Auma Obama’s troubled childhood and father’s mysterious death

Barack Obama Senior travelled to the University of Hawaii in September 1959, met and married Ann Dunham, who bore him a son, Barry (Barack Obama Jnr), before he graduated at the top of his economics class. Barack subsequently joined the prestigious Ivy League institution Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for his postgraduate studies and began dating Ruth Baker.

When Barack abruptly left Harvard for Kenya, Ruth defied conservative conventions and her Jewish customs to follow her black boyfriend to Kenya. She boarded a flight to Nairobi and then to Kisumu, before sending a courier to Kogelo to inform Barack of her arrival.

There was already a profound rift between Auma's mother, Kezia, and father, Barack, after his years of absence. Her father left them for a second time as Ruth and he began a new life in his affluent residence in Hurlingham, Nairobi, while four-year-old Auma, her six-year-old brother Abong’o and their 22-year-old mother, Kezia, moved in with her paternal family in Gendia, Homa Bay.

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Barack sent Auma, then aged six, to Mary Hill Primary School in Thika alongside Tom Mboya's daughter. At the beginning of each school term, Auma carpooled with the Mboyas to school in their Citroën. Auma was later moved to Kilimani Primary School, a few houses down from her father’s new home in Woodley. She eventually enrolled at Kenya High, a prestigious all-girls boarding school, which, to her disdain, reflected the same discriminatory atmosphere that had been upheld during colonialism.

Auma noticed the political challenges that dominated her father's everyday professional life in the 1960s and 1970s. He had returned from Harvard, motivated and convinced that he could make significant contributions to his country. While working in the Finance Ministry, he soon discovered that he was expected to align his vision with the prevailing political climate.

The post-Independence administration had no genuine interest in fostering Kenya’s progress and as its leaders were increasingly concerned with consolidating personal positions and amassing wealth. Barack's undoing was the fact that his Harvard academic background in economics elevated his competence beyond that of his superiors, and he made this emphatically clear. Further, he was Luo, which drastically complicated the situation in the volatile political landscape. Ethnicity, cronyism and nepotism predominantly influenced government appointments, especially in favour of Kikuyus. Prominent Luos had either been alienated, murdered or detained.

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