Onyango Obama (1895-1979)

Barack Obama's paternal grandfather (c. 1895–1979);. (One source gives 1870–1975 as his dates of birth and death, possibly based on his tombstone in his home village. . However, in 1988 Barack Obama found a British document based on a 1928 ordinance showing his grandfather as 35 years old. The date of the document must have been around 1930, which means that his grandfather had indeed been born around 1895. ) Onyango was the fifth son of his mother, Nyaoke, who was the first of the five wives of his father, Obama. Barack Obama relates how his step grandmother Granny Sarah (Sarah Onyango Obama) describes his grandfather: "Even from the time that he was a boy, your grandfather Onyango was strange. It is said of him that he had ants up his anus, because he could not sit still." As a young man, he learned to speak, read and write in English.


 * Onyango worked as a mission cook and as a local herbalist. He joined the King's African Rifles during World War I.


 * In 1949, Onyango spent at least 6 months in Kamiti Prison. He was probably tried in a magistrates’ court on charges of political sedition or membership of a banned organisation, but the records do not survive because all such documentation was routinely destroyed in British colonies after six years. He was violently tortured to extract information about the growing insurgency. In his memoir, President Obama described his grandfather's shocking physical state: "When he returned to Alego he was very thin and dirty. He had difficulty walking, and his head was full of lice." For some time, he was too traumatised to speak about his experiences. His wife told his grandson: "From that day on, I saw that he was now an old man." Onyango was permanently scarred, remaining in pain and requiring assistance moving until his death. Although previously working very closely with British colonists, his torture left Onyango bitterly anti-British. During a Sky News interview in 2009, Barack Obama was asked if this negatively affected his view of the British personally and he replied that it did not. "I love the Brits and I think I have shown that affection every time I have visited there. The notion that I would somehow judge countries based on what happened 100 years ago would not make much sense."


 * Onyango is sometimes referred to as Mzee Hussein Onyango Obama. The word mzee is a Kenyan honorific meaning "old man" or "elder."


 * According to his third wife, Sarah, he originally converted to Catholicism, but took the name Hussein when he later converted to Islam; she said he passed the name, not the religion, on to his children. Luos are given names related the circumstances of their birth, and Onyango means born in the early morning.