by Auma Obama
In this, the woman often had no choice—that is, she had no say at all in the marriage negotiations. In most cases, however, the fears and anxieties of both partners abated quickly. It was simply not expected that getting married necessarily had anything to do with love.
Thus my grandmother married my grandfather when she herself was only nineteen and he was already around fifty. When I asked her how she felt about having a husband who was so much older than she was, she answered with the simple declaration that it didn’t bother her at all. My grandfather was a reputable, well-off man, and for my grandmother it was important that her family viewed him as “a good match.” With that, it was settled for her that he was the right man, and that was enough for her.
“But he was so old!” I replied, indignant at her explanation. “Did you even love him?” I could not just accept the reasons she had given for her consent. At the age of eight, I already found the idea of not being able to choose my future husband for myself unbearable.
“You really are a true Baker granddaughter,” my grandmother often rebuked me. “That’s why you don’t understand our customs and traditions.” Baker was the maiden name of my North American stepmother, whom my father had married when I was four years old. As an American, she abided by Luo customs only to a minor degree, if at all. And although my grandmother never criticized her in my presence, I knew that she did not always approve of this.
Even though I adored and respected Granny Sarah, I decided that I would definitely not follow her example. I would never permit a man to rule over me just because I was a woman, and I would certainly never let anyone else decide whom I had to marry. I was convinced that life (and marriage) meant more for a woman than submitting to a man. And although I had no idea how I would do it, I was already pretty certain back then that I would one day leave Kenya to find this “more.” Not forever, because I loved my country, but for a certain period of time.
In fact, the older I got, the more intensely I longed for a place where I could simply be myself, without having to subordinate myself to the cultural constraints and expectations of my family and my fellow Kenyans. In short: a place where no one demanded that, just because I was a girl, I behave any differently than my headstrong and independent nature inclined me to.
Like the books in which I buried myself for hours on end, my journey to Germany was ultimately an escape. I wanted to avoid at all costs a fate as a submissive wife.
* * *
My path to Germany actually began when I was in high school. In Nairobi, where I lived from the age of four onward, I attended Kenya High School, an all-girls boarding school still renowned today. The original name of the school, European Girls School, was also reflected in its architecture, for it had been built during the colonial period in the style of a British private school exclusively for the daughters of the European colonists; in those days, admission was denied to native Africans.
At the time of British rule, separate schools were established for the children of the Africans, usually by missionaries. These schools had substantially fewer resources than the European ones. In his day, my father had attended such a school, the Maseno Boys Secondary School, founded in 1906.
But when I went on to high school after the seven years of primary school customary in Kenya, that era was past. Now my boarding school was no longer called European Girls High School, and although there were some white students—along with a few Indian ones—the Africans clearly outnumbered them. But, despite the fact that the student body of Kenya High School was now predominantly African, the rules in force there were far from being tailored to Africans. On the contrary: It was we who had to conform to regulations dating from the colonial period. For example, we were not allowed to braid our hard-to-control curly hair, even though braiding gave us a neater appearance and spared us the painful morning combing. Nor were we permitted to speak our respective native tongues at school. We were also prohibited from stepping on the meticulously tended lawn of the school grounds, and running around anywhere was strictly forbidden. Sometimes I had the feeling that they were trying to educate us to be little British girls.
On the whole, though, these rules didn’t bother me much. In my primary school, Kilimani Primary School—which, just like Kenya High School, had formerly been a school for white children—I had already been prepared for this to some extent. There, too, we had been obliged to follow countless rules similar to those at the all-girls boarding school later on. As a consequence, many Kenyan men and women of my generation did not master their native tongue and destroyed their skin and hair with chemicals, just to adapt their appearance to the British norm.
Before I entered Kilimani Primary School, I had attended another primary school—also modeled on the British system—for over a year: Mary Hill Primary School. Run by Catholic nuns, the boarding school was a short distance outside Nairobi, in Thika, and was regarded at the time as one of the best all-girls schools in the country. I was sent there at the age of six, and there was a reason for that: My father had the same high standards as the other members of the small group of “chosen ones” who were the first generation of Kenyans to have completed their studies in the United States or Europe. In a sense, they represented the hope of the nation. And it was important to all of them that their children receive the best possible education.
The daughters of many prominent Kenyans went to Mary Hill Primary School, including the daughter of the politician Tom Mboya, who played a significant role in Kenya’s history. Mboya was a leading Luo politician and, in 1960, one of the founders of the Kenya African National Union (KANU), the party that led Kenya to independence. Later, he was the first Minister for Economic Planning and Development. Our families were close friends at the time. At the beginning of each school trimester, the Mboyas drove me to school or we took their daughter with us. A few other girls carpooled with us as well, allowing our parents to take turns with the long drive to and from the school.
I can still see a bunch of us girls packed into one of those cars. One car in particular I remember clearly, a Citroën, at the time a state-of-the-art, posh model with a long, wide front. The car was unusually low, and in the back, where we children sat, the vehicle seemed practically to touch the ground. On the wide backseat, I always had the feeling that I was almost sitting on the road. I could barely look out the window; it was like being in one of those large spinning cups on a carnival carousel. At the same time, the Citroën reminded me of the huge tubs in which the bigger girls washed us younger students every day in the large washroom of the school.
Mary Hill Primary School was run by the Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of Africa, an order that had settled in Kenya in 1907. First and foremost, this educational institution admitted children from culturally mixed families. In those days, each individual cultural community in Kenya—European, Asian, African—had its own school, but at Mary Hill the unique attempt was made to integrate the groups.
In this nuns’ school, religious education was central, of course. They were determined to make us into good, devout Catholic girls, as required by their missionary duty. We had to go to church regularly, and not a day went by without some religious activity. But to this day, one question remains for me: What affiliation did my father, who was never religious to my knowledge, indicate when he enrolled me in this school? If he didn’t specify one, how was it possible that I was admitted there as a child who belonged to no denomination?
We non-Catholic girls were not expected to go to confession, but I remember well that participation in the Sunday Mass was obligatory. After church we walked around the cemetery with the priest, gathering nuts that had fallen from large trees. Although I have fond memories of those walks, I still shudder today at the thought that on those cemetery paths we might have consumed bodily remains that had turned into nuts.
Entirely in the British tradition, we wore school uniforms. Even on the weekend, standard attire was obligatory: There was a Saturday uniform and another for going to church
on Sunday. Like all first-graders, I was assigned an older student as a “big sister.” She had to look out for me and help me with everyday things like the above-mentioned washing or getting dressed.
In retrospect, I have the impression that everything at Mary Hill Primary School was organized according to strict rules. We were under permanent supervision and were constantly kept occupied with something. And it seems to me that we were not given a minute simply to do what we wanted.
Since the introduction of the British educational system, it has been common in Kenya—unlike in many Western countries—to attend boarding school, particularly for high school students. The best Kenyan schools were and still are boarding schools. At six years old, however, I did not appreciate the fact that I had gotten one of the most highly coveted places at such a school. I would have much rather stayed at home.
I burst into tears when my parents brought me to the boarding school and said good-bye to me. For a long time after their departure, I could not settle down, and, especially during the early days, I suffered from horrible homesickness—much to my father’s disappointment. Many nights I cried myself to sleep. At that time I shed so many tears that my father had to come to the school several times to bring me a new pillow. But during those brief visits, I was rarely allowed to see him, even though I had longed so terribly for him and my family. I can still see myself standing at the window of the dormitory, watching him drive away, once again in tears.
* * *
The cause of my difficulties adjusting was probably not only that I was still so young. The fact that my little brother Okoth was born at that time must have been very much on my mind. With the arrival of a younger brother, I, the littlest, suddenly lost my position as the baby of the family. On top of that, by moving to boarding school, I had lost the safe space of my home. I must have felt cast out. And although I do not remember clearly the separation from my biological mother, Kezia, two years earlier—when I was only four years old—I would imagine that must have also left its marks. So I most likely experienced my stay at Mary Hill Primary School as a double banishment from a familiar environment: I had to part from my biological mother and from my second mother, my father’s American wife.
The strictly regimented life of the boarding school was frightening for me. In class, it was the nuns who scared me. I seem to recall that they threatened to lock us in a “dungeon” if we weren’t good. None of us children knew for sure whether this dungeon really existed, but our fear of it was so great that we preferred not to find out. Out of sheer terror, I often did not dare to ask whether I could go to the bathroom during class. Once I waited so long that, to my despair, a warm stream suddenly ran down my leg to the floor.
Things did not go much better for us in the living quarters. There, too, we were surrounded by nuns, who watched us like hawks. On both ends of the dormitory, a crucifix hung on the wall, and there was constant praying, to which I was unaccustomed. My father, as mentioned, was not religious, and my stepmother Ruth was Jewish, though she didn’t practice her faith.
Each evening before going to bed and each morning immediately after getting up, we had to kneel down in front of our beds facing the crucified savior. At bedtime, the nuns painstakingly made sure that our hands lay virtuously on the blanket. Why that was so important to them was a mystery to me at the time. At home, I was used to covering myself up to my neck. With my arms lying “out in the open,” I had trouble falling asleep.
One night the nun on duty caught me with my hands under the blanket. I was startled out of sleep in confusion as someone yanked the blanket from my body. Completely bewildered, I saw the Sister standing in front of me and heard her scolding me, without understanding what I—while fast asleep!—had done that was so bad. Only years later did I realize that the nuns wanted to prevent us from sinning under the blanket by playing with certain body parts—even though we were only six, at most seven! Eventually, my father had to give in to my obvious unhappiness and take me out of Mary Hill Primary School.
My older brother Abongo didn’t fare much better. He, too, attended a top boarding school, the Nairobi School, which was in the middle of the capital. And he, too, was apparently unhappy there and loathed life in that educational institution. But he expressed his aversion in a different way. Instead of shedding tears, he made other children cry, by getting into fights with them. My father was summoned to his school so often that he eventually realized there was no point in leaving Abongo there any longer. So both of us returned home—I was in second grade, my brother in third—and spent the rest of our primary school years happily as day pupils at Kilimani Primary School. At that time, my stepmother Ruth gave birth to my brother Opiyo, her second son.
* * *
The harmonious family life did not last long. While I was still waiting for the results of my final primary school exams, my father and Ruth got a divorce. When I was accepted into Kenya High School, with my thirteenth birthday approaching, my stepmother had already moved out and had taken my two younger brothers, Okoth and Opiyo, with her.
My father and stepmother’s divorce was hard on me. A large void opened up. Fortunately, I could escape it to some extent with the entrance into boarding school life. The new school would turn out to be a blessing for me.
When I arrived at Kenya High School, people seemed to have heard of me already. The word was that I was the girl with the strange way of expressing herself (at the time, influenced by my stepmother, I used many American terms). And because I behaved rather self-confidently, people at first found me arrogant. Even some older girls looked in on our class to get a glimpse of the new student. Of course, the message behind that was: “Watch out, we’re keeping an eye on you!” I was not to think that I could act as if I were something special; instead, I was to conform immediately to the strict hierarchy that prevailed in the boarding school subculture.
But I was not intimidated by the behavior of the older students. My stepmother’s modern parenting—she had always tried to explain things to me in detail and allowed me to express myself—had made me into a rather self-assured young girl, who was not impressed by the big girls. And so I quickly settled in and found my place at Kenya High School.
3.
MY STEPMOTHER HAD LEFT US—and I fell into a deep hole. The house was suddenly quiet and empty without her, Okoth, and Opiyo, and even though Ruth had reassured us in parting that she had only separated from our father and not from us, I knew that wasn’t true. She had also separated from my older brother and me.
A sad time began. Because my relatives had always mocked me for my supposed closeness with the Baker family, my stepmother’s family, I was firmly resolved not to show my pain. But no one could fail to see that I was suffering.
I had lived with Ruth since I was four years old. She was the only woman I had consciously experienced as a mother. My father had insisted from the beginning that we call her “Mummy,” and in the next nine years she really had become a mother to me.
My memory of my biological mother, Kezia, had largely faded. I no longer recalled how I had felt when I had to say good-bye to her. Very soon after we moved in with my father and his new wife, Ruth, he had his younger sister Zeituni come and look after us. Getting used to a new mother was hard for us, so they assumed that the adjustment would go faster with our familiar aunt.
I can still remember well Aunt Zeituni being there. She was tall and beautiful, and she became a very strong presence in our lives. She washed us, combed and braided my hair, and spent a lot of time with us. On many occasions she settled disputes and protected me, because Abongo was quick to fly into a rage when I did something he didn’t like.
At first, my biological mother, Kezia, came regularly to see us at home, but I can scarcely remember those occasions. Only the sweets she brought us stuck in my memory. Her visits never lasted long because, supposedly, we often got upset and burst into tears. My father eventually refused further meetings. I was five or six years old at the time, and I wouldn�
��t see my mother again until I was thirteen.
Except one time—at a brief encounter in her new home—I didn’t see my stepmother again, either, until many years after her departure. By then I was already an adult.
* * *
At the age of thirteen, after having to cope for the second time with being abandoned by a mother, I began to brood and seriously question who I was.
Until that point, apart from regular visits with Granny Sarah in the countryside, I had been under the dominant influence of my stepmother. In my early childhood years, I had not really been aware that she was not my real mother, but as I got older, it became clearer to me. Besides the obvious fact that Ruth was white and I was black, she also spoke quite openly with me about the fact that she was not my biological mother, which also explained why she sometimes treated her own children differently than she treated Abongo and me. When her separation from my father was imminent, she tried several times to make me understand why this step was necessary for her. And she told me once again that we were not her children and therefore could not go with her.
It is possible that I repressed everything that had to do with my biological mother in order to preserve my familiar world. I knew only my stepmother and our small family, and I desperately wanted it to remain the way it was. As long as my real mother stayed away, I thought back then, nothing would change. No wonder my brother, who could still remember her well, often got annoyed with me. Abongo probably viewed me as a horrible traitor.
And it was also he who, soon after our stepmother’s departure, began to talk about the return of our biological mother.
* * *
My brother’s efforts are best understood against the background of Luo traditions. In our ethnic group, polygamy is customary, and a man is permitted to have several wives. He may, without having to get divorced, get married a second, third, or even fourth time. Thus my father and my mother, because they had had a traditional marriage, were, in the eyes of Kenyans, especially the Luo, not divorced—particularly in light of the fact that, for the Luo, after the delivery of the bride price (usually a certain number of cattle) and the birth of children, an official divorce is, as a rule, no longer possible. Even in the case of a separation, the couple continues to be regarded as married. If they remain childless, however, the wife is frequently blamed. In that case, if the man does not simply take another wife, a divorce is possible.
