After President Obama lectured Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta earlier today on the African nation's gay rights record, he sat down with his Kenyan half-sister Auma Obama to a festive state dinner where he joked that some back home probably think he is in Kenya "to look for my birth certificate."

Kenyatta welcomed Obama with music and dancing under a giant multi-peaked white tent. They were serenaded in English and Swahili by popular music group Sauti Sol.

Kenyatta was effusive in his praise for the U.S. president and said that he never could have predicted a decades-old study-in-America program for Kenyans would have produced Obama, an "engine to propel and transform the African continent." Obama's father was a participant in the program Kenyatta referenced.

Obama replied with a few words thanking his hosts in Kiswahili for their "incredible hospitality." In keeping with his name, he was "truly blessed," he said, according to pool reports.

Obama joked that some of his critics in the United States probably thought he was back in Kenya "to look for my birth certificate."

"That is not the case," he said.

The Kenyan president praised Obama "riding on the wings of history" for America, Africa, and "most importantly for Kenya."

"As the toast reached crescendo some people in the audience ululated as a brass brand struck up the US national anthem," according to pool reports.

Obama reminisced how his step-grandmother Mama Sarah made a joke about his inability to speak the local languages: If the president is so smart, "how come he can't talk to his grandmother?"