Former US President Barack Obama has opened up on his relationship with his father, Barack Obama Snr, and the impact he had on him growing up. The former president disclosed in a podcast, on Monday that he really did not know his father, since Obama Snr left him and his mother when he was just 10 years old.
”He left my mother and me when I was two years old, and only traveled from Kenya to visit us once, when I was ten. ”
Obama, who is born of a Kenyan father and a Kansas mother recalled that trip was the first and last he saw of his father. After that they would only communicate through letters.
”I heard from him only through the occasional letter, written on thin blue airmail paper that was preprinted to fold and address without an envelope. His short visit had a profound impact on my life,” Obama wrote, adding, ”My father gave me my first basketball and introduced me to jazz. But for the most part, the visit left me with more questions than it answered, and I knew I would have to figure out how to be a man on my own.”
He was the 44th president of the United States and the first American president with African descent. During tenure the US president visited Kenya in 2015 and later in 2016 after retirement.
