Street vendors in Indonesia cooked up "Obama" fried rice and children from the new US president's old elementary school sang the Star-Spangled Banner. Kenyans were planning parties for their most famous son.

Across the world, people gathered yesterday to mark the inauguration of Barack Obama as if he were one of their own.

In the Indonesian capital, where Obama spent four years as a young boy, students from his former school performed old-style dances from across the world's most populous Muslim nation.