Early life and career

Barack Obama was born on August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Barack Obama, Sr., a black Kenyan of Nyang’oma Kogelo, Siaya District, Kenya, and Ann Dunham, a white American from Wichita, Kansas. His parents met while attending the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where his father was a foreign student. They separated when he was two years old and later divorced. Obama’s father returned to Kenya and saw his son only once more before dying in an automobile accident in 1982. After her divorce, Dunham married Lolo Soetoro, and the family moved to Soetoro’s home country of Indonesia in 1967, where Obama attended local schools in Jakarta until he was ten years old. He then returned to Honolulu to live with his maternal grandparents while attending Punahou School from the fifth grade in 1971 until his graduation from high school in 1979. Obama’s mother returned to Hawaii in 1972 for several years and then back to Indonesia for her fieldwork. She died of ovarian cancer in 1995. As an adult Obama admitted that during high school he used marijuana, cocaine, and alcohol, which he described at the 2008 Civil Forum on the Presidency as his greatest moral failure.

Lolo Soetoro

Lolo Soetoro (c. 1936–1987) was the stepfather of Illinois Senator Barack Obama, the 2008 Democratic candidate for President of the United States. He was a native of Indonesia.
During the Indonesian National Revolution (c. 1946) when Indonesia won independence from the Dutch, Soetoro’s father and eldest brother were killed, after which the Dutch army burned down the family’s home. Soetoro fled with his mother into the countryside to survive.
He met Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham, when they were both students at the University of Hawaii. Around 1966 Soetoro and Dunham married and Soetoro returned to Indonesia when it called home its citizens who were studying abroad. About a year later,  Dunham and her six-year-old son Barack Obama followed Soetoro back to Indonesia, where the family took up residence in Menteng Dalam, Jakarta. In 1970 Soetoro and Dunham had a daughter, Maya Kassandra Soetoro-Ng (born Maya Soetoro).
After returning to Indonesia, Soetoro first worked for the army as a geologist and then took a job as a government relations consultant with Mobil Oil.^[4][5][6] Obama describes Soetoro as well-mannered, even-tempered, and easy with people. He writes that Soetoro was physically short, good looking, and brown with black hair. He describes the struggles he perceived Soetoro had to deal with after he returned to Indonesia from Hawaii.
During their years together in Indonesia, Dunham became increasingly interested in the country’s culture, while Soetoro became more Western in his outlook. Ann Dunham left Soetoro in 1972, returning to Hawaii and reuniting with her son, who had returned from Indonesia in 1971 to attend school. Soetoro and Dunham saw each other periodically in the 1970s but did not live together again. They were divorced in 1980.
According to a 2007 Chicago Tribune article, “Soetoro was much more of a free spirit than a devout Muslim, according to former friends and neighbors.” Soetoro was Muslim; in a general way. Islam is the religion of a majority of Indonesians. His wife, however, did not hold the same beliefs.
According to his nephew, Lolo “loved drinking, was a smart and warm person, the naughtiest one in the family.”^{[citation needed]} Soetoro died of a liver ailment in 1987 at age 51.