And Then Life Happens

by Auma Obama

  I only faintly recall our life in Hurlingham, because I was in boarding school most of the time we lived there. But there is one image I can still see clearly in my mind’s eye: I am sitting in our car, frightened and perfectly still, as one of our household workers runs alongside it, pulling at the collar of our fiercely barking dog up on his hind legs.

  Kilimani Primary School, which I began attending as a day pupil after my unhappy time at Mary Hill Primary School, was only a few houses down from the Hurlingham house. But by the time I entered the new school, we had once again moved, this time to Woodley, another Nairobi neighborhood, not far from Hurlingham. Woodley had at one time been reserved for midlevel colonial officials, but in the aftermath of independence, the white families, with a few exceptions, had left the area. When we moved to Woodley, our neighborhood consisted mainly of Africans and a few Indian families. My best friend Barbara’s parents came from Poland and England. They lived only a few houses down from us, at the end of the street. And my second closest friend, Sharon, and her family, who lived next door, were Kenyan, though originally from Goa, an Indian state. Barbara, Sharon, and their brothers attended Kilimani Primary School, too.

  In Woodley, there were almost only young families with children our age, so that we never lacked playmates. Sometimes up to fifteen children met in front of the houses to do things together. For, although all our bungalows were surrounded by gardens, we almost always played in the street, which barely had any traffic during the day and offered us a lot of space. There we could be as loud as we pleased, because the properties had large front gardens and the buildings were situated at some distance from the street.

  We could play outside to our hearts’ content only on weekends and school breaks. During the week we had to do our homework after school, which left us barely any time for anything else. We made up for that on weekends and vacations, rushing outside right after breakfast. At lunch we all disappeared to our respective homes, because we did not eat in each other’s houses without our parents’ permission. Since both parents typically worked on weekdays, each family had domestic help, who were available at least six days a week and cooked for the children. After lunch, we would then meet again to continue the interrupted play.

  Generally, girls and boys played together without reservations. Only my brother Abongo never wanted me to join in with his friends. He would have been happier if I spent my time only with girls or preferred dolls to soccer. But dolls bored me. I found the athletic activities and competitions we organized with the boys much more exciting. Most of the girls in our neighborhood felt the same way, with the exception of a few who only wanted to watch.

  It bothered Abongo not only that I didn’t stay away from his friends, but also, on a quite general level, that I participated fearlessly in everything they did. He would make that particularly clear to me whenever there were scuffles for some reason. If, for example, I got into a fight with a girl who had provoked me, he kept out of it as much as possible. While the other girls usually received support from their older or even younger brothers, Abongo only watched aloofly as we went at each other. Even when I was really in a tight spot or was getting clobbered by several children at once, he did not abandon his observation post. Often one of the other children would get our cook, Obanda, for help. Or Obanda would find out about the fights when I returned home with my clothing stained from a nosebleed. Then he would always get angry with Abongo.

  “Why don’t you help your sister?” he would ask him furiously.

  “It’s her own fault,” Abongo would grumble. “She’s the one who’s always asking for trouble.”

  “What did you say?” Obanda would ask in a threatening voice.

  “She can never keep her mouth shut. I’m not responsible for her!”

  At that point, Obanda would raise his voice.

  “Are you crazy?” he would scold. “You are responsible for her! You’re her older brother, aren’t you? Who else is going to look out for her?”

  Abongo would shrug and look down at the floor. Both of us were afraid of Obanda. He had worked in our house for a long time and, besides the cooking, dealt with many other matters of importance to my father. As a result, the two men were very close. We children always feared that Obanda would tell our father—who was a great, awe-inspiring mystery to us—about our misbehavior, and then we would get in a lot of trouble. On top of that, Obanda would not have shied away from raising his hand against us, if need be. For that, he had our father’s blessing. In our culture, it is not only the parents who bring up the children; in their absence, it is completely natural for someone like Obanda to slip into their role. Although the cook was very strict and we were quite afraid of him, he nonetheless mercifully overlooked a lot and thus ultimately spared us from our parents’ reprimands many times.

  I relished it when my brother was scolded. Now Abongo would get what was coming to him, I thought, that idiot, who never stood up for me. While I felt in all my bones the painful effects of the skirmishes with the other children, I waited intently for my brother to get his justly deserved beating. That was the only way he would finally realize that it was his job to defend me. Especially since I myself always jumped into the fray when he got into fights with other children, and often walked away with bruises. More often than not, however, Abongo got off with only a scolding.

  At the time, I didn’t understand why my brother never helped me and why he was so often standoffish or angry with me. Only years later, when we were grown up and I began to grasp the intricacies of our complicated family life, could I divine what was going on with him in those days. At the age of six, he was separated from his biological mother and transplanted from his familiar rural surroundings into the city and, on top of that, into a strange family. The head of that family, his own father, was a stranger to him, and the woman he was now supposed to call “mother” even more so: She was a white woman. Up to that point, we children had scarcely had any contact with white people, at least never consciously. And like many children from the countryside, we were probably at first afraid of the woman with the pale complexion.

  Abongo, who was two years older than I was and already grasped to some extent what was happening to him, must have really struggled with this new situation. He must have missed our mother terribly, and at the same time he had to watch as I, a clueless four-year-old, adapted quickly to the new circumstances. No wonder that my “betrayal” seemed to provoke great anger in him. And because I later sometimes received preferential treatment from our parents, for I remained the only girl, that anger intensified. Thus, for better or worse, I had to learn not to rely on my brother or anyone else to help me out of a jam.

  * * *

  We children from Woodley loved to model our games on current sporting events, such as the Safari Rally (better known as the East African Safari Rally), which started every year around Easter in Nairobi and was then continued in other parts of the country. Parallel to that exciting event, we organized with great seriousness our own mini Safari Rally in our neighborhood. On the basis of the rally schedule that could be consulted in the newspaper, we prepared for our own race with colorfully painted Dinky racecars (the competitor to Matchbox cars). We carefully planned the course of the racetrack and marked it on the ground. Then we tied a long string to the front of each little car and checked the condition of the wheels to make sure that they turned properly and evenly. And off we went.

  As soon as the starting whistle sounded, each racing pilot pulled his racecar by the string over the bumpy ground, through puddles and small hollows. Now we were Joginder Singh, Shekhar Mehta, Hannu Mikkola, or Bert Shankland, the famous drivers who raced their cars through the land. And like those professionals, we too, their doubles, raced toward the finish line. As chance would have it, the racetrack of the true heroes ran along Ngong Road, of all places, which was only a few hundred yards from our house. Of course, we excitedly stopped our mini-rally to see them hurtle past. We then returned to our parallel event wi
th heightened enthusiasm.

  Our other games, too, usually revolved around who did something fastest, best, or most skillfully. I will never forget the day when I tried to prove to myself that I could climb higher than anyone else—and almost broke my neck in the process. At the time, there was a fir tree in our garden, which was over thirty feet tall and which I had already climbed many times. That day, I swiftly and easily climbed the tree and didn’t stop at the usual spot, but instead kept going higher. Having almost reached the top, I didn’t even notice how the thin branches were bending. Suddenly, a branch broke under my foot, depriving me of support. I began to slip and tried in vain to cling to the branches. They broke off in my hands, and I fell farther and farther down.

  Luckily for me, the lower and thicker branches broke my fall. Frozen in shock, I stayed where I was, half-lying, half-sitting. Everything had happened incredibly fast. After a few minutes, I pulled myself together, looked down, and realized with alarm that it was only a few yards to the ground. If I had fallen farther, I definitely would have broken my neck.

  After that plunge, it hurt everywhere on my body where the branches had jabbed and scratched me. I felt like crying. But I clenched my teeth and swallowed my tears. I had undertaken that adventure on my own initiative, and no one would find out about my fall, which fortunately had ended well. It was a long time before I climbed that tree again.

  I always took part when we organized the garbage can race, which, in retrospect, was not entirely without risk either. In those days, the streets of Nairobi were in very good condition, which is hard to imagine for anyone who knows their present state. In any case, the well-maintained asphalt surface was excellently suited for our garbage can race. For that game, we utilized the sturdy, bucket-shaped garbage cans, just over three feet high, which stood on every property. We took off the lids, which sat loosely on the containers, and laid the cans on their sides on the ground. At most, four garbage cans fit side by side on the street. Every can pilot now stepped onto his vehicle and balanced on it until the starting whistle sounded. As fast as possible—without falling down, of course—the metal container now had to be rolled with the feet to the finish line at the end of the street. That worked best if you took many tiny steps. But until you had really mastered this special technique, you fell repeatedly onto the hard asphalt and got scrapes and bruises. This was especially true if you were so courageous—as I was—that you organized the race on a slope instead of on a flat stretch. Although I was an enthusiastic fan of this game and got more and more skilled at it over time, some of the scars I got back then remain visible today.

  * * *

  Although I often played with the boys, I spent just as much time with my friend Barbara. We met practically every day, when we were not busy with schoolwork, usually at my house. At her place, I always had the feeling that her mother was not thrilled about my presence. She never said anything to that effect, but I sensed from her manner that she didn’t like me, just from the way that she would look at me and from the fact that she would very rarely talk to me or allow me into the house. I think that she was not comfortable with the fact that her daughter’s best friend was a black girl. In the early sixties, shortly after the end of the colonial era, she had to accept that many Africans moved into her neighborhood, in which only white people used to live. The fact that my stepmother was white probably mitigated my blackness in her eyes a bit—and I suspect that was the only reason she tolerated my friendship with her daughter—but Ruth’s marriage to an African must at the same time have been a considerable demerit.

  My friendship with Barbara lasted only until the end of primary school. Afterward, our ways parted because I went to a different school than she did. Shortly thereafter, Barbara’s family became one of the last white families to move away from Woodley. Little by little, all the white people had left the neighborhood, and besides the African families, only a few Indian families now stayed behind. I never saw Barbara again. Thus ended an almost six-year friendship, without either of us ever inquiring about the other again.

  Shortly before Barbara’s departure, my friend Sharon’s family had also moved away. They left the country when it became known that the Ugandan head of state Idi Amin was expelling the Indian population en masse from his country. He claimed that they would exploit the country and deprive the indigenous people of the chance to participate in Uganda’s economic success. Fearing that the same fate could befall them in Kenya, Sharon’s parents ultimately decided to immigrate to Canada.

  Suddenly, due to events beyond my control, my world changed radically once again. From the familiar primary school, I entered high school, my two best friends moved out of the neighborhood, and—what hit me hardest—my stepmother then divorced my father and left us forever, taking my two younger brothers with her.

  This time, I was actually glad to go to boarding school, because an oppressive emptiness had permeated our home. Not only because my stepmother was gone, but also because she took many household objects with her, which made the rooms look bare and dismal, as if no one was living in them anymore. The house turned into a quiet, depressing place. On top of that, Ruth was awarded our father’s only real estate—it was in Lavington, an elegant neighborhood of Nairobi—after the divorce. He thereby lost the bulk of his wealth.

  One might have thought that Abongo and I would have grown closer in our shared fate. But the opposite was the case. My brother showed barely any interest in me, took pleasure in teasing me, and acted as if it meant nothing at all to him that three important people vanished from our lives. Only years later did he confess to me that he, too, had cried himself to sleep at night in his room out of sheer grief.

  6.

  AS A THIRTEEN-YEAR-OLD GIRL, I experienced the new boarding school as a true salvation. Without the security of Kenya High School, I might not have recovered my shaken balance so easily—for the six years I spent there were among the most difficult in my life. Far from the ruins of my former family, this all-girls high school became a second, more stable home. The school’s orderly world with clear rules and structures provided me with an urgently needed foothold.

  The large offering of academic and extracurricular activities proved to be an additional source of help in that. We were advised to make full use of them, and with this wide palette of possibilities we were instilled with the sense that the world was at our fingertips. There were no limitations at all, and the school subjects generally reserved for boys were regarded at Kenya High School as fully appropriate for us girls. As long as our grades permitted it, we could learn anything we pleased in addition to the required curriculum. Apart from our own laziness, nothing and no one could stop us from becoming whatever we had set our mind to. And that really was the case. To this day, over thirty years later, I run into alumnae of “Boma”—as we fondly called our school (boma means “cattle pen” in the Maasai language)—who have since become scientists, engineers, lawyers, judges, professors, or politicians. Most former students go through life with a confidence that can certainly be traced back to their Boma education.

  While during the week a packed academic and extracurricular schedule provided me with the necessary distraction from the pain smoldering inside me, on some weekends the emotions kept in check in the midst of the school routine rose powerfully to the surface. This happened most often when we girls dealt with typically female questions, which a mother would have been best equipped to answer. Such topics usually came up on Saturday evenings after dinner—because we were free to do what we wanted with those evenings. In the common rooms of the several residence halls, we could play records and dance and visit each other in our respective living quarters.

  In a group of friends, we moved from one residence hall to another, usually boisterous and laughing loudly. We stayed longest where songs were played that we knew by heart and could sing along to at the top of our voices. In that joyful atmosphere, I was sometimes seized unexpectedly by a profound sadness. My friends struck me as so happy and
carefree; their only concern seemed to be the choice of a common room with the best dance music. But I sank deeper and deeper into a feeling of loneliness, which threatened to nearly suffocate me. On such evenings, I withdrew from the group of friends unnoticed, in order to be alone. I crept over to the “Five Acre,” an elevated semicircular stretch of land that separated the residence halls, each of which housed about a hundred students, from the academic buildings. There I sat in the dark for hours on a bench, from which I watched all the girls walking back and forth between the various residence halls. The bench was under a large tree directly in front of the residence hall in which I was living.

  I spent many Saturday evenings in that familiar place. Sometimes I only wept softly, but often my emotions rumbled fiercely in me, and I stared angrily into space. I felt betrayed by my father, blaming him for not holding the family together, and abandoned by my stepmother. If the separation only applied to my father, then where was she now? I asked myself, furiously hurling the words into the darkness. My father had promised me that everything would turn out all right, after I had asked him for the hundredth time what was going to happen now that they had left. But everything was not all right! Why else was I so unhappy? And why hadn’t my stepmother been in touch with me at all?

  One evening, I almost cried my heart out on my favorite bench. I had been sitting with a few friends, and our chat had turned to the problem of eyebrow plucking. Should we or shouldn’t we? Was plucking your eyebrows part of becoming a woman? Suggestions, considerations, and arguments went back and forth, but we did not reach a clear conclusion. Actually, none of us really knew at that point what it meant to be a woman. Even though I was looking forward to it, I was at the same time afraid of it, as many other girls must have been as well. One of my schoolmates finally suggested that we ask our mothers what they had to say on the topic. Everyone nodded enthusiastically, and I nodded, too—knowing all the while that there was no mother I could ask. I barely held back the tears. Shortly thereafter, I stole away and visited my spot under the tree. And there I longed desperately for the mother who would have been able to advise me on the difficult question of eyebrow plucking, among other things.