KISUMU, Kenya (Reuters) – Kenyans in Barack Obama's ancestral homeland prayed for victory Tuesday and relatives prepared to roast a bull in celebration if he becomes the first African-American president of the United States.
U.S. election fever has swept Kenya as the Democratic hopeful is tipped to win the world's most powerful position.
Babies have been named after Obama, drinkers knock back "Senator" beers in his honor, pop stars sing his praises and "Obama: The Musical" opened in the capital Nairobi Sunday.
His late father hailed from rural western Kenya, and exuberant locals gave his Republican rival John McCain little hope of making a comeback after lagging for weeks in the opinion polls.
Police tightened security as family, friends, well-wishers and hordes of local and foreign journalists descended on Kogelo, a tiny village where Obama's 87-year-old grandmother lives.
Many Africans hope his victory would mean more U.S. support for local development projects and an improvement in living conditions for the majority on the world's poorest continent.
"My brother may not directly influence the development in the village," half-brother Abongo Malik Obama said.
"But there are things that he stands for, and it is the people who believe in those things who will make moves to improve living standards," he told reporters in Kogelo.
However, analysts have warned that Obama will be able to do little to bring tangible benefits to Africa, and that he does not have a strong track record of interest in the continent.
Born in Hawaii to a white mother from Kansas and a Kenyan father, Obama is idolised by many Kenyans in the way the Irish revered U.S. President John F. Kennedy in the 1960s: as one of their own who succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.
The western town of Kisumu, about an hour southeast of Kogelo on the shores of Lake Victoria, was in a frenzy of excitement as Americans went to the polls.
"I don't think McCain would have sold anything," said Kwamboka Okari, a woman selling Obama buttons in Kisumu's hot equatorial sun. "I don't see how McCain would come here."
At Chirombero Market nearby, a local comedy duo staged a mock U.S. election with lines of excited youths queuing up to cast "votes" in a ballot box plastered with Obama's picture.
Comedian Milton Obote, in charge of the McCain box, said business had been slow and that only a handful of people had "voted" for the Republican. Kenyans were upset, he said, because the Arizona Senator had never visited their country.
"McCain sent me a dream last night and told me to be his agent," Obote told Reuters as the crowd roared with laughter.
"Had McCain come to Kenya we would have been voting for him by now because we wanted to tell him our problems."
(Additional reporting by Njuwa Maina and Donna Omulo; editing by Keith Weir)
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