Two Nobel Laureates
When the news came early last Friday morning that U.S. President Barack Obama has been awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, I was immediately taken back to the Friday morning, now five years ago, that Prof learned that the Norwegian Nobel Committee had named her its 2004 peace laureate. Even in a life filled with incident, like both Prof's and Obama's, that news is pretty memorable.
For Prof, it came as a total surprise -- as it seems to have been for Obama. In 2004, Prof was traveling to a meeting with some of her parliamentary constituents outside the town of Nyeri in central Kenya, about a three-hour drive from Nairobi, over rutted roads and past small villages and pineapple plantations. The line from Norway to Prof's cell phone wasn't strong. I recall her pressing the phone more closely to her ear to hear the extraordinary message.
And then, nothing was the same again . . . or at least
some things weren't. Prof's name was a headline across the world; journalists began dialing in to her mobile from too many countries to mention now. I was there, too (why is perhaps a story for another time) and tried my best to keep up with the media queries. Alas, or perhaps wonderfully, Prof's constituency aide and I were in a field, literally, next to a school in a tiny village. I had to explain to the reporters that Prof had kept her schedule. True to form, and conviction, despite the news from Norway and the pleading of TV journalists that she return to Nairobi to do live interviews, she didn't. She kept her commitment to her constituents who, after all, had travelled from miles around, by foot or crowded matatu van to meet her. They didn't know anything about a Nobel prize. Prof explained it to them, but quickly returned to their agenda.
The Associated Press chartered a plane to get to that field. The media kept calling, too. "She's in a meeting," I'd explain. "Can you call back?," I'd ask. Her cell phone didn't dial internationally. Inevitably, the phone's battery died. We had to switch it with someone else's. "We've been calling," the reporters said, "and there's no answer." "We're trying our best," we'd reply. We did and of course Prof did, too: when she finished her meeting she tried to answer as many of the phone calls as she could . . . until Kenya's president communicated with one of the local officials. He was sending a helicopter for Prof. He'd like her to return to Nairobi for a press conference at State House.
On the helicopter, the phones didn't work. That short ride, I realized, was the only time Prof had a few minutes -- and not much more than that -- to reflect on what the awarding of the peace prize might mean to her life, her work, her influence. Once she was in Nairobi, winding her way through the streets to State House, people in other cars recognized her and cheered or raised their arms. No more space or time for reflection.
I know that President Obama, when he got his Nobel news, certainly had state-of-the-art infrastructure around him: the best phones, Blackberries, satellite hook-ups and video links in the world. But, he, too had, like Prof, been given an honor like no other. He, too, said he was humbled and deeply honored by the prize. He, like Prof, said it wasn't for him alone, but for the citizens of the world who shared his values. He, too, like Prof, pretty much kept to his schedule, addressing a meeting on small business that Friday afternoon. And he, too, I thought, probably also had precious little time for reflection.
It's a nice circle of five years, from Prof to the U.S. President, whose father, of course, was, like Prof, a young Kenyan student in the U.S. in the 1960s. In fact, Prof had met President Obama again in the White House just a few days before the Norwegian Nobel Committee made its call to Obama. Perhaps some Nobel magic had been transferred from one to the other . . . and then back again.
Here's to five years of Prof being a Nobel peace laureate. And to the first few days of Obama joining her. Skoll to both.
