Jungle angel was Barack Obama’s mother

Sujak recalled how Dunham arrived at his home in 1983 in a white Jeep with more than 100lb of rice, sweets, pens and school books.

He said Dunham, who died of cancer in Hawaii in 1995 at the age of 52, had given him four donations worth the equivalent of $1,000. The money enabled him to build his house, expand his business and pay for his children's education.

Other villagers recognised Dunham, and themselves, from photographs that are included with parts of her graduate thesis in a book that will be published next month with a foreword by Maya Soetoro-Ng, Dunham's daughter by her second marriage and Obama's half-sister.

Soetoro-Ng said last week she was happy to learn that her mother was still remembered in the Javan villages where she did most of her research while Barack, then a teenager, remained in Hawaii with his grandparents.

"She had a real affection for those people and that place," Soetoro-Ng told The Sunday Times. "She helped a lot of people through her work and it was very much like her to help them on a more personal level."

Dunham's visits to Indonesia would later cause political controversy over bogus claims that Obama had been raised as a Muslim and had been born overseas, making him ineligible to be president.

It was partly to set the record straight about their mother's Indonesian work that Soetoro-Ng found a publisher for Surviving Against the Odds: Village Industry in Indonesia, an academic study based on her mother's 1,000-page graduate thesis. Gazing at Dunham's portrait on the cover, Sujak said he felt his benefactor was still with him in spirit. "It means that she still loves me; after 25 years she is still looking out for me," he said.

Sujak recalled how he had applied for a grant after seeing a notice posted by Dunham. He recalled that he enclosed a photograph of his then seven-year-old daughter, Sutini, with his application. The Kansas-born American was travelling at the time with her own daughter, Maya, whose Indonesian father married Dunham two years after her 1964 divorce from Obama's Kenyan father.

Kay Ikranagara, a friend of Dunham's at the Academy of Educational Development in Jakarta, said the gifts were in keeping with the American woman's nature.

"She was so warm-hearted. It is nice that someone she helped has been traced in this way. I hope there will be more."

In all, Dunham gave the Sujak family 1m rupiah, then equivalent to twice the annual salary of a factory worker. Recognised in Java as a pioneer of microfinance, Dunham was campaigning to extend small loans to rural industries.

Some of the cash may have come from one of the international development agencies for which she worked as a consultant, but Dunham added her own gifts, including a fondly remembered present of three watches.

Sutini, Sujak's daughter, is now 32 and still lives in the village. Shown Dunham's photograph, she vividly remembered the childhood visit from a smiling, dark-haired woman.

Another villager recognised herself as a child, photographed in her late father's shop. The 42-year-old woman, who said her name was Mintarsih, rushed to show the picture to family and friends. Her mother, Bu Sastro, was visibly moved to see her late husband's portrait in the book. He had been one of Dunham's main research subjects.

Dunham first visited Indonesia in the 1960s with her second husband, Lolo Soetoro. Obama lived with them in Jakarta for four years from 1967-71. When the couple split up in 1972, Dunham moved to Hawaii before returning to her Indonesian research in 1977. Barack was 16 at the time, and decided to stay with his grandparents in Honolulu.

While undertaking her fieldwork Dunham stayed at the home of Bu Maggie Norobangun, who last week recalled how the American visitor had loved to dress in vividly coloured traditional batik skirts. "She was anxious to raise the position and role of women, especially in villages . . . teaching young mothers how to make soup, showing an interest in them," she said.

Dunham's simple room, today bearing cracks from an earthquake in 2006, overlooks fruit trees and a terrace, where she would talk about her work with her hosts, and other visiting students. She described the village as "a wonderful and mysterious place".

Dunham's thesis reflects her passionate interest in Indonesian rural life. She describes how in 1978 Pak Sastro, a technology enthusiast, bought the village's first television - battery-run as there was no electricity.

He and his wife settled down to watch it when, Dunham recalls, "hundreds of visitors crowded uninvited into their house to watch this strange new device".

"Finally, in exasperation, Pak Sastro was forced to place the set in the window, facing the yard, and sat outside with his wife, on two chairs closest to the set, the villagers clamouring to view it behind them."

Soetoro-Ng often accompanied her mother on her research trips. She writes in the book's foreword: "Many hours of my childhood were spent in the homes of blacksmiths or by their furnaces . . . on these trips the greetings that the village women exchanged with Mom conveyed an intimacy that made it clear they had fully taken each other's measure ... she was welcomed and trusted by all."

In his memoir, Dreams From My Father, Obama displayed no trace of anger or regret that his mother had left him in Hawaii as a teenager.

He described her as "the kindest, most generous spirit I have ever known".

Additional reporting: Sara Hashash