I Have Something in Common with the Mayor of New York City

Don’t you want to know what it is?

After the report that New York City Mayor Zorhan Mamdani was set to open five government (i.e. tax-payer) funded grocery stores in his city,¹ I began doing a little research on him because I wondered how his parents landed in Uganda - the mayor’s birthplace.

As Wikipedia tells it, Mayor Mamdani’s parents were part of a great diaspora of Indians, who migrated through Eastern Africa during the last days of the colonial era.

And guess what else I found out when I was reading about the mayor’s father, Mahmoud Mamdani! He was part of the Kennedy/Mboya Airlift, just like someone else I’m very familiar with.

By me in 2020.

When the students of the Mboya Airlift were hand-picked to come to America, it was for a specific purpose: to educate demonstrably gifted Kenyan, Tanzanian [and Ugandan] students in the Western tradition and to send them home to be the leaders and information vendors of their countries in preparation for independence from the European colonial powers. One of these students was my biological father, [Kenyan] journalist Philip Ochieng.

That was in the late fifties to early sixties and most of the students did return home. The Airlift was a privately funded endeavor by the likes of the Ford Foundation, the Kennedy Foundation, Jackie Robinson, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Harry Belafonte. I’m sure that there have been other experiments like it.

There were several sorties of this airlift. My father was on the first one and Mr. Mamdani was on one of the later ones. And, not surprisingly, it turns out that the two were friends.

My father attended Roosevelt College - now Roosevelt University - in Chicago and it is there where he and my mother met.

My father passed away in 2021 and you can read about him here.

The existence of the Kennedy/Mboya Airlift became well-known in the United States because, for a time, it was believed that this was how Barack Obama Senior came to the United States. But it was discovered that this was not so.

(Side note: I didn’t know about the Airlift until Barack Obama II ran for POTUS in 2008.)

(Side Note 2: Father and Obama Sr. were drinking buddies after both returned to their home country. Then, after Mr. Obama died in an accident while driving drunk, Father stopped drinking.)

The senior Mamdani is still alive has an extensive academic and publishing career. I don’t know what his political leanings are, but looking at his resume, one can make an educated guess. I’ll let the readers do that.

My mother says that, during the time they were in school, Father’s entire social circle was composed of white socialists and communists. These were primarily the sponsors of the African students.

Father promoted socialism all his life. His biography - written by Leah Auma Otieno-Okeyo - is even entitled The Fifth Columnist. He was also an atheist.

A few months ago, I shared a thread on X about how colonialism tarnished the reputation of capitalism in the minds of African leaders and the catastrophic effect that this mindset had on most of Africa.

Most of you know that I am not any kind of communist or socialist. But that is because I was not raised in that kind of environment and I also think it’s a matter of God‘s grace.

I don’t know of any other progeny of the Airlift - yet - but I’m sure that more than a few exist. It would be interesting to find out how their lives have turned out and how they think.

Rest in peace, Father. You know what the truth is now.

1. For what it’s worth, the link about the grocery stores is from the Guardian, lest anyone accuse me of using a source that is biased against the idea.