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Barack Obama is mourning the loss of a family matriarch with a touching tribute on Instagram [3]. On March 29, the former president revealed that his grandmother, Sarah Ogwel Onyango Obama, died at the age of 99. "My family and I are mourning the loss of our beloved grandmother, Sarah Ogwel Onyango Obama, affectionately known to many as 'Mama Sarah' but known to us as 'Dani' or Granny," he captioned the post, before describing her life in Alego, Kenya. "There she raised eight children, tended to her goats and chickens, grew an assortment of crops, and took what the family didn't use to sell at the local open-air market."
He continued, "Although not his birth mother, Granny would raise my father as her own, and it was in part thanks to her love and encouragement that he was able to defy the odds and do well enough in school to get a scholarship to attend an American university." Sarah, who was Barack's step-grandmother, spent her life promoting education for girls and orphans in her village. "When our family had difficulties, her homestead was a refuge for her children and grandchildren, and her presence was a constant, stabilizing force. When I first travelled to Kenya to learn more about my heritage and father, who had passed away by then, it was Granny who served as a bridge to the past, and it was her stories that helped fill a void in my heart," he shared.
"During the course of her life, Granny would witness epochal changes taking place around the globe: world war, liberation movements, moon landings, and the advent of the computer age. She would live to fly on jets, receive visitors from around the world, and see one of her grandsons get elected to the United States presidency," he added. Sarah staunchly defended her grandson when journalists descended upon Kenya during his candidacy for president. "And yet her essential spirit—strong, proud, hard-working, unimpressed with conventional marks of status and full of common sense and good humour—never changed."
According to family spokesperson Sheik Musa Ismail, Sarah did not die from COVID-19 [4]. Barack finished the post by saying, "We will miss her dearly, but celebrate with gratitude her long and remarkable life."