Former US President, Barrack Obama has described his late grandmother, Sarah Ogwel Onyango Obama who is better known as “Mama Sarah” as one who lived a long and remarkable life.
“Mama Sarah,” the matriarch of the Obama family died aged 99 in western Kenya, the family confirmed on Monday.
“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,” Obama tweeted on his official handle alongside a photo of himself and her. “We will miss her dearly, but we’ll celebrate with gratitude her long and remarkable life.”
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 we’ll celebrate with gratitude her long and remarkable life. pic.twitter.com/avDY4f1PVu
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) March 29, 2021
READ ALSO: Matriarch Of Obama Family Dies Aged 99 In Kenyan Hospital
Sarah Obama, popularly known as Mama Sarah, had been admitted to the Jaramogi Oginga Odinga Teaching and Referral Hospital in Kisumu.
Family spokesman Sheikh Musa Ismail said she had been unwell for a week but had tested negative for Covid-19.
Ismail said the former president had “sent his condolences.”
Once a simple countrywoman, Sarah Obama was for a long time best known for the hot porridge and doughnuts she served at a local school.
But she rose to world fame with the 2008 election of her step-grandson Barack as the first black US president.
Already a national celebrity after the former Illinois senator Barack Obama visited Kenya in 2006, Sarah’s modest homestead became a tourist attraction with Obama’s November 2008 election triumph.
Born in 1922 in a village on the shores of Lake Victoria, Sarah was the third wife of Hussein Onyango Obama, President Obama’s grandfather, a herbalist and a village elder who fought for the British in Burma, now called Myanmar.