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Updated Sunday 15 May, 2011 12:18 PM |
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This Day in Alternate History Blog
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Walking a straight line in a crooked world by Steve Payne
On August 4th 1961 future world statesman Barack Hussein Obama II was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. His parents met while attending the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where his father was a foreign student. They separated when he was two years old and later divorced. Following an unremarkable record of educational achievement in Hawaii and subsequently the continental United States, Obama entered North America's premier professional men's basketball league where he signed for the Chicago Bulls in 1982. In his autobiography "Dreams of My Father" he describes how Barack Obama, Senior survived a near-fatal car crash in Nairobi that very same year. Interpreting this miraculous escape from death as an act of destiny, his father travelled from Nyang'oma Kogelo, Siaya District to find his son in Chicago. He was shocked to find him addressing himself by the anglicized name "Barry" and suffering a profound identity crisis. Following a furious argument, his father experienced a change of heart only after he found a scrap of poetry in which his son had written that he was "Walking a straight line in a crooked world". Writing of his political awakening in "The Audacity of Hope" , Obama stated that if not for the re-union with his father, it is unlikely that he would have found the sense of purpose and direction to launch a political career, to become someone - the President of Kenya.
Steve Payne, Editor
Today in Alternate History
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