KOGELO, Kenya -- The dancing started early this morning when CNN International announced that Sen. Barack Obama will be the next president of the United States.

The crowd, much of which stayed up all night watching election returns on a 19-inch TV screen in the compound of Grace Obama -- the step-mother of now President-Elect Obama -- erupted in Luo song and dance.

They sang a Luo chorus: "Wan wadhi, wan wadhi eh whitehouse, wan wadhi ka Obama," or "We are going with, we are going with Obama to the White House."

The group formed a column and went to Sarah Onyango Obama's house, where it found the 87-year-old family matriarch already in song and dance.

The merriment continued as the caravan danced around the family compound, all through Sen. John McCain's concession speech, stopping only to dance around the TV as Mr. Obama delivered his victory speech.

A harbinger of what was to come occurred in Ogelo a few minutes before 9 p.m. yesterday, when a bolt of lightning lit the skies as a heavy rainstorm poured down on the village and much of western Kenya.

It was 1 p.m. on the East Coast of the United States and voting was still underway, but a group of Obama brothers and cousins drinking Tusker beer and Pilsner lagers at the Nyangoma Roadside Bar took it as a sign of good things to come.

They broke out chanting in unison, "Obama! Obama! Obama!" when a huge thunder clap roared over this little town and the hillside beyond it.

"This is going to be a great night," Sadik "Bernard" Obama, a younger half-brother of Mr. Obama, said on a night that this village saw the man they consider their native son rise to become the 44th president.

For the most part, however, much of Kogelo did not seem particularly moved by the voting and anticipation of election returns in the United States.

It looked as if the villagers here were going about their lives as usual, except at the family compounds of Mr. Obama's older half-brother Abongo Malik Obama and at the home of his step-mother.

Initially, a small group of relatives sat under a green tent in Grace Obama's compound watching a soccer match on a 19-inch TV placed on table in front of the two-bedroom brick house.

The group, which also included a number of journalists, grew bigger when CNN International started announcing election returns.

And when the 24-hour cable network called Pennsylvania in the Obama win column at about 4:40 a.m., the crowd started singing and dancing with a sense that Mr. Obama was probably going to carry the night.

And as night gave way to dawn and an almost cloudless morning rose in Kogelo, the Obama family started preparations for a big party today.

Throughout Africa, many people stayed up at all-night parties or woke before dawn today, gathering around televisions and radios as Mr. Obama was declared the winner.

"I'm not tired even, though I have been watching the results through the night," Josiah Otupa, 30, said in Nairobi. "Our man is in the lead but we are still praying hard."

In Nairobi's Kibera shantytown, one of the largest slums in Africa, hundreds gathered around a massive bonfire of tires. Residents joyfully held up Obama posters, blew whistles and waved American flags.

Mr. Obama, the son of an economist from Kenya, is wildly popular across Africa.

Many people hope an Obama presidency will help this vast continent, the poorest in the world. Some are looking for more U.S. aid to Africa, others simply bask in the glory of a successful black politician with African roots.

"Obama, being partly African, has the moral obligation to intervene in Africa," said Samuel Conteh, managing editor of The New Citizen newspaper in Freetown, Sierra Leone. "The aspirations of Africans are very high, believing that he will change the social and economic situations of Africans."