Barack Obama Senior

Barack Hussein Obama Senior

Obama, Sr. was born in Rachuonyo District^[1] on the shores of Lake Victoria just outside Kendu Bay, Kenya Colony, at the time a colony of the British Empire. He was raised in the village of Nyang’oma Kogelo, Siaya District, Nyanza Province.^[12] His family are members of the Luo ethnic group. He was a son of Hussein Onyango Obama (c. 1895-1979), who had at least three wives. His mother was Habiba Akumu Nyanjango of Karabondi, Kenya, his father’s second wife through an arranged marriage. However, he was raised by his stepmother, Sarah Ogwel of Kogelo, after Akumu left her family and separated from her husband in 1945.^[3][13] Before working as a cook for missionaries in Nairobi, Onyango had travelled widely, enlisting in the British colonial forces and visiting Europe, India, and Zanzibar, where he converted from Roman Catholicism to Islam and took the name Hussein. His father also made all his wives convert to Islam. Hussein Onyango was jailed by the British for six months in 1949 due to his involvement in the Kenyan independence movement. According to Sarah Onyango Obama, Onyango was subjected to brutal torture which caused permanent physical disabilities.^[14] Although Obama Sr. was born into a Muslim and Christian family,^[15] he became an atheist as a young man.^[6]

Source : Wikipedia