NAIROBI, Kenya, Mar 29 – Former US president Barack Obama has eulogized his grandmother, Mama Sarah Ogwel Onyango Obama following her death.
The deceased was 99 years old.
Mama Sarah, the matriarch of the Obama family had been admitted and was receiving treatment at the Jaramogi Oginga Odinga Teaching and Referral Hospital in Kisumu County, prior to her death.
“My family and I are mourning the loss of our beloved grandmother, Sarah Ogwel Onyango Obama, affectionately known to many as “Mama Sarah” but known to us as “Dani” or Granny, ” said Obama.
In a poignant letter, Obama described her grandmother as a care giver and a woman that has been through what many would only dream of in their lifetime.
She was a compassionate lady, Obama said, saying she always put the needs of her family and those of others first.
“Although not his birth mother, Granny would raise my father as her own, and it was in part thanks to her love and encouragement that he was able to defy the odds and do well enough in school to get a scholarship to attend an American university,” he said.
“When our family had difficulties, her homestead was a refuge for her children and grandchildren, and her presence was a constant, stabilizing force. When I first traveled to Kenya to learn more about my heritage and father, who had passed away by then, it was Granny who served as a bridge to the past, and it was her stories that helped fill a void in my heart.”
Despite being married off at a young age and subsequently deprived of a formal education, Obama said that ‘granny’ who had witnessed epochal changes taking place around the globe among them the world war, liberation movements, moon landings, and the advent of the computer age, she worked hard to ensure that her eight children would become well educated, ready to face what the new world had to offer.
“She would live to fly on jets, receive visitors from around the world, and see one of her grandsons get elected to the United States presidency. And yet her essential spirit—strong, proud, hard-working, unimpressed with conventional marks of status and full of common sense and good humor—never changed. We will miss her dearly, but celebrate with gratitude her long and remarkable life,” the former President said.
Throughout her life and through the Mama Sarah Obama Foundation, she was able to educate thousands of young vulnerable and orphan children, particulalrly girls, while always insisting that, “if a woman gets an education, she will not only educate her family but educate the entire village.”
President Uhuru Kenyatta also mourned the death of Mama Sarah, describing her as a generous, loving, caring and compassionate in her passion for doing good to the less endowed in the society.
“With the the demise of Mama, the people of Siaya county will miss her gentle guidance on cultural matters as well as her noble works as an ambassador of peaceful co-existence of our people,” President Kenyatta said.
Mama Sarah will be laid to rest Tuesday according to the islamic rites of burial.
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