Magazine: Obama brother in Kenyan slum

Published: Aug. 21, 2008 at 6:47 AM
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NEW YORK, Aug. 21 (UPI) -- U.S. presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama's half-brother is living on less than $1 a month in Kenya, the Italian edition of Vanity Fair reports.

The magazine said it discovered George Hussein Onyango Obama, 26, in the slums of Nairobi. He said that he is ashamed of his poverty and doesn't talk about his relationship with his older brother.

"No one knows who I am," he told Vanity Fair. "If anyone says something about my surname, I say we are not related. I am ashamed."

Obama, D-Ill., the presumptive Democratic Party nominee for president, mentions George briefly in one of his books, describing him as a beautiful 5-year-old boy, The Independent reports. Obama's father, who met his mother when they were studying in Hawaii, returned to Kenya when the future senator was 2.

George, two decades younger than the U.S. senator, said he met him a second time in Kenya in 2006.

"It was very brief, we spoke for just a few minutes," he said. "It was like meeting a complete stranger."


© 2008 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved.



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