Presumably aware that his marriage to Ruth was nearing a bitter end, Obama apparently initiated the Hawaii visit in part with the expectation that his former wife might return to Kenya with him.
Ann, then twenty-nine, had her own marital troubles with Soetoro and likely intuited that her marriage was not to last long either. She was already talking about enrolling at the University of Hawaii in order to pursue a master’s degree in anthropology. Although she considered Obama’s suggestion, she concluded that she and her children were better off staying in Hawaii where their lives would be more stable.
“He had come back and wanted her to go to Africa with him, finally,” recalled Ann’s old school friend, Susan Botkin Blake.
“Of course this was what she had wanted all those years he had been away. But now, she told people, she could not face leaving again.”
With the finality of Ann’s refusal generating palpable tension, Obama’s visit soon began to sour.
Words fail me.
Any reference to the Obama family in the STANDARD DIGITAL MEDIA article are incidental to a rather rambling story about a suburban region known as WOODLEY:
Woodley recast into the modern day happy valley
Last updated on 2 Sep 2013 11:33
By Charles Ouko
NAIROBI, KENYA: The story of Nairobi’s leafy Woodley suburb comes as close to the Happy Valley narrative as you can get. It is intricately intertwined with the country’s chequered history with some of its more famous residents being at the centre of public personal tragedies and triumphs in almost equal measure.
From plane accidents, to murder trials, imprisonment, detention without trial, coup plot accusations, suspicious deaths and outright executions, Woodley’s residents have been at the centre of them all.
Amidst all of this, Woodley has been the place of residence for a clutch of distinguished Kenyans, among who were an Olympic championship athlete, a vice president, a revered freedom fighter, a host of Members of Parliament, among them assistant ministers and Cabinet ministers.
Built in 1950, Woodley comprises 300 housing units made up of flats, and two and three bed-roomed stand-alone bungalows. Surrounded by plenty of open grass fields, the estate named after British aristocrat Sir Richard Woodley bears great similarities with council estates in the England capital, London.
Woodley became the estate of choice for many Africans who were ascending into positions of prominence in varied spheres of public life, immediately following Kenya’s independence in 1963.These were trade unionists, civil servants and politicians whose astonishing tragedies and triumphs capture some of the country’s most remarkable events.
Woodley’s highest moment has to be its association with US President Barack Obama, whose father Barack Obama Snr lived here at the prime of his life as a senior public servant. The lowest points were probably the cold-blooded and day light execution of a residents’ rights advocate Charlie Sosah in February 2001, and night-by shooting of Embakasi MP Mugabe Were in 2007.
The Obamas: Barack Obama Snr lived in house No 118 with his white American wife Ruth, whom he married after divorcing Ann Dunham, the US president’s mother in 1964. The Obamas lived with the two eldest children from Keziah, Obama Snr’s first wife. These were Roy and Rita. Ruth’s two younger sons by Obama Snr, Mark Okoth and David Opiyo also lived in House No 118.
In later years, Roy and Rita would go to the prestigious Lenana and Kenya High schools for their secondary and high school education.
Today, Roy is 54 and is called Malik, while Ruth, 52, is better known by the name Auma.
Obama Snr died in a car crash in 1982, and in 1987, his son David was killed in a motorcycle accident in Nairobi. Mark now lives in Hong Kong, adopting his Tanzanian stepfather’s name Ndesandjo. CMG Argwings Kodhek: Kenya’s first African Barrister, the UK-trained lawyer, was MP for Gem and Foreign Affairs minister. He was killed in a suspicious motor accident in the upmarket Kilimani area along a road that now bears his name. Then Attorney General Charles Njonjo confirmed to Parliament that CMG’s body had wounds consistent with bullet holes. He had lived in Woodley with his white wife Joan and children.
Ramogi Achieng Oneko: He lived in house No 113 and like Obama Snr, was a polygamist married to Jedidah and Loice.
The former freedom fighter and Information Minister in Kenya’s first independence Cabinet was without a doubt one of Woodley’s most distinguished residents with a history as astonishing as it was revered. He was a man of many firsts among them being detained for three decades and also being an MP in two different provinces.
Together with Eliud Mathu (the first African to sit on Kenya’s Legislative Council from 1944 to 1957), Oneko was one of the only two African councillors in the Nairobi City Council in the colonial era and oversaw the construction of Woodley Estate. He later served as Nakuru Town MP and Rarieda MP.
His son Mike Lwande, 62, takes up the story of their times in Woodley. “Mzee’s second stint in detention from 1969 till 1975 united us and drove us to succeed, like nothing else ever could. We were social outcasts even in Uyoma and only children and teenagers would visit us in Woodley. I don’t blame them as no one would have liked to go to prison for being seen to associate with us.”
That’s page one of four in a similar vein which reads like a discussion a couple of bored PI’s might have in a Nairobi bar.