BERNARD OBAMA

'Nothing better to do'

Bernard Obama might or might not be a blood relative to Barack Obama.

Barack Obama's father's first wife, Kezia, is Bernard Obama's mother. And Bernard was born when Barack Obama Sr. had resumed his relationship with Kezia.

Some relatives question whether another man she was also seeing at the time is actually the young man's father, Obama wrote in Dreams From My Father. But Barack Obama Sr. was said to have treated Bernard as his son.

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In this Obama Family photo are: (bottom row, from left) half-sister Auma, her mother Kezia Obama, Obama's step-grandmother Sarah Hussein Onyango Obama and unknown; (top row, from left) unknown, Barack Obama, half-brother Abongo (Roy) Obama, and three unknowns.
(Courtesy of the Obama Family)

"That sweetness, the lack of guile, made him seem much younger than his seventeen years," Obama wrote in his book. "But he was seventeen, I reminded myself, an age where a little more independence, a sharper edge to his character, wouldn't be such a bad thing. I realized that he had time for me partly because he had nothing better to do. He was patient because he had no particular place he wanted to go."