When you're a citizen of the world's only superpower, and you travel abroad, you become a symbol of all kinds of things that probably have nothing to do with you--wealth, power, Hollywood fairy tales, and, most recently, the unmitigated hubris of cowboy-kings. Being American in 2005 was to invite a million questions and reproaches and lectures. It was to have blood on your hands. So for a long time, I'd hold my passport eagle side down while waiting on the customs line, not wanting to invite that conversation.

But now it's 2008.  Goodbye to all that?

Obama won Oregon and lost Kentucky. A week later, I was on the overnight bus from Kenya to Uganda, 7,000 miles away from history in the making, watching the sleepy villages and the shuttered trading centers as they passed by.

When I arrived in Kampala the next morning, I was accosted by Kisoto, the bus terminal's security guard, a man with gray whiskers and a permanent smile. He asked me where I was from, so I told him, then braced myself for the usual litany of questions, accusations and condolences. Instead, he snapped open a copy of The Daily Nation to a black-and-white photograph of Jimmy Carter and told me,

"This man, I don't know who, he is saying, Killington should drop out of the race!  I think Killington will soon be out."

He asked me if I voted for Obama. I said yes, I had. As he shook my hand, I thought I saw tears welling in his eyes. He almost looked grateful.

I've had dozens of minor moments like this since arriving in Africa one month ago. In Addis Ababa, I met sleep-deprived print journalists—there are, alas, no Wolf Blitzers in Ethiopia—who told me how readers would call in the middle of the night after a Democratic primary to ask the results, unable to wait until the morning papers. These same journalists had taken to memorizing the names and demographic compositions of Pennsylvania's counties. (Many Americans would be hard-pressed to place the country of Ethiopia on its proper continent, let alone name its capital city!)

Yesterday, about to board a return bus to Nairobi, I met Kisoto again. When he saw me, he came running, waving a copy of New Vision, the government paper. On its cover, Barack Obama was grinning his wide grin, not nearly, but almost, as wide as Kisoto's. The headline read: "Obama excites Ugandans!" It was Thursday, the day after Obama declared he had cinched the Democratic Party's nomination.

"He is there!" he cried, shaking my hand furiously. He shouted at passengers as they came through the terminal gates, pointing to Obama's grinning face on the front page. "Obama has made it!"

A middle-aged woman with a reddish Shirley Temple weave walked by. "That man is going to interact with the Africans and the Arabs. He's going to change everything. No more of this Osama bin Laden stuff."

I heard Kisoto trying to explain to a Muslim woman who had apparently never heard of Obama, the import of his newspaper waving. I picked out a few English words from his Swahili. "Kenya." "Kansas." Then a beat. "And he's going to be the President of America!"

"And this," he said, pointing to Michelle, "will be the First Lady. Of the United States."

(From your lips to God's ears.)

Kisoto grabbed my hand tight, waved New Vision at a few more arriving passengers and said, "Doesn't she look like Obama? This is Obama's sister! Obama's sister!"

He left me his address in case I ever wanted to send him American magazines, preferably about Obama. He bought me a bottle of Coca-Cola. "For Obama's sister," he said.