NAIROBI, Kenya - "Pirates on the shore wanted a tip from the pirates on the Sirius Star, so they started to fire in the air as our people approached the land," said the pirate on a crackling cell phone.We sat hunched over a camera in the Nairobi bureau, a microphone taped to the receiver.

A parachute floats down to the Sirius Star after being dropped by a small aircraft.

"When our pirates heard the shots they thought they would be robbed so they tried to return to the tanker. In that quick turn the boat capsized."

"Are you happy with how the Sirius Star hijacking went?"

"No, we lost our comrades."

We had our pirate interview. And he told us a story, not just rant as they often do.

So, how do you get hold of a pirate in Somalia? Well, you just call them up. But their number is not listed in the Nairobi white pages. Believe me, I checked.

The whispers started floating in on Friday afternoon from our sources in Somalia that pirates were releasing the giant Sirius Star.

CNN's newsgathering resources kicked in. The bureau in Nairobi, the International Desk in Atlanta, our sources in Kenya and Somalia - it was all hands on deck to confirm the story.

We soon found out there was something wrong. "Five pirates have drowned," a reliable source told us "the boat will be only released tomorrow."

Here was our chance to get hold of the pirates. I put in the word that we wanted to talk to a pirate.

"Considering how badly it went," I said, "I am sure they want to tell us exactly what happened."

So we waited. A full day passed.

"They might talk to you today," said our contact in Somalia, "but they are very busy counting the money."

When a pirate captures a ship and gets a ransom they don't just take their millions and deposit it at their local branch. First, they split the money with the scores of pirates who guarded the ship. Then, they must pay the contractors who supplied food to the hostages, the elders who overlook their criminal activities, the creditors who help finance their escapades.

"OK, they might talk, but only tomorrow," says the contact, "you will speak to a pirate that was on the Sirius Star when the others drowned. Be ready at 10 a.m. to call him."

We get the number and wait another night.

We dial the number the next morning.

"Sorry, the number you have dialed is incorrect."

We dial again ... nothing.

Finally, we figure out a way to do it. Let's call it a trade secret.

"My name is Libaan Jaama," he says.

We have our story.

KOGELO, Kenya - The priest heard it first.

Hunkered down with a few policemen, some village elders and not a small number of journalists, his face changed from concentration to confusion to comprehension to joy.
A ripple of understanding in the pre-dawn light of Kogelo, Kenya, broke into a wave of celebration.

The media turned out in force in Kolego.

"God bless Barack Obama," the priest praised into the PA system. "Obama is going to the White House" the villagers of Kogelo sang in the local Luo language. Children peered over the hedge of the Barack Obama school and poured over to join in and sing in their neatly pressed blue and white uniforms.

The journalists couldn't help themselves. This hardened group of old Africa hands and newly parachuted in traded smiles and took snapshots. And breathed a sigh of relief.

And through the night the media village that had planted itself in this village had been rushing back and forth from Obama's granny's house to his half brother's house and back.

And the village of Kogelo is not even a village really. There is a school and a corner of a road. There are shops and no real market.

But today they believe in a better future for this country that struggles with poverty and corruption, where people still haul water out of Obama's relatives' yard with a rope.

I spent much of the night sitting on a plastic chair outside Malik Obama's house, Barack Obama's half brother. A tiny TV was hooked up to a small generator that buzzed through the night. A fuzzy transmission of CNN came over the airwaves straight onto local TV (they dropped their normal programming).

Most of the assembled guests couldn't understand English but still they let off a quiet cheer when Obama's name was spoken.

It is a name that has become a clarion call here.

In a land that has been wracked by ethnic tension, Kenyans see unity through his ancestry and possibilities in his success.

All the young people I have spoken to in Kenya through this long campaign have been Obama supporters. For them his victory helps them dream.

"Barack Obama winning means anything is possible," one young man in Kogelo said, "it means that perhaps my son can be president, or my grandson can be president. It gives me hope."

KOGELO, Kenya - The entire village of Kogelo, in Western Kenya, is supporting Barack Obama on election day. Well, almost. There is one supporter of Senator McCain here; the bull that will be slaughtered should Obama win..

The bull that is set to be slaughtered should Obama win.

Feasting on a bull is traditional in this part of Africa and in the world headquarters of Obamamania outside of the U.S., there will be a lot of nervous bovine tonight.

CNN has come here because this is the ancestral home of Barack Obama (as Kenyans see it.) And in a few hours this remote place could be part of history.

Barack Obama Senior, the senator’s father, was born in this remote district of less than a thousand people. His grandmother lives in simple house now surrounded by a fence and Kenyan police.

But that’s not the only family in Kogelo. The entire clan has descended on the village. There are half-brothers and aunts, half sisters and uncles – the large extended family that is now famous in Kenya.

The locals tell us that usually not much happens here. But Kogelo Village has become a media village; inundated with local and international journalists. There are hordes of us here. Running around in buses and SUVs, hitching rides on bikes and pumping out live shots on satellite.

As voting started in the U.S., prayer meetings were held at the local medical dispensary calling for an Obama victory. In celebratory Pentecostal prayers, the district called for a great Obama victory.

The extended family of Obama have gone from a relatively simple country life to giving press conferences on the yard of their homestead in rural Kenya.

They are being coy about a possible Obama victory, but when I spoke to Malik Obama, Obama’s half brother, he couldn’t help himself.

“There is an opportunity for change and the thing is that this agent for change is home bred,” he said. “We are looking forward to a great celebration.”

And so is the whole of Kenya.

I have seen Obama bootleg CDs pulled from CNN air being sold in Nairobi, Obama ‘08 pins pushed by hawkers and even Obama Campaign billboards looking over the bumpy streets and bicycle taxis of Kisumu.

As voting continues in America and the results trickle in they are hooking up car batteries to borrowed TVs and hunkering down next to tiny radios to wait to see if their favorite son can make it all the way to the Whitehouse.

CNN Correspondent David McKenzie traveled to Kenya's Masai Mara to film the epic annual migration of the wildebeest. He also filmed a video blog about his journey.

"It's natural wonder on a grand scale, massive expanses of grassland stretching past the horizon. It is a haven for both the graceful, and the deadly."

Watch McKenzie's report about how the migration provides a bonanza for poachers

Watch more footage of the migration

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa – Zimbabweans voted today in an election many called a ‘sham.' But ordinary people from Zimbabwe were stuck outside the country watching the events in their homeland unfold.

Voters line up in Harare.

And so was I. CNN is banned by the Zimbabwean government from reporting in the country.So I spent the week talking to Zimbabweans living in Johannesburg. I met them at Park station in downtown Johannesburg and in a refugee camp next to a plush golf course outside of the city.

At the station they gather commodities that they have bought to take back to their families. There are few commodities in Zimbabwe and the inflation rate is over two million percent. They were taking rice and maize meal, clothes and mattresses.

"There is no reason to go and vote since they are beating us like this," said one man at the Park station, "It doesn¹t make sense." Another agreed, I can't use any of their names, they are afraid that Mugabe's government might monitor CNN's broadcasts and website, "Even if we go back and vote, Mugabe would not accept it. It is better for us to stay here, we are free here."

I was at the refugee camp as voting began. Many Zimbabweans live here and they were depressed about their country. They had voted in March. Now they were too fatigued at the politics or too afraid to go back.

They got hold of relatives, worried about their safety back in Zimbabwe.

Texas talked to his grandmother. She was too afraid to chat on the phone because thugs were intimidating people at the polling station. Joseph also got hold of his grandmother. She said that militia where forcing people to vote and checking their hands for ink. They stain fingers when you have voted in Zimbabwe.

I also met Nesbitt and his father. Nesbitt's father is a war veteran. War veterans are generally associated with ZANU-PF. But his father, who doesn't want us to reveal his name, fled the country a week ago. He says he was put on a list an MDC supporter, though he has no real political affiliation.

"They said I was an opposition supporter because I am not following their footsteps," he said, "I fought for democracy, not for brutality after independence."

Not all Zimbabweans are refugees, of course, there are over a million of them living in South Africa. Privilege is one of them.

Privilege is a 24-year-old Zimbabwean waitress who's been living in Johannesburg since 2005.

She hopes for a better tomorrow in Zimbabwe, but she has gotten used to her adopted country.

"I am better than I would have been had I been in Zimbabwe, so I can say that I am happy."

Whether Privilege and other Zimbabweans ever get to live in their home again depends on how the ruler of that nation and the leaders of the world decide whether the people of Zimbabwe deserve a fair shake.

DJIBOUTI – As you might imagine, getting on a U.S.-guided missile destroyer off the Somali coast isn't the easiest thing to do. The USS Shoup is a tactical battleship and its plans are as fluid as these waters are dangerous. The Shoup can travel at 30 knots and changes plans on an hourly basis.

CNN's David McKenzie aboard the USS Shoup.

But after months of pushing to get on a destroyer, the e-mail came from Bahrain and we scrambled to get to Djibouti, a tiny country wedged between Somalia and Eritrea. We flew from Nairobi, through Ethiopia, and landed in the deathly heat of the Horn of Africa.

After staying a night at the sprawling Camp Lemonier naval base we flew out in an aging and agile Allouette helicopter. A guided missile destroyer holds over 300 sailors, but to see it on the backdrop the ocean it at first looks impossibly small.

The ship is a labyrinth of cramped ladders, flashing lights and rooms you can't enter. But in the perfect weather of the Gulf of Aden it was a dream for the cameraman. It is a mix of the archaic and modern: pollywogs and Aegis weapons systems; whistle calls and boarding assault teams. There is no denying that the open ocean has a romance sometimes lacking in other the other armed forces. For every corner of the ship there is an ancient naval term, for every event a spot of tradition, a touch of class.

But we wanted to see if we could do lives from the sea. Simple, perhaps, but at CNN we have a device that needs to point at a satellite and stay in that exact direction. Try doing that on a battleship that is changing course every few minutes and is in the middle of pre-planned exercises.

Three minutes before live. We are set up but the Shoup is traveling near 30 knots. We have to hold down the equipment or it will blow off the edge.

Two minutes before live. The boat slows down and we breath a sigh of relief - we have a signal.

One minute before live. A French Mirage fighter jet appears out of the blue and banks across the destroyer cracking right overhead. The bridge shouts commands and aggressively maneuvers to the starboard.

Forty seconds before live, the signal drops, we are pointing exactly in the wrong direction, 180 degrees from starting point. We dive across, flip the satellite modem, drop the signal, put it back up just in time.

There is the power and aggression of the USS Shoup and the practicality and grace of the FS Marne, a refueling Durance class vessel that we hop across from the Shoup. It is everything that the modern destroyer isn't: roomy and classic cabins, tasteful officers quarters. It is a four-star hotel stuck on top of a gas station.

Dining with the Admiral of the CTF-150 - the multinational force that polices these waters - is like stepping back in time for this landlubber. The French Navy takes their hospitality and their food seriously. The moon dips under the ink sea as we feed a story way past midnight on the deck of the Marne, and it's hard not to marvel at a world so far removed from the one anchored on land.

Watch my report

ABECHE, Chad – A country in a state of emergency, curfews at midnight, and rumors of rebel offences - our biggest worry was our gear.

Children preparing for their journey back to their families.

Fabien decided, wisely, that our equipment was more important than our personal effects, so we left our own bags behind and rode to the airport in N'Djamena, Chad, with a four-wheel drive packed to the rafters with black gear bags.
 
The last time I was in this airport, someone was trying to take a tiny Antelope with him as hand luggage.  We didn't have anything quite that exotic.
 
We placed all our bags on the scales and were asked a dreaded question in the broadcast world, "what isn't critical for your trip?"
 
"Everything is critical!" Fabien replied.
 
The small Bombardier aircraft can't take excess baggage. But it seems, none of the other passengers planned live shots in remote Eastern Chad, so we had enough slack to squeeze everything on.
 
From the air Abeche looks like a jigsaw puzzle in dust. The plane bumped on the tarmac and we descended into crushing heat.
 
Finally, after three plane rides from Nairobi and three hours of passing through a number of accreditation hoops, we got to Bakana Assalam orphanage in Abeche. The children were sitting under a thorn tree and a shelter.
 
They have just found out that they are going home. Some are too young to understand where they are off to, though.

The Red Cross volunteers were touched by their plight. But they all seemed happy to see them off to their parents.
 
But rumors, some true, some carried away in the dust, keep swirling of rebel incursions and rebel attacks. Still tomorrow is the day. Tomorrow these children will pile on a couple of buses and head due east, across this parched piece of Africa towards Darfur.

The next day, we arrive early at the orphanage to travel with the children to Adre, on the border of Sudan. They are already packing their bags getting ready for their trip home when we get there.

They have been here for more than four months and, in many ways, the town of Abeche seems to have adopted them as their own. But the volunteers are still excited to see the children go. Because they know that they need to go to their families.

We milled around the children to see how they were feeling. A whole host of women crowded around Tahir. He is just 14 months old. The Red Cross workers told us that when Zoe's Ark went to his village they took his two brothers. But Tahir cried and refused to let them go. So the charity took him with them.

The volunteers started calling Tahir "Sarkozy," after Nicolas Sarkozy. They say it is because Tahir looks like the French president.

Finally, the governor arrived and after the requisite speeches, we assembled the convoy to leave town.

But driving to Adre isn't like taking a swing around town. It is a perilous trip into the badlands border region of Chad and Sudan. And as we traveled we got word that there were rebels somewhere in the vicinity. And that could mean any number of groups.

There are Sudanese rebels in this area allied with the Chadian government. There are Chadian rebels who have been looking to oust the Chadian government. There are Chadian military. And then there are just random guys with guns.

So when we get a flat tire in our vehicle, the radiator bursts on the children's bus and we lose track of the truck carrying supplies for the children, things start to get a little nerve-wracking.

The drive should take around three hours. Five hours into the trip and we are nowhere near our destination.

Then, finally, we hit the outskirts of Adre town itself. Curious onlookers stop on their donkeys and peer over the hardened mud walls.

We head straight to the post office. Mothers ululate excitedly when we get there. But the mothers have to wait because first the men make their speeches. But then a table is brought out and the children and mothers are brought out one by one.

There are Some tearful greetings, but mostly the spirit is killed by the officialdom and the paperwork. But behind the line of onlookers, behind the rubber stamps and signatures, private moments of joy unfold between these mothers and their sons and daughters who were caught up in this international scandal not of their making.

N'DJAMENA, Chad – The Ethiopian Airlines flight banked over the River Chad as fishermen poled their dugouts against the current. The dusty capital, N'Djamena, sits on the edge of the river; Cameroon visible just across its sluggish expanse.

Fabien and I have traveled from Kenya to Chad to follow the journey of over a hundred children from Abeche, in Eastern Chad, to their homes in Adre, on the border of Sudan.

The children sparked worldwide debate and national protest when Zoe's Ark, a French charity, claimed they were refugees from Darfur. The charity tried to spirit them away to France. But members of Zoe's ArK were halted at the last minute by Chadian authorities and arrested.

Fighting stopped only a few weeks ago here in the capital. There are sprays of bullet holes in shops, broken glass in buildings, wooden paneling boarding up damaged entrances. And carpet sellers everywhere in the already bustling markets.The rebels came right up to the residence of President Idriss Deby. They call it the "White House."

There is a state of emergency here and all visitors must register with the police. Residents are under midnight curfew, and Somalia-style "technicals" - improvised armed vehicles - still patrol the streets. Occasional military planes of the European peacekeeping force fly overhead and the whirl of attack helicopters drown out other sounds.