Barack Obama, Sr. - Early Life and Education

Early Life and Education

Obama was born in Rachuonyo District 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. His family are members of the Luo ethnic group. His father was Onyango (later Hussein) Obama (c. 1895-1979), and his mother, Habiba Akumu Nyanjango of Karabondi, Kenya, was his second wife. After Akumu separated from her husband Hussein and left the family in 1945, the boy Barack Obama was raised by his father Hussein's third wife, Sarah Ogwel of Kogelo.

Before working as a cook for missionaries and local herbalist in Nairobi, Barack Obama's father Onyango had traveled widely, enlisting in the British colonial forces and visiting Europe, India, and Zanzibar. There he converted from Roman Catholicism to Islam and took the name Hussein. In 1949, after becoming more politically active, Onyango was jailed by the British for six months due to his working for the Kenyan independence movement. According to Sarah Onyango Obama, her husband Hussein Onyango was subjected to beatings and abuse; it resulted in permanent physical disabilities and his loathing of the British.

Obama was raised in a Muslim family. When he was about six years old and attending a Christian missionary school, the boy converted to Anglicanism when strongly encouraged by the staff. He changed his name from "Baraka" to the more Christian-sounding "Barack".

While still living near Kendu Bay, Obama attended Gendia Primary School. After his family moved to Siaya District, he transferred to Ng’iya Intermediate School. From 1950 to 1953, he studied at Maseno National School, an exclusive Anglican boarding school in Maseno. The head teacher, B.L. Bowers, described Obama in his records as "very keen, steady, trustworthy and friendly. Concentrates, reliable and out-going."

Read more about this topic:  Barack Obama, Sr.

Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or education:

    ... business training in early life should not be regarded solely as insurance against destitution in the case of an emergency. For from business experience women can gain, too, knowledge of the world and of human beings, which should be of immeasurable value to their marriage careers. Self-discipline, co-operation, adaptability, efficiency, economic management,—if she learns these in her business life she is liable for many less heartbreaks and disappointments in her married life.
    Hortense Odlum (1892–?)

    There are two times in a man’s life when he should not speculate: when he can’t afford it, and when he can.
    Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)

    Our children will not survive our habits of thinking, our failures of the spirit, our wreck of the universe into which we bring new life as blithely as we do. Mostly, our children will resemble our own misery and spite and anger, because we give them no choice about it. In the name of motherhood and fatherhood and education and good manners, we threaten and suffocate and bind and ensnare and bribe and trick children into wholesale emulation of our ways.
    June Jordan (b. 1939)