People across Africa stayed up all night on Nov 4, 2008  to watch U.S. history being made, while the president of Kenya — where Obama’s father was born — declared a public holiday.

In his autobiographical book “Dreams from My Father,” Barack Obama tells of his father as having emerged from a poor Kenyan village, who started out as a goat herder who eventually became a Harvard-educated economist.

Apparently Barack Obama senior was a polygamist who had already abandoned one wife and child in Africa when he met Obama’s mother in Hawaii where his son was eventually born.

After Harvard, Obama senior abandoned his wife and son and returned to Africa, where he lived the life of an alcoholic. He ultimately died in 1982 while driving drunk on the streets of Nairobi.

So yes, there was a black goat herder in Kenya some 50 years ago who could have said: “I am going to go to America, find a wife, and my son will become the President of the United States.”

An unlikely story.

An American story unlike any before.