(TriceEdneyWire.com) –– Preparing for a visit next month by President Barack Obama, officials of Siaya County in Kenya will spend 1 million shillings or just over $10,000 on the restoration, maintenance and care of the president’s father’s grave.
Barack Hussein Obama Sr., President Obama’s father.
Governor Cornel Rasanga gave the Department of Tourism the go-ahead to implement the project before Air Force One arrives in Nairobi.
The grave-restoration funds will also cover Obama’s grandfather’s grave, located next to his father.
Other plans for the site include a visitor’s park in Kogelo, where Mama Sarah [Obama’s stepmother] will receive her visitors,” Siaya tourism chief Charles Akello said on the ‘phone yesterday.
President Obama’s Father
Barack Hussein Obama’s grave in Kenya.
Barack Hussein Obama Sr. died November 4, 1982, following an automobile accident in Nairobi, Kenya, which eventually led to his losing both legs. He was 46. Obama Sr. was born June 18, 1932, in Nyang’oma Kogelo, Kenya.
He was senior economist for the Kenyan Ministry of Finance after graduating Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Hawaii with a degree in finance. While attending the University of Hawaii, he married Stanley Ann Dunham, who would become President Obama’s mother.
He attended Harvard University on a graduate fellowship supported in part by Major League Baseball great Jackie Robinson and actor Harry Belafonte.
Obama earned a master’s degree in economics, but he did not complete his Ph.D. in economics because he was forced to leave the school reportedly because he was dating a white woman.
Plans to improve the grave
“Remember these plans were made long ago, before we even had information that the U.S. President would be visiting the country,” Akello said.
President Barack Obama
President Obama’s travel plans became known after a telephone call to Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta, following the terror attack on Kenya’s Garissa University during which more than 140 people were killed.
President Obama will co-host with President Kenyatta the 2015 Global Entrepreneurship Summit June 25 and 26 in Nairobi.
The summit brings together business owners, educators, policymakers and investors to support the growth of new enterprises in developing regions. It will be held in Africa for the first time.
This will be the fifth African country Obama will visit since being elected president.
