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.