Records at Maseno School show the bright side of President Barack Obama’s father

Setting the record straight: While accounts by relatives captured in President Obama’s autobiography indicate his father was a rebel, notes by teachers, pastors and other staff at the school depict a hardworking student.
Beneath the gum trees of Maseno area on the Equator on the edge of Kisumu and Vihiga counties and at the foot of imposing rocky hills lies Maseno School, Kenya’s foremost historical learning institution. It is the former school of Barack Hussein Obama, father of US President Barack Obama.
Established by the Anglican Church under the Church Missionary Society (CMS) in 1906, Kenya’s oldest school and its decaying walls and colonial structures tell the full story of formal education in Kenya, if only the world could listen. Maseno School became the first examination centre in colonial Kenya through the efforts of its first Headmaster JJ Willis in 1910. The first examination (in 1910) was occasioned by a student revolt of African learners who enrolled in 1906 but after acquiring literacy and numeracy skills, discovered that the missionary teachers did not intend to teach Africans anything beyond gardening, hygiene and pastoral work. So they revolted, demanding a formal education. What became the first and last student strike in Maseno’s 109 years history was orchestrated by the late Ojijo Oteko. Ojijo, in whose honour Ojijo Road in Nairobi is named, forced the colonial/missionary authorities to introduce a formal curriculum and examination later went to study in the US around the period of WW1 only to return to be killed in unexplained circumstances for daring to organise a revolt against colonial rule.