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AIRLIFT TO AMERICA is the never-before-told and quite heroic story of the 1959-1963 airlifts from East Africa that helped Barack Obama, Sr., father of the president-elect, and Wangari Maathai, future winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, among hundreds of others, to study at American and Canadian colleges and universities. The airlifts and their graduates changed not only the future course of Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and other nations of East Africa, but also the course of U.S. race relations. Jack Kennedy's donation to enable the 1960 airlift became an important issue in that year's American presidential election, and was a factor in swinging enough African-American votes into his column to give him the victory.

TOM SHACHTMAN, AUTHOR

AND HERE'S THE CONTRADICTION:

See second-last paragraph of interview:

'Obama, who has been away from Kenya for seven years...'

Dated June 22, 1962.

BARAK HUSSEIN OBAMA ONYANGO LEFT KENYA IN 1954-55 IN HIS OWN WORDS.

MBOYA 1955 - 1956

Mboya became a prominent figure in Kenyan politics - organising protests against mass removals, detention camps, and secret trials. The British Labour Party arranged for a year’s scholarship (1955—56) to Oxford University, studying industrial management at Ruskin College. By the time he returned to Kenya the Mau Mau rebellion had been effectively quashed. Over 10,000 Mau Mau rebels were estimated to have been killed during the disturbance, compared to just over 100 Europeans.

MBOYA 1957

In 1957 Mboya formed the People’s Convention Party and was elected to join the colony’s legislative council (Legco) as one of only eight African members. He immediately began to campaign (forming a bloc with his African colleagues) to demand equal representation — and the legislative body was reformed with 14 African and 14 European delegates, representing over 6 million Africans and almost 60,000 whites respectively.

MBOYA 1958 - 1959 - 1960

In 1958 Mboya attended a convention of African nationalists at Accra, Ghana. He was elected chairman and declared it “the proudest day of my life.” The following year he received his first honorary doctorate, and helped set up the African-American Students Foundation which raised money to subsidise the cost of flights for East African students studying in America. In 1960 the Kenya African National Union, KANU, was formed from the remnants of the KAU and Mboya elected secretary-general.

http://africanhistory.about.com/od/countrieseast/p/bio_mboya.htm