Were obama's parents legally married. Didn't he have a legal wife in Africa.

The Luo The Obamas are members 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 Barack Obama's grandfather was Hussein Onyango Obama (Grandfather).   He was born about 1895 and died in 1979.  He worked for the British colonial government and was a prominent and wealthy farmer.Zanzibarfirst Muslim convertsfiercely devoted to Islamat least 3 wivesrespectedshe said

Grandfather lived for a time in , where he converted from Christianity to Islam.  He was one of the in his village.

Grandfather, for whom Obama was given the middle name, Hussein, was "."   He had : Helima, who had no children, Akuma who gave birth to Sarah Obama, Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. and Auma Obama.

"What your grandfather 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."
 
Grandfather'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," .

Sarah became the primary caregiver for Senior after his mother, Akuma, left the family while her children were still young.

Akumu Habiba Akumu Obama was Obama's paternal grandmother, and the second wife of Hussein Onyango Obama.

A photograph of her holding her son, Barack Sr, on her lap is on the cover of her grandson's memoirs titled "Dreams from my Father..."

Hussein
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" told

"Granny Sarah" 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.

Senior

 

Barack Hussein Obama Sr. (Senior) was born in Nyangoma-Kogello, Siaya District, Kenya in 1936.  He was a member of the Luo tribe and grew up in the sleepy village of Alego-Kogello.

The myth is that Obama Sr. was a goat herder.

Obama Sr. may have herded some goats that were part of Grandfather's  extensive livestock collection, but Obama Sr. spent his time at school where he was actually an extremely bright student and sufficiently educated to go on to obtain degrees from the University of Hawaii and Harvard.

In 1955, at 18 years of age, Senior married a girl called Kezia from the local village.  It was Kezia who remained his one true love and to whom he always returned.

 

Senior seems to have inherited his father’s attitudes towards the colonial power.  He was also arrested, for attending a meeting in Nairobi of the Kenya African National Union (KANU), the organization spearheading the independence movement.  Sarah told Obama that his father, unlike her husband, had been held only for a short time in the white man’s prison: "Because he was not a leader in KANU, Senior was released after a few days."

Shortly after his arrest, in 1958, Obama Senior was awarded an American sponsored scholarship in economics to the University of Hawaii at Manoa.  He was selected by a former Kenyan cabinet minister, the late Tom Mboya, who was earmarked as the successor to Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya's first prime minister and  leader of the terrorist Mau Mau.

 

The presumption was that Senior would return to Africa and use his "Western-honed skills in a new Kenya."

Chief Engineer found this 1960 "Time" article about Tom Mboya.  On page 8 it mentions the "Jackie Robinson -- Harry Belafonte Fund" which Susan Mboya oversees and which has already been used to send 81 Kenyans to the U.S. to be educated.

While Mboya has refused to release her father’s papers, some of them may be among the personal papers and correspondence Mboya (father) had with students who participated in the airlift.  Those papers are at Stanford and personal correspondence is listed as one of the items in the holdings.

Of interest in the "Time" article, it mentions Pam Odede was sent to Ohio as one of the students.  Pam would later become Mboya’s wife and it is no coincidence that their daughter Susan now lives in Ohio.

In June, 1959, at the age of 23, Obama Sr. became the first African student enrolled at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Kezia, who is pregnant, remained in Kenya.  Senior would have two more children with Kezia in subsequent years.

Eventually, Senior will have three wives and one mistress.  With them, he will have seven children, although there are some reports of an eighth.

Sarah Sarah Obama is the third wife of Obama's paternal grandfather and was born in 1922.

Also known, through the addition of her late husband's name, as Sarah Onyango Obama, and sometimes referred to as Sarah Ogwel, Sarah Hussein Obama or Sarah Anyango Obama, she lives in Nyang’oma Kogelo village, 30 miles west of western Kenya's main town, Kisumu, on the edge of Lake Victoria.

The
Airlift

"When Obama Sr. arrived in Hawaii in June 1959, future President Kenyatta was in jail in Kenya," as reported by a story done in Hawaiian paper after he arrived:

"The Washington Post reported that when Barack Obama, Sr. first arrived in Hawaii he was interviewed by the Hawaiian Press, the reporter Hirozawa relays Obama’s comments, "he would study business administration and wanted to return to Kenya to help with its transition from tribal customs to a modern economy."

He was concerned, he said, about his generation’s disorientation as Kenyans rejected old ways yet struggled with "westernization," the date of the story was JUNE, 1959.

The whole story is a lie right from word one of daddy arrived courtesy of an airlift.  He didn’t even arrive with the other students, he arrived months before them, so the question becomes why?

All of this can be found at the following link aside from speculation of why.  Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, and Jackie Robinson appeal letter, Aug. 24, 1959, box 3, Robinson Papers; Smith, "East African Airlifts of 1959, 1960, and 1961," 25–43.

Barack Obama wrote that his father "had been selected by Kenyan leaders and American sponsors to attend a university in the United States," but a list of the students who landed in New York on September 9, 1959, does not contain the name of the elder Obama.  Tom Shachtman, working in the African-American Students Foundation (AASF) papers for a book on the airlifts, has found that the elder Obama came in 1959 with support from the AASF but appears to have been routed a different way as he made his way to the University of Hawaii.

Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (New York, 1995), 9; "Eighty-One Kenya Airlift Students Arrived New York Sept. 9th 1959," box 3, Robinson Papers; Tom Shachtman telephone interview by James H. Meriwether, Aug. 19, 2008, notes (confirmed via e-mail by Shachtman) (in James H. Meriwether’s possession).

Kezia
 
Kezia was a 16-year-old schoolgirl while Senior, two years older, had just got his first proper job as an office clerk in Nairobi.

Kezia said: "It was at a dance in Kendu Bay, my home town.  Barack (Senior) was there on holiday with his family.

"I went to the dance hall with my cousin William and I saw Barack enter the room.  I thought, 'ohhh, wow'.  He was so lovely with his dancing.  So handsome and so smart.

"We danced together and then the next day my cousin came to our house and told me that Barack liked me.

"It was December, so I was off school.  Each day Barack and my cousin would stop by the house.

"Every time I looked they were always there, trying to convince me to go with Barack to Nairobi.

"About a week later, William and I took Barack to the station.  We were going to say: 'Bye bye, see you next time.'  Except there was no bye bye.

"When the train arrived William and Barack said, "You are going to Nairobi."  I went with him.'

Her father, a local driver, was furious.

Kezia said: "He did not like Obama.  My father and brothers came to Nairobi to bring me back.  They said I had to go back to school.

"When I wouldn't, they said they would never speak to me again.

"Barack was also worried about what his father (grandfather) would think because I was so young, but he gave us his approval.  He sent my mother and father 14 cows for my dowry.

Kezia and Barack Sr. were married in a tribal ceremony in January, 1957, and  set up a home in Jericho, a section of Nairobi created for government employees, and began a family.

First son Roy was born in March 1958.  Kezia insisted: "Barack was a good husband."
 
Also known as Kezia Grace Obama.  She currently lives in Bracknell, Berkshire, England.

Can you imagine if a Republican was running for president and it came out that his father had bought his first wife for 14 cows???!!!Just wow!!