Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., a Luo from Kenya, and Ann Dunham, a white American from Wichita, Kansas.
His parents met while attending the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where his father was a foreign student.
They separated when he was two years old and later divorced. Obama's father attended Harward Universtiy for his Doctor’s Degree and returned to Kenya and saw his son only once more before dying in an automobile accident in 1982.
After her divorce, Dunham married Lolo Soetoro, and the family moved to Soetoro's home country of Indonesia in 1967, where Obama attended local schools in Jakarta until he was ten years old.
He then returned to Honolulu to live with his maternal grandparents while attending Punahou School from the fifth grade in 1971 until his graduation from high school in 1979.
Obama's mother returned to Hawaii in 1972 for several years and then back to Indonesia to complete fieldwork for her doctoral dissertation. She died of ovarian cancer in 1995.
Questions
1. Was Obama born in a happy family?
2. What can you learn from his early life and education?
