Traveling with Obama

Inauguration Day. A day we will all remember. A day our children and our children's children will prompt the question, "where were you when Barack Obama was sworn-in as..."

the 44th President of the U.S.

the first African American President of the U.S.

the first bi-racial President of the U.S.

Or the day Bush flew over the Potomac no longer the President of the U.S.

Tomorrow I will post images and audio, hopefully a slideshow, of some of the amazing people I met today while marking this historic day in my personal storyline. I will tell my children, or your children - someone's children - that I spent this great day in the way that means the most to me: hearing people tell their stories, sharing their dreams, and collecting a photographic memory of their stories to add to my own.

I am ending my day in Jersey City - an enclave just west of the World Trade Center site - with a Kenyan community galvanized by the election of a man who's father was Kenyan. President Obama, in one of the highpoints of his inaugural speech earlier today, suggested people might open their fists when an open hand is extended to them. As one man I interviewed, David Asige, said, "[Obama's] Kenyan father and his white mother held hands together to make the man that became this dream." This is only part of what makes this day so historic for everyone around the world.


I got to watch election history being made in November from the flat of my friends Rich and Hannah in Dublin, Ireland. Rich has been active in the Democrats Abroad contingent (check out his hilarious tongue-in-cheek piece in The Dubliner Magazine) and was glued to his laptop most of the night. Well, when I wasn't stealing it out from under him to track stats, predictions, commentaries and returns on my favorite sites. A room full of Irish and stomachs full of homemade pizza (way to go, Hannah!), we were a happy and overtired group by 5:30AM when I cried in delight as the new first family, a beautiful black family, walked onto the stage.

Today, back in my country of birth and near family I was born into and family I have come to adopt as my own after my trip to Africa, I raise a hand, sing an "Amen!" and kneel in gratitude for this new day that has dawned.