Obama Senior: More insight on the man and other myths

A new book has been released this weekend that deepens and extends our knowledge of the Obama family; a timely intervention coinciding with the visit of US President Barack Obama to Kenya.

Obama Senior: A Dream Fulfilled by Fredrick Donde, published by Kenway – an imprint of East African Educational Publishers; chronicles the eventful life of the absent Kenyan father of the first black US President.

The book is not entirely ground-breaking; another biography of the man, The Other Barack, by American journalist Sally Jacobs – is an incisive look at Obama father’s life and loves in America.

The book talks about Obama Senior’s roots from his Kogelo village and his subsequent work life in Nairobi, where he ultimately met his death in November 1982 at the age of 46.

No doubt, there are gems of information about the man, such as prospects of his resurrection in television recordings filed at Kenya Broadcasting corporation (KBC) which Obama produced under a current affairs series, Wheels of Progress in the 1960s, to his published academic critiques.

And when US President produced his elegant memoir, we now know the seeds of his imagination must have come from Obama Senior: He, too, produced a creative work, Otieno Jarieko (Otieno the Wise Man), when working for an education consortium that subsequently helped secure his scholarship to Hawaii.

Getting to these few discoveries, one has to wade through a huge chunk of Luo anthology, including the migration of the Obama patriarchs a century back and finish off with bio data of the parallels between Obama senior and his famous son.

The crux of the story is in the three-page Foreword by Obama Senior’s cousin, Ezra Obama.

Besides living with the Obamas in Nairobi’s Woodley estate for four years from 1966 – Obama Senior had then married his American (and third wife) Ruth and taken in two children from his first marriage.

Ezra was there when Obama tumbled from Tom Mboya’s assassination and his eventual sacking.

In an ironic twist, Ezra, who had finished school and secured a job at Coca Cola with the help of Obama Senior, would then host Obama at his modest apartment in Ngara for a couple of months.

The book talks of information that is already in the public domain, such as Obama’s chance encounter with his former Shell colleague and future President Mwai Kibaki, who helped secure him a job at the Treasury soon which steadied Obama’s life once more.

So the book only succeeds in mystifying the man, not explaining him.

Which is a real shame considering the long list of interviewees accessible to the author, of those who knew Obama Senior.

Even when such individuals are quoted, their recollections are hardly insightful.

Quoting Dr Francis Masakhalia to confirm that Obama Senior had been expelled from the Maseno School, Donde writes;

“Whereas his (Obama’s) academic performance was commendable, there are strong indications that he ran into some trouble regarding his social life and on matters of discipline. Such would eventually lead to his expulsion before he could finish his studies at Maseno.”

Such evasiveness is not helpful because readers are not interested in “indications of some trouble” but concrete information.

Donde displays similar shiftiness when he repeats the myth about Obama Senior going to America on the student airlift organised by nationalist Tom Mboya, even after providing a detailed account of how American educationists helped send him off to Hawaii.

This chunky passage illustrates the point: “It was around this time (in 1959) that Obama Snr met two American ladies, Elizabeth Mooney Kirk and Helen Roberts, who encouraged him to go for further studies abroad. Elizabeth was an international literacy expert then working in Kenya...

“She had been hired to help the Kenya Department of Education set up a literacy programme funded by the USA International Cooperation Administration, an arm of the USA Department of State that administered development aid. Her brief included the development of a countrywide literacy campaign that used the local languages as a stepping stone to achieving English language proficiency.

“In due course, she brought together a sort of project support team who helped run the programme. They also helped her to develop elementary reading materials in the local languages.

“Obama Snr worked for her as part of that team, starting off as an office assistant who also handled basic writing and translation duties... Perhaps in appreciation of his nascent potential, Elizabeth encouraged Obama Snr to pursue education by correspondence, an advice that he took to heart, and that eventually bore fruit when later he was accepted for further education in Hawaii... His airfare was paid with the support of Elizabeth and Helen, who provided partial scholarship.”

Overall, this book is a useful addition to the body of knowledge on the Obamas, but which could have been remarkably better with a solid story focus, tighter editing and simple verification of facts.

The Obama family tree lists President Obama’s mother as “Ann Dunn” instead of Ann Dunham, while the opening quote, attributed to Nelson Mandela in 2004, was actually delivered from the dock during the Rivonia trial in April 1964.

Dr Kimani, an author and critic, is a lecturer at the Graduate School of Media and Communications at the Aga Khan University.