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Michelle Obama: 57 years of the former First Lady, between iconic looks and new commitments
Barack Obama shared a moving post on Instagram. A photo that shows him very young, happy and smiling next to his “Granny”, there grandmother Sarah Ogwel Onyango Obama that he loved so much and that is failed in the past few hours in the Jaramogi Oginga Odinga hospital in Kisumu, the third largest city in Kenya.
“Mamah Sarah”, as everyone in the family affectionately called her, she was 99 years old. According to reports from the family spokesman Sheikh Musa Ismail, the woman had been unwell for a week already. And so she went away in silence a woman who has represented so much, not only for the Obama family and the former President of the United States of America, but also for his people.
And it is Barack Obama himself who tells on Instagram the highlights of the life of Mama Sarah, that grandmother who gave him so much and who was for him a great example. Born in the Nyanza province on the shores of Lake Victoria, she was uneducated and raised in the ways of the Luo tribe. A life that is not at all simple, as indeed it is for most young African women. Mama Sarah got married while still a teenager with Barack Obama’s grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama, a man much older than her and who already had many children. With him she lived in the tiny village of Alego in one mud and brick house. No electricity, no running water.
In spite of everything, grandma Sarah raised a large family taking care of the house, the animals and the harvest. And she was far-sighted, far more than her adopted children could imagine. He always has them pushed and encouraged to follow their dreams and with a thousand sacrifices in the end she managed to assure them the education that she had not been granted. “Grandma raised my father as her own – wrote the former President – and it was partly thanks to her love and encouragement that she was able to defy the odds and do well enough in school to get a scholarship to attend an American university “.
Mama Sarah has been a point of reference for her entire family. His was one life long almost a century, which has seen so many events and changes around the world such as “the world war, the liberation movements, the moon landings and the advent of the computer age,” Obama wrote. But most of all he saw his beloved nephew make history and become the first President of the United States of America of African American descent alongside the gorgeous wife Michelle.
On the occasion of her first official trip to Kenya as President, the wonderful Mama Sarah has become famous all over the world. He has known a popularity that he would never have expected and that he knew how to exploit for the good of his people. Sarah Obama she struggled to ensure education and education for Kenyan women and to children, worrying about the weakest and the rights that are denied them. “Education is everything”, the splendid grandmother of Africa always repeated.
“His essential spirit – strong, proud, hardworking, indifferent to prestige and full of common sense and good humor – has never changed,” wrote a moved Barack. “We will miss him very much, but we will celebrate his long and extraordinary life with gratitude ”. And certainly the people for which they have fought so hard will do the same.
Barack Obama remembers his grandmother on Instagram: “We will miss him very much, but we will celebrate his long and extraordinary life with gratitude”
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