Onyango Obama worked as a cook for USIS staff in 1959. BO, Sr. attended UH on a scholarship and his expenses were paid through the efforts of international literacy expert named Elizabeth Mooney Kirk.
None of the Obamas were involved in Kenyan politics. The Odingas, with whom BO, Sr. allied himself years later as a government employee, were Luo, and therefore possibly distantly related to the Obamas.
Now, unless the Obama family had some connections, there would be no way that benefactor Elizabeth Mooney Kirk's path would have crossed with Obama's. The idea of a Kenyan youth being sent off to study at an American university would have been a pipe dream to the average Kenyan family at the time.