Obama’s Half-Brother Reveals What the President Did the First Time They Met in Kenya and Talked About ‘Heroes of Western Culture’
President Obama’s half-brother told
an Israeli newspaper that when he first met Barack, he was struck by
his sibling’s rejection of Western culture.
“I remember that my impression at the
first meeting was that Barack thought that I was too white, and I
thought that he was too black,” Mark Okoth Obama Ndesandjo told Maariv.
“He was an American citizen on a journey in search of his African
roots, while I was a resident of Kenya seeking to find his white roots.”
“I remember that when I spoke with him
about the heroes of Western culture he rolled his eyes impatiently. My
feeling was that, here is an American who in many ways is trying to be a
local Kenyan youth. This is something I tried to flee my entire life,”
Ndesandjo said of the brothers’ first meeting in Kenya, which Obama
described in his 1995 best-selling memoir, “Dreams From My Father.”
President Barack Obama with half-brother Mark Okoth Obama Ndesandjo and his wife. (Image: Mark Obama Ndesanjo Foundation Ltd.)
In his memoir, Obama also described the first meeting with his brother:
“I don’t feel much of an attachment [to Kenya]. Just another poor
African country,” Obama quoted Ndesandjo saying. He went on to say, “You
think that somehow I’m cut off from my roots … Well, you’re right.”
As reported on TheBlaze last month, Ndesandjo has said he wants to “set the record straight” about some of the details presented in Obama’s memoir.
The siblings have met since that first
meeting in Kenya, including in 2007 before then-candidate Obama’s debate
with rival Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
“I came to visit him in Texas, and it
was one of the happiest moments of my life. He entered the room where I
was waiting for him, looked at me and said, ‘Mark, what happened to your
afro?’ And I asked: ‘What happened to your afro?’ He said: ‘I cut my
hair.’ It was a real moment, very natural, as if for a moment we
returned to being two brothers,” Ndesandjo recounted.
Ndesandjo described his relationship with the president as “loaded” and “passionate.”
“There were very good conversations or very loaded,” he said in the interview, which was published Thursday.
The siblings share the same Kenyan father, Barack Obama Sr., but had different white American mothers.
“A few months ago I asked him to
contact his relatives in Kenya. I told him that even one phone call
would propel them to the sky with such happiness, but he didn’t like
what I asked, and that moment broke off the connection with
me,” Ndesandjo said.
Note that in Hebrew – the language in
which the interview was published – the same word is used for
“connection” and “relationship” so it’s unclear if Ndesandjo meant that
his brother Barack cut off the telephone conversation or their
relationship.
“He can be sensitive, aggressive or
very stoical. That’s a side of his personality that many people do not
know,” Ndesandjo said of Barack Obama. “Barack and I have a lot in
common. Both of us have advantages and disadvantages, and some of them
come from our father.”
The president’s half-brother described their relationship with their parents and with each other.
He called their father “a
boundary-breaking man and to a large extent rebellious. He was a man of
great passion and intellect, who attracted many people.”
Asked what he has in common
genetically with Barack, Ndesandjo said, “I think that the common link
between us comes not from [our] shared father, rather more from our
mothers. Both of us had strong mothers, women who took great risks to
raise their children and to protect them. Barack and I love our mothers
to no end, because they defended us and protected us.”
“I thought it was amazing how much he
resembles me,” Ndesandjo said of their first meeting. “And yet, we were
like two Siamese twins who looked in the direction of the other, and we
were unable to see each other.”
Ndesandjo today is a businessman and
musician who lives in China. He published an autobiographical novel
several years ago which described an abusive Kenyan father.
He also runs the Mark Obama Ndesanjo Foundation
which promotes cultural exchanges between Asia, Africa and the U.S. and
provides instruments and music teachers to needy children in China.
When his parents divorced, Ndesandjo
moved to the U.S. where he studied physics at Brown University and
Stanford and earned an MBA from Emory University.
Ndesandjo’s mother, Ruth Nidesand, Obama Sr.’s third wife, was born in the U.S. to Lithuanian Jewish immigrants.
Ndesandjo told Maariv he considers
himself a member of the Jewish people: “I am a Jew not only because I
have a Jewish mother but first and foremost because there exists in me
great pride to be a part of the Jewish people. I feel great belonging to
Jewish heritage, to Jewish culture, and to the Jewish philosophers.”
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