His Mom and Dad met as students at the University of Hawaii. After the completion of his Bachelor's degree, Mr. Obama Sr. got a scholarship to Brown - one of the eight Ivy League institutions in the US. That scholarship covers his studies and his family. He had a second scholarship from Harvard, another Ivy League institution. But the scholarship from Harvard covers only Mr. Obama Sr. and not his family.
What did he do? He went to Harvard and left his new wife and the mother of his baby son behind. Got his Ph.D., married to another White Lady and went back to Kenya. Things didn't work out well at home. Not many African leaders want intellectual rebels around them. The Americanized Mr. Obama Sr. took to alcohol. And he died unsung a few years later.
Mr. Obama Sr. met with Barack Obama Jr. once, when he came visiting him in the United States after his relocation to Africa. In spite of the prolonged absence, the smiling Barack Obama that you are seeing in the picture below with his Kenya family did not prevaricate in his search for his African roots.
He had all the reasons in the world to say f... you, Africans. He never did. In New York, Chicago, and in Nairobi, he went about searching for us and searching for the blackness in him.
Not even his Dad's decision to go to Harvard and not Brown where the entire family would have been under one roof could stop him from loving his Dad and his heritage. He went on his own to Kenya to embrace his own and to kiss the soil that gave him flesh.
Of all the decisions this young man took in his early life, the one that appeals to me the most, which in fact, laid the foundation to his rise to the White House as the first African American President, was transferring from Occidental College in Los Angeles to Columbia University in New York City.
Dad was in Africa, married to another woman, and Mom was in Indonesia, married to another man. And Obama was alone in his own world, taking the hard decisions, and traversing the hard roads to fame. And that's why I love him so much. My Dad died when I was thirteen, and I became a man the very day he died, taking my own decisions and farmed to support my Mom and my immediate elder sister. Even when I became a boarding student in Grammar School, I would still travel home on weekends to assist my Mom with farm work.
As an American and as a human being, he might have been 50% Black and 50% White, but America doesn't consider him anything else, but 100% Black. He knew that reality, and he wasn't running from it. He resolved to be a real negro and went about searching for his soul. And that was how the decision to relocate to New York came about.
After two years at Occidental College in California, he transferred to Columbia University in New York City for the remaining two years. And that was where he had his real baptism of Blackness. By the way, Columbia University in New York is one of the eight Ivy League institutions in the States.
Following the completion of his Bachelor's degree at Columbia, he didn't allow his light skin to push him towards Hollywood to become a movie star. Or succumb to the pressure of Wall Street plum jobs, being a Columbia University alumnus. He went further in search of the blackness in him. And landed in Chicago to work as a Community Organizer.
And he was in his world and the world didn't know his name.
After a few years in Chicago, he applied and was accepted to Harvard Law School. At Harvard, he became the first Black to edit the Harvard Law Journal.
Following his graduation from Harvard, he turned his back on all the prestigious law firms on Wall Street, and off he went to Chicago once again, to work for a law firm. That was where he met his jewel of inestimable value, the love of his life (an Ivy League-educated - Princeton and Harvard) and the mother of his two gorgeous daughters.
And that is the story of a self-made man.
The hard roads and bold decisions didn't stop him from becoming the President of the most powerful nation in the world. In fact, the decisions, tough and less profitable as they were, carved a path for his way to greatness and the turbulent route to the White House. The Real Leaders are Proud of their Roots and Comfortable in the Company of their Town Folks.
Mr. Alex Aidaghese LL.M,. MCSE.
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