Meet George Obama, the US president's half brother on the sidelines

GlobalPost

NAIROBI, Kenya — Barack Obama’s baby brother smokes a cigarette outside the YMCA Nairobi.

The American president is due to arrive in a few hours on his first visit to Kenya since taking office. The extended Obama family, including half-sister Auma, step-grandmother Sarah and a few dozen others, will that night welcome him with a lavish dinner at a Nairobi hotel.

But George Obama, who is the president’s youngest half-brother, says he hasn’t heard a word about any family events. He also says he hasn’t been in touch with anyone to ask.

“I think he's coming for some government stuff so I'm not sure what he's going to do. It would be nice if he'd get to see relatives,” George Obama says with a shrug.

“People think it’s a must for me to meet him, but I think he's on an official visit. So if he'd have come, like, for vacation or something, I guess I'd pretty much say I'd meet him. But he's here on official business, so, you can't tell."

Unlike his eloquent brother, the soft-spoken George is a man of few words — and evidently not close to the other Obamas at the moment. He says he hasn't talked to his grandmother Sarah for a while: "We don't talk on a regular basis.”

When Barack Obama visited Kenya as a young man, he sought out George, whose mother Jael Otieno was Barack Obama Sr.’s last girlfriend before his death in a car crash in 1982. George was just six months old at the time.

In his book “Dreams from My Father,” Obama describes going to see his “baby brother” — who was then a schoolboy — with sister Auma.

“He was a handsome, roundheaded boy with a wary gaze,” Obama writes.

George Obama, now 33 with a 6-year-old son, on this Friday afternoon seems tired and unfocused, perhaps weary of answering the usual questions from journalists. 

George Obama, a half-brother of the American president. In the back of a car at the YMCA Nairobi.

A video posted by Erin Conway-Smith (@erinconwaysmith) on

Previous reports have discussed his struggles with alcohol and drug addiction. George himself has talked about his drug problems when he was younger, and how he became an armed robber to finance his habit.

He lives in Huruma slum on the outskirts of Nairobi, but says he is at the YMCA for a meeting. He insists we conduct the interview in the back of a car, in the parking lot.

While he had been training to work as a mechanic, George says he is now focused on his “Obama Brother Foundation."

"We work with orphaned children, needy children," he says. “They need an education. They have challenges — some don’t have school uniforms, others don't have school fees, others don’t have basic stuff — books, so on — that's what we try and organize for them." 

"We just give them hope that they can get an education."

On Saturday, a day after the big Obama family dinner, Barack Obama tells a press conference about the challenges of seeing family members while on an official visit.

"I think the people of Kenya will be familiar with the need to manage family politics sometimes,” he says. “There are aunties and uncles and cousins that show up that you didn't know existed but are always happy to meet.”

The dinner with his Kenyan relatives “was a wonderful time,” he adds, and explains that he will have more freedom to reconnect with family once he is no longer president.

George Obama says he last saw his brother during his 2006 visit to Kenya, and would be keen to meet him again. They could talk about youth work, for example.

“He’s a good guy, actually. He's cool,” George says.

But when asked about the beautification of downtown Nairobi for his brother's visit, and the strict security measures in place, he laughs, calling it a "smokescreen."

“They're just pleasing him, because when he goes it's just going to return to normal," he says. "They're living a lie. When he's gone who's going to take care of it again?"

As for being an Obama? “It's got its challenges obviously. At times its good, at times it gets tough."

"I like to keep a low profile," he adds with a smile.

Sign up for our daily newsletter

Sign up for The Top of the World, delivered to your inbox every weekday morning.