|
 |
 |
|
Codel Obama
It’s Saturday, and Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is on his trip to Africa, sitting in the back seat of a UN plane flying from near the Chad-Sudan border — he visited a camp housing Sudanese refugees who fled violence in Darfur — to the airport at Abeche, Chad.
There, Obama will switch to a U.S. military aircraft to return to the capital, N’Djamena, the last stop on his first solo try at diplomacy.
Codel Obama, as the trip is officially called, is a congressional delegation of one, authorized by Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Last year, freshman Obama traveled with Lugar to Russia and other former Soviet republics on his first codel and then in another trip flew to Iraq, Israel and Kuwait.
Most congressional visitors come and go with little notice. But the combination of a compelling personal and political storyline — a return to Kenya of an almost native son and the possibility that the Illinois Democrat could have a White House run in his future — attracted a traveling press corps of U.S. writers, photographers and videographers that swelled to more than 20 when Obama toured his father’s homeland in August.
Codel Obama touched down in South Africa, Kenya, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Chad. Obama met two presidents — Kenya’s Mwai Kibaki and Chad’s Idriss D
