[browardchad]

Bear in mind that Barack Sr.'s family was not poor. They were influential in Kenyan politics, and apparently were able to support him in college.

Onyango Obama worked as a cook for USIS staff in 1959. BO, Sr. attended UH on a scholarship and his expenses were paid through the efforts of  international literacy expert named Elizabeth Mooney Kirk.

None of the Obamas were involved in Kenyan politics. The Odingas, with whom BO, Sr. allied himself years later as a government employee, were Luo, and therefore possibly distantly related to the Obamas.

[justiceseeker93]

I don't know where you get your facts, but as you said, the Obamas were cousins to the Odingas. Blood relationships would be paramount for upward socioeconomic mobility in a tribal based society.

Now, unless the Obama family had some connections, there would be no way that benefactor Elizabeth Mooney Kirk's path would have crossed with Obama's. The idea of a Kenyan youth being sent off to study at an American university would have been a pipe dream to the average Kenyan family at the time.