{{Malik Abongo Obama, the older half-brother of Barack Obama, is selling two handwritten letters from the US President to relatives and supporters back in Kenya for $15,000 each.}}<\/p>\n
Both the undated letters on a White House letterhead say “Thanks for your prayers and support” and are signed “B.O.”<\/p>\n
One is legibly addressed to “The People of K’Ogelo,” while the other appears to have the heading, “To the People of K’Obama.”<\/p>\n
London’s Daily Mail reported on Thursday that President Obama sent the letters shortly after a few of his Kenyan relatives flew to Washington for his January 2009 inauguration.<\/p>\n
Malik is offering the letters for sale through an autograph collector website, momentsintime.com.<\/p>\n
The New York Post, which first reported the offer to sell the letters, quotes US collector Gary Zimet as saying, “I wrote to Malik and didn\u2019t know if I would get a response. I was astonished when I did.”<\/p>\n
“I sent a letter to a post office box in Kenya. I asked him if he had any letters from his brother. I didn\u2019t expect to hear from him ever, but he wrote back and said, \u2018I have two letters.\u2019”<\/p>\n
Mr Zimet told the Post, “These letters show great interest on the President\u2019s part in his family.” He added that he “didn’t go too much into Malik’s relationship with his half-brother.”<\/p>\n
“I got a sense it was cordial, but not overly warm.”<\/p>\n
Malik set up an American charity in 2008 reportedly to support poor Kenyans as his brother was running for office.<\/p>\n
He vied for political office in Kenya at the last election in March but fared poorly.<\/p>\n
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{{Malik Abongo Obama, the older half-brother of Barack Obama, is selling two handwritten letters from the US President to relatives and supporters back in Kenya for $15,000 each.}} Both the undated letters on a White House letterhead say “Thanks for your prayers and support” and are signed “B.O.” One is legibly addressed to “The People […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[99],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-8186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-greatlakesnews","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8186\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8186"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=8186"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=8186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}