Auma Manners

Auma Obama is President Barack Obama's half sister. She currently lives in Kenya, but was active campaigning for him in the United States, particularly in Iowa and New Hampshire. Auma Obama was born to Barack Hussein Obama Senior's first wife in Kenya.

Auma Obama visited her half-brother at the White House in October of 2009.http://www.alternet.org/rss/the_wire_provided_by_huffington_post/95...

Fast Facts:

  1. Born: prior to 1959

  2. Birthplace: Kogelo, Kenya

  3. Currently Resides: Nairobi, Kenya

  4. Born to: Barack Hussein Obama Senior's first wife in Kenya

  5. Married a British man, Ian Manners, now divorced

  6. One daughter, Akinyi b 1998

http://ssl.daad.de/alumni/en/4.2.5_10.html

Auma Obama

East Africa Coordinator for the Aid Organisation Care in Kenya

One-year Scholarship 1980 to 1987 University of Heidelberg

PhD Scholarship 1988 to 1990 and 1993 to 1994 University of Bayreuth

"Germany really influenced and impressed me, and that contributed to turning me into what I am."

When American Presidential Candidate Barack Obama came to Berlin on an official visit in July 2008, Germany's newspapers were full of reports on him. But the media interest also focused on his half-sister. Kenyan Auma Obama has close ties with Germany, because she spent 16 years living, studying and working here.

Auma Obama was born in a Kenyan village in 1960 and already started learning German at the Goethe Institute in Nairobi at the age of 17. In 1980, she came to study German at Heidelberg with a DAAD scholarship and graduated with a Magister Artium degree in 1987. In 1988, she began, once again funded by the DAAD, to do a doctorate at the University of Bayreuth, eventually gaining her doctoral degree there in 1996.

She wrote her dissertation on the concept of work in German and Kenyan literature and culture. As a student, she already got to know all the ins and outs of everyday German life. She took on casual work at a hospital, a supermarket, and as an interpreter at fairs and exhibitions. In the late 1980s, she briefly worked in Kenya as a contract lecturer for German at the Goethe Institute and the Carl Duisberg Society. Back in Germany, she held political seminars at the SPD-affiliated Friedrich Ebert-Foundation. During her stay in Germany, several attacks were committed on foreigners. Following an attack on a asylum seekers hostel in Lübeck, she was invited to attend the "Presseclub" programme broadcast by Germany's ARD TV station and to comment on xenophobia in Germany.

The mother of an 11 year-old daughter lives in Kenya again today and works there as the East Africa Coordinator for the Aid Organisation Care. In an interview she gave for "Stern" magazine in August 2008 on her experience with Germany, Auma Obama said: "I really liked living in Germany very much. The country really influenced and impressed me, and it contributed to turning me into what I am.“

Auma Obama met Barack, her younger brother by one-and-a-half years, for the first time 25 years ago, just after their common father had been killed in an accident. At the time, she travelled to the United States to visit Barack. A couple of years later, she drove through Kenya with him in her VW Beetle and showed him the home of his ancestors. Since then, the two siblings have been in close contact. And so Auma also made an appearance for Barack Obama at the nomination elections for the Democratic Party.

In the news:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/06/opinion/06cohen.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/nov/16/usa.hannahpool

http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/iriks/politikk/article3326828.ece

http://www.daylife.com/photo/04Jf4vAaRA5JK

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_cANskkBqnlY/SaK5sEnegrI/AAAAAAAAAD4/QPoxK...

She and her brother Roy lived with Ruth and Barack, Sr., while growing up.