Barack Obama's Step-Grandmother 'Mama Sarah' Dies at 99: 'We Will Miss Her Dearly'

Str/AP/Shutterstock Sarah Obama

Former President Barack Obama is mourning the loss of his step-grandmother, Sarah Ogwel Onyango Obama, the family matriarch of the Obama family who died in Kenya.

"We will miss her dearly, but celebrate with gratitude her long and remarkable life," Obama, 59, said in a statement shared with PEOPLE on Monday.

Her daughter, Marsat Onyango, told The Associated Press that "Mama Sarah," as she was called by family members, died around 4 a.m. local time at the Jaramogi Oginga Odinga Teaching and Referral hospital in Kisumu.

"We are devastated," Onyango told the AP.

The AP reported she was at least 99 years old.

The former president was informed and sent his condolences, according to the AP. Obama grieved the loss in a statement shared on social media Monday morning, remembering his step-grandmother as "Dani," or "Granny."

"Born in the first quarter of the last century, in Nyanza Province, on the shores of Lake Victoria, she had no formal schooling, and in the ways of her tribe, she was married off to a much older man while only a teen," Obama said.

"She would spend the rest of her life in the tiny village of Alego, in a small home built of mud-and thatch brick and without electricity or indoor plumbing," the former president added.

In Alego, Obama continued, "she raised eight children, tended to her goats and chickens," and grew crops to both feed her family and sell at a local market.

Obama said that while Sarah was not the birth mother of his father, Barack Obama Sr., she raised him as her own.

"It was in part thanks to her love and encouragement that he was able to defy the odds and do well enough in school to get a scholarship to attend an American university," Obama wrote.

"When our family had difficulties, her homestead was a refuge for her children and grandchildren, and her presence was a constant, stabilizing force," he continued.

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When the former president first traveled to Kenya to learn more about his heritage and about his father, who passed away in 1982, Obama said "it was Granny who served as a bridge to the past, and it was her stories that helped fill a void in my heart."

During a two-day trip in 2018 to his father's native country of Kenya — Obama's first trip to the country since leaving office — the former president could be seen listening to music and sharing a lighthearted dance with his then-96-year-old "Mama Sarah."

Obama's step-grandmother attended his historic 2009 inauguration and went on to start the Mama Sara Obama Foundation, which works to "improve the education and welfare of disenfranchised children in order to help them successfully achieve their goals and have a better future."

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The AP reports that for decades, she had helped raise orphans, including opening her home to house some of the children. The United Nations honored her in 2014 with the inaugural Women's Entrepreneurship Day Education Pioneer Award, according to the outlet.

Obama wrote in his statement Monday that while his "Dani" witnessed a number of momentous events throughout her lifetime — including seeing her grandson become the U.S. president — the family matriarch never changed her upbeat tune.

"During the course of her life, Granny would witness epochal changes taking place around the globe: world war, liberation movements, moon landings, and the advent of the computer age," Obama said. "She would live to fly on jets, receive visitors from around the world, and see one of her grandsons get elected to the United States presidency."

And yet, Obama said, "her essential spirit — strong, proud, hard-working, unimpressed with conventional marks of status and full of common sense and good humor — never changed."