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The other Obama: Shenzhen-based half-brother of US president sets record straight
Mark Okoth Obama Ndesandjo sits down for a candid chat with Jenni Marsh
The South China Morning Post
Jenni Marsh
3/23/2014
Excerpt:
Close your eyes, and it could be the president of the United States talking.
Sipping tea with Mark Okoth Obama Ndesandjo in a Ming-dynasty temple is a surreal experience. Fleetingly, it conjures up images of what it'd be like to meet his half-brother - Barack Obama - for this African-American émigré to China bears a striking resemblance to his Nobel Peace Prize-winning sibling. And despite having grown up on opposite sides of the world - Barack with his mother in Hawaii and Mark with their Kenyan father in Nairobi - the half-brothers share mannerisms, including a politician's gift for putting people at ease.
We had arranged to meet in Shenzhen's Baoan district. Ndesandjo's assistant, George, escorted me through a leafy park on a golf buggy to a secluded building. The imposing, tall wooden doors opened from the inside and we were guided through a series of private, tranquil courtyards until we reached the Yuan Baoyuan teahouse, where Ndesandjo emerged from the main hall.
In the flesh, he is a force. Dressed head to toe in black, with an Indonesian bandana around his forehead, Ndesandjo is tall and personable, and speaks with a warm American accent. He's much more likeable than his self-deprecating new autobiography, Cultures: My Odyssey of Self-discovery, suggests.
THE LIVES OF MARK and Barack couldn't have unfolded more differently. While Barack's childhood was a happy Honolulu existence, Mark spent his formative years in a newly independent Kenya, living under the reign of terror of an alcoholic and abusive father, until his white, American mother finally found the courage to flee.
Despite his Kenyan upbringing, Ndesandjo never felt accepted by black Africa; but as the son of a Luo tribesman, he also felt incongruous in the expatriate community to which his mother belonged.
With his first autobiography, which was released last month, Mark has emerged from relative anonymity to tell his story and set the record straight about the president's "mysterious Kenyan roots".
Mark with his mother, Ruth Baker."I wanted to tell my story myself without other people telling it for me," he says.
Ndesandjo, 48, lives in Futian, Shenzhen, with his wife, Liu Xuehua, a Hunan province native and his partner of a decade. The pair met in a tea shop when Ndesandjo was an impoverished English teacher. He had emigrated to China in 2003 from Orlando, Florida. Having lost a well-paid job in the telecommunications industry in the post-9/11 economic slump, he wrote to the director of a mainland teaching project he'd read about in a magazine, asking for a job.
"He said, 'You're obviously too qualified.' But I really wanted to explore China."
Ndesandjo expected to stay for three months. Twelve years later, he is fluent in Putonghua, proficient in calligraphy and has no plans to leave the country. Long-standing rumours tell of him running a barbecue restaurant in Shenzhen, but he laughs them off.
"I'm a vegetarian," he says.
What he does run is a foundation that helps children in need, while also teaching piano to orphans, raising awareness of domestic violence and heading up two consulting companies that assist American investors entering the Chinese and Kenyan markets, and those looking to go in the other direction, one registered on the mainland, the other in Hong Kong.
THE FIRST TIME NDESANDJO met Obama was in 1988. It was a sunny weekend in Nairobi, and Ndesandjo was on his bed reading Fawn M. Brodie's The Devil Drives, about the explorer Richard Burton.
"My mother came to the doorway and was trembling. She said, 'Your brother from America is here. In the living room. He wants to meet you.'"
In Obama's 1995 autobiography, Dreams from My Father, he claims Ndesandjo's mother, Ruth Baker, sent a car to pick him up and that the family had arranged lunch.
"It was never like that," Ndesandjo says, shaking his head. "He and my half-sister, Auma, walked in that afternoon out of the blue. It was a year after my younger brother, Bobby [David Opiyo], had died in a motorcycle accident. I thought, 'What are they doing here?'"
Obama, Ndesandjo remembers, sat on the couch in very simple clothes, appearing as a regular Kenyan, with gangly legs and arms, and huge hands.
"My stepfather [Simon Ndesandjo] was very impressed by him," he says.
The family leafed through photo albums but the meeting was stilted, and the two half-brothers agreed to meet again a few days later.
"He looked so similar to me, we both loved America and were going to Ivy League schools," he says.
Barack Obama Snr and Baker with their children, Mark (standing) and David.
Having left Kenya aged 17, armed with a scholarship, Ndesandjo had just completed a degree in maths and physics at Brown University, in Rhode Island. He was on a break in Nairobi before returning to the US, to enrol at Stanford University.
"Until then, I'd assumed I was the cleverest in the family," he says.
But the long-lost siblings failed to connect.
"Barack felt I was too Western, and I thought he was trying too hard to be African," Ndesandjo remembers. "He wanted to know a lot about my father [who had passed away in 1982], and he was very direct with his questions. I felt like he was opening up old wounds. A lot like a lawyer, he was trying to research our emotional history.
"He kept asking, 'Well, what do you think of him?' I had shut all these things out, but he was relentless. It was a shock to him when I said, 'Our father was a drunk and he beat women.' Barack flinched. He wasn't aware of that.
"I think that has coloured our relationship to this day. In fact, I know it has."
Barack Obama Snr had skin as dark as ebony, teeth that shone like pearls and, in his younger years - like his Hawaiian son - had the hallmarks of brilliance. Born in 1936 in the sun-basked Nyanza province of western Kenya, Obama Snr attended the prestigious Maseno School, where his teachers described him as an "exceptionally bright student".
However, Obama Snr didn't graduate from high school, the record shows, because of a "behaviour infraction". Consequently, in 1959, his request for a grant to study abroad was rejected. Had it not been for Elizabeth Mooney Kirk - a forty-something American who Obama Snr allegedly seduced - agreeing to bankroll him, neither Barack Obama nor Ndesandjo would be here today.
.................................................
View the complete article at:
http://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-m...92/other-obama
Mark Okoth Obama Ndesandjo sits down for a candid chat with Jenni Marsh
The South China Morning Post
Jenni Marsh
3/23/2014
Excerpt:
Close your eyes, and it could be the president of the United States talking.
Sipping tea with Mark Okoth Obama Ndesandjo in a Ming-dynasty temple is a surreal experience. Fleetingly, it conjures up images of what it'd be like to meet his half-brother - Barack Obama - for this African-American émigré to China bears a striking resemblance to his Nobel Peace Prize-winning sibling. And despite having grown up on opposite sides of the world - Barack with his mother in Hawaii and Mark with their Kenyan father in Nairobi - the half-brothers share mannerisms, including a politician's gift for putting people at ease.
We had arranged to meet in Shenzhen's Baoan district. Ndesandjo's assistant, George, escorted me through a leafy park on a golf buggy to a secluded building. The imposing, tall wooden doors opened from the inside and we were guided through a series of private, tranquil courtyards until we reached the Yuan Baoyuan teahouse, where Ndesandjo emerged from the main hall.
In the flesh, he is a force. Dressed head to toe in black, with an Indonesian bandana around his forehead, Ndesandjo is tall and personable, and speaks with a warm American accent. He's much more likeable than his self-deprecating new autobiography, Cultures: My Odyssey of Self-discovery, suggests.
THE LIVES OF MARK and Barack couldn't have unfolded more differently. While Barack's childhood was a happy Honolulu existence, Mark spent his formative years in a newly independent Kenya, living under the reign of terror of an alcoholic and abusive father, until his white, American mother finally found the courage to flee.
Despite his Kenyan upbringing, Ndesandjo never felt accepted by black Africa; but as the son of a Luo tribesman, he also felt incongruous in the expatriate community to which his mother belonged.
With his first autobiography, which was released last month, Mark has emerged from relative anonymity to tell his story and set the record straight about the president's "mysterious Kenyan roots".
Mark with his mother, Ruth Baker."I wanted to tell my story myself without other people telling it for me," he says.
Ndesandjo, 48, lives in Futian, Shenzhen, with his wife, Liu Xuehua, a Hunan province native and his partner of a decade. The pair met in a tea shop when Ndesandjo was an impoverished English teacher. He had emigrated to China in 2003 from Orlando, Florida. Having lost a well-paid job in the telecommunications industry in the post-9/11 economic slump, he wrote to the director of a mainland teaching project he'd read about in a magazine, asking for a job.
"He said, 'You're obviously too qualified.' But I really wanted to explore China."
Ndesandjo expected to stay for three months. Twelve years later, he is fluent in Putonghua, proficient in calligraphy and has no plans to leave the country. Long-standing rumours tell of him running a barbecue restaurant in Shenzhen, but he laughs them off.
"I'm a vegetarian," he says.
What he does run is a foundation that helps children in need, while also teaching piano to orphans, raising awareness of domestic violence and heading up two consulting companies that assist American investors entering the Chinese and Kenyan markets, and those looking to go in the other direction, one registered on the mainland, the other in Hong Kong.
THE FIRST TIME NDESANDJO met Obama was in 1988. It was a sunny weekend in Nairobi, and Ndesandjo was on his bed reading Fawn M. Brodie's The Devil Drives, about the explorer Richard Burton.
"My mother came to the doorway and was trembling. She said, 'Your brother from America is here. In the living room. He wants to meet you.'"
In Obama's 1995 autobiography, Dreams from My Father, he claims Ndesandjo's mother, Ruth Baker, sent a car to pick him up and that the family had arranged lunch.
"It was never like that," Ndesandjo says, shaking his head. "He and my half-sister, Auma, walked in that afternoon out of the blue. It was a year after my younger brother, Bobby [David Opiyo], had died in a motorcycle accident. I thought, 'What are they doing here?'"
Obama, Ndesandjo remembers, sat on the couch in very simple clothes, appearing as a regular Kenyan, with gangly legs and arms, and huge hands.
"My stepfather [Simon Ndesandjo] was very impressed by him," he says.
The family leafed through photo albums but the meeting was stilted, and the two half-brothers agreed to meet again a few days later.
"He looked so similar to me, we both loved America and were going to Ivy League schools," he says.
Barack Obama Snr and Baker with their children, Mark (standing) and David.
Having left Kenya aged 17, armed with a scholarship, Ndesandjo had just completed a degree in maths and physics at Brown University, in Rhode Island. He was on a break in Nairobi before returning to the US, to enrol at Stanford University.
"Until then, I'd assumed I was the cleverest in the family," he says.
But the long-lost siblings failed to connect.
"Barack felt I was too Western, and I thought he was trying too hard to be African," Ndesandjo remembers. "He wanted to know a lot about my father [who had passed away in 1982], and he was very direct with his questions. I felt like he was opening up old wounds. A lot like a lawyer, he was trying to research our emotional history.
"He kept asking, 'Well, what do you think of him?' I had shut all these things out, but he was relentless. It was a shock to him when I said, 'Our father was a drunk and he beat women.' Barack flinched. He wasn't aware of that.
"I think that has coloured our relationship to this day. In fact, I know it has."
Barack Obama Snr had skin as dark as ebony, teeth that shone like pearls and, in his younger years - like his Hawaiian son - had the hallmarks of brilliance. Born in 1936 in the sun-basked Nyanza province of western Kenya, Obama Snr attended the prestigious Maseno School, where his teachers described him as an "exceptionally bright student".
However, Obama Snr didn't graduate from high school, the record shows, because of a "behaviour infraction". Consequently, in 1959, his request for a grant to study abroad was rejected. Had it not been for Elizabeth Mooney Kirk - a forty-something American who Obama Snr allegedly seduced - agreeing to bankroll him, neither Barack Obama nor Ndesandjo would be here today.
.................................................
View the complete article at:
http://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-m...92/other-obama