User:Jfire/Kenyan relatives of Barack Obama

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Main article: Barack Obama

United States Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has several paternal relatives who live in Nyangoma-Kogela, a village in Siaya District, Kenya, including his step-grandmother Sarah Onyango Obama (born c. 1922) and uncle Said Obama (born c. 1967).[1] Obama's father, Barack Obama, Sr. (1936–1982), was born and raised in Kogela and was buried there after his death in a car accident.[2]

Sarah, Said, and more than a dozen other relatives of Obama live on a farm in Kogela, in fertile countryside 40 miles north of Lake Victoria and western Kenya's main town, Kisumu. The farm, which Barack Obama has visited on trips in 1987, 1992, and the summer of 2006,[1] has no electricity and no running water.[3] Family members listen to news of Obama's presidential campaign on a portable radio.[1] A local school has been renamed the "Barack Obama Secondary School",[3] but has been unable to open in 2008 due to political unrest following the 2007 Kenyan presidential election.[2]

Sarah Obama was the third wife of Obama's paternal grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama, an older man who was Sarah's father's friend, and whom she married at age 16. Arranged marriages and obedience to husbands -- enforced by beatings, if necessary -- were the plight of Kenyan women of her generation, she explained in Obama's book Dreams from My Father.[4] Although she is not his blood relation, Barack Obama nevertheless calls her "Mama Sarah" and "Granny", since she had a major role in raising his father.[3] Sarah follows Obama's presidential campaign closely and has been frequently interviewed by the press in connection with it. She has publicly complained about the false reports that Senator Obama is a Muslim, saying that he is a Christian, just as she is.[5]

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c Mike Pflanz (2008-01-11). Barack Obama's Kenyan relatives keep faith. The Daily Telegraph.
  2. ^ a b Paula Newton. "Barack Obama's ancestral home", CNN, 2008-01-07. 
  3. ^ a b c Jeff Koinange. "Obama in Africa", CNN, 2006-08-25. 
  4. ^ Scott Fornek (2007-09-09). Sarah Obama: 'Sparkling, laughing eyes'. Chicago Sun-Times.
  5. ^ Katharine Houreld. "Obama's grandma slams 'untruths'", Associated Press, 2006-03-05. 

[edit] External links

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