Source: Politics<\/p>\n
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) \u2014 Sarah Obama, the matriarch of former U.S. President Barack Obama\u2019s Kenyan family has died, relatives and officials confirmed Monday. She was at least 99 years old.<\/p>\n
Mama Sarah, as the step-grandmother of the former U.S. president was fondly called, promoted education for girls and orphans in her rural Kogelo village. She passed away around 4 a.m. local time while being treated at the Jaramogi Oginga Odinga Teaching and Referral hospital in Kisumu, Kenya\u2019s third-largest city in the country\u2019s west, according to her daughter Marsat Onyango.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe died this morning. We are devastated,\u201d Onyango told The Associated Press on a phone call.<\/p>\n
\u201cMama was sick with normal diseases she did not die of COVID-19,\u201d a family spokesman Sheik Musa Ismail said, adding that she had tested negative for the disease. He said she had been ill for a week before being taken to the hospital.<\/p>\n
President Barack Obama had been informed of the death and has sent his condolences, he said.<\/p>\n
She will be buried Tuesday before midday and the funeral will be held under Islamic rites.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe passing away of Mama Sarah is a big blow to our nation. We\u2019ve lost a strong, virtuous woman, a matriarch who held together the Obama family and was an icon of family values,\u201d President Uhuru Kenyatta said.<\/p>\n
She will be remembered for her work to promote education to empower orphans, Kisumu Governor Anyang Nyong\u2019o said while offering his condolences to the people of Kogelo village for losing a matriarch.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was a philanthropist who mobilized funds to pay school fees for the orphans,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Sarah Obama, was the second wife of President Obama\u2019s grandfather and helped raise his father, Barack Obama, Sr. The family is part of Kenya\u2019s Luo ethnic group.<\/p>\n
President Obama often showed affection toward her and referred to her as \u201cGranny\u201d in his memoir, \u201cDreams from My Father.\u201d He described meeting her during his 1988 trip to his father\u2019s homeland and their initial awkwardness as they struggled to communicate which developed into a warm bond. She attended his first inauguration as president in 2009. Later, Obama spoke about his grandmother again in his September 2014 speech to the U.N. General Assembly.<\/p>\n
For decades, Sarah Obama has helped orphans, raising some in her home. The Mama Sara Obama Foundation helped provide food and education to children who lost their parents \u2014 providing school supplies, uniforms, basic medical needs, and school fees.<\/p>\n
In a 2014 interview with AP, she said that even as an adult, letters would arrive but she couldn\u2019t read them. She said she didn\u2019t want her children to be illiterate, so she saw that all her family\u2019s children went to school.<\/p>\n
She recalled pedaling the president\u2019s father six miles (nine kilometers) to school on the back of her bicycle every day from the family\u2019s home village of Kogelo to the bigger town of Ngiya to make sure he got the education that she never had.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love education,\u201d Sarah Obama said, because children \u201clearn they can be self-sufficient,\u201d especially girls who too often had no opportunity to go to school.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf a woman gets an education she will not only educate her family but educate the entire village,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
In recognition of her work to support education, she was honored by the United Nations in 2014, receiving the inaugural Women\u2019s Entrepreneurship Day Education Pioneer Award.<\/p>\n