History
Onyango was working as a computer programmer at Kenya Breweries in Nairobi, when she first met Barack Obama during his first trip to Kenya in 1988. Obama's father and Onyango's half-brother, Barack Obama, Sr., had left Obama and his mother when he was two, and was only known through the stories his mother and her parents told, and a month-long return visit eight years later. Barack Obama, Sr. had remarried in Kenya and fathered six children, then died in 1982. Obama's trip to Kenya was to meet the other half of his family. In his memoir Dreams from My Father, Barack Obama, Jr. writes about his journey and meeting Onyango, referred to as "Aunti Zeituni".
Onyango explained to Obama the significance of Obama's father being the first to fly in an airplane and study abroad; she also explained the complicated extended family on Obama's side from four marriages (two of them polygamous), and his rise in government to senior economist in the Kenyan Ministry of Finance before conflict with President Kenyatta destroyed his career. Barack Obama Sr. fathered six other sons and a daughter, in addition to Obama. All but one live in Britain or the United States as of 2010.
Read more about this topic: Zeituni Onyango
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