Posted on 11/06/2008 7:58:21 PM PST by nickcarraway
Barack Obamas election as US President has given rise to celebrations in many corners of the world. But in southern China, one of Obamas little-known relatives is holding his own quiet celebrations, away from the glare of the media.
Obamas half-brother Mark Ndesandjo he is the son of Obamas late father and his third wife Ruth Nidesand has lived in Shenzhen in southern China for over six years, and on Wednesday, sent his congratulations to Obama immediately after his historic election as the first African-American President of the US, according to Shenzhen Daily.
Ndesandjos business partner and friend Sui Zhengjun was quoted as saying that Ndesandjo has very high hopes about Obamas concept of change, and was delighted not only as Obamas half-brother but as an American.
Obama refers to Ndesandjo as my brother but the two are believed to have had a strained relationship, which Obama records in his 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father.
Ndesandjo has gone to extraordinary lengths to avoid public attention, particularly after he was outed by the media in July.
He is believed to have a long-time Chinese girlfriend, and his acquaintances describe him as being big, strong and full of energy and a really easygoing guy who wears a hat over his shaven head.
Ndesandjo, who gets his surname from his Kenyan mother, is associated with a Shenzhen-based company, Worldnexus Ltd, which provides corporate communications and website design services for Chinese firms seeking customers in English-speaking markets, principally the US.
Despite his reclusive nature, Ndesandjo has become something of a reluctant star in China, and a Chinese wine manufacturer even invited him to be its brand ambassador. But Ndesandjo is believed to have declined the offer; the Shenzen Daily quoted Sui as saying that Ndesandjo preferred a quiet life.
Earlier Chinese media reports have noted that Ndesandjo, a self-taught musician, offers piano lessons at an orphanage in Shenzhen. A 2004 article claimed that Ndesandjo wished to bring the art of music to the orphans.
Ndesandjo is known to have come to China in 2002 on a Sino-American culture exchange programme. As part of this programme, he worked in a Shenzhen foreign language school, and during that period, he established a non-profit organisation in China to help orphans.
According to Sui, before coming to China, Ndesandjo contacted several philanthropist agencies, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, with a proposal, but had received no response. He then secured some donations from his MBA classmates in Emory and moved to China.
Perfect!
No, I am talking about BHO’s half brother...the one in this article...and how come his last name is not “Obama”?
Does this mean that Stanley Ann had another son?! With a different Kenyan....no, the article says that this BHO brother had Kenyan mother. The only way he could be Obama’s brother is if they shared a parent...THIS DON’T MAKE NO SENSE!
That’s why Michelle the Jackal is still sending emails begging for money. I swear, I got one last Tuesday morning, several hours before Hussein “won”.
any idea which planet
obamao’s from?
BHO Sr was one Horny Toad. With the emphasis on "Toad".
Imagine how many there are who are not children of one of his wives.
Funny how we heard so little about Sen. DingDong's years at college. Well, actually it's infuriating.
huh, i have no idea...
He’s got a half brother in the US somewhere, who had his own blogging space on Hussein’s campaign website. They shared a Dad, Frank Marshall Davis. I can’t find this stupid blog anymore through all the self aggrandization at that website, so you will have to take my word for it. His last name was Davis. I forget what his first name was.
Well there's a thought that hadn't yet crossed my still-reeling mind...will the American taxpayers have to fork out the dough for Secret Service protection for 0's throngs of relatives? Oh the Hugefamily!
Let’s see, Occidental, Columbia and Harvard Law. They should be opening these files up by now. I would just love to get my hands on that stuff.
Not really, it's way of upper class Muslims, which his father was. Multiple wives at the same time, and serially. If they can manage it, children by "concubines" as well.
Many terrorists start off as frustrated young men, with no women. So they make War, not Love.
At this point I hope there’s some kind of nasty skeleton lurking in his closet. Not something that threatens the nation, but something that makes it painfully obvious that the media missed it while it was administering fellatio to him during the campaign.
Mark is more intelligent than Barack, and has a master’s degree in physics from Stanford. Barack wrote about his strained encounter with Mark in Dreams from My Father, on pages 341-344 of the hardback version if you have the book.
Based on Barack’s description of him, I would compare Mark to someone like Tiger Woods. Barack clearly holds him in some contempt for not idolizing their father and because Mark is not, like Barack, obsessed with African and black racial identity. Barack is more of an anti-Tiger Woods. Unlike Barack, Mark spent a lot of time in Kenya growing up.
***********************************
Quoting from the book:
The following week [while Barack was in Kenya], I called Mark and suggested that we go out to lunch. He seemed a bit hesitant, but eventually agreed to meet me at an Indian restaurant downtown. He was more relaxed than he had been during our first meeting, making a few self-deprecatory jokes, offering his observations about California and academic infighting. As the meal wore on, I asked him how it felt being back for the summer.
“Fine,” he said. “It’s nice to see my mom and dad, of course. And Joey — he’s really a great kid.” Mark cut off a bit of his samosa and put it into his mouth. “As for the rest of Kenya, I don’t feel much of an attachment. Just another poor African country.”
“You don’t ever think about settling here?”
Mark took a sip from his Coke. “No,” he said. “I mean, there’s not much work for a physicist, is there, in a country where the average person doesn’t have a telephone.”
I should have stopped then, but something — the certainty in this brother’s voice, maybe, or our rough resemblance, like looking into a foggy mirror — made me want to push harder. I asked, “Don’t you ever feel like you might be losing something?”
Mark put down his knife and fork, and for the first time that afternoon his eyes looked straight into mine.
“I understand what you’re getting at,” he said flatly. “You think that somehow I’m cut off from my roots, that sort of thing.” He wiped his mouth and dropped the napkin onto his plate. “Well you’re right. At a certain point, I made a decision not to think about who my real father was. He was dead to me even when he was still alive. I knew that he was a drunk and showed no concern for his wife or children. That was enough.”
“It made you mad.”
“Not mad. Just numb.”
“And that doesn’t bother you? Being numb, I mean?”
“Towards him, no. Other things move me. Beethoven’s symphonies. Shakespeare’s sonnets. I know — it’s not what an African is supposed to care about. But who’s to tell me what I should and shouldn’t care about? Understand, I’m not ashamed of being half Kenyan. I just don’t ask myself a lot of questions about what it all means. About who I really am.” He shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe I should. I can acknowledge the possibility that if I looked more carefully at myself, I would...”
For the briefest moment I sensed Mark hesitate, like a rock climber losing his footing. Then, almost immediately, he regained his composure and waived for the check.
“Who knows?” he said. “What’s certain is that I don’t need the stress. Life’s hard enough without all that excess baggage.”
We stood up to leave, and I insisted on paying the bill. Outside we exchanged addresses and promised to write, with a dishonesty that made my heart ache.
**************************
Now remember, we must take what Barack writes about the statements of others with a grain of salt. For example, his friend from Hawaii, “Ray,” when contacted by reporters, said he never thought or said the militant racial statements that Barack attributes to him in the book.
Okay...I made the effort to google this guy...His mom is also a white American....not Kenyan, as the article says.
http://www.thomascrampton.com/people/mark-ndesandjo/
This is going to be more fun than the Clinton family. I seem to recall that Clinton’s father was a traveling salesman, so every few months, some new half-sibling would come forward to claim membership in the president’s clan.
He was just irresponsible.
You know all those responsible people who have 1 or 2 kids and stay together forever... when the gov’t is socialist it just makes them suckers..
speciation
Well don't forget that 0's last name wasn't always Obama. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that this brother was adopted by some guy his Kenyan mother married after he was born. Happened to Barry Soetoro.
IIRC Mark Ndesandjo has an undergraduate degree in physics from an American university. There are multiple members of Obama’s Kenyan relatives who were smart enough to be accepted at good colleges in the US and Europe.
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