Washington delegate Dean Ando remembers the Democrat's presidential candidate as ‘Barry’.

Ando remembers when, in the fifth grade, Barry’s Kenyan father came all the way from Kenya to visit their high school in Hawaii.

“His father came to visit our fifth grade classroom. He told us about Africa and growing up in Kenya,” Ando told FRANCE 24.

Dean Ando also played basketball with Barry Obama. “Having been in Indonesia the previous year, he was better at soccer and tennis. But then we all ended up playing basketball.”

Asked whether his schoolmate was a ‘mean’ basketball player, Ando said that he was “mean, but fair.”

Ando also suggests not taking Obama’s high school stories too seriously. “We were all in a game,” he said. “We pretended that we were NBA professional basketball players, and we just had a lot of fun!”

Concerning how Barack Obama would fare in the US elections, Ando was hopeful. “He’s come this far. I hope he’s going to push it through. In the end, I hope it’s going to be about the real issues and not about little things…”

Watch Catherine Galloway’s interview with Dean Ando by clicking ‘Play’ above.

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