Quick! Point out Kenya on a map. No, not Kentucky, Cancun or Katmandu, but Kenya, ancestral home of Barack Hussein Obama Sr., father of the president-elect of the United States.

You'll likely hear about Kenya a great deal in the next four years, so here's a short course if you don't know anything about this wondrous country. It lies in Africa. For the clueless, Africa is a continent and not a country, and Kenya is but one of its 47 nations - 53 counting the islands.

Africa, depending upon your perspective, is either ironically or coincidentally shaped like an elephant's ear. To find Kenya, trace your finger to the horn of East Africa on the Indian Ocean. There it is, bordered by Somalia, Ethiopia and Sudan on its northern fringes, Uganda to the west and Tanzania to the south.

Kenya is pronounced as KEN-ya and not KEEN-ya, as the colonial English used to do before the Mau Mau uprising and the country's independence from the British in 1963. Jomo Kenyatta became its first prime minister and then president.

I have loved Kenya since I first stepped off the plane in Nairobi in 2002, as much for its incredible beauty as for its people. In my journeys across the globe as a writer and a tourist, I never have known a people as gentle as the Kenyans.

Even in Barack Obama, whose father belonged to the Luo tribe, that warmth and charisma come across in his million-watt smile.

Most tourists come for a safari on the Maasai Mara, the rust-colored landscape alive with culture and wildlife. Chances are high that you'll see lions, leopards, Cape buffaloes, rhinoceroses and elephants, as well as a virtual Noah's Ark of other species and dazzling plants.

And here, the sunsets are as brilliant as a Kenyan's smile, scribbled with the stunning liquidity of iridescent gold, topaz and ruby that melts into nightfall. These are images burned into my soul.

If you go, schedule your trip during the great wildebeest migration from about July until October, when these grunting, snorting "beests" storm the Mara from the Serengeti in search of greener pastures of lush grass.

Thousands of zebras and impalas escort the wildebeests on their journey, mingling like a naturally orchestrated circus. Above these plains crammed with creatures the rains come softly. You can see the rain miles before it reaches you, as the open sky goes on forever.

A safari offers only a taste of Kenya. Fans of literature will want to visit Bogani, "Out of Africa" author Karen Blixen's home near Nairobi. Kuki Gallman, author of "I Dreamed of Africa," still lives at Laikipia and runs The Gallman Africa Conservancy, which supports cultural, educational and environmental research.

And there's Mount Kilimanjaro. Officially belonging to neighboring Tanzania but resting in both countries, its shadows grow long on the plains of Amboseli National Park, home to elephant herds. Mount Kenya, Africa's second-highest peak, is farther north and is a sort of Holy Grail for climbers and hikers.

If you visit coastal resort towns of Mombasa or Lamu on the Indian Ocean, not only should you stick your toes in the sugar-soft sands and swim in its emerald waters, but also you should experience dining on a traditional Arab dhow - a sailing vessel. As you marvel at its ancient-looking wooden structure and triangular sails, you should feast on Swahili food and have a dawa, the traditional Kenyan cocktail made of vodka, lime, sugar and honey.

In underdeveloped, poverty-stricken western Kenya near Lake Victoria, where Obama's father was born, tourists rarely visit the remote landscape scattered with mud huts and occupied by barefooted villagers. But rest assured you would be most welcome.

Obama's stepgrandmother, Sarah Onyango, and other relatives still live in the village of Kogelo. The nearest airport is Kisumu, but hire a driver. You do not want to navigate Kenya's roads on your own.

From my journal entries from my two trips to Kenya, I wrote that I found it to be a spiritual place. It's an intellectual's country, as it provides fodder for deep thinking. You come away with the sense that secular possessions are insignificant in this place where nature reigns with a power all its own.

With so much talk of Obama and Kenya, I dug around in boxes until I found my journals of my trips there. "On the drive to Amboseli from Nairobi," I wrote, "we crisscrossed open plains peppered with acacia and passed herds of cows and goats tended by Maasai.

"How courageous the early settlers must have been to explore and live in the vastness of Kenya. It is raw, unforgiving country, but so starkly beautiful that it takes away my breath. No doubt, one must have tremendous grit and stamina to come here. One wrong turn, and you're toast."

Later we stopped at a Maasai village where the kids called, "Sweets! " All I had was chewing gum, which appeased them mightily. Everywhere around the village were dots of red-attired Maasai shepherds tending their herds. The winds howled down from Kilimanjaro, with more dust nudged from earth by roaring winds.

"That evening," I scrawled in the journal, "our group enjoyed a sundown nature walk with 'Killing Guy,' so named because he single-handedly killed two lions that were attacking his cattle. He stands at least 7 feet tall, the tallest Maasai I have ever seen.

"Another Maasai started a fire by rubbing two sticks together. Yet another started singing 'Jambo!' from 'The Lion King' movie. That night they performed the traditional Maasai dance and music that is as lyrical and rhythmic as Sacred Harp singing."

Days later at the 250,000-acre Borana Ranch in northern Kenya, I'm reminded of "The Lion King" again when we pass the "Lion King rock," the outcropping that partially inspired the film.

At Borana, I learned what a "dawn chorus" is: The birds serenade you awake in the early mornings. That evening from our Land Rover, we sipped wine and watched two lionesses stalking a buffalo. Dark enveloped us before we knew whether they dined that evening.

From the Mara, we flew to Mombasa. At the Mara airstrip - which consisted of nothing more than a shelter and rusted, tin-roofed, tin-sided, dirt-floored "duty free shop" - we learned our plane was "broken," and that another would soon come for us.

A few minutes later a young woman explained the plane was "fixed." It was the most decrepit-looking aircraft I have ever seen. I gasped when I saw seats had been removed and the "broken" engine had been loaded inside.

The only passengers were my two friends and me, a father and young son, and the maintenance crew who had "fixed" the "broken" plane. The smell of gas and oil permeated the cabin for the two-hour bumpy flight to Mombasa. The maintenance crew slept as I silently prayed.

That evening we stayed at the Karen Blixen Coffee Garden, now owned by Bonnie Dunbar, an American doctor from Houston. My journal entry attests to its charm: "Masses of exotic flowers grow here, from bougainvillea to jacaranda to bottlebrush. Soft Kenyan breezes rule here. There was an ibis in the bird feeder today, making all kinds of racket as it splashed about.

"This evening in the bar, a Louis Armstrong sound-alike played Dixieland-style jazz. I'm convinced that Armstrong didn't die; he just moved to Kenya."

This is a tiny sampling of Kenya. To be fair, a State Department travel warning exists for it. While you shouldn't ignore it, you must follow ground rules and just be careful.

Avoid the slums of Nairobi. Take your anti-malarial medication. Leave your expensive jewelry at home. Goats and cattle have the right-of-way on the roads, so be patient.

Just as you can get into trouble in your hometown by not paying attention to your surroundings, it can happen in Kenya too. Overall, it's extremely safe.

Before you go, watch a few movies and read a lot. I recommend "Out of Africa," the book and the movie.

But there are others too, including "Born Free," "I Dreamed of Africa," "The Ghost and the Darkness" and "Sometimes in April." Read anything by Karen Blixen and Ernest Hemingway, particularly "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" and "An African Story." Netflix has a host of documentaries on Kenya.

Despite its beauty, Kenya is Third World, and like Obama taking on the presidency in the most uncertain times of our generation, it faces a host of formidable challenges: poverty, drought, corrupt (but improving) politics, famine and AIDS. But no matter the challenges, there are the Kenyan smiles.