From a City Council Aide, a Run for Parliament in Sierra Leone By around midnight at a fund-raiser last month for Al-Hassan Kanu, a City Council aide making his first run for public office, only about a dozen supporters remained at an African restaurant in Jamaica, Queens. The scene contrasted sharply with the reception Mr. Kanu, 31, received a month earlier in his native country, Sierra Leone, where he is seeking a seat in Parliament. In Freetown, he said, so many people flooded the airport of the capital city that security guards had to bear him on their shoulders through the scrum. Many immigrants in New York City send cash or bring supplies to their homeland. But Mr. Kanu is part of a smaller group who use the money and education they get in the United States as a springboard to pursue elected office in their home countries. This summer, Mr. Kanu will leave his job to return to a country he left as a teenager. He will be taking up the mantle of his father, a former high-ranking official who was ousted in a coup before taking refuge in the United States. But he will also be making a case that Sierra Leonean voters should see his years overseas not as a liability but as an asset. "Yes, I haven't done anything for Sierra Leone prior to me coming," he said. One thing I did for Sierra Leone that is great is, I came to the United States and didn't get sucked up in a system and then did not come home. Mr. Kanu acknowledged that in seeking to represent a district of 50,000 mostly poor residents in a place where government corruption is endemic, he was taking a big step up from his current position as director of community affairs for Councilman Leroy Comrie, who represents the Jamaica area. He came to Mr. Comrie's office as an intern seven years ago. "Most people, once they get here, they get settled, they get saddled with bills and children and responsibilities, they never go back," Mr. Comrie said at the fund-raiser, which netted about $1,000. I'm proud of him that he wants to go back and serve his country and be part of government there, and take what he's learned here and adopt it there. Others have shown that such returns are possible. Five years ago, Benneh Bangura, 60, a former associate producer for CBS News, won a seat in the Sierra Leonean Parliament. He said Mr. Kanu was a strong candidate for the Nov. 17 election, which has about a dozen competitors. "Coming from America, you're always welcome here," Mr. Bangura said in a telephone interview from Freetown. You've been exposed; you bring new ideas. But it also can complicate campaigning, he added, because outsiders must prove "you're here to help, and you are here because you are born here." That trajectory is familiar enough that West African literature calls a person who went overseas and returned a "been-to," said Joel Samoff, a professor of African studies at Stanford University. It "can look to people like a local gain," he said, "but it can also turn out to be a burden." Mr. Kanu has been both helped and hindered by his father's local fame. Hassan Gbessay Kanu was finance minister under President Joseph Saidu Momoh before the government was overthrown in an 11-year civil war that began in 1991. Local newspapers have unearthed allegations of corruption, decades old, against Mr. Gbessay Kanu, which his son denied. The family, including Mr. Kanu and his 13 siblings, received political asylum in the United States after their home was attacked in 1997, he said. Mr. Kanu has an American green card but remains a citizen of Sierra Leone. Mr. Kanu, who is running on a platform of reclaiming the country's vast natural wealth for its people, argued that his American education - he studied political science at York College, part of the City University of New York - and his background in grass-roots movements were assets. He said he had also been sending money to his home district. Ernest Bai Koroma, the first democratically elected president of Sierra Leone since before the war, has improved security since he took office in 2007. But it remains unsafe enough that Mr. Kanu's 15-month-old daughter, Olana, will stay in the Bronx, where she lives with her mother, Mr. Kanu's fiancée. They plan to marry after the election. Returning from the diaspora, Mr. Kanu has the advantage of being able to present himself as a figure outside of the fray, said Peter M. Lewis, director of the African studies program at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. But, he added, "There is always a segment of the African public in any country who say, "Where were you when we were suffering?" "