I just got back from Barnes & Noble with Pulizer Prize-winning author David Maraniss’ 600-page annotated historical biography “Barack Obama: The Story, which I have obtained to see what Ruth Baker Ndesandjo said about baby David Obama in her videotaped interview with Maraniss. this was her first and only interview according to Maraniss in his CSPAN Book TV video on the book, IIRC.
In the Index on page 632 there is the following in the alphebetical listing:
“Obama, David Opiyo, 245-46, 249”
So David Obama is mentioned on only three pages of the book under that name.
Page 245:
Page 245 is the first page of Chapter 10, “Marked Man” referring to BHO Sr. as a doomed man and describing the events leading up to his death. The chapter begins with the introduction of David to the world giving him a verifiable birth date (an easy date to remember) and birth location for the first time that I have seen:
“Barack Obama had added another son to his disparate family just before Barry and Ann left for Indonesia. In Nairobi, on September 11, 1967, Ruth gave birth to her second child, David Opiyo Obama.”
Page 246:
“When he landed an important job as senior planning officer at the Kenya Tourism Development Corporation (KTDC) during the same month that David was born, they moved to a new place in Woodley Estate; they had money again and servants to cook and clean and care for the children.”
Page 249:
“Ruth and the boys joined him for one long trip to Luoland in 1968. Mark was three and David one. They stayed in Nyang’oma Kogelo with his step-mother Sarah, and Hussein Onyango, and took a side trip down to Kanyadhiang. Obama was the first member of the family to bring a white woman home. His relatives seemed impressed by Ruth. “She was comfortable and could eat anything that was cooked here,”said Charles Oluoch, a member of the Obama compound in Kanyadhiang.”
(snip)
“The real trauma came once they returned to Nairobi. David had contracted malaria during the visit, and it erupted violently after a brief incubation, sending him to Nairobi Hospital. ‘I was screaming and yelling,’Ruth remembered. ‘I was breaking down terribly at the hospital because I thought my baby was dying. But he got through it.’”
Those are the only three passages in which baby David Obama is mentioned.
Note that two living tribal clan witnesses to the 1968 visit of baby David are mentioned, Sarah and Charles, and also a possibly verifiable hospitalization of David having contracted a reportable illness is documented.
I wonder if Baby David was attended to by the famous Nairobi pediatrician, Dr. Ang’awa, a man alleged in one claimed BC to have delivered BHO II. Dr. Ang’awa was not murdered until February 8, 1970.
Note that on page 5 of the photo pages, a photo of the gravesite of Barry’s great-grandfather, Obama Opiyo, is shown at the top. This person is likely the source of David Opiyo Obama’s middle name. His mother raised Mark as Jewish and likely named David as a Jewish first name and then gave BHO Sr. the choice of middle name.
I have seen no evidence to refute this narrative given directly to Maraniss by Ruth and the Obama relatives including numerous verifiable claims of fact.
That being the case, the family picture of Barack Sr., Ruth, Mark and David is circa 1970.
David’s death, it turns out, is reported under the name “David Ndesandjo” on page 629 of the Index:
“Ndesandjo, David, 496-97”
Page 496-47:
“Auma told Barack that she was planning a trip to New York, a prospect that thrilled him. He said she should stay with him, and was eagerly anticipating her long-awaited visit when she called again to say the trip had been canceled due to a tragedy in the family. The roads of Kenya had claimed another victim, a son of Mr. Toad. David Ndesandjo, the younger son of Obama Sr. and Ruth Baker, now Ruth Ndesandjo, half-brother to both Barack and Auma, had been killed in a motorcycle accident. The word from Nairobi was that David, unlike his older brother Mark, had laid claim to his African heritage and essentially broken away from his white mother and identified himself with the rest of the Obama clan. Now he was dead. If Barack discussed this call with Genevieve, she could not remember it.”
It is noteworthy that Barry’s alleged girlfriend at the time has no recollection of any call to Barry informing him of the death of his half-brother, who was supposedly being grieved over by the daugher of Kezia who was dumped in favor of David’s mother, acording to the narrative. The book says at age four Auma (called Rita at the time) was taken away from Kezia’s care and boarded at a Catholic convent school in Nairobi and expected to treat Ruth as her mother when visiting her father. The description of the Auma call regarding David’s death appears to have been lifted intact from “Dreams,” IIRC, an Ayers-written novella.
Curiously, there is no index entry for Mark Ndesand, only an entry for Mark Obama:
“Obama, Mark, 207, 209, 249, 399, 496, 567, 568”
Page 207:
(Re: 1965) “Mark was born late that fall, on November 28. His Luo name was Okoth, which means ‘born when it is raining.’”
Page 209: (Ruth and Mark flee to Boston for three weeks in 1966)
Page 249: (Mark and David taken to Luoland in 1968 and stay with Sarah and Hussein Onyango)
Page 399: “Before dying, Hussein Onyango had met a grandson who was half white and American...not Barack II, the baby bull thousands of miles away, son of Ann, but Mark, in Nairobi, son of Ruth.”
Page 399 contradicts page 249. On page 249 it says that Hussein Onyango met TWO half white babies. According to Ruth, he met BOTH Mark (3 and David (1), but on page 399 only meeting Mark is mentioned. Perhaps he wrote page 399 before his interview with Ruth and didn’t cross-check. It took Maraniss four years to write the book.
Page 496: (referred to only as brother of David at time of accident that killed David)
Page 567-68: (Mark is home on vacation from studying physics at Stanford when Auma drops in unannounced on Ruth with Barry) Ruth: “She hadn’t alerted me, as I remember. I like to be alerted. This was pretty traumatic, She said ‘This is Barack.’ Or ‘This is Dad’s son from Hawaii.’ Now this was a time when I couldn’t face something like that, okay? And everyone wanted to know about Obama Sr., and as I remember it I closed up.”
So it's possible that without any warning, accompanied by one of the daughters of Kezia, zero shows up at Ruths house in Nairobi and the woman introduces him as Dad's son from Hawaii and poor Ruth, after all she's suffered at the hands of the drunken, violent man who was the father of her son Mark, NOW she's being told he had another child in Hawaii, not just the Dark Boy she cared for since 1964, but ANOTHER CHILD with ANOTHER WHITE WOMAN he supposedly married...no wonder she says I CLOSED UP.
Thanks for sharing. Looks like the David mystery is solved.
All words from a book.
Big freaking deal.