Serena Williams Opens Second School in Kenya

Serena Williams, the world's #1 womens tennis player, made a whirlwind 3-day trip to Kenya in late February. The trip included the opening of the Serena Williams Wee Secondary School, the second such school in her name in that African nation. The school is located in the remote village of Wee, east of Nairobi. This is the second school she’s opened in Kenya with help from computer giant Hewlett Packard. Serena opened her first school in 2008. Oprah, you're lagging.


Just a couple months ago Serena was all over the news for her rant against a line judge in a tennis match and the media was calling for her head. But where is the main stream media when not only Serena Williams, but any athelete does anything positive?

The tiny village of Wee was a beehive of activity as Serena and her entourage arrived in aboard helicopters to preside over the grand opening. Hundreds of school children and their parents turned out to receive the celebrated star player which they only hear about in the media. The greatest moment of the event came when Serena was decorated as an Akamba woman amid song and dance.

Wee students, having heard of a popular joke that Serena’s roots are in Western Kenya due to her imposing physique, impressed the visitor with a rendition of popular songs from the region like mwana wa mama apepetanga (mama’s girl is a star dancer). The children sang: “Serena we like you, Serena we love you, Serena come dance with us,” and Serena acknowledged by waving back with a smile.

For hundreds of Wee residents, the presence of helicopters attracted their attention much more than did the tennis star as they gathered around the machines they only see flying above the hilly region.

Serena’s school has a special class for deaf students, the first of its kind in the region.

Serena also met with the Prime Minister and Vice President of Kenya and conducted a tennis clinic with the children. And being that Serena was recovering from the flu, her appearance was all the more impressive.

First African Playboy Playmate of the Year

Tanzanian-born model Ida Ljungqvist recently received a necklace from Hugh Hefner in recognition as the 2009 Playboy Playmate of the Year at the Playboy Club at The Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas, Nevada. She was Playmate for March 2008.

The 27-year-old African/Swede stunner was discovered while working at a Bebe clothing boutique on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills by 2007 Playmate of the Year Sara Jean Underwood. She made history as the magazine’s 50th woman to hold the title, and the first African to do so. She is tri-lingual (English, Swahili and Swedish, and), and has a degree in fashion design and marketing and plans to study economics. Ljungqvist quit her job at Bebe a month later and appeared on the cover of Playboy in March of last year. She said her parents were hardly proud when she told them she was going to bare all for Playboy. “My mother didn’t speak to me for a month,” she said. She hopes being Playmate of the Year opens doors for her; she'd love to act. And from now on, she says, she's keeping her clothes on in photos.

Ida Ljungqvist was born to a Tanzanian mother and a Swedish father and she traveled the globe while her father worked for UNICEF. In Africa she has lived in Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, South Africa, Zimbabwe; in Asia, she lived in Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand; in Europe, she lived in France, the U.K., Sweden, and Denmark. She currently lives in California.

Sons of Lwala

The village of Lwala is a small farming community of 1500 in Kenya. Two things stand out in Lwala: the sense of community and the lack of health care. In Lwala poverty, impassable roads during the rainy season, lack of electricity, unsafe drinking water and poor nutrition create an environment where poor health is rampant and access to care practically nonexistent. Malaria, diarrhea, skin diseases, respiratory diseases and tuberculosis are rampant. Women give birth in their dirt-floored huts, and complications in delivery often lead to death. Children suffer from malnutrition, which makes worse the problems of malaria, diarrhea and skin diseases. But despite their difficulty, these problems pale in comparison to the problem of HIV/AIDS, which is the primary cause of death in Lwala and infects as much as a third of the population. The nearest hospital is over 40 miles away. Lwala is basically a community struggling to keep afloat. In all this misery and despair, the residents of Lwala somehow carry themselves with a sense of joy.

‘Sons of Lwala’ is a documentary film that follows Milton and Fred Ochieng’. Milton and Fred are two brothers from Kenya whose village sent them to America to become doctors. But after losing both parents to AIDS they were left with a heartbreaking task: to return home and finish the health clinic their father started before getting sick. Unable to raise enough money on their own, the brothers were joined by students, politicians, and Christian rock band - Jars of Clay to launch a fundraising drive among young people across the United States. The documentary follows Milton and Fred on their incredible journey as they find a way, despite all odds, to open their village’s first and only clinic. Both have been speaking all over the northeast lately to doctor’s conventions while filmmaker Barry Simmons been showing the film in dozens of venues, from universities to medical conferences to church gatherings to fund the clinic. The clinic has already made a huge difference in the lives of Kenyans living in and near Lwala. But the greatest challenge facing the clinic continues to be funding. The lack of an ambulance to transport patients, refrigeration to store drugs like snake anti-venom, staffing and supplies, especially medicine. The clinic is staffed by one physician’s assistant and three nurses, a nurse’s aide, a lab technician and a pharmacist. Treatment is free for children under 5, seniors over 70, pregnant women and HIV/AIDS patients. The cost for those who pay is usually about 70 cents a visit.

The Lwala villagers sold livestock, the equivalent of us selling our cars, to send Milton and Fred Ochieng’ to the United States for medical training. Milton is currently pursuing his residency in St. Louis, Missouri and Fred is a third year med student at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee. The brothers’ achievement is a village affair and it is also a family affair. Two of their sisters are also in the U.S.: Florence is a second-year nursing student at St. Joseph’s College of Nursing in Syracuse, New York and Grace is attending high school in New Hampshire. A younger brother, Solomon, is in high primary school in Kenya. He is taken care of by the oldest brother Omondi who was enrolled at a local teacher’s college before dropping out to care for the sick parents. Omondi looks after the homestead and runs the clinic in Lwala.

When Milton left Kenya to study in the U.S., he became the first person from his village to board an airplane. He received a college scholarship to Dartmouth but was unable to afford the airfare until neighbors came up with the money by selling chickens and cows. Fred followed his brother to Dartmouth two years later, becoming only the second person from their village to set foot in the United States. Fred raised $9,000 at a Christian conference while at Dartmouth in one day to begin the building of their father’s clinic.

Since its independence from Britain in 1963, Kenya has achieved a level of corruption unrivaled almost anywhere else in the world. According to studies, the government steals and wastes $1 billion. Yet Kenya spends just $14 per person on health each year and pays it young doctors about what a U.S. cab driver makes. It’s no wonder that nearly 1,700 physicians have fled Kenya in the last 10 years in search of better jobs, leaving their families and neighbors in the villages with no one to care for them.

The “Sons of Lwala” DVD is available and on sale for $19.99 at www.sonsoflwala.com. According to the producers all proceeds go to the clinic. If you use Facebook, join the Sons of Lwala group to receive regular updates on where the film is being shown and how you can make a difference in this project.

To find out more about the village visit: www.lwalacommunityalliance.org?>http://www.lwalacommunityalliance.org

World Hopes for a 'Less Arrogant America'

Around the world, large crowds packed outdoor plazas and pubs to await U.S. elections results Tuesday, many inspired by Barack Obama's promise of change and a sense of relief that — no matter who wins — the White House is changing hands. As millions of U.S. voters decided who would be their next leader, the world was abuzz with the sense of bearing witness to a moment of history that would echo well beyond American borders.

"America is electing a new president, but for the Germans, for Europeans, it is electing the next world leader," said the director of the German Council on Foreign Relations. In Germany, where more than 200,000 people flocked to see Obama this summer during a trip to the Middle East and Europe, the election dominated television ticker crawls, newspaper headlines and Web sites.

In Kenya, Obama's ancestral homeland, the atmosphere was electric with pride and excitement as people flocked to all-night parties to watch election results roll in. Kenyans believe an Obama victory wouldn't change their lives much, but that hasn't stopped them from splashing his picture on minibuses and selling T-shirts with his name and likeness. Kenyans gathered around radios and TV sets Tuesday night as the results came in.

The Irish village of Moneygall was also trying to claim Obama as a favorite son — based on research that concluded the candidate's great-great-great grandfather lived there before emigrating to the United States. The entertainment at Moneygall's Hayes Bar included a local band called Hardy Drew and the Nancy Boys that has been winning air time with its rousing folk song "There's No One as Irish as Barack Obama."

London Mayor Boris Johnson — a Conservative — was rooting for the liberal Obama. "For those who have become disenchanted with America — including many Americans — (Obama) offers the hope of re-igniting the love affair," he said. In Paris, among the festivities planned was a "Goodbye George" party to bid farewell to Bush. A Paris bank tell said, "It lets America turn an important page in its history."

Obama-mania was evident not only across Europe but also in much of the Islamic world, where Muslims expressed hope that the Democrat would seek compromise rather than confrontation. Worldwide, most Muslims believe the Bush administration alienated Muslims by mistreating prisoners at its detention center for terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and inmates at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.

In the Japanese coastal town of Obama — which translates as "little beach" — images of President-elect Obama adorned banners along a main shopping street, and preparations for a victory party were in full swing.

From Unknown to the World’s Most Recognized Face

Just eight years ago a little known Barack Obama arrived at the Democratic National Convention in Boston unable to obtain a floor pass. He ended up watching most of the speeches on TV monitors in the arena. He was so broke that his credit card was rejected at the car rental counter. His political future was bleak. He had just been trounced in his bid for Congress.

Four years later the change was remarkable. This time when Barack Obama attended the 2004 Democratic convention he was tapped as the keynote speaker, a coveted spot for up-and-comers, and as a U.S. Senate nominee generating political buzz, he fit the bill. Barack Obama still was an unaccomplished state lawmaker, a virtual unknown to the cheering delegates gathered in the Boston convention hall that July night. But his words lit up the crowd.

Now jump forward to the 2008 Democratic convention. On Aug. 28, Senator Barack Obama will step on the stage before a crowd of 75,000 to accept the Democratic Party’s nomination for president. He will be at the summit of U.S. politics, a phenomenon who has smashed every fundraising record, drew astounding crowds, and made history.

How did this man go so far so fast? He is a candidate with political savvy and electrifying oratory skills, enormous confidence, and fierce drive, and an uncanny knack of making friends and forging connections in all the right places. He likes to get along with people. He listens to them. Someone said that he is lucky. And like I always say luck happens when preparation and opportunity meet. A lucky man is one who knows how to take advantage of a break when he gets it.

Senator Obama also has a life story unlike that of any man ever nominated for the U.S.'s highest office. And while his unconventional experiences have made him an unconventional candidate, they also have helped fuel his extraordinary rise. It is truly the American dream – one of the most unlikely political biographies of all times. When you look at his life, there are half a dozen times when he could have failed ... being abandoned by his father, his troubled teenage years... but he seems to weather adversity better than most people.

"It's a leap electing a 46-year-old black guy named Barack Obama," the Illinois senator told a crowd in July at a Missouri fundraiser.
There is his biracial roots and foreign-sounding name. It's his youth spent wrestling with questions about his racial identity and a foreign father he barely knew. It's his admission that he tried drugs as a teen. That kind of revelation is rarely made known by politicians. It's his travels from low-prestige community organizer in the poverty-ravaged corners of Chicago to the high-powered halls of Harvard Law School. And it's his rapid climb up the political ladder.

Barack Obama's life story is familiar to many by now. The Kansas-born mother, Stanley Ann Dunham (her father wanted a boy). The Kenyan-born father, Barack Obama Sr. Their meeting at the University of Hawaii, their marriage, the birth of Barack ("blessed" in Arabic). The father's departure two years later to study at Harvard, his return just once when Barack was 10. The childhood in Indonesia, homeland of his stepfather, Lolo Soetero; the exposure to poverty and beggars, crocodiles and roasted grasshopper. And then, after his mother's second marriage broke up, the return to Hawaii, where the young Obama (then known as Barry) enrolled in the prestigious Punahou School, a private academy in Honolulu.
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As a teen, Barack Obama was smart and liked to read but he wasn't particularly driven or ambitious (there were no obvious signs -- unless you count a grade school essay -- that pointed to politics as his destiny). He wasn't part of student government. He wasn't in any advanced placement classes. “He was a young man concerned with ... hanging out with his buddies, playing basketball and body surfing,” says his half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng.

When his mother's work as an anthropologist took her back to Indonesia, Barack stayed behind for high school, living with his maternal grandparents, Madelyn, known as Tutu or Toot (Hawaiian for grandparent), and Stanley, or Gramps. He played golf and poker, he practiced his left-handed jump shot on a playground into the night (he had a minor role on his school's championship basketball team), he sang in the choir, he listened to the music of Earth Wind & Fire (great musical taste).

In some ways, he was a typical teenager. In other ways, he was anything but: His mother was far away, his father was gone forever, he had already lived in a Third World country and was growing up in Hawaii (all of which shaped him into someone who could easily be flexible and adapt to change).

At Occidental College in Los Angeles, he who started using his given name, Barack and took his first plunge into politics, speaking at an anti-apartheid rally. Barack was confident and casual on campus; he favored flip-flops, shorts and a trim Afro, and not one to dominate dorm discussions about political issues. But Occidental was a small liberal arts college and Obama wanted to expand his horizons, so he transferred across the country to Columbia University in New York.

Barack Obama graduated with a political science degree and held a few jobs in New York. It was there he received a call from an aunt in Nairobi, Kenya notifying him his father had been killed in a car accident. The news eventually led Obama on a journey to Kenya and a visit to his father's grave.

After New York, Obama headed to Chicago, a city where he knew no one, taking a low-paying job, motivating poor people to participate in a political system that had traditionally shut them out. Starting out as a $12,000-a-year community organizer, Obama walked the run-down streets of the South Side that had been devastated by the loss of steel mills and factory jobs. Working for the Developing Communities Project, Obama met with Black pastors and tried to mobilize people to speak up for themselves, whether it was lobbying for a job training center or cleaning up public housing. He established an easy rapport with people in the community, many of whom treated him like a son (they teasingly called him "baby face.") "He would tell us you've got to do things right, you've got to take the high road," says one of the project founders. "He would talk about no permanent friends, no permanent enemies. He would say, 'Don't get personalities involved.'"

Obama — who calls his organizing work "the best education I ever had" — became a skilled conciliator. He became very effective at getting people who initially did not get along to work together and build alliances. He found a way to be tough and challenging when he didn't like something. At the same time, he was not one to burn his bridges with people. This is the way a president should deal with adversaries instead of not talking to them. And they continue to say he has no experience. This is REAL experience. If you can be successful in the hard nosed Chicago politics you can be successful anywhere.

Chicago is the city where Barack Obama put down roots. He joined the Trinity United Church of Christ and became friends with its pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, whose remarks Senator Obama denounced after they created a national uproar. He no longer attends the church.

Chicago also was Obama's political boot camp, where he learned how to win over skeptics who wondered why that tall, skinny guy was at their door when Harold Washington, the first black mayor, was in City Hall. "Black people would say, 'Harold will take care of the problem. Why do we need a community organizer?'" recalls Mike Kruglik, a fellow organizer. "He'd say, 'We have to build the power ... we can't trust any individual politician.'" Senator Obama was not all work. He attended Chicago Bulls games and wrote short fictional stories that evocatively captured the feel of the streets. (He later wrote two best-selling books, one of them a memoir.)

Obama also remained close to his family. After her father died, Maya, who is nine years younger, says Obama "really took on the role of a father," taking her on college tours, introducing her to jazz, blues and classical music — and, much later, consoling her when their mother died of ovarian cancer at age 53.

Then Senator Obama made a giant leap from the tough South Side to the heady atmosphere of Harvard Law School, the training ground for America's political elite. He made history there, as the first Black president of the Harvard Law Review, the most prestigious law journal in the U.S.

After his first year, Obama was a summer associate at a corporate law firm in Chicago where his adviser was Michelle Robinson, another Harvard law graduate and a product of a working-class family. They later married, and had two daughters, Malia, now 10, and Sasha, 7. As Obama prepared to leave Harvard, job offers poured in. But he already had a plan. He would return to Chicago for a political career.

At first, he chose a behind-the-scenes job. Obama ran a voter registration drive that added tens of thousands to the rolls. "He was very straightforward and had a no-nonsense, all-the-cards-on-the-table approach," recalls Sandy Newman, founder of the national group, Project Vote!

Obama also began carefully mapping out a path that positioned him for public office. He joined a small, politically connected law firm that did civil rights litigation. He and his wife, Michelle, lived in Hyde Park, the racially mixed neighborhood around the University of Chicago that is home to progressive politics, intellectuals and a sprinkling of Nobel Prize winners. By choosing to move to Hyde Park, he moved in an area where an independent can come out of nowhere to win. He also broadened his circle of acquaintances, impressing influential Democrats and party donors who proved invaluable in his campaigns.

Obama was a great networker. He worked all the right circles. Foes called him a calculating politician; friends called him a smart, methodical worker. He does nothing that's different from most politicians. The difference is he's extraordinarily gifted. His greatest capability is he never makes the same mistake twice. But that skill was nothing without a political opportunity. While waiting for one, Obama became a lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School. He taught constitutional law. "He's a great conversationalist and a good listener," says Richard Epstein, a law school professor.

In 1996, Obama was elected to the Illinois state Senate, but as a member of the Democratic minority, his legislative proposals were consistently let down by Republicans. Some dismissed him as a college liberal. Obama won over many lawmakers in nearly eight years in the state Senate (inexperienced?). He played in weekly poker games, befriending suburban and White rural legislators. He also had an important ally in an old-school Chicago Democrat who became Senate president when the party took control of the chamber, a change that increased Obama's influence.

Obama had several legislative successes. He passed measures that limited lobbyists' gifts to politicians, helped expand health care to poor children and changed laws governing racial profiling, the death penalty and the interrogation of murder suspects. He reached across party lines to work with Republicans. He can compromise without giving up his principles.

Obama stumbled badly, though, in 2000 when he challenged Representative Bobby Rush, a former Black Panther member with deep roots in the community. During that contest, Obama was dogged by the question raised by some critics and Black politicians (whether he was "Black enough" for the district). He is running for president of the U.S. not president of the Black community. But in that congressional campaign, Obama was seen as the outsider. Rush, the insider, crushed him by 31 percentage points in the primary.

Two years later, Obama set his sights on another office: U.S. Senate. He won in a massive victory. Months later, Senator Obama impressed Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry during a joint campaign appearance in Chicago, leading to his stirring keynote speech. In 17 minutes, Senator Obama went from an obscure state lawmaker to a force in national politics.

When Barack Obama announced his presidential candidacy 18 months ago at the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Illinois, he was still unknown to most Americans. The freshman senator Obama had been in Washington just two years. He has appeared on numerous magazine covers, won two Grammys for recording his best-selling books, made TV appearances, received hundreds of invitations a week and traveled the country in 2006, campaigning for other Democratic candidates and building up relationships along the way. And the spotlight only grew during the primary season. Senator Obama proved to be an enormous draw on the campaign trail, packing arenas with overflow crowds as he promised an end to the Iraq war, a new era of bipartisanship in Washington and "change we can believe in."

Just like John F. Kennedy tapped into the television market in the 1960 election, Senator Barack Obama has tapped into the internet better than any candidate ever has, he knew what to do with the Internet and e-mail in a way no candidate has.

In Denver, at Democratic Party Convention, Senator Barack Obama will turn to the old-fashioned powers of speechmaking when he steps on stage to address the crowd and accept the nomination as the Party’s nominee for President of the United States. And this time, everybody will know exactly who he is.

Darfur Refugee Will Lead U.S. Olympic Team

Lopez Lomong will lead the U.S. Olympic team at opening ceremonies Friday night at Bird's Nest Stadium in Beijing. Lomong, one ot the "Lost Boys of Sudan" was selected Thursday as the flag bearer for the U.S. team. He won a vote of team captains to earn the honor at the Olympic opening ceremonies.

Lopez was born Lopepe Lomong, January 1, 1985 in Kimotong, Sudan. He was among roughly 3,800 refugees, dubbed the Lost Boys of Sudan by reporters and aid workers, who were resettled in cities across the United States. Nearly all were boys who had been separated from relatives during fighting in Sudan. They endured months of wandering during which thousands died of hunger, disease or attacks by bandits or wild animals.

Human rights groups have faulted China for doing too little to pressure Sudan, its trading partner, to halt continuous bloodshed in the Darfur region. An estimated 300,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been forced from their homes in a campaign of genocide in Darfur. Lomong was uprooted in 1991 by a grinding civil war in Sudan that pitted Black southerners who practiced Christianity and other religions against a government dominated by Arab Muslims from northern Sudan. The north-south war in Sudan killed 2 million people and displaced 4 million others before a 2005 peace deal ended the fighting. Yet violence still rages in the unrelated conflict that erupted in 2003 in the western region of Darfur. Lomong is a member of Team Darfur, a group of athletes committed to raising awareness about the violence in the Darfur.

The 23-year-old Lomong is a 1,500-meter runner. He was born in Sudan and separated from his family at the point of a gun by rebels, a fate shared by thousands of children in the Darfur, a western area of Sudan. After escaping from a rebel camp with the help of friends at age 6, he spent 10 years in a refugee camp in Kenya before arriving in Tully, New York in 2001 as part of a program to relocate lost children from war torn Sudan and becoming a U.S. citizen a year ago.

Lomong called the honor “the most exciting day ever in my life. It's more than a dream," Lomong said in an interview with the Associated Press moments after he got the news. "I keep saying, I'm not sure if this is true or not true. I'm making the team and now I'm the first guy coming to the stadium and the whole world will be watching me carry the flag. There are no words to describe it. I feel great," Lomong said. "I feel happy, honored. I'm feeling so blessed to get an opportunity to present the United States of America, to present the United States flag in front of my team."

Lopez Lomong began running shortly after the 2000 Olympics. He walked about 5 miles from the Kenyan camp and spent his earnings of a few cents from a landscaping job to pay to watch the Sydney Games on TV.

Lomong attended Tully High School in Upstate New York where he helped lead the cross country and track teams to sectional and state titles, and later competed for Northern Arizona University. In 2007, Lomong was the division I NCAA indoor champion at 3000 meters and the outdoor champion at 1500 meters. He finished third in the distance at the Olympic trials. All three Americans in the 1,500 are naturalized citizens — Lomong, Bernard Lagat (Kenya) and Leo Manzano (Mexico).

After his success at the collegiate level, Lopez signed a contract with Nike and now competes professionally. He specializes in the 1500m run but is a serious contender in every mid-distance race from 800m up to and including the 5k. Lomong is a member of Team Darfur, a group of athletes urging China to exert pressure on Sudan's government to address the violent conflict in Sudan's Darfur.

He is the son of foster parents Robert and Barbara Rogers. Lomong enjoys listening to music. One of his favorite artists is 2Pac Shakur. He plans on majoring in hotel and restaurant management and hopes to have a partnership with a well known hotel like Marriot. His goal is to build a hotel in Africa in order to bring tourists to his birth home and create more of a peaceful environment there. He'd love nothing more than to give people the opportunity to visit the country and interact with the people before prejudging what it may be like there.

Tune Wins Closest Women’s Boston Marathon in History; Cheruiyot Wins His Fourth

When Dire Tune, (pronounced "Deer-ay Too-nay), decided to wait until the end and try to outkick her opponent, Alevtina Biktimirova, when she couldn't pull ahead of with a few miles left in the Boston Marathon. The plan barely worked – but it worked. The two women ran shoulder to shoulder from Heartbreak Hill to the end, exchanging the lead from time to time before Tune pulled away on the final turn to win in 2 hours, 25 minutes, 25 seconds today to take the closest women's race in Boston Marathon history. Ms. Biktimirova finished 2 seconds later. Ms. Tune, a 22-year-old Ethiopian remarked through a translator, “I tried to run away from her for the last miles, but she’s very strong. I was confident when I was not able to run away from her, I could save myself for the final kick.” This was her first try at Boston

Tune and Biktimirova were part of a group of 10 women who immediately broke from the pack within the first mile and stuck together until about mile 15. One by one the others dropped back until only Tune and Biktimirova were left. Tune and Biktimirova seemed to get stronger, matching each other stride for stride. Ms. Tune at one point appeared to give up an edge when she nearly missed one of the final turns.

The previous closest women's finish was 10 seconds in 2006, when Kenya's Rita Jeptoo beat Latvia's Jelena Prokopcuka. The two finished third and fourth respectively, today. The top American finished 15th overall in 2:48.43. Most of the top American women ran in Sunday's Olympic trials in Boston. It probably wouldn’t have made a difference because women from African and the former Soviet Union have dominated the race in recent history.

Robert Cheruiyot of Kenya won the men’s race in 2 hours, 7 minutes and 46 seconds. It was his fourth win in five tries. After crossing the finish line, he dropped to his knees to kiss the ground before standing up and counting off his four victories with an upraised arm. Cheruiyot's third straight victory gave Kenya its 15th men's title in 17 years. Kenyans also finished sixth through ninth. But Cheruiyot's countrymen struggled more than usual overall, with just the one man in the top five - the fewest since 1992 - and one woman in the top 10. Cheruiyot couldn't say whether the performance was related to the post election violence back home, in which some of his country's top runners have been killed and threatened. Cheruiyot missed two months of training because of the unrest before his coach moved their camp to Namibia.

More than 25,000 runners started the race for the second-largest field ever. Among entrants in this race were cyclist Lance Armstrong and astronaut Sunita Williams, who ran a simulated Boston Marathon last year while in orbit on the International Space Station.

Crisis In Kenya

Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and African statesman is in Nairobi, Kenya to try and resolve a bitter standoff between President Mwai Kibaki and opposition challenger Raila Odinga. The crisis involves a disputed poll that plunged Kenya into chaos and ethnic bloodshed. Annan is escorted by fellow mediators Benjamin Mkapa, the former president of Tanzania, and Graca Machel, the wife of former South African leader Nelson Mandela. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni also arrived on Tuesday to join in the mediation efforts, though the opposition distrusts him because he is one of few African leaders to have congratulated Kibaki on his victory.

"We expect all parties to enter into dialogue in good faith and to seize this opportunity to end the suffering and uncertainty," Annan said. However, it remains to be seen if any progress can be made since Odinga and Kibaki have refused to speak to each other despite pressure from Western powers like the United States, Britain and the European Union. Mr. Annan's mission follows a similar attempt by African Union head and Ghanaian President John Kufuor. He failed to get Kibaki and Odinga to meet.

Clashes between Kibaki and Odinga supporters, ethnic unrest, and a brutal crackdown by the security forces have killed at least 650 people over the past month. Mr. Odinga says a December 27 poll that returned Kibaki to power was fraudulent. His supporters have taken to the streets, and mobs mostly targeting Kibaki's Kikuyu tribe have hacked people to death and burnt homes. There have also been reprisal killings.

The opposition will hold a memorial gathering starting at a mortuary then proceeding to a football field near Nairobi's Kibera slum on Wednesday for those who have died in the unrest. Police have banned all rallies and have broken up previous gatherings of supporters from both sides but said they will allow the memorial gathering to go ahead.

About 250,000 Kenyans have been uprooted by the fighting that has tarnished the country's image, cost east Africa's biggest economy more than $1 billion, and choked fuel supplies and trade to landlocked neighbors like Uganda.

As we here in the U.S. are in the mist of a presidential election year, it is a sad sight to see real political fighting in an African country. But it is also great to see Black men and women from other African countries attempt mediation between the factions.

The western media criticizes the civil fighting in African countries but somehow fails to remember that the U.S. had its own civil war at one time. After all most of the African countries have had independence for only fifty or so years. They are just following the example of their former enslavers.