Mofo Politics | Hoping Obama Fails

Profile: George Hussein Obama, half-brother of Barack Obama

Posted September 19th, 2008 under Headlines Tags: barack, brother, george, global, half-brother, humura, hussein, initiative, keeper, kenya, nairobi, obama, poverty, promise, slum, village

Meet George Hussein Obama, half-brother of President-Elect Barack Obama.

George Obama lives in a 6 by 8 foot shack in Nairobi’s Huruma slum. He has no phone and can rarely afford the costs of an international call.

Nairobi’s Huruma slum, pictured below, is one of the more violent areas in one of the most violent places in the civilized world…

According to Barack Obama, and confirmed by George Obama, the two met on several occassions. Once, when he was a child. But they also met later, at least one other time, when Barack Obama visited Kenya as a US Senator in 2006. By then, Barack Obama was already a United States Senator and very nearly a millionaire, while his brother was living on $1 per day.

More: Even before Barack and Michelle Obama became multi-millionaires from the sales of Barack’s two memoirs (Dreams of My Father and the Audacity of Hope), the Obamas were already making a good living. Michelle Obama alone, was making over $300,000 per year, according to CNN:

Michelle Obama … worked for a while as a big-firm lawyer, leaving to take jobs in the nonprofit sector. She wound up as vice president for community affairs at the University of Chicago Hospitals, a position that paid nearly $317,000 a year.

Flashback: Barack Obama’s broken promise to African village:

At that historic homecoming in August 2006 Obama was greeted as a hero with thousands lining the dirt streets of Kogelo. He visited the Senator Obama Kogelo Secondary School built on land donated by his paternal grandfather. After addressing the pupils, a third of whom are orphans, and dancing with them as they sang songs in his honour, he was shown a school with four dilapidated classrooms that lacked even basic resources such as water, sanitation and electricity.

He told the assembled press, local politicians (who included current Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga), and students: “Hopefully I can provide some assistance in the future to this school and all that it can be.” He then turned to the school’s principal, Yuanita Obiero, and assured her and her teachers: “I know you are working very hard and struggling to bring up this school, but I have said I will assist the school and I will do so.”

…

Obama’s own grandmother Sarah confidently told reporters before his visit: “When he comes down here, he will change the face of the school and, believe me, our poverty in Kogelo will be a thing of the past.”

But the Evening Standard has heard that the promises he made to help the school as well as a local orphanage appear to have been empty.