Sarah, Obama’s Kenyan Stepgrandmother to Attend Ball
Sarah Hussein Onyango Obama , 86, a person whom the president-elect calls “Granny.” will fly from her native Kenya to attend the inaugural festivities, the Kenyan government announced on Tuesday
mrs Obama isn’t actually related to the next president by blood — she was the third wife of Barack Obama’s paternal grandfather. She will join representatives from the Kenyan government, African Union and African diplomats for an unofficial inaugural ball on Jan. 20
In “Dreams from My Father,” Obama described meeting Sarah Obama during his 1988 trip to his father’s homeland, earning a handshake as a greeting and awkwardness as they struggled to communicate.
“Our mutual vocabulary exhausted, we stared ruefully down at the dirt until (half-sister) Auma finally returned,” Obama writes in “Dreams from My Father.”
“And Granny then turned to Auma and said, in a tone I could understand, that it pained her not to be able to speak to the son of her son.”
Sarah Obama lives in a house in the western Kenya village of Kogelo and speaks only the local Luo language and some little Swahili. She has visited the United States twice before, she came in 2004 to celebrate her step-grandson’s inauguration into the U.S. Senate.