Dreams from My Father
In his memoir "Dreams from My Father," Obama wrote that Akumu was miserable in her marriage and abandoned Onyango Obama and her children with him. She subsequently married again and moved to Tanganyika, now Tanzania. Her name "Akumu" means "mysterious birth." Her mother conceived her after having given birth to another child and before resuming her menses. Akumu took the name "Habiba" upon her conversion to Islam in her second marriage, to Salmin Orinda, a Muslim from Wagwe, near Homa Hills, South Nyanza. A photograph of her holding her son, Barack Sr., on her lap is on the cover of her grandson's memoir. (See image at right margin.)