Barack Hussein Obama (Senior) was born in Nyangoma-Kogello, Siaya District, Kenya in 1936.  He was a member of the Luo tribe and grew up in the sleepy village of Alego-Kogello.

The myth, as written by Obama in "Dreams...," is that Senior was a goat herder.

Senior may have herded some goats that were part of Grandfather's extensive livestock collection, but Senior spent his time at school where he was actually an extremely bright student and sufficiently educated to go on to obtain degrees from the University of Hawaii and Harvard.

In 1955, at 18 years of age, Senior married a girl called Kezia from the local village.  It was Kezia who remained his one true love and to whom he always returned.

Senior seems to have inherited his father’s attitudes towards the colonial power.  He was also arrested, for attending a meeting in Nairobi of the Kenya African National Union (KANU), the organization spearheading the independence movement.  Sarah told Obama that his father, unlike her husband, had been held only for a short time in the white man’s prison: "Because he was not a leader in KANU, Senior was released after a few days."

Shortly after his arrest, in 1958, Obama Senior was awarded an American sponsored scholarship in economics to the University of Hawaii at Manoa.  He was selected by a former Kenyan cabinet minister, the late Tom Mboya, who was earmarked as the successor to Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya's first prime minister and  leader of the terrorist Mau Mau.

The presumption was that Senior would return to Africa and use his "Western-honed skills in a new Kenya."

Chief Engineer found this 1960 "Time" article about Tom Mboya.  On page 8 it mentions the "Jackie Robinson -- Harry Belafonte Fund" which Susan Mboya oversees and which has already been used to send 81 Kenyans to the U.S. to be educated.

While Mboya has refused to release her father’s papers, some of them may be among the personal papers and correspondence Mboya (father) had with students who participated in the airlift.  Those papers are at Stanford and personal correspondence is listed as one of the items in the holdings.

Of interest in the "Time" article, it mentions Pam Odede was sent to Ohio as one of the students.  Pam would later become Mboya’s wife and it is no coincidence that their daughter Susan now lives in Ohio.

In June, 1959, at the age of 23, Senior became the first African student enrolled at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Obama Sr. showed up in Hawaii under his own steam, he wasn't part of the first airlift of students.  And HIS father, Hussein Onyango Obama, was cook to Gloria and Gordon Hagberg (second and third right respectively in this photo), shown with Tom Mboya (fourth right in same photo) who personally selected Obama Sr. to receive the scholarship to Univ. of Hawaii.

          

In August or September of 1961, Senior enrolled and attended classes in his final undergraduate year at the University of Hawaii, from which he would graduate with a Bachelors Degree in economics and mathematics in June, 1962 -- after three years in Hawaii, as a Phi Beta Kappa straight-A student.

Senior’s main monetary sponsor for his schooling in the U.S.was Elizabeth Mooney Kirk.  Kirk wrote a letter to Tom Mboya in May 1962 asking if another sponsor could be found so Senior could attend graduate school, preferably at Harvard.  She was unable to continue her sponsorship as she had two step children who were going to be attending University.  Tom Mboya ended up sponsoring Seniorr for his Harvard studies. 

So senior’s plans weren’t definite in May of 1962.  Some time between August 1961 and March 1962, Barack Obama Senior was accepted into Harvard's Ph d. program in economics.  He left Hawaii on June 22, 1962, while his still-teenage wife and child remained in Seattle.

Obama's autobiography claimed Senior had rejected a scholarship at the Marxist New School for Social Research in New York City that would have paid for his family to come with him.  He chose to attend Harvard, where there was no allotment for his family.  Shortly after arriving at Harvard, and he took up with  Nidesand, who would become his third wife.

In "Dreams...," Obama claims that Senior left when he was two years old, when, in fact, Senior left before Obama was 1 year old.

A newspaper story on the day he left, June 22, said Obama planned a several-weeks grand tour of Mainland universities before he arrived at Harvard to study economics on a graduate faculty fellowship.  The story did not mention that he had a wife and an infant son.

According to his daughter, Auma, Senior was an alcoholic who was extremely found of Scotch".  He killed a man in a drunk driving accident in the early 1970's.

In 1982, Obama Senior killed himself in an alcohol-related car accident in Kenya, leaving three wives, one mistress, six sons and a daughter -- there is also the possibility of an eight progeny via a mistress.

Although Obama claims Obama Senior was an atheist, Obama Senior was buried as a Muslim.  The rival families of Obama's late father are still suing each other over his meager estate.

 
One of Senior's former drinking partners, Kenyan writer Philip Ochieng said that his friend's downfall was his weak character.  In fact he was a menace to life, said Ochieng.  "He had many extremely serious accidents.  Both his legs had to be amputated.  They were replaced with crude false limbs made from iron.

"He was just like Mr. Toad [from Wind In The Willows], very arrogant on the road, especially when he had whisky inside.  I was not surprised when I learned how he died."

"Although charming, generous and extraordinarily clever, Senior was also imperious, cruel and given to boasting about his brain and his wealth," he said.

"He was excessively fond of Scotch.  He had fallen into the habit of going home drunk every night.  His boasting proved his undoing and left him without a job, plunged him into prolonged poverty and dangerously wounded his ego."

The Daily Mail quotes a relative of Obama as saying, "We told him [Obama] how his father would still go to Kezia and it was during these visits that she became pregnant with two more children.  He also had two children with Ruth." [Kids 5 and 6]

According to the Daily Mail, even after losing both legs in the car accident, Obama senior fathered yet another son, his eighth child, [Okay, they got me, that would only be 7 by my count.  Not sure old BHO, Sr. was keeping a close count either] by yet another woman, and "continued to come home drunk."

Regardless of the motives, in "Dreams from my Father" Obama never states precisely how many wives his father had, or how many half-brothers and -sisters he has from different mothers, whether married to his father or not.