Barack Obama has lived one version of the American Dream that has taken him to the steps of the White House. But a few miles from where the Democratic presidential candidate studied at Harvard, his Kenyan aunt and uncle, immigrants living in modest circumstances in Boston, have a contrasting American story.

Zeituni Onyango, the aunt so affectionately described in Mr Obama’s best-selling memoir Dreams from My Father, lives in a disabled-access flat on a rundown public housing estate in South Boston.

A second relative believed to be the long-lost “Uncle Omar” described in the book was beaten by armed robbers with a “sawed-off rifle” while working in a corner shop in the Dorchester area of the city. He was later evicted from his one-bedroom flat for failing to pay $2,324.20 (£1,488) arrears, according to the Boston Housing Court.


The US press has repeatedly rehearsed Mr Obama’s extraordinary odyssey, but the other side of the family’s American experience has only been revealed in parts. Just across town from where Mr Obama made history as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, some of his closest blood relatives have confronted the harshness of immigrant life in America.

In his book Mr Obama writes that “Uncle Omar” had gone missing after moving to Boston in the 1960s – a quarter-century before Mr Obama first visited his family in Kenya. Aunt Zeituni is now also living in Boston, and recently made a $260 campaign contribution to her nephew's presidential bid from a work address in the city.

Speaking outside her home in Flaherty Way, South Boston, on Tuesday, Ms Onyango, 56, confirmed she was the “Auntie Zeituni” in Mr Obama’s memoir. She declined to answer most other questions about her relationship with the presidential contender until after the November 4 election. “I can’t talk about it, I just pray for him, that’s all,” she said, adding: “After the 4th, I can talk to anyone.”

A photograph of Ms Onyango was later shown to George Hussein Onyango, Barack Obama’s half-brother in Nairobi, who confirmed that it was their aunt. George Onyango, 26, the youngest child of Barack Obama Sr, said that he had spent weekends with his Aunt Zeituni when he was growing up, and instantly recognised her.

George Onyango said that his aunt had left for the US about eight years ago but sent him e-mails. “She left to find work and I suppose she thought her life would be better there,” he said. “She was kind and caring.”

In his memoir Mr Obama describes the joy of meeting his father’s family during his first visit to Kenya in 1988. Aunt Zeituni, then a computer programmer at Kenya Breweries in Nairobi, is portrayed as a feisty woman who proclaims herself “the champion dancer”. Uncle Omar, by contrast, remains a mysterious figure who left for America and never came back. At one point in the book a half-sister tells Mr Obama that people “like our Uncle Omar, in Boston” move to the West.

“They promise to return after completing school. They say they’ll send for the family once they get settled. At first they write once a week. Then it’s just a month. Then they stop writing completely. No one sees them again.”

Aunt Zeituni and Uncle Omar are the children of Mr Obama’s grandfather Hussein Onyango Obama, by his third wife – the woman Mr Obama calls “Granny” because she raised his father. Mr Obama’s father, Barack Sr, was Onyango Obama’s son by his second wife, Akumu. That makes Zeituni and Omar a half-sister and half-brother of Mr Obama’s father, or Mr Obama’s half-aunt and half-uncle.

Russell, I can tell from your heartfelt post on this topic that you believe that we are our brother's - well, at least our relatives' keepers.

I am sure, then, that you have taken care of all of your own relatives, right?

Well for one thing Frack my family is doing just fine even the brother that lost a leg and delivers newspaper by auto.

I also don't go around telling everyone that I'm my brothers keeper then ignores family members living in abject poverty.

All all alms are supposed to start at home.

another fact for you in as much as Obama has amassed a fortune he and his likewise wealthy running mate both have given less then 2% of their wealth to charity.

Yup a right ba*tards those two frauds are..

What, no aunts or uncles who were brother and sister to a father that you met once and only knew for a month or so, total?

Listen up, you unmitigated horse's ass - check out how Cindy McCain treats her sisters - not aunts and uncles that she knew virtually nothing about for most of her life, but her sisters that she has known all of her life!

Then give me lessons about how families should treat one another. And while you are at it, tell me, what percentage have you given to charity?

What, no aunts or uncles who were brother and sister to a father that you met once and only knew for a month or so, total?

Nope Putz. I have an half brother that is a retired Air force E-9.

I knew my father for a short 13 years and a mother that I buried last summer.

No relatives that I know of that are welfare queens or bank robbers.
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check out how Cindy McCain treats her sisters - not aunts and uncles that she knew virtually nothing about for most of her life, but her sisters that she has known all of her life!

Cindy McCain has traveled the world on her own dime with an entire medical team dispensing medical care to poor people around the world, not to speak of the handicapped child she brought home to John and said, "John let me introduce you to your new daughter'.

She had to buy that child a shirt in the airport for her to have something to wear on the plane.
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And while you are at it, tell me, what percentage have you given to charity?

Well in as much as I'm not a millionaire I sure don't give as much as I would like, however Putz I know for a fact I give more to charity then you do. I remember when I asked the posters of this BB to send some simple school supplies to the kids in Afghanistan and you couldn't be bothered spending $30.00 to send those children a thing.

PUTZ.

all families are different, some close and some so not. This does not mean one darn thing, it is part of life. If his aunt needed help she would ask him, that is her choice.

As far as donations go, no one is obliged to donate one cent, we all donate enough throw our taxes.

I do my share if and when I can, just like most people.

So what you are telling me, Russ, is that you don't do any more for any of your relatives than you are claiming that Obama does for his. In truth, you don't have a clue what he has or has not done for his relatives. You also don't really know anything about the conditions of this aunt and uncle to which you refer.

Which is also true about your statements about me - you don't know a single little thing about my charitable giving or about my life in my community.

But your claim that you are more charitable than me is typical of all of the other silly outlandish statements that you tend to make. You take the fact that I did not choose to participate in what you were doing as if it were proof that I have done nothing at all. That, bubba, is one truly ignorant-assed way of looking at the world. I actually do all sorts of things in my life without ever consulting or informing you. If I choose to something for someone else, unlike you, and especially unlike Quano, I feel absolutely no need to try to impress anybody else by broadcasting it.