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For the United States Senator and Presidential candidate, see Barack Obama.

Barack Obama, Sr.

Barack Obama, Sr.
Barack Obama, Sr. and Jr. during Senior's only visit with his son in Hawai'i
Born	1936 Nyangoma-Kogelo, Kenya
Died	1982 Nairobi, Kenya
Resting place	Nyangoma-Kogelo, Siaya District, Kenya
Nationality	Kenyan
Alma mater	University of Hawaii Harvard University
Occupation	Economist
Known for	Father of Barack Obama
Spouse(s)	Kezia Ann Dunham Ruth Nidesand Unknown 4th partner
Children	1. (with Kezia): Abongo (Roy) Obama, Auma Obama, Abo Obama, Bernard Obama 2. (with Ann Dunham): Barack Obama 3. (with Ruth Nidesand): Mark Obama, David Obama
Parent(s)	Hussein Onyango Obama and Habiba Akumu

Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. (1936–1982) was the father of Illinois Senator and 2008 Democratic presumptive nominee Barack Obama. He left the family when Barack Jr. was two years old, and only saw him one more time when Barack was age 10. He is the main subject of his son's memoir, Dreams From My Father. Born and raised in Kenya, Obama Sr. was educated in the United States, after which he returned to Kenya and served as a senior economist for the government. Obama died at age 46, from injuries received in an automobile accident.

Family background and early life in Kenya

Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., was born in 1936 on the shores of Lake Victoria in Nyangoma-Kogelo, Siaya District, Kenya. His father, Hussein Onyango Obama (c. 1895-1979, buried at Alego), belonged to the Luo tribe and was born Onyango, son of Obama (buried at Kendu Bay, Kenya) and wife Nyaoke, in one of their villages. Before working as a cook for missionaries in Nairobi, Onyango had travelled widely, enlisting with the name Onyango Obama in the British colonial forces during World War I and visiting Europe, India, and Zanzibar, where he converted from Christianity to Islam and added Hussein to his name. Onyango had at least three wives; Barack Obama Sr. was the son of Habiba Akumu, the second wife. However, he was raised by Onyango's third wife, Sarah, after Akuma/Akumu left her family and separated from her husband in 1945.

Obama Sr. grew up in Nyangoma-Kogelo. At 18, he married a young woman named Kezia in a tribal ceremony. They had four children, two of them after he returned to Kenya from the United States. He never divorced Kezia, who now lives in Bracknell, England.

American education and marriages

Due to a program offering Western educational opportunities to outstanding Kenyan students that was organized by nationalist leader Tom Mboya, Obama Sr. was awarded a scholarship in economics, and at the age of 23 he enrolled at the University of Hawaii. He left behind a pregnant Kezia and their infant son. As his son Senator Obama has said, "The Kennedys decided: 'We're going to do an airlift. We're going to go to Africa and start bringing young Africans over to this country and give them scholarships to study so they can learn what a wonderful country America is. This young man named Barack Obama [Sr.] got one of those tickets and came over to this country." An article by Michael Dobbs in The Washington Post, however, states that the Kennedy family did not become associated with the educational airlift until 1960, a year after Obama Sr. was already studying in the United States. Initial financial supporters of the program included Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, Jackie Robinson, and Elizabeth Mooney Kirk, a literacy advocate who provided most of the financial support for Obama Sr.'s early years in the United States, according to the Tom Mboya archives at Stanford University.

According to Senator Obama, the elder Obama had already abandoned Islam and become an atheist by the time he moved to the United States. Barack Obama Sr.'s daughter Auma has commented that her father "was never a Muslim although he was born into a Muslim family with a Muslim name."

On February 2, 1961, Obama Sr. married a fellow student, Ann Dunham in Maui, Hawaii. She did not know that he already had a wife in Kenya. Their son, Barack Obama, Jr., was born on August 4, 1961. Two years later, Obama Sr. was accepted at Harvard for graduate study. He moved to Massachusetts, unable to afford to take his wife and son with him. He and Dunham divorced in 1963, divorce filed in Honolulu, Hawaii in January 1964, and he only saw his son again once, at age 10. He received the AM degree from Harvard in 1965.

At Harvard, he met an American-born teacher named Ruth Nidesand who would follow him to Kenya when he returned after completing his Masters degree. She eventually became his third wife. She and Obama Sr. had two children together before they divorced.

Return to Kenya

On his return to Kenya, Obama Sr. was hired by an oil company and then served as an economist in the Ministry of Transportation, and later became senior economist in the Kenyan Ministry of Finance. In 1965 Obama wrote an important paper titled "Problems Facing Our Socialism", published in the East Africa Journal, harshly criticizing the blueprint for national planning titled "African Socialism and Its Applicability to Planning in Kenya" produced by Tom Mboya's Ministry of Economic Planning and Development. Obama's paper put him on the side of communist-allied leader Oginga Odinga against pro-Western 'third way" leader Tom Mboya and the President of Kenya Jomo Kenyatta. As Sen. Barack Obama describes in his memoir, Obama the elder's conflict with President Kenyatta effectively destroyed his career. His life then took a tailspin into drinking and poverty, from which he never fully recovered. His friend Kenyan journalist Philip Ochieng has described Obama's difficult personality and drinking problems in the Kenya newspaper The Nation. Obama Sr. lost both legs in an automobile accident, and subsequently lost his job. He died not long afterwards, in poverty, at the age of 46 in a car crash in Nairobi.

He is buried in Alego, at the village of Nyangoma-Kogelo, Siaya District, Kenya.

Besides United States Senator Barack Obama, Barack Obama Sr. fathered six other sons and a daughter. All but one live in Britain or the United States.

His children with Kezia include their sons Roy (now known as Abong'o), Bernard, and Abo, and daughter Auma who is a social worker running a children's trust in the United Kingdom. Obama Sr. had two sons with Ruth, named David and Mark. Mark studied physics at Stanford, and now lives in China and is engaged to a Chinese woman. His eighth child, George, was with a woman in Kenya whom he was planning to marry at the time of his death.

Malik Abong'o Obama

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Sarah Obama

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Sarah Ogwel (1922 - ) is Barack Obama, Sr.'s step-mother (sometimes referred to as Sarah Hussein Obama or Sarah Anyango Obama). She lives in Nyang’oma Kogelo village, 40 miles north of western Kenya's main town, Kisumu, on the edge of Lake Victoria. Her small farmhouse has no running water.

Sarah Obama was the third wife of Barack Obama, Sr.'s father paternal grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama (1870–1975). Although not a blood relation, Barack Obama, Jr., nevertheless calls her "Granny Sarah". She was just 16 when she married Onyango, an older man who was her father's friend.

Despite living in a small rural village in Kenya, Sarah Obama is well aware of Senator Obama's fame in the United States, and has photographs of his successes on her walls. She recently publicly complained about false reports about Senator Obama's religion. She says that he is a Christian, just as she is. She has been frequently interviewed by the European press, and she is closely following the political campaign.

On July 4, 2008 she attended the Independence Day celebrations in Nairobi, hosted by Michael Ranneberger, the US ambassador in Kenya . Sarah, who speaks only few words in English, communicates with American family members through an interpreter. She has visited the USA two times .