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Barack Obama, Sr. Early years Obama Sr. was born in Kanyadhiang village, on the shores of Lake Victoria just outside Kendu Bay, Kenya. He was the son of Hussein Onyango Obama and his second wife, Akumu Habiba. His father Onyango had at least three wives; though Obama Sr was born to Akumu, he was raised by Onyango's third wife, Sarah, after his mother left the family and separated from Onyango in 1945. Obama Sr. eventually married at the age of eighteen in a tribal ceremony to Kezia, with whom he had four children. Education From 1950 to 1953, Obama Sr. studied at Maseno National School, an elite Christian boarding school in Maseno, run by the Anglican Church of Kenya. B.L. Bowers, one of Obama Sr.’s head teachers at the school, described him as "very keen, steady, trustworthy and friendly. Concentrates, reliable and out-going." Tom Mboya, a nationalist leader at the time, organized a program that offered Western educational prospects to outstanding Kenyan students. Through his dedication and exceptional work, Obama Sr. received a scholarship in economics through this program. President-elect Obama spoke about his father’s scholarship, saying:
"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.'" At the age of 23, Obama Sr. left behind a pregnant Kezia, and their infant son, and enrolled at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. It was here that he would meet and marry a fellow student, Ann Dunham, on February 2nd, 1961 in Maui, Hawaii. Obama Sr.'s and Dunham's son, Barack Obama II, was born shortly after on August 4, 1961. Dunham left school to care for the baby, while Obama Sr. completed his degree. He graduated from the University of Hawaii in June 1962, and left very soon after for Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he would begin graduate study at Harvard University. Ann too left Hawaii to pursue her education at the University of Washington, in Seattle, but Dunham, missing her family, ultimately moved back to Hawaii and filed for divorce in Honolulu in January 1964. Obama Sr. did not contest, and the divorce was granted. He visited his son only once, in 1971, when Barack was 10 years old. Return to Kenya Obama Sr. returned to Kenya, and upon his return he was hired by an oil company. He then worked as an economist, first in the Ministry of Transport, then later as senior economist in the Kenyan Ministry of Finance. In 1965 Obama Sr. wrote a paper titled "Problems Facing Our Socialism," which was published in the East Africa Journal. His paper harshly criticized the blueprint for national planning which had been shaped by Tom Mboya's Ministry of Economic Planning and Development. As President-elect Barack Obama describes in his memoir, his father's divergence with President Kenyatta destroyed his career. Obama Sr.'s life then took a tailspin into drinking and poverty, from which he never recovered. Obama Sr. lost both legs in an automobile collision, and afterward lost his job. He died in 1982, at the age of 46, in a car crash in Nairobi. |
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