Barack Obama‘s long-lost half-brother has surfaced in Kenya – living like a recluse on less than $1 a month and hiding his family ties.
George Hussein Onyango Obama, 25, said he’s embarrassed to reveal his identity – because he makes his home in a 6-by-9-foot hut on the outskirts of Nairobi while his world-famous brother is hoping to move into the White House.
“If anyone says something about my surname, I say we are not related; I am ashamed,” he told the Italian Vanity Fair. “No one knows who I am.”
Barack Obama, 47, wrote warmly about his youngest half-brother in his autobiography, describing him as a “beautiful boy with a rounded head.”
The two men – 22 years apart in age – have only met twice. Once was when George was 5. The other was during the Illinois senator’s emotional tour of east Africa in 2006.
“It was very brief. We spoke for just a few minutes,” George told the magazine. “It was like meeting a complete stranger.”
Since Barack Obama became a celebrity, several relatives have shared in his fame, including half-brother Bernard, a Kenyan auto-parts dealer who was front-page news when he visited England last month.
But until now, almost nothing was known about George, who was born to Barack’s father, Barack Sr., and his fourth wife.
Barack Sr.’s second wife was American Ann Dunham, the mother of the future senator. But the marriage failed, and after completing his studies in the United States, he returned to Kenya, where he became a senior government economist.
He fathered seven other children, the youngest being George.
Italy’s Vanity Fair tracked George Obama down to the violent Kenyan town of Huruma, where he lives alone in a shack adorned with soccer posters, a calendar depicting beaches around the world, and a front-page newspaper photo of the Democratic presidential nominee-to-be.
George Obama said he has no contact with his mother, and apparently has cut himself off from the rest of the family.
“I have had to learn to live and take what I need,” he said.
He said he was homeless for 10 years, including when Sen. Obama visited Nairobi two years ago. His home now, the shanty town of Huruma, is “a tough place,” he said.
“I have seen two of my friends killed,” he added. “I have scars from defending myself with my fists. I am good with my fists.”
Other members of the extended Obama family have remained close.
Barack Obama and half-brother Malik Obama, a Kenyan accountant, were the best man at each other’s weddings.
“As far as I’m concerned, we are one family,” Malik said in 2004.
In Barack Obama‘s book, he said he was a young adult when he found out about George from his half-sister Auma. In 1988, he met George and several other relatives for the first time when he visited Africa and introduced his wife, Michelle, to the family.
“I took comfort in the fact that perhaps one day, when he was older, George might want to know who his father had been and who his brothers and sisters were,” he wrote. “And if he ever came to me, I would be there for him, to tell him the story I knew.”
But George Obama is living apart from his family.
“I live like a recluse. No one knows I exist,” he said.
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