Malik Obama - Paternal Relations

Paternal Relations

The Obamas are members of the Luo, Kenya's third-largest ethnic group, which is part of a larger family of ethnic groups, collectively also known as Luo. Linguistically, the Luo language belongs to the Eastern Sudanic branch of the Nilo-Saharan phylum. The Obama family is largely concentrated in the western province of Nyanza.

Hussein Onyango Obama

Barack Obama's paternal grandfather (c. 1895–1979). (One source gives 1870–1975 as his dates of birth and death, possibly based on his tombstone in his home village, Barack Obama relates finding in 1988 a British document based on a 1928 ordinance recording his grandfather as 35 years old. The date of the document was estimated to be about 1930, which would mean that his grandfather had been born around 1895.) Onyango was the fifth son of his mother, Nyaoke, who was the first of the five wives of his father, Obama. Barack Obama relates how his step-grandmother Granny Sarah (Sarah Onyango Obama) describes his grandfather: "Even from the time that he was a boy, your grandfather Onyango was strange. It is said of him that he had ants up his anus, because he could not sit still." As a young man, he learned to speak, read and write in English.

Onyango worked as a mission cook and as a local herbalist. He joined the King's African Rifles during World War I.

In 1949, Onyango spent at least 6 months in Kamiti Prison. He was likely tried in a magistrates' court on charges of political sedition or membership of a banned organisation, but the records do not survive, because all such documentation was routinely destroyed after six years in British colonies. He was tortured to extract information about the growing insurgency. In his memoir, Obama recounted family descriptions of his grandfather's shocking physical state when released from prison:

"When he returned to Alego he was very thin and dirty. He had difficulty walking, and his head was full of lice." For some time, he was too traumatized to speak about his experiences. His wife told his grandson Obama: "From that day on, I saw that he was now an old man."

Onyango was permanently scarred, remaining in pain and requiring assistance in moving until his death. Although previously he had worked closely with British colonists, his torture left Onyango bitterly anti-British.

Onyango is sometimes referred to as Mzee Hussein Onyango Obama. The word mzee is a Kenyan honorific meaning "old man" or "elder".

According to his third wife, Sarah, Onyango had first converted from tribal religion to Catholicism. After later converting to Islam, he took the name Hussein. She said that he passed on the name to his children, not the religion. The Luo are given names related to the circumstances of their birth, and Onyango means "born in the early morning."

Habiba Akumu Obama

Also known as Akumu Nyanjoga (c. 1918–2006). Barack Obama's paternal grandmother, and the second wife of Hussein Onyango Obama. She had three children with Onyango: daughters Sarah and Auma, and son Barack (Barack Obama's father). Her father was named Njango, and she was born and raised in the Western Kenyan village of Karabondi. In his memoir Dreams from My Father, her grandson wrote that she was miserable in her marriage and abandoned her husband and children with him. She subsequently married again and moved to present-day Tanzania. The Luo are given names related to the circumstances of their birth and Akumu means "mysterious birth," a conception after a birth, but before resumption of a woman's menses. She took the name Habiba upon her conversion to Islam. A photograph of her holding her son, Barack, Sr., on her lap is on the cover of her grandson's memoir. (See image at right margin.)

Sarah Obama (aunt of Barack Obama)

Aunt of U.S. President Barack Obama and elder sister of his father, born 1933 to Hussein Onyango and Habiba Akumu Obama. (She should not be confused with her stepmother Sarah Onyango Obama, also often called just Sarah Obama, the third wife of Onyango.)

Barack Obama, Sr.

Barack Obama's father (1934–1982). Government economist in Kenya. In addition to President Obama, Barack Obama Sr. fathered one daughter and at least four sons.

Hawa Auma Hussein (aunt of Barack Obama)

Aunt of U.S. President Barack Obama and younger sister of his father, born to Hussein Onyango and Habiba Akumu Obama. She is the sole surviving full sibling of Barack Obama, Sr.

Sarah Onyango Obama

Third wife of Obama's paternal grandfather, born 1922. She is known for short as Sarah Obama; she is sometimes referred to as Sarah Ogwel, Sarah Hussein Obama or Sarah Anyango Obama. She lives in Nyang'oma Kogelo village, 30 miles west of western Kenya's main town, Kisumu, on the edge of Lake Victoria. (She should not be confused with her stepdaughter of the same name, Sarah Obama, a daughter of Onyango's second wife, Akumu.)

Although she is not a blood relation, Barack Obama calls her "Granny Sarah". Sarah, who speaks Luo and only a few words of English, communicates with President Obama through an interpreter.

On July 4, 2008, she attended the United States Independence Day celebrations in Nairobi, hosted by Michael Ranneberger, the US ambassador in Kenya.

During the campaign, she protested attempts to portray Obama as a foreigner to the United States or as a Muslim, saying that while Obama's grandfather had been a Muslim, "In the world of today, children have different religions from their parents." Sarah Obama herself is "a strong believer of the Islamic faith", in her words.

Kezia Obama

(Also known as Kezia Aoko and as "Grace"). Born c. 1940, she is Barack Obama, Sr.'s first wife; she married him in Kenya before studying abroad in the United States. She lives in Bracknell, Berkshire, England. On March 22, 2009, Kezia made a guest appearance on the British television show Chris Moyles' Quiz Night. Her sister, Jane, is the 'Auntie Jane' mentioned at the very start of Dreams from My Father when she telephoned Obama to tell him that his father had been killed in a car accident.

Malik Obama

Barack Obama's half-brother, also known as Abongo or Roy, was born c. March 1958, the son of Barack Obama, Sr., with his first wife, Kezia. Malik Obama was born and raised in Nairobi, Kenya. He earned a degree in accounting from the University of Nairobi. The half brothers met for the first time in 1985 when Barack flew from Chicago to Washington, D.C., to visit Malik. Malik and his half-brother Barack were best men at each other's weddings. Malik has twelve wives as of 2013. Barack Obama brought his wife Michelle to Kenya three years later, and they met with Malik again while meeting many other new relatives.

Although much of the Obama family has dispersed throughout Kenya and overseas, most, including Malik Obama, still considered their rural village on the shores of Lake Victoria to be their true home. They feel that those who have left the village have become culturally "lost". A frequent visitor to the United States, and a consultant in Washington, D.C., for several months each year, Malik settled in the Obamas' ancestral home, Nyang'oma Kogelo, a village of several hundred people. He prefers its slow pace to that of the city. He runs a small electronics shop a half-hour's drive outside of town.

During his brother's presidential campaign, Malik Obama was a spokesman for the extended Obama family in Kenya, dealing with safety and privacy concerns arising from the increased attention from the press. He ran for governor of the Kenyan county of Siaya in 2013, and was defeated by a wide margin.

Auma Obama

Barack Obama's half-sister, born c. 1960, to Kezia, his father's first wife. As of July 2008, she was a development worker in Kenya. She studied German at the University of Heidelberg from 1981 to 1987. After her graduation in Heidelberg, she went on for graduate studies at the University of Bayreuth, earning a PhD in 1996. Her dissertation was on the conception of labor in Germany and its literary reflections. Auma Obama has lived in London. In 1996 she married an Englishman, Ian Manners, although they have since divorced. They have a daughter named Akinyi (b. 1997). In 2011 Auma Obama was interviewed for Turk Pipkin's documentary Building Hope.

Abo Obama

Barack Obama's alleged half-brother, also known as Samson Obama, born 1968. In Dreams from My Father, it is stated that the Obama family doubt Abo and Bernard are the biological sons of Barack Obama, Sr. Abo is a mobile phone shop manager in Kenya. He was barred from entering the United Kingdom after receiving a police caution for a public order offence; he was also accused of, but not prosecuted for, sexual assault. At the time he had been living illegally in the UK.

Bernard Obama

Barack Obama's alleged half-brother, born 1970. Dreams from My Father states that the Obama family doubt Abo and Bernard are the biological sons of Barack Obama, Sr. He had been an auto parts supplier in Nairobi, Kenya, and has one child. Bernard converted to Islam as an adult and has said: "I'm a Muslim, I don't deny it. My father was raised a Muslim. But it's not an issue. I don't know what all the hullabaloo is about." He resides in Bracknell, England, with his mother Kezia.

Ruth (Baker) Ndesandjo

Born Ruth Beatrice Baker was born in the United States around 1937, the daughter of Maurice Joseph Baker and Ida Baker of Newton, Massachusetts, who are of Lithuanian Jewish descent. Ruth was a 1954 graduate of Brookline High School in Brookline, Massachusetts, and a 1958 graduate of Simmons College in Boston with a degree in business. She was a suburban elementary school teacher when she met and began dating Barack, Sr., in Cambridge in June 1964, a month before his return to Kenya in August 1964. She followed Obama, Sr., back to Kenya five weeks later, and married him in Kenya in a civil ceremony on December 24, 1964. She later became a private kindergarten director in Kenya. She had two sons with Barack Obama, Sr.: Mark and David. Since she remarried when they were young, they took their stepfather's surname, Ndesandjo, as their own. Her third son, Joseph Ndesandjo, was born c. 1980 in her second marriage.

Mark Okoth Obama Ndesandjo

Barack Obama's half-brother, son of Ruth Baker and Barack Obama, Sr. He runs an Internet company called WorldNexus that advises Chinese corporations how best to reach international customers. Mark graduated from Brown University, studied physics at Stanford University, received an MBA from Emory University, and has lived in Shenzhen, China, since 2002. Through his mother, he is Jewish. He is married to Liu Xuehua (also spelled Liu Zue Hua in some reports), a Chinese woman from Henan Province. He is an accomplished pianist.

In 2009, he published a semi-autobiographical novel, Nairobi to Shenzhen: A Novel of Love in the East. He has also stated that he planned to write a proper autobiography which would go into more detail about his relationship with Barack Obama.

David Ndesandjo (c. 1967 – c. 1987)

Barack Obama's half-brother (also known as David Opiyo Obama), son of Ruth Baker and Barack Obama, Sr. He died in a motorcycle accident.

George Hussein Onyango Obama

Youngest half-brother of Barack Obama, born c. 1982, son of Barack Obama, Sr. and Jael Otieno (now a resident of Atlanta, Georgia). George was six months old when his father died in an automobile accident, after which he was raised in Nairobi by his mother and a French step-father. He later lived in South Korea for two years while his mother resided there for business reasons. Returning to Kenya, George Obama "slept rough for several years," until his aunt gave him a six-by-eight foot corrugated metal shack in the Nairobi slum of Huruma Flats. As of August 2008, Obama was studying to become a mechanic. George received little attention until being featured in an article in the Italian-language edition of Vanity Fair in August 2008, which portrayed him as living in poverty, shame, and obscurity. The article quoted George Obama as saying that he lived "on less than a dollar a month" and said that he "does not mention his famous half-brother in conversation" out of shame at his poverty. In later interviews, George contradicted this picture. In an interview with The Times, he "said that he was furious at subsequent reports that he had been abandoned by the Obama family and that he was filled with shame about living in a slum." He told The Times, "Life in Huruma is good." George Obama said that he expects no favors, that he was supported by relatives, and that reports he lived on a dollar a month were "all lies by people who don't want my brother to win." He told The Telegraph that he was inspired by his half-brother. According to Time, George "has repeatedly denied ... that he feels abandoned by Obama." CNN quoted him as saying, "I was brought up well. I live well even now. The magazines, they have exaggerated everything – I think I kind of like it here. There are some challenges, but maybe it is just like where you come from, there are the same challenges." George and the British journalist Damien Lewis published George's story in a 2011 book called Homeland. George also appeared in the film 2016: Obama's America, which was widely considered an anti-Obama documentary.

Omar Okech Obama

He sometimes goes by a variation of the name of his father Onyango Obama. Half-uncle of Barack Obama, born on June 3, 1944, in Nyang'oma Kogelo. The eldest son of Onyango and his third wife Sarah Obama, he moved to the U.S. in October 1963 when he was 17 years old as part of Tom Mboya's Airlift Africa project. Once he arrived in the U.S., his half-brother, Barack Obama, Sr., found him a place at a boys' school then known as Browne & Nichols, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He later dropped out of school and changed his name to O. Onyango Obama. He has operated a liquor store in Framingham, where he resided as of March 2011. He was subject to a deportation order in 1989. The Boston Herald reports that he may have illegally obtained a driver's license and Social Security number. After an unsuccessful appeal, he was given a new deportation order in 1992. He was arrested on August 24, 2011 for driving under the influence, and subsequently held in jail until September 9, 2011, on a federal immigration warrant. He pleaded to certain parts of the DUI and his DUI case was continued until March 2013. His immigration case was remanded, on November 30, 2012, by the Board of Immigration Appeals to the Executive Office for Immigration Review for reconsideration of the original order of deportation that was issued in 1986 and re-issued in 1992 after his appeals failed. An immigration judge ruled on January 30, 2013 that Onyango Obama will receive a deportation hearing on December 3, 2013. Onyango's attorney's outlined that Onyango's legal defense for the December 3, 2013 hearing would be a reliance on the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, since Onyango has resided in the U.S. since before January 1, 1972, the cutoff date of the 1986 amnesty.

Zeituni Onyango

Half-aunt of Barack Obama, born May 29, 1952, in Kenya, Onyango is referred to as "Aunti Zeituni" in the memoir Dreams from My Father. She was denied political asylum in the US in 2004, but remained in the country illegally. Her presence was leaked to the media during Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. She was granted asylum in 2010.

Yusuf Obama

Half-uncle of Barack Obama, born c. 1950s in Nyang'oma Kogelo; son of Onyango and Sarah Obama.

Sayid Obama

Half-uncle of Barack Obama, born c. 1950s in Nyang'oma Kogelo; son of Onyango and Sarah Obama.