Earlier Saturday, thousands of well-wishers lined pot-holed roads to greet Obama as he began a journey to his ancestral home, Nyangoma-Kogelo, a tiny village in the rural west where his father grew up herding goats and attending classes in tin-roofed schools.

"I just want to say very quickly that I am so proud to come back home," Obama told the cheering crowds. "It means a lot to me that the people of my father, my grandfather, are here in such huge crowds."

His father, also named Barack Obama, won a scholarship to a university in Hawaii, where he met and married Obama's mother. The two soon separated, however, and Obama's father returned to Kenya and worked as a government economist.

His father died in a car crash in 1982, leaving three wives, six sons and a daughter. This was Obama's third visit, but his first since becoming senator of the U.S. state of Illinois in January 2005. His last visit was in 1995.

Obama said he was looking forward to seeing his grandmother and uncle, who still live in the village, but that the trip was more than just a family reunion. Both his grandmother and uncle have visited him in the United States, and will get other chances to see him, he said.

The Democratic Party senator said his relatives "understand that some of this is going to be dominated by spectacle, and they'll roll with it as I will roll with it."

He also planned to visit a project he helps fund, which helps grandmothers find money to take care of children orphaned by AIDS.

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