Lets lighten up the mood a bit around here.
A lot has been said about Barack's maternal grandparents Stanley and Madelyn Dunham; as well as his paternal grandmother Sarah Obama. We all know about his mother Stanley-Ann Dunham (so named because her Dad had wanted a boy), his wonderful wife Michelle and of course Malia and Sasha (Natasha) - his kids.
However not to much has been discussed about his older half-sister (on his fathers side) - Auma Obama. We've read clips, maybe heard a brief audio clip or seen her hanging around Michelle (she accompanied Michelle a lot during the primaries, esp in New Hampshire). As someone who spent a lot of my early years in West Africa and who has also had to trace my roots to villages in Africa, my attention always perks up when I see Obama's African family profiled.
So who is Auma Obama.......?
Auma Obama was the second child (and only daughter) of Barack Obama Sr. She was born to his first wife Kezia, whom Obama Sr. left when he went to further his studies in America. Auma is highly educated, studied in Germany and now lives in Great Britain (and often times returns to Kenya), where she works as a social worker running a children's trust. She was married to a British Guy before getting divorced in 2000.
If you've read Barack's first book "Dreams from my Father" then you know all about Auma and there isn't much more to add. However if you haven't then you should know that Auma was the first member of Obama's African family to reach out to him in the late eighties. There's a poignant part of the novel where Barack gets an introspective overview (from Auma) about the Man ("The Old Man") he never got to know.
Theres an excerpt about Auma here, and I quote:
Barack Obama and his half-sister Auma didn't meet until they were in their 20s, but both have said they immediately clicked when she first came to visit him in Chicago in the 1980s.
"There was a lot of apprehension," Auma Obama told the Guardian of London last year. "I had a plan B in case it didn't work out, but it worked out. We just didn't stop talking when we met -- it was absolutely as if we'd lived together all our lives."
When he picked Auma Obama up from the airport, Barack Obama knew "somehow, that I loved her, so naturally, so easily and fiercely, that later, after she was gone, I would find myself mistrusting that love, trying to explain it to myself," he wrote in Dreams From My Father.
I've often wondered from Auma's perspective what this roller-coaster of a journey with her once long-lost brother must feel like. I'd heard Barack's grandmother (she raised Obama's father but isn't actually his blood-grandmother) speak at length about Barack, but never heard Auma.....until now:
Pay attention to the part where she talks about Barack telling her not to call him Barry
Quite the Queens English eh? Sorry that got me, I spent a lot of my formative years in England (yeah I've practically lived all over the world!), so I've got quite the soft spot for British accents.
Anyways hope you enjoyed this brief introduction to Auma. I'm sure we'll be hearing more about the comprehensive Obama (American, African, Asian etc) family as the year progresses.
Peace.