Perhaps it was an omen. The first voter in the Ifo camp block leader elections strode to the polling station in an oversized Obama t-shirt, thrust his ration card forward, daubed his thumb in indelible ink, and deposited his token in a jerry can emblazoned with the candidate's photograph.
He was followed by a snaking line of similarly excited voters, all anxious to find their names on the polling manifest. For thousands of Somalis, most of them engaging with the democratic vote for the first time, it was an auspicious occasion. It was made poignant by the fact that they voted on the border of their troubled homeland.
Elections, and the act of voting, are a powerful affirmation of one's ability to stand and be counted. For refugees especially, it is all the more significant. In one morning the block leader elections held in Dadaab in the far east of Kenya, a sparse desert township harbouring the largest refugee settlement in the world, grasped what since 1991 has eluded transitional leaderships, clan warlords and foreign interlocutors in Somalia.
Across the porous border in Somalia, where more than 60,000 Somalis took flight to Kenya last year alone, legitimacy remains an elusive prize. Since the fall in 1991 of the military tyrant Siad 'Big Mouth' Barre, the country has tumbled in violent freefall, its history pockmarked by unrelenting violence and poverty. Many thousands have died in the conflict since and millions more are displaced and dependent on aid.
The leadership vacuum inside Somalia has led to many conflicts between rival clans and to the intermittent rise and fall of warlords who have both caused alarm and been courted at home and abroad.
Mohamed Farah Aidid, chief protagonist in the infamous 'black hawk down' episode is a case in point. Once demonised as the architect of the slaughter of American troops, he was later courted as a key agent in peace talks which have continued, failingly, into the new century.
In 2000 a transitional government was appointed. After laborious deliberations a new President was installed in 2004. It marked the 14th attempt to set up a functioning government since the fall of 'Big Mouth'.
The Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), a hardline Islamist group, seized power from a deeply factionalised Somali Transitional Federal Government (TFG) in 2006. The impact was immediate. Law and order in the capital were restored and the economy rejuvenated.
Despite the UIC's regressive