Obama set to visit Kenya for first time as president

When Barack Obama visited Kenya for the first time nearly 30 years ago, he was astonished that an airport worker recognized his last name.

It was a striking experience for a young man - and future US president - struggling to understand how a country he had never seen and a Kenyan family he barely knew had shaped his identity.

"My name belonged and so I belonged, drawn into a web of relationships, alliances and grudges I did not yet understand," Obama wrote in his memoir, Dreams From My Father, about the airport encounter.