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The first article which I mentioned in my post is found here and I never found it in a U.S. publication but in a Dubai publication, it details the original meeting of Jr and Frank Marshall Davis:
http://www.thenational.ae/article/20080904/LIFE/733109695

In the following interview printed in “The Guardian” a fellow classmate and Indonesian friend of Jr. mentions Jr being absent but he says it was the fifth grade so it would be 1971.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/26/barackobama-uselections2008

Even David Maraniss in his article in “The Washington Post” mentions that it is difficult to discover the truth behind financing for Obama Sr. who told different stories. That article can be found here about midway down:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/22/AR2008082201679_pf.html

In the article it tells of Obama Sr telling a journalist that:
“Obama told Hirozawa that he had enough money to stay in Hawaii only for two semesters unless he applied for a scholarship.”

Following through, I went to the East-West Center website and discovered that although students were accepted as students of the East-West Center starting in September, 1960 there were no actual buildings specifically built and designated as “The East-West Center” until September, 1962 after Obama Sr had left Hawaii and before Ann and Jr had returned to Hawaii. Further research led to a “Time” article at the following link:

http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,897832,00.html

In the article you will find the following about those chosen to be East-West Center students:

“The bait: two-year scholarships, valued at $9,000, including transportation, books, board and room, $50 a month spending money, and a two-month study tour of the mainland.”

Now if you will remember when Obama Sr left Hawaii he mentioned he would be going on a tour of the mainland prior to going on to Harvard.He actually toured for 3 months arriving at Harvard on a “crisp, cool autumn day”. Also I would point out that while Obama Sr originally lived at the Atherton Y.M.C.A. by 1960 he was living in a “small, single story home at 625 11th Ave.” in the St Louis Heights area. The tour and the change of address indicate he had some money and interviews with him did not mention any difficulty with money while in Hawaii. This was not the case when he went to Harvard as is mentioned in the following article: (Sorry it is 7 pages long)

http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2008/articles/2008/09/21/a_fathers_charm_absence/

In the article the following is mentioned on page 5:

“During his time at Harvard, Obama met another woman. Her name was Ruth Nidesand, a teacher and a person of some means. Obama confided in friends that he was attracted to Nidesand in part because, “she was able to pay for some of the social activities that he could not afford,” said Omolo.”

No mention was made of the same problem while Obama Sr was living in Hawaii and Hawaii was the most expensive state at the time considering transportation costs of supplying the essentials that other states take for granted. We also know that in April 1962, Elizabeth Mooney Kirk wrote a letter to Tom Mboya asking that another sponsor be found to fund Obama Sr’s way to graduate school preferable at Harvard. Kirk would be unable to continue sponsoring him as she had two step-children who would be attending college.
That information as quoted:

According to a letter on file in the Mboya papers at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, “most” of Obama Sr.’s early expenses in the United States were covered by an international literacy expert named Elizabeth Mooney Kirk, who had traveled widely in Kenya. Kirk wrote to Mboya in May 1962 to request additional funds to “sponsor Barack Obama for graduate study, preferably at Harvard.” She said she would “like to do more” to assist the young man but had two stepchildren ready for college.

Can be found here:
http://kenyatogether.blogspot.com/2008/04/mboya-send-obama-to-school.html

Now if you will notice the wording as contained in the Mboya papers Kirk funded “most” of Obama Sr’s expenses, which raises the question as to how he could afford to move from the Y.M.C.A. where he lived in 1959 to a home in 1960. It also raises the question as to where he got the funds for a tour of mainland U.S.A. before his arrival at Harvard. One way he could have done so was to continue getting funding from Elizabeth Mooney Kirk AND applying to be one of the first students of the soon to be built East-West Center.

Many thanks for the links. I hadn't seen the first two articles before.

The "reminiscences" of his Indonesian friend, Rully Dasaad, in that Guardian article, have some serious credibility issues, chief among them being his assertion that in 1967, Ann Dunham "worked for USAID, helping Indonesian women in the countryside to live in a more Western fashion." She didn't work for USAID until sometime after she returned to Indonesia, having completed two years of study in anthropology at UH grad school in 1974. And the late 60's was certainly no time for a white female American, newly arrived and unfamiliar with local customs, to be wandering through the countryside teaching "Western" ways in a country that had recently undergone a bloody slaughter of so-called "Communists," (a label applied to all suspected enemies of the new government) -- a purge in which it's highly likely Lolo Soetoro was required to participate as a proof of loyalty.

Nice touch about the rock-throwing injury to Barry's head, though -- that injury was portrayed quite differently in "Dreams" -- as an intentional act by neighborhood kids who regularly bullied him. The incident supposedly prompted Lolo to teach him how to fight back -- but according to Dasaad, Barry's mom taught him not to fight back and the Indonesian kids just immediately accepted the first black American kid they ever met into their social group. Because, of course, everyone knows the US is the only country in which racism exists, per the Obama mantra. And Dasaad tells us Barry learned Indonesian in three months, contradicted, of course, by other accounts, including at least one teacher, that he never mastered the language.

That's what those 4 am tutoring sessions with his mother were about; the Indonesian school system had a reputation for years as among the worst in the world. Couple that with the fact that he could barely speak the language, and he was likely learning next to nothing in school. The situation probably became intolerable -- both educationally and socially -- by the fourth grade, so back he went to Hawaii.

Dassad's "memories" -- like most of the glowing retrospectives of Obama's chosen "spokespeople" -- sound very much like a concoction designed to coincide, politically if not chronologically, with what was already in print, by Obama and the sycophantic media, concerning his years in Indonesia. It's the rare adult indeed who remembers such specific details of his childhood without some form of embellishment -- and Dassad's story appears to contain more embellishment than fact.

I have Maraniss' articles. He's an odd one: he provides new details, such as how long and where the Dunhams lived in California, Oklahoma and Texas, and then gets their arrival in Seattle wrong -- they were there a year before Ann entered high school, living in Seattle proper, where she attended eighth grade, as we know. He provides details of the Hawaiian newspaper articles about Sr., but has no clue concerning the financing of his education. Yet, his own paper, the Washington Post, reported five months earlier , on March 30, 2008, that:

"During his 1959 trip to the United States, the 29-year-old Mboya raised enough money for scholarships for 81 young Kenyans, including Obama Sr., with the help of the African-American Students Foundation. Records show that almost 8,000 individuals contributed. Early supporters included baseball star Jackie Robinson, who gave $4,000, and actors Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier.
There was enormous excitement when the Britannia aircraft took off for New York with the future Kenyan elite on board. After a few weeks of orientation, the students were dispatched to universities across the United States to study subjects that would help them govern Kenya after the departure of the British. Obama Sr. was interested in economics and was sent to Hawaii, where he met, and later married, a Kansas native named Ann Dunham. Barack Jr. was born in August 1961.

I seriously doubt that a man with as high opinion of himself as BO, Sr. would have willingly chosen to study at UH without a scholarship. UH definitely lacked academic clout, as your link to the East-West Center's history correctly reports: "Though first-rate in a few fields, such as tropical agriculture and marine biology, the university was best known for a summer hula course, low faculty pay and an uninspired board of regents." Having a UH degree didn't exactly embellish one's resume, which would also explain his drive to go to Harvard -- a graduate degree that would go a long way towards obscuring the below-par undergraduate school.

Although the East-West Center wasn't formerly established until after Sr. graduated, the article does say that "the university set up the center as a confusing blend of graduate and undergraduate studies" in 1960. I would think Russian was on the list, as a hot-ticket item back in the early '60's. (Lolo Soetoro, BTW, was a student at the East-West Center. The A&E Biography briefly shows a shot of Lolo's UH ID badge, in which the date is obscured, but which clearly indicates "East-West Center." He looks incredibly young in the photo ID.)

Maraniss lends more weight to Sr.'s "contemporary" quote than he does his own paper's reporting, but considering the pathetically low journalistic standards the Hawaiian papers have demonstrated throughout the campaign, I doubt they were much better back then. Sr. was also something of a BS artist, like Jr., so if the papers did quote him correctly, he may have been talking through his hat.

I agree with you about the unexplained income needed to live off-campus and tour the US, but I don't believe the funds came from UH. It's more likely that the Dunhams supported him in exchange for his agreement to be Barry's surrogate father. In a sense, he would have been the perfect choice: a man of some prestige who was hell-bent on leaving Hawaii, as evidenced by his acceleration of his studies which enabled him to graduate in three years, and his anxiety to get to Harvard before he got called back to Kenya. He would play the role only briefly, and then they'd be done with him. Ann threw the monkey-wrench into the arrangement, apparently, by contacting him for some reason -- perhaps in support of her fantasizing to her son about his awesome birth father. Or perhaps it was the other way around: he was down and out in Kenyan political circles in 1971, and flat broke. The visit to Hawaii may have been a form of blackmail.

Even if Obama is the biological father (which I question) he might have required monetary persuasion to assent to paternity -- an issue that Madelyn Dunham would have been desparate to resolve, even by purchase.

Also I would point out that while Obama Sr originally lived at the Atherton Y.M.C.A. by 1960 he was living in a “small, single story home at 625 11th Ave.” in the St Louis Heights area. The tour and the change of address indicate he had some money and interviews with him did not mention any difficulty with money while in Hawaii.

On the topic of his off-campus living, I don't know if you've seen the material on this unlikely site, posted by former UH classmates. It's a long, slow load with lots of pics, but when it's done, search on REMINISCENSES, (about halfway down) and you'll find three photos and this testimonial in .jpg format. The resolution is very poor, so I've typed it out:

I CALLED HIM OBAMA

I travelled from Los Angeles via Boston. Obama came from East Africa. Somehow we ended up on a small island in the midst of the Pacific. Our mutual purpose was education. We shared classes together and an occasional break over a drink and some pupusl.

For any of us to say we knew Obama well would be difficult. He was private man with academic achievement his foremost goal. He lived somewhat like a hermit in a small room up in the valleys of Manoa. I visited him on my Lambretta and wondered how he sustained himself outside of his focused attention to his academic skills.

Then there was the other side. Most of my closest friends were studying at the East West Center. Obama was a student at the University. Bureaucratically, this was a distinction. But after you got to know your classmates those barriers fell aside.

Obama had little reservation about joining a party. And it was on those occasions that his gregarious nature took over. I remember him as a spirited interlocutor -- you name the issue he was ready. Fun was fun, but there are also those longer lasting impressions that here was a man with a keen intellect.

I left Hawaii in mid-term to join the Foreign Service and lost contact with Obama. We learned of his death in Kenya. The New York Times and CNN offered glimpses of his son's emergence at Harvard and in Chicago.

Prompted by Senator Obama's book, "Dreams from My Father," one of us found a photo which recalls a period not yet fully reported. We decided to offer our reflections.

Robert Ruenitz

The "not yet fully reported" is an understatement, to say the least. The question is, will it ever be fully and/or honestly reported?

It does verify a few things: the E-W Center did exist, if only on paper; Obama lived in a house, by himself, off-campus. (I assume it's the same address that's been reported by the Honolulu Advertiser.) And Ruenitz, a classmate, also wondered how Sr. supported himself.