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Obama's half brother performs in China

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-01-17 19:06

Mark Ndesandjo, the intensely private half-brother of President-elect Barack Obama, poses sculptor at a charity concert in Shenzhen, southern China, Friday, Jan. 16, 2009.[Agencies]

"But it wasn't until July when media reports started surfacing about him being related to Obama that I found out they were related," he said. "He called and told me."

He uses the surname of his mother, Ruth, the third wife of his father, who died in 1982. He was born in Kenya and moved to the United States when he was a child.

Footage from a Chinese TV news show posted on Youtube shows him practicing calligraphy at home and teaching children how to play the piano, praising them in Mandarin and English.

On Friday, he said he had visited a Shenzhen orphanage shortly after arriving in China and saw rows and rows of sleeping babies while a harried staff of two nurses tried to care for them.

"One child with big black eyes seized my finger and would not let it go," he told the crowd.

After the charity event, Ndesandjo chatted with friends and shook hands as he slowly walked out of the venue pursued by journalists hoping for a comment. He slipped into an elevator and continued to ignore questions as the door slowly closed.

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