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Nairobi, Kenya Sarah Obama, the matriarch of former President Obama's Kenyan family has died, relatives and officials confirmed Monday. She was at least 99 years old.

Mama Sarah, as Mr. Obama's step-grandmother was fondly called, promoted education for girls and orphans in her rural Kogelo village. She passed away around 4 a.m. local time while being treated at the Jaramogi Oginga Odinga Teaching and Referral hospital in Kisumu, Kenya's third-largest city, according to her daughter, Marsat Onyango.

"She died this morning. We are devastated," Onyango told The Associated Press on a phone call.

"Mama was sick with normal diseases. She did not die of COVID-19," family spokesman Sheik Musa Ismail said, adding that she had tested negative for the disease. He said she had been ill for a week before being taken to the hospital.

Mr. Obama was informed of the death and sent his condolences, Ismail said.

She will be buried Tuesday before midday and the funeral will be held under Islamic rites.

"The passing away of Mama Sarah is a big blow to our nation. We've lost a strong, virtuous woman, a matriarch who held together the Obama family and was an icon of family values," President Uhuru Kenyatta said.

She will be remembered for her work to promote education to empower orphans, Kisumu Governor Anyang Nyong'o said while offering his condolences to the people of Kogelo village for losing a matriarch.

"She was a philanthropist who mobilized funds to pay school fees for the orphans," he said.

Sarah Obama was the second wife of President Obama's grandfather and helped raise his father, Barack Obama, Sr. The family is part of Kenya's Luo ethnic group.

President Obama often showed affection toward her and referred to her as "Granny" in his memoir, "Dreams from My Father." He described meeting her during his 1988 trip to his father's homeland and their initial awkwardness as they struggled to communicate, but said they developed a warm bond. She attended his first inauguration as president in 2009. Later, Mr. Obama spoke about his grandmother again in his September 2014 speech to the U.N. General Assembly.

"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," the former president said in a statement Monday.

His statement 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. 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 traveled 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. ...

"We will miss her dearly, but celebrate with gratitude her long and remarkable life."

For decades, Sarah Obama helped orphans, raising some in her home. The Mama Sara Obama Foundation helped provide food and education to children who lost their parents - providing school supplies, uniforms, basic medical needs, and school fees.

In a 2014 interview with the AP, she said that even as an adult, letters would arrive but she couldn't read them. She said she didn't want her children to be illiterate, so she saw to it that all her family's children went to school.

She recalled pedaling the president's father six miles to school on the back of her bicycle every day from the family's home village of Kogelo to the bigger town of Ngiya to make sure he got the education that she never had.

"I love education," Sarah Obama said, because children "learn they can be self-sufficient," especially girls who too often had no opportunity to go to school.

"If a woman gets an education she will not only educate her family but educate the entire village," she said.

In recognition of her work to support education, she was honored by the United Nations in 2014, receiving the inaugural Women's Entrepreneurship Day Education Pioneer Award.

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Sarah Obama, matriarch of Obama family branch in Kenya ...

March 29 (UPI) -- Sarah Obama, the step-grandmother of former President Barack Obama, died in Kenya on Monday. She was 99.

The Standard newspaper in Kenya reported that Obama died while undergoing treatment at Jaramogi Oginga Odinga Teaching and Referral Hospital in Kisumu. Relatives did not disclose the cause of death.

Kisumu is about 170 miles northwest of the capital Nairobi.

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta acknowledged her death in a statement.

"The passing away of Mama Sarah is a big blow to our nation," he said. "We've lost a strong, virtuous woman. A matriarch who held together the Obama family and was an icon of family values."

The second wife of the former president's paternal grandfather, Hussein Obama, Sarah Obama helped raise Barack Obama Sr., the father to the 44th U.S. president.

In his memoir Dreams From My Father, President Obama referred to his step grandmother as "granny." She was also known to friends as "Mama Sarah."

The former president first met Sarah Obama during a trip to Kenya in 1988 and had to communicate through interpreters, as she only spoke Luo. Two decades later, she would attend his first inauguration in 2009.

"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,'" the former president tweeted Monday, with a photo of the two during the 1988 trip.

"We will miss her dearly, but we'll celebrate with gratitude her long and remarkable life."

Kenyatta said Sarah Obama will be remembered for her philanthropic work, especially in her hometown village of Nyang'oma-Kogelo in Siaya County.

Sarah Obama founded The Mama Sarah Obama Foundation to help educate children in her native Kenya. For her efforts, she received the inaugural Women's Entrepreneurship Day Education Pioneer Award at the United Nations in 2014.

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Sarah Obama, step-grandmother to former President Barack ...

A year after the presidents inauguration, Ms. Obama created her own foundation the Mama Sarah Obama Foundation to raise funds to build an educational campus in her village and to sponsor scholarships for young Kenyans, particularly girls, who would otherwise be denied schooling.

I help the orphans and widows, especially the young girls who have been orphaned by their parents dying of H.I.V., she told NPR through a translator in 2014, when she won an Education Pioneer award at the United Nations. I am their sole parent right now, so I help pay school fees and also get them the things they need, like sanitary towels, books, necessities like a pencil, school uniforms. Thats what I do.

But there were risks in her ties to the president as well. After the killing of Osama bin Laden by Navy SEALs in 2011, ordered by Mr. Obama, the Kenyan police tightened security in her village for fear of reprisals from a local affiliate of Al Qaeda. Even after Mr. Obama left office in 2017, those precautions were maintained.

Mr. Obamas own security arrangements prevented him from visiting the ancestral village.

When the president made an official visit to Kenya in 2015 the first sitting American president to do so his African relatives had to meet him in the capital, Nairobi. About three dozen members of his extended family, including his stepgrandmother, joined him at his hotel for dinner around long banquet tables.

During that trip Mr. Obama spoke at an indoor arena, where he was introduced by his half sister Auma Obama, who had met him during his first visit to Kenya three decades earlier. She told the audience that a Kenyan had said to Mr. Obama, Dont get lost, but that there was no way he would.

Ill tell you that because he was with me he fit right in, she said.

Hes not just our familia, she added. He gets us. He gets us.

Abdi Latif Dahir contributed reporting.

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Plans to rename an Illinois school after Barack Obama have run into a protest from local members of the Latino community who are angry about the former presidents record on the issue of deportation.

Leaders and members of the Waukegan Latino community are pushing back against a local school boards proposal to rename the citys Thomas Jefferson middle school, according to WGN Chicago.

Waukegan is a city just north of Chicago with a population that is more than 50% Latino.

The move to change the schools name stems from the fact that Jefferson was a slave owner, and echoes similar proposals across the country in the wake of a racial reckoning caused by Black Lives Matter protests. Opposition to naming this school after Obama stems from the deportation of 5 million people during his presidency, most of whom were Latino.

Today, I want to urge the board to drop the names of Barack and Michelle Obama from consideration, Oscar Arias, a graduate of Waukegan public schools and city resident, told the citys school board Tuesday night. Barack Obamas presidency is filled with hostility against the immigrant community.

Before the school board meeting, a press release sent to media outlets by those opposed to the group said that Obama is thought of as deporter-in-chief among the Latino community.

Back in 2015, Obama had overseen more than 2.5 million deportations, far more than any previous president in our history, the press release said. Obama had the reputation for using Congress as an excuse, saying that Congress tied his hands and that he could not reduce the number of people being deported.

Families in Waukegan were destroyed amid raids and other immigration enforcement actions, the release stated.

Those children live in the reality of insecurity in mixed-status families, Waukegan resident Julie Contreras said. For us, having the deporter-in-chiefs name is painful for the community.

Migration Policy Institute data indicate that Bill Clinton and George W Bush deported 12 million and 10 million people respectively. While total deportations were higher in the Bush and Clinton administrations, there were more removals from the US interior under Obama, 3m compared to Bushs 2 million and Clintons nearly 900,000, the Institutes numbers show.

WGN reports that it will be at least one month before the school board announces a final decision on this schools name.

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Illinois Latinos criticize plan to rename school after 'deporter-in-chief' Obama - The Guardian

Sarah Obama, step-grandmother of former US President Barack Obama, died at the age of 99. Authoritiesreported that Mama Sarah Onyango Obama died in Kenya, while receiving treatment at a Kisumu hospital. The public message of comfort provided by President Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya, partially stated that the Obama family matriarch has been an icon of family values, in addition to a philanthropist who contributed to the progress of the Kenyan nation. Her death was described as a big blow.

Religion News reported that Obamas beloved grandmother supported groups of women and children orphaned by HIV and AIDS, through a non-governmental organization known as the Safeguard Orphans and Widows Organization (SAWO). Additionally, the philanthropist also took care of widows through the California-headquartered Mama Sarah Obama Foundation.

The website further explained that grandparents who are raising orphans in many sub-Saharan communities has become common place. For this reason, Mama Sarah Obama started with feeding programs to assist orphans in her community. According to religion news, she even adopted several orphans, then later established the Mama Sarah Obama Foundation. The foundations mission is said to improve the education and welfare of disenfranchised children, to help them successfully achieve their goals, while enabling them to have a better future. The Obama family matriarch had a strong legacy of community work and benevolence.

She was a loving and celebrated philanthropist who graciously shared the little she had with the less fortunate in her community, President Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya said in a statement.

Former president Obama mentioned the loss of his familys matriarch on Twitter.

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. We will miss her dearly, but well celebrate with gratitude her long and remarkable life. pic.twitter.com/avDY4f1PVu

Barack Obama (@BarackObama) March 29, 2021

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. We will miss her dearly, but well celebrate with gratitude her long and remarkable life, Obama said in a tweet.

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Barack Obamas Grandmother Dies at 99, Family in Mourning - Black Enterprise