And Then Life Happens

by Auma Obama

  The next leg of my journey would be the train ride to Saarbrücken, which was four hours away. Contrary to my expectation that a representative of the DAAD would pick me up in Frankfurt, no one had showed up. But I had also been told that it was no problem to find the way to Saarbrücken: “Just go to the information desk and ask where the train to Saarbrücken departs.” That would have posed no great difficulty, if I had found my bearings among the countless signs that confronted me everywhere. But most of them I did not understand, and the symbols were foreign to me. When I realized that the signs were not helping me, I tried asking someone.

  “Excuse me?” I said in German to a woman who was coming toward me at a hurried pace. I must have spoken too softly, for she simply rushed past me.

  Next, I addressed an older man, who was walking more slowly than his predecessor. When he got close to me, I said, a bit louder this time, “Excuse me! Can you please help me?”

  To my relief, the man stopped.

  “How can I help you?” he asked with a smile.

  He understood me, I rejoiced inwardly. Until now, I had spoken German with another person only during role-playing at school, a relatively stress-free exercise, during which I always knew that I could switch to English if necessary. But this was not role-playing. I really had to get to Saarbrücken. I searched my memory for the German word for “information desk.” But it simply would not come to me. The man looked at me patiently.

  “How can I help you?” he repeated.

  “Um … information desk?” I stammered in English. Then, in German, “Please, information. Train?”

  Damn it, I thought in frustration. Here was someone who wanted to assist me, and I could not think of the right words. Suddenly, all the German I had learned had vanished into thin air. How often we had practiced such dialogues in class! Actually, I could have recited whole travel scenes, with all the questions and answers.

  “Do you want to take a train?” Thank God, the man spoke English—albeit with a strong German accent, but I understood him. All was not yet lost.

  “Yes, please!” I answered with relief. “To Saarbrücken. I need the information desk.”

  The man smiled and said, “Den Informationsstand.” He took my baggage and said, “Follow me. I will show you where it is.”

  As we marched to the information desk, the terms came back to me bit by bit: information was Auskunft, train station was Bahnhof, round trip was hin und zurück, one-way to Saarbrücken was eine einfache Fahrt nach Saarbrücken … I softly said words and phrases to myself as I walked. At the information desk, I wanted to finally show how well I could speak German.

  When we arrived there, my companion explained to the man on duty, before I could even open my mouth, that I had to get to Saarbrücken and needed a suitable train connection. The first real chance to demonstrate my German—out the window. But still: I had understood almost everything he had said. When the official spoke to me in German, the helpful older man broke in, “You should explain it to her in English. She can’t speak German.”

  Immediately, I wanted to protest. Just when all the words were coming back to me! Instead, I smiled politely and was silent. The man at the desk explained to me how to get to the train station, which was also in the airport, and how I could buy a ticket and obtain all other travel information there. After I had, to be safe, repeated the instructions to the helpful older man, who was still standing next to me, he pointed to a sign showing a train, the word Bahnhof, and an arrow.

  “Everything is okay now?” he asked kindly. I nodded and thanked him in German. “I must go now,” he said. “Auf Wiedersehen und viel Glück!” And with that he turned around and disappeared.

  For a few seconds, I stood forlornly next to my duffel bag. In that brief time, I had gotten used to the nice man and had secretly hoped that he would bring me to the train. But then I dispelled the sense of disappointment. He had already done enough for me; I would manage the rest on my own. I took my baggage and followed the sign toward the train station.

  * * *

  All that I remember about the trip to Saarbrücken is that I had several brief conversations with other passengers. At the time, I was happy to provide information and did not shy away from answering unusual questions about myself. I also wanted to use my knowledge of German and test my mastery of the language. If anything from that day has impressed itself deeply in my memory, it is the sense of joy and pride that I could actually make myself understood in German. I still recall that, having arrived in the Saarbrücken train station, I got off the train feeling satisfied with myself and immediately found a taxi that brought me to the university. And once I was there, I made it to student services without any problems.

  Outside the office that had been indicated in my documents as the first place to go, several young women and men were waiting. I sat down with them. Finally, I had reached my destination.

  With curiosity, I observed the students sitting next to me and passing by, impressed by the fact that they all spoke German, even the foreigners. The African students stood out from the crowd, not only because of their skin color, but also because none of them passed me without looking in my direction and giving me a friendly nod, which I experienced as a greeting of camaraderie.

  Finally, it was my turn. I entered a small room, in which there was a huge desk. Behind it sat a man who looked like an Arab and somehow seemed too large for the room. He made a slightly irritated, impatient impression, which I ascribed to the fact that he had had to deal completely on his own with all the students who had been with him before me.

  I gave him a warm smile. Something told me that I had to cheer him up. But his eyes showed no sign of friendliness.

  “What can I do for you?”

  I sensed that I would make headway with him only in German. “Um … I’m Rita Auma Obama. I’m from Kenya.”

  “Na und?”

  I didn’t understand what he meant by that.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Na und?” he repeated.

  “I don’t understand,” I said, taken aback. His impolite-sounding answer was not something we had learned in German class. (The expression, I later learned, is akin to “So?”)

  “What can I do for you?” He sounded more and more impatient.

  Now I was the one who was irritated. I had assumed he was informed. After all, I had been accepted into this university as a student.

  “I’m here to study.”

  “Just like all the other students, right?” he replied laconically, and then, at the limits of his patience, asked loudly, “You want to enroll?”

  “Yes, please.” Finally, he had gotten it. I heaved a sigh of relief.

  “What was your name again?”

  I repeated it.

  The man took a file off the shelf and leafed through it until he found what he was looking for under O. Then he gave me a small green book—my Studienbuch, which would serve as the official record of my courses—filled out a few forms and closed the file again.

  “All right,” he said. “You can go.”

  “And the key?” I asked, again with a smile. He must have forgotten that.

  “What key?” Apparently, he considered our conversation finished. He was about to call in the next student. He cast a glance at his watch and stood up.

  “I mean the key for my room,” I said, remaining seated.

  “What room?”

  “The dorm room.”

  The man looked at me as if I were crazy.

  “What dorm room? I have no room for you. You have to find yourself a room.”

  We had spoken German the whole time, and I had not felt as if I had missed anything. But my brain cells refused to understand his last words. In Kenya, you were automatically assigned a room when you began your studies.

  “No room?”

  “You certainly won’t get one from me!”

  My German no longer sufficed to continue the conversation. I had to say everything from that point on in
English. Was he telling me that I had taken the long journey here from Kenya to find out that there was no room for me?

  “I have no room!” I said loudly and clearly in English, emphasizing every single word.

  “I don’t have a room for you, either!” he replied, still speaking German, now visibly annoyed.

  “You have to have a room for me. I wrote!”

  “Listen, I don’t have a room for you. You have to go into the city, buy a newspaper, and find yourself one. Now I have to carry on.” With those words he went to the door and opened it. I felt him pushing me out of the room with his eyes. I had no choice but to leave the office.

  “I can’t find a room. I wrote to you asking for a room, and you never wrote back to say you had no room. Now I’m here, I don’t speak enough German, and you have to get me a room!” I said in one breath.

  The door now stood wide open and the next student was looking expectantly into the room.

  Suddenly, everything was no longer simple at all. I felt the tears coming to my eyes. But I pulled myself together, walked out, and turned around again to the man. “You have to have a room for me.”

  He gave no reply, and merely indicated to the other student with a nod that he could enter.

  In the hallway, I went back to my duffel bag, which was still where I had left it, and sat down. Besides me, there was only one more student waiting. He was constantly looking at his watch and at the door of the room in which I had just experienced that defeat. Only now did it dawn on me that I had not yet even thought about what time it was. I felt as if I had been in transit for an eternity. Kenya was so far away. It was hard to believe that I had still been there the previous evening. For the first time, feelings of loneliness and faint despair welled up in me. Just as I was about to turn to the student next to me, he jumped up, looked at his watch, and hastily strode down the hall.

  Now I was sitting there completely alone, disheartened, but firmly resolved not to go anywhere. And where could I go? It was Saarland University that had brought me here, after all. I had been accepted as a student and was informed that everything would be taken care of. And now that man in the gloomy office was telling me there was no dorm room for me. That didn’t make sense.

  The more I thought about it, the angrier I got. And with the anger the tears ceased. At that moment, the door opened, and the student services employee stepped out of the office with my successor. He seemed to be in a good mood, for he was laughing about something the student had just said. When he saw me, however, his expression froze.

  “You’re still here?” he asked, clearly perturbed, looking at my duffel bag. As he started to lock his office door, I stood up quickly.

  “I need a room,” I said again.

  I was dead serious with my demand, and my face said: If necessary, I will spend the night outside your office door. The man looked at his watch.

  “I’m already off work for the day,” he replied in frustration. He used the German word for the end of the workday, Feierabend, which I didn’t know, but I suspected it had something to do with him wanting to go home. Me, too, I thought.

  The man sighed and reopened the door to his office. I immediately grabbed my duffel bag and followed him.

  “I’ll see what can be done. But I’m not promising anything!”

  I sat down and was silent. There was nothing more to say. All I needed was a room.

  The man made various phone calls. I was no longer even listening; I was now really tired. The only thing I wanted was to lie down and sleep.

  “You have a room available? In Residence Hall D? Wonderful,” the man suddenly exclaimed loudly into the telephone. His relief was unmistakable. I didn’t know where Residence Hall D was, but I was delighted to finally have a place to stay.

  I no longer recall how I ultimately made it to the residence hall with my heavy baggage. The building was on the campus, not far away from student services. There, a German student helped me find my room, which was on the ground floor of the three-story building. The student’s name was Elke. She was a bit taller than I was, very slim, and she had long blond hair that reached down almost to her hips. Elke could speak English very well, and because I was tired, we spoke to each other only in that language. I was glad that the first person I had to deal with in my new home was so nice. At the time, I did not know that this chance encounter would turn into a close friendship, which lasts to this day.

  10.

  WHEN I ARRIVED in Saarbrücken, my name was Rita Auma Obama. I had never really liked the name Rita, especially as my grandmother often teased me that it was the name of a girlfriend of my father’s from his student days in the United States, where he was living at the time of my birth. Supposedly, he had suggested it in a letter to my mother.

  In Germany, everyone now thought I had a German first name and asked me why I didn’t have an African one. That sounded to me as if they were calling my whole identity into question. As if they wanted to know who I really was, because they could not reconcile me, the African, with that name. In a way, I understood this dissonance. I, too, felt a bit as if the name Rita gave me a false identity.

  So I decided pretty soon after my arrival to use my Luo name, Auma, as my first name from that point on. My mother had chosen to name me that after a relative who had appeared to her in a dream shortly after my birth.

  Although I no longer called myself Rita, I never completely gave up the name. I regarded it as a gift from my father and retained it in the form of the initial R. But that experience enhanced my awareness of myself as an African. There was a growing sense of pride within me that I was Kenyan. Apart from the excessive attention paid to me in public because I looked different, I enjoyed rediscovering, so to speak, my African identity and embracing it consciously. In Kenya, I had never thought about my identity. And why would I have? It had been a given.

  It was not only the confrontation with my first name that made me reflective regarding my background, but also people’s reactions to my choice of clothing, music, and literature. In a foreign land, I inevitably gained a stronger consciousness of what it meant to be an African.

  * * *

  I had settled into the residence hall well. My room was in Elke’s corridor, and I could not have been any luckier, because Elke and I had in the meantime become good friends. We had a lot to share with each other. I told her all about my life in Kenya, about my dearly beloved grandmother, my siblings, and the extended family. Elke, for her part, explained to me much of what seemed confusing in the twelve-month language proficiency course I was required to take in preparation for my studies. She also told me about her family, which, in contrast to mine, was small and basically consisted of only a father, a mother, and two children. She and her younger sister, Gabi, had grown up in a village in Bavaria, where her parents had built themselves a house. For a while, Elke had had a relationship with a Togolese man, whom she had really loved. But for him, it had been settled from the beginning that he would sooner or later return to his native country. She understood and let him go. Once Elke visited him in Togo, but came back to continue her studies. I found the story sad—Elke had liked the man a lot but had nonetheless let him leave. She reminded me a little of Ann Dunham, who had also loved a man from another culture—my father—and had not wanted to hold him back.

  * * *

  I will never forget the day when I first encountered snow (as a young girl I had seen snow from afar only once, when I climbed Mount Kenya on a school excursion).

  I woke up in the morning, looked out the window—and caught my breath. Everything was white: the ground, bushes, trees, cars, roofs, everything. I immediately ran over to Elke’s room. I knocked hard on her door.

  “Open up, Elke. Open up. It’s snowing!” I cried.

  It was still early, too early for my friend.

  “What?” I heard a drowsy voice. “Come back later…”

  By student standards, it was indeed still very early; in the hallway it was dead silent. But I disr
egarded that and kept knocking. I was raring to go out in the snow, and I wanted Elke to come with me.

  “Five more minutes.” Her voice still sounded pretty hazy.

  “Not today!” I persisted, my face pressed against the door. “Open up! Please, please, open up!”

  I received only a grunt in reply, and I imagined her pulling her pillow over her head.

  “Elke, it’s snowing! You have to get up,” I cried, now somewhat more loudly. Finally, she came shuffling to the door, opened it, turned around, and immediately crawled back into bed.

  “You’re going to wake everyone up,” she murmured. The last part of the sentence was swallowed by the comforter she had burrowed under.

  “But you have to come outside with me,” I insisted. I can be very stubborn. “It’s snowing! Everything is white. I’m seeing real snow for the first time!” We had been speaking German, but in English I exclaimed, “My first snow!” I thought that she would better recognize the seriousness of the matter if I said it in English.

  “I heard you the first time,” a muffled voice replied from under the comforter. “Another five minutes. The snow will still be on the ground outside tomorrow and the day after.”

  I sat down at her desk and stared at her—or rather, at the spot where I suspected her head was. And waited. Finally, Elke turned over and looked sleepily out from under the blanket.

  “Okay, I surrender.” She sat up in bed, her hair tousled, smiling wearily. “I should have known you wouldn’t give up.”