2007, and it has been repeated many times since he became president. But Obama Sr. was not a member of the student airlift. Obama, in fact, was turned down for the much-coveted seat. And the man who rejected him was an enthusiastic young American named Robert F. Stephens.
From 1957 to 1959 Stephens was the cultural affairs officer at the U.S. Information Service (USIS) in Nairobi. An amiable Michigan native, Stephens counted among his many responsibilities the task of interviewing students to determine if they met the criteria for the airlift. Despite being a mzungu with a significant degree of power, Stephens was well liked by the African nationalists. Not only was he conversant in Swahili, he was an avid supporter of the drive for African education and did much to facilitate the studentsâ success.
Stephens and others in the U.S. Consulate in Nairobi had long objected to the U.S. requirement that a Kenyan student have two years of additional schooling after high school in order to be eligible for a U.S. scholarship.
He reasoned that Americans needed only a high school degree to get into college, so why should the bar be higher for Africans? He was the one who helped convince Washington officials to drop the requirement so that Kenyans needed only a Cambridge School Certificate, the equivalent of a high school diploma, in order to apply.
A thirty-four-year-old father of three at the time he interviewed Obama, Stephens became an unofficial mentor for many Kenyan students eager for a chance to travel to America. Young men and women stood for hours outside his second-floor office on Government Road waiting to hear his advice. While interviewing them to determine their eligibility, Stephens often had to raise his voice to be heard above the buses and bodies churning outside his open window.
Stephens maintained a library of more than six hundred American college catalogues. StudentsâObama among themâwere constantly dropping in to thumb through their well-worn pages, never mind that they had never heard of either the schools or the cities in which they were located. Stephens also held some informal orientation sessions on American ways for prospective students. A chief subject was gender relations and sexual mores, which differed vastly from African habits. In the category of hygiene, clean socks were high on the agenda. âI told them they must always remember to change their socks and to wash them out,â recalled Stephens, now retired in Marblehead, Massachusetts.
When Mboya arrived back in Nairobi, the exhausting process of selecting the eighty-one students who would fill the first charter plane began. Mboya, Kiano, Njiiri, and Stephens formed the selection committee. Often the four men would pour over the student lists long into the night in the living room of the Stephensâs Muthaiga home, trying to make the difficult choice of who would get to go. The chance of boarding the Britannia aircraft that had been chartered for the trip had become a dream that infected young people from the shores of Lake Victoria to the rough-hewn docks of Mombasa. âGoing to America was the thing to do,â said Philip Ochieng, one of Kenyaâs most prominent journalists and a drinking pal of Obamaâs in later years. âIf you didnât have an education, youâd never rise higher than a senior clerk.â
Obama was determined to be one of the chosen ones. He talked about it constantly, sometimes comparing notes with other applicants. Thinking
his friendship with Mboya was his ace in the hole, Obama headed into his interview with Stephens bristling with certainty.
Stephens recalls his meeting with Barack Obama well, not because he was so impressed with him but because he was not. Dapper in suit and tie, Obama appeared in Stephensâs office one morning with his paperwork in hand. Stephens was put off by the younger manâs manner from the start. Obama seemed cocksure, far more confident
From 1957 to 1959 Stephens was the cultural affairs officer at the U.S. Information Service (USIS) in Nairobi. An amiable Michigan native, Stephens counted among his many responsibilities the task of interviewing students to determine if they met the criteria for the airlift. Despite being a mzungu with a significant degree of power, Stephens was well liked by the African nationalists. Not only was he conversant in Swahili, he was an avid supporter of the drive for African education and did much to facilitate the studentsâ success.
Stephens and others in the U.S. Consulate in Nairobi had long objected to the U.S. requirement that a Kenyan student have two years of additional schooling after high school in order to be eligible for a U.S. scholarship.
He reasoned that Americans needed only a high school degree to get into college, so why should the bar be higher for Africans? He was the one who helped convince Washington officials to drop the requirement so that Kenyans needed only a Cambridge School Certificate, the equivalent of a high school diploma, in order to apply.
A thirty-four-year-old father of three at the time he interviewed Obama, Stephens became an unofficial mentor for many Kenyan students eager for a chance to travel to America. Young men and women stood for hours outside his second-floor office on Government Road waiting to hear his advice. While interviewing them to determine their eligibility, Stephens often had to raise his voice to be heard above the buses and bodies churning outside his open window.
Stephens maintained a library of more than six hundred American college catalogues. StudentsâObama among themâwere constantly dropping in to thumb through their well-worn pages, never mind that they had never heard of either the schools or the cities in which they were located. Stephens also held some informal orientation sessions on American ways for prospective students. A chief subject was gender relations and sexual mores, which differed vastly from African habits. In the category of hygiene, clean socks were high on the agenda. âI told them they must always remember to change their socks and to wash them out,â recalled Stephens, now retired in Marblehead, Massachusetts.
When Mboya arrived back in Nairobi, the exhausting process of selecting the eighty-one students who would fill the first charter plane began. Mboya, Kiano, Njiiri, and Stephens formed the selection committee. Often the four men would pour over the student lists long into the night in the living room of the Stephensâs Muthaiga home, trying to make the difficult choice of who would get to go. The chance of boarding the Britannia aircraft that had been chartered for the trip had become a dream that infected young people from the shores of Lake Victoria to the rough-hewn docks of Mombasa. âGoing to America was the thing to do,â said Philip Ochieng, one of Kenyaâs most prominent journalists and a drinking pal of Obamaâs in later years. âIf you didnât have an education, youâd never rise higher than a senior clerk.â
Obama was determined to be one of the chosen ones. He talked about it constantly, sometimes comparing notes with other applicants. Thinking
his friendship with Mboya was his ace in the hole, Obama headed into his interview with Stephens bristling with certainty.
Stephens recalls his meeting with Barack Obama well, not because he was so impressed with him but because he was not. Dapper in suit and tie, Obama appeared in Stephensâs office one morning with his paperwork in hand. Stephens was put off by the younger manâs manner from the start. Obama seemed cocksure, far more confident
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