Former US President, Barack Obama’s grandmother, Mama Sarah Onyango Obama, has on Monday, March 29 passed away at 99.
Her death was confirmed by her daughter, Marsat Obama, who revealed that her mother died at the Jaramogi Oginga Odinga Teaching and Referral Hospital, Kisumu in Kenya at 4.45am on Monday, Standard newspaper in Kenya reports.
Sarah Obama was admitted to the hospital on Sunday morning, due to an illness but lost her battle for life barely 24 hours later.
The family has announced that she would be buried buried today (Monday) at Muslim Cemetery in Kisumu.
A relative said;
We are trying to see whether we shall be able to bury her today and if not, we shall bury her tomorrow.
Sarah Obama, an educator and philanthropist, was the second wife of Hussein Obama, the former president’s paternal grandfather and helped raise his father, according to The Associated Press.
In his memoir Dreams From My Father, the former president referred to her as “Granny” and recalled meeting her during a trip to Kenya in 1998. She attended his first inauguration just over a decade later.
Kenya’s former president, Raila Odinga is among those who have publicly paid tribute following her death.
Odinga in a statement posted on Twitter said;
In the passing of Mama Sarah Obama, we have lost a matriarch who lived ahead of her time. She single-handedly kept the family going long after the husband departed.
In the passing of Mama Sarah Obama, we have lost a matriarch who lived ahead of her time. She single-handedly kept the family going long after the husband departed. pic.twitter.com/v2AxeNKw6N
— Raila Odinga (@RailaOdinga) March 29, 2021
Obama’s father, Barack Obama Sr., was born in Kogelo, a rural village in western Kenya. He left for studies on a scholarship in the United States where he met a white woman, Ann Dunham, an anthropologist at University of Hawaii.
The couple got married but divorced when the younger Obama was only just two years old. His father returned to Kenya where he died in a car crash in Nairobi in 1982.
According to StraitTimes, Obama Jr. never really knew his father, whom he met only once when he was 10, but he felt a connection that eventually took him to Kenya in 1987 in search of his roots.
