‘It is a win for Africa,’ Joseph murmured, talking of things more important than caterpillars, or football, again.

‘It’s a win for the world,’ I answered, made more sentimental and less sceptical by the joy and festivity of the occasion. A group of women drummers was pounding out a complicated rhythm. The rest of the women broke into song and danced past with parcels of the approved food on their heads.

‘Did you see that terrific Doonesbury cartoon,’ I asked Joseph. ‘A white GI says to a black GI: “He’s half white, you know.” The black GI says: “You must be very proud.”’

He laughed, and relayed the joke, but as others of my new extended family joined in the laughter, I realised that their new white brother – me – did feel, curiously and complexly, proud. Proud of what? Of Homo sapiens, American subspecies, for coming so far since slavery and lynch mobs? But American whites voted for Obama’s opponent in numbers unchanged from the previous election. Proud of myself in some obscure way? Again, for what? For wanting a black man to be president? Big deal, especially for a veteran of ‘68. Besides, it’s the intellectual in Obama that attracts me, and that’s nothing necessarily to be proud of. I have tried hard not to invest any hopes in philosopherkings since the heady days of the late 1960s, when, to my shame, I liked to wave Mao’s Little Red Book above my head. I might as well have waved Mein Kampf. Hitler murdered fewer people.

The food was being laid at Daniel’s feet; the women knelt before him in their brilliant costumes and headdresses, untying the wrapped pots with their teeth – to signify, Mutale’s father, Charles Mambwe, another psychiatrist, told me, that you need to fight tooth and nail to keep a marriage afloat.

I vowed to fight hard for my second marriage as I raised my camera for the hundredth time.

The food was spread out on the floor; Daniel’s sisterin-law knelt before him and ritually washed his hands.

‘In Zambia it would also be the feet,’ Joseph said as I took more snaps.

It was time to feast. I queued with the men, who were still talking about Obama. He might be only half-Kenyan, but there was a pan-African pride here. Or perhaps it was more pan-human. I remembered a photograph of celebrations in Obama’s old primary school in Indonesia, and imagined another Doonesbury panel: ‘He’s half-Indonesian, you know.’

‘We should all vote in the American elections,’ Antony, a surgeon, said. ‘Everyone in the world. Their president is effectively our president.’

‘For better or for worse,’ someone added, and we laughed, brought back to the wedding, and the feast before us. I piled my plate high with roasted caterpillars; I seemed to be the only one eating them.

‘He wrote Dreams From My Father in Bali,’ I said, which is about as proprietorial as an Australian can get about Obama, geographically.

Which brought me back to the Doonesbury cartoon, a rough representation of the two halves of Obama’s complex struggle with his own identity that pervades his fascinating book.

I thought: we should all get to vote in the US elections. One human, one vote. ‘Old’ Europe and its ‘cheese-eaters’ should especially get a vote, for despite Donald Rumsfeld’s insults, even Europe’s most critical leaders still functioned as The President’s Loyal Opposition. Perhaps ‘we’ (I’m wary of these collusive pronouns, but it fits here) feel that we did get to vote, by some weird wish fulfilment, and that helps explains the Obama-euphoria.

Be careful what you wish for? I voted for him, certainly – at least in my head – but my natural scepticism was beginning to reassert itself. It will surely all end in tears.

The bride and groom headed off separately with groups of elders for ‘Ukufunda’ – a couple of hours of traditional marriage teachings from experienced men and women, a kind of crammer course in the getting of wisdom. Mutale returned after an hour, looking both beautiful and wise, but there was no sign of Daniel, who clearly had more to learn.

Time passed. Obama was still on the side of the angels, but my innate devil’s advocate was whispering away in my ear. Of course he will disappoint. It comes with the territory. The constraints of power, of realpolitik, of a worldwide financial crisis. Paul Berman’s excellent book Power and the Idealists (2005), an exploration of the compromises that the burden of power forced on the generation of ‘68’ – Bernard Kouchner, Joschka Fischer – was still fresh in my mind.

Daniel appeared at last, looking not much wiser, but slender and handsome in his Bemba smock, like – I couldn’t help the thought – a taller, whiter Obama. He was handed a small spear to throw at a target representing female reproductive organs. If he missed – Charles joked – the wedding would be off; he clearly lacked the necessary manhood. I felt more performance anxiety than my son; he simply walked the spear up to the target and planted it dead centre; the women waved their hands and ululated their approval.

The last part of the ten hours of dancing and feasting was ‘Ukulula’: a customary handing over of the bride, amid speeches from family members. I talked about the evolution of human DNA in the Rift Valley over the last million years; its subsequent spread out across the world.

‘It has taken 100,000 years for two of its far-flung strands to reunite here, today,’ I said, as sentimental and happy as I have ever been.

As the groom was handed his ceremonial bow and arrow, I remembered some lines from Les Murray’s great epithalamium, ‘Towards The Imminent Days’: ‘The depth in this marriage will heal the twentieth century.’ I don’t mind if Daniel and Mutale’s daughter doesn’t win the World Presidential Election in 2050, but for the time being there is enough goodwill towards the new president to begin healing the twenty-first century. A sentimental hope? A foolish dream from my new brother, our collective new Big Bro’, Barack Obama? If so, as the months have passed and the pragmatic cabinet appointments have accumulated, and my hard head has reasserted itself over my soft heart, the anti-dreamer which is the other half of all-white me has also gotten (we are all Americans now) to like him.

Any healing will be very much pragmatic, step by step.