Right .. the ‘story’ sounds totally contrived.
One needs to ask, if it wasn't for the NEED to contrive a scenario in which all the protagonists were placed within range of each other in conversation, so that the NAMES could be used - ANN/ANNA/TOOT - would the story be worth the telling?
And the answer=NO.
...A Sunday Nation team that set out to trace Obama's roots was surprised to find that, unknown to many, Obama has actually been to this village twice. First in 1983, when he had come to mourn his late father, Barack Hussein Obama, who had died in Nairobi in 1982...
AND IT LOOKS LIKE THEY TOOK Alice Dewey with them for back-up:
Dewey later traveled with Dunham to the same village in Kenya where Obama's father came from and decades later saw a video of Obama in the same village near a building that arranged micro loans.