Dead “Mama Sarah”, the woman Barack Obama considers …

Sarah Onyango Obama, the woman former US President Barack Obama considered his grandmother, has died aged 99 Kenya after being hospitalized with decompensation due to the diabetes she suffered from.

“He went with God. He died this morning,” confirmed Marsat Onyango, daughter of the woman who achieved international recognition when the former US president mentioned her as “Mama Sarah”.

There was no connection between them, but he recognized her as one of his mentors and visited her several times when she was already a figure in politics in the United States.

“Mama Sarah” became a star in Kenya when she 2006 visited by her “grandson” who was then senator from Illinois. From there, she devoted herself to philanthropy and collaborated in the education financing of low-income children.

After Obama was elected president in 2008, Sarah’s modest house in the village of Kogelo, near the Ugandan border, has been turned into a tourist destination, to the point that he was protected by security guards and barbed wire.

During her presidential trip to Kenya in 2015, Barack Obama met her and his family in Nairobi. In 2018, after his tenure, he also visited her, this time in Kogelo, a place considered as “The people of Obama”.

In the past few hours, Sarah Obama has been admitted to the Jaramogi Oginga Odinga Teaching and Referral Hospital in Kisumu. Her daughter confirmed that in September of last year she suffered a stroke.

Currently, “he was having problems with blood sugar,” he added. It is more, had been hospitalized for diabetes on several occasions for two years.

“Mama Sarah” was born in 1922 and was the third wife of Husein Onyango Obama, the paternal grandfather of the former president. and a British Army veteran in Burma.

The figure of Obama, the first American president of African descent, has always aroused great interest in Kenya, the country where his father was born and where many consider him to be one of their own. Barakc saw his father only once, when he was 10 years old.

Woman he considered his grandmother to be buried in Kisumu Muslim cemetery, was the third wife of former President Obama’s paternal grandfather

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta expressed his condolences to the family in a statement where he assured that the country had lost “a virtuous and strong woman” who was “an icon of family values”.

Likewise, the country’s main opposition leader, Raila Odinga, claimed that she “has become a symbol of the resilience and confidence of African women”.

For his part, the governor of the homonymous county of Kisumu, Anyang Nyong’o, stressed that the old woman “She was not only the matriarch of the extended Obama family, but also a mother figure to many and a philanthropist. who has helped raise funds to pay the school fees of many orphans and vulnerable children and supported many widows. “