As Barack Obama becomes the first African-American to occupy the White House, members of the 'Luo' tribe in faraway Kenya are celebrating -- for a "brother" who belong to their community.

The man who will now rule America was born to Barack Obama Sr, an economics student from Kenya, and Stanley Ann Dunham, a white woman from Kansas. Much of Obama's family still lives in Kenya, and his Kenyan grandmother is attending his inauguration.

"We shall be celebrating the whole day and the whole night...I feel so great because he's one of us, he's like a brother to us," Foxnews.com quotes a 27-year-old Kenyan Nick Otieno as saying.

Obama's father belonged to the Luo tribe and Otieno, a resident of Kibera slum in Nairobi finds Luo traits in Obama's speech and character, the report said.

"He's a Luo and Luos are so much proud of him... Everything he does, he does the same way the Luos do things," he said. But Dickens Odhiambo, an accountant from the same tribe, said, "it is not only Luos, it is also Kenyans; it is not only Kenyans, but it is other Africans who are excited."

"The change that Obama talked about, we believed in and finally there was change," he told Christian Science Monitor. The Luos are Kenya's third largest ethnic group, making up about 12 per cent of the population.

They speak the Dholuo language and the traditional occupation is fishing. Media reports last week quoted Obama's grandmother Sarah as saying that she will carry a traditional Luo oxtail fly whisk as an inauguration gift for Obama.