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Nairobi, Kenya – Sarah Obama, the matriarch of the Kenyan family of former President Obama has died, relatives and officials confirmed on Monday. She was at least 99 years old.
Mama Sarah, as Mr. Obama’s step-grandmother affectionately called her, promoted the education of girls and orphans in her rural village of Kogelo. She died around 4 a.m. local time while being treated at the Jaramogi Oginga Odinga Teaching and Referral Hospital in Kisumu, Kenya’s third largest city, according to her daughter, Marsat Onyango.
“She passed away this morning. We are devastated,” Onyango told The Associated Press during a phone call.
“Mom was sick with normal illnesses. She did not die from COVID-19,” family spokesman Sheik Musa Ismail said, adding that she had tested negative for the disease. He said she had been sick for a week before she was taken to hospital.
Mr. Obama was notified of the death and sent his condolences, Ismail said.
She will be buried before noon on Tuesday and the funeral will take place under Islamic rites.
“Mama Sarah’s passing is a blow to our nation. We have lost a strong and virtuous woman, a matriarch who united the Obama family and was an icon of family values,” said President Uhuru Kenyatta.
She will be remembered for her work promoting education to empower orphans, said Kisumu Governor Anyang Nyong’o, while offering condolences to residents of Kogelo village for losing a matriarch.
Sayyid Abdul Azim / AP
“She was a philanthropist who raised funds to pay for orphans’ school fees,” he said.
Sarah Obama was the second wife of President Obama’s grandfather and helped raise her father, Barack Obama, Sr. The family is part of the Luo ethnic group of Kenya.
President Obama has often shown her affection and called her “Granny” in his memoir, “Dreams from My Father”. He described meeting her during his 1988 trip to his father’s homeland and their initial awkwardness as they struggled to communicate, but said they developed a warm bond. She attended her first inauguration as President in 2009. Later, Mr. Obama spoke about his grandmother again in his September 2014 address to the United Nations General Assembly.
“My family and I mourn the loss of our beloved grandmother, Sarah Ogwel Onyango Obama, affectionately known to many as ‘Mama Sarah’ but known as ‘Dani’ or Granny,” said the former president said on Monday in a statement.
His statement continued:
“Although not her biological mother, Granny would raise my father as hers, and it was partly because of her love and encouragement that he was able to defy all expectations and do well enough in school to. get a scholarship to attend an American college.. When our family struggled, her farm was a haven for her children and grandchildren, and her presence was a constant and stabilizing force. When I first visited in Kenya to learn more about my heritage and my then-deceased father, it was Granny who served as a bridge to the past, and it was her stories that helped fill a void in my heart. …
“She will be dearly missed, but let us celebrate with gratitude her long and remarkable life.”
For decades Sarah Obama has helped orphans, raising some in her home. The Mama Sara Obama Foundation has helped provide food and education for children who have lost their parents – by providing school supplies, uniforms, basic medical care, and school fees.
In an interview with the AP in 2014, she said that even as an adult letters would arrive but she couldn’t read them. She said she didn’t want her children to be illiterate, so she made sure that all the children in her family went to school.
She remembers cycling the president’s father six miles from school on the back of his bike every day from the family’s home village of Kogelo to the larger town of Ngiya to make sure he gets the education she never had.
“I love education,” said Sarah Obama, as children “learn that they can be independent,” especially girls who too often did not have the opportunity to go to school.
“If a woman gets an education, she will not only educate her family but educate the whole village,” she said.
In recognition of her work in education, she was honored by the United Nations in 2014, receiving the inaugural Women’s Entrepreneurship Day Education Pioneer Award.
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