Barack Obama's grandfather was
Hussein Onyango Obama
(Hussein). One source says he was born about 1895 and died in 1979.
He worked for the British colonial government and was a prominent and wealthy farmer.
Another source
says Hussein was born in 1870 and died in 1975.
Hussein, as all of the Obamas, was a member of the
Luo, Kenya's
third-largest ethnic group, which is part of a larger family of ethnic
groups, collectively also known as Luo. This group belongs to the
Eastern Sudanic branch of the Nilo-Saharan phylum. The Obama
family is largely concentrated in the western province of Nyanza.
Hussein lived for a time in
Zanzibar, where he converted from
Christianity to Islam. He was one of the first Muslim converts
in his village.
Hussein, for whom Obama was given the middle name, Hussein,
was "fiercely
devoted to Islam." He had
at least 3 wives: Helima, who
had no children, Akuma who gave birth to Sarah Obama, Barack Hussein
Obama, Sr. and Auma Obama.
Hussein's third wife Sarah is the one often referred to by Obama
as his "grandmother." She is not a blood relative and describes
herself as a lifelong Muslim. "I am a
strong believer of the Islamic faith,"
she said.
"What your grandfather
respected was strength -- discipline." Obama quoted his grandmother, Sarah, as telling him. "This is also why he
rejected the Christian religion.
"For a brief time, he converted, and even changed his name to Johnson. But he could not understand such ideas as mercy towards your enemies, or
that this man Jesus could wash away a man's sins."
"To your grandfather, this was foolish sentiment, something to comfort
women," she added. "And so he converted to Islam -- he thought its
practices conformed more closely to his beliefs."
Sarah became the primary caregiver for
Senior after his mother, Akuma, left the family while her children were still
young.
The Insurgent
During Obama’s first visit to Kenya in 1988, his grandmother
Sarah told him about the
resentment against white colonial rule in Kenya, with rallies and mounting
violence that would explode into full-scale rebellion in 1952. "Most of
this activity centered on Kikuyuland," she told him. "But the Luo,
too, were oppressed. Men in our area began to join the
Kikuyu"
"Granny Sarah"
told Obama that Hussein Onyango Obama, Obama’s paternal grandfather, became
involved in the Kenyan independence movement while working as a cook for a
British army officer after World War II. He was arrested in 1949 and
jailed for two years in a high-security prison where, according to his family,
he was subjected to horrific violence to extract information about the growing
insurgency. Sarah, said that her husband had supplied information to the
insurgents. "His job as cook to a British army officer made him a useful
informer for the secret oathing movement which would later form the Mau Mau
rebellion," she said. "At the time the insurgents were secretly taking
oaths which included promises to kill white settlers and colonialists," Mrs. Onyango said.
"To arrest a Luo, WW II veteran (Burma), who was a senior figure in the
community, is pretty serious. They must have had some damn good evidence,"
said Professor David Anderson, director of the African Studies Centre at the
University of Oxford, and an authority on the Mau Mau rebellion.
Obama refers briefly to his grandfather’s imprisonment in his best-selling
memoir, "Dreams...," but states that his grandfather was held only for "more
than six months." Obama described his grandfather’s physical state: "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.
