And Then Life Happens: A Memoir

by Auma Obama

  As a consequence of the payment of the bride price, if there is a separation, all the children born from the marriage belong to the husband. They become his property, so to speak. And his wife is permitted to go back to her own family only after a return of the bride price. If she leaves her husband’s compound, for whatever reason, the children living with the father can demand her return. Usually, this is the responsibility of the oldest son.

  In the life of a Luo woman, another change occurs with marriage. As a result of the strict customs, she now loses her place in her original family. One ritual makes this particularly clear: Among the Luo it is customary to bury a deceased family member within the homestead. A married woman is traditionally buried on her husband’s compound. A divorced woman, however, even if she lives on her former family’s compound, is permitted to be buried only outside the homestead—because, despite returning home, she does not belong to her parents’ family, but still belongs to that of her husband. Both families are acquainted with this tradition and adhere to it.

  * * *

  When my brother began, at the age of fifteen, to make an intense effort to get our biological mother back, he was familiar with all this. He turned to her family to get in touch with her.

  One day a schoolmate of mine approached me and explained that she was related to me; our mothers were cousins. Over the years, I had been introduced to so many close and distant relatives that I didn’t think much of it. Now and then we visited each other, until one day this schoolmate came running over excitedly and urged me to accompany her home. I asked what was going on, but she answered only that I had to come with her immediately. It all sounded extremely mysterious.

  Since we did not live far away from each other, we were at her house in a few minutes. She led me into the living room, in which many people were sitting. I remained standing at the door nervously, because I didn’t know anyone except my aunt. But my cousin pushed me into the room from behind, and her mother called to me:

  “Come in, child. We have a surprise for you!”

  Shyly, I entered the room. I still hadn’t grasped what this was actually about.

  “Don’t you recognize her?” my aunt asked excitedly.

  I looked around without a word.

  “Don’t you recognize your mother?”

  Confused, I looked around the room once again. My mother? No, I didn’t recognize anyone.

  One woman in the group was looking at me particularly intently. Embarrassed, I began to smile. Then the woman beamed at me, stood up, and came toward me with open arms.

  “My child, don’t you know anymore who I am?”

  “Hello,” I replied uncertainly, walking toward her. What else should I have said?

  I was aware of the fact that I had a biological mother, even if she had not participated in our lives over all these years. Sometimes, when I was particularly unhappy or was troubled by a burdensome problem, I imagined her as a good fairy, who at any moment would conjure me away and free me from all my difficulties. But, ultimately, I did not view her as part of our family. At an early age, I had accepted things as they were. For me, my mother had therefore always stood outside our life. I had never seriously thought about what would happen if she ever returned.

  Now this stranger was standing in front of me, and I couldn’t bring myself to say a word. And even though I sensed that everyone was waiting for a reaction from me—excitement, joy, some expression of emotion—I remained silent.

  “Let her be,” my aunt exclaimed. “Don’t you all see that she’s shy?”

  My mother took me by the hand and led me to the chair next to her own. After that, the room filled with conversation again. Tea and juice were served with light snacks.

  I continued to sit silently next to my mother, grateful that she hadn’t made a dramatic scene out of her return into my life. I eyed her furtively from the side and listened to her chatting and laughing casually and self-confidently with her relatives. And I wondered whether, now that she was back in my life, everything would finally get better.

  * * *

  The next encounter with my mother took place at our home. She had brought along a relative I didn’t know—another one. I assumed she might have been afraid of confronting my father without support. But as it happened, only my brother and I were in the house at that time.

  After we had greeted each other, my mother took a large silver can out of her handbag, which looked as if it had gone straight from the factory onto the store shelf before anyone had time to stick a label on it.

  “For you,” she said, handing me the container. I accepted the mysterious gift and looked at her questioningly.

  “For your skin,” she explained.

  I went into the kitchen and got a knife to pry open the tightly closed lid, which resembled that of a paint can.

  “Thank you,” I said after a while, when I was back in the living room with my mother. The can contained Vaseline. Suddenly I had a wonderful sense of security. After my stepmother’s departure, I had barely taken care of my appearance. I had retreated into a sort of apathy as a way to stop time, so to speak—if I couldn’t turn it back. And at the same time, I had persuaded myself that the less I took care of myself, the less I would miss my stepmother. There was no one who asked whether I had bathed, put on lotion, or brushed my teeth. My brother and I barely talked to each other, and my father withdrew into his work and usually came home late in the evening, when I was already in bed.

  At our first meeting, my mother must have noticed my neglected appearance and my dry, lusterless skin. While I at first saw only a stranger, she was looking at me from the beginning through maternal, caring eyes. From then on, she brought me a can of Vaseline on each visit.

  Full of conviction and commitment, my older brother waged the campaign to get my mother back. I don’t know whether he spoke openly with my father about it at the time, but he often met with relatives, and some of them supported him energetically and encouraged him not to let up.

  I myself hung back and didn’t say much about his efforts because, even though I had finally gotten to know my biological mother, I still longed to have our recently broken-up family back. I missed my little brothers terribly, especially Opiyo. But the more Abongo campaigned for the return of our mother, the less probable the chances seemed that my stepmother and my little brothers would one day come back to live with us.

  4.

  THERE WERE EVENTS that occurred several months before I was born that had an enormous impact on my life. When my mother found out that she was pregnant for a second time, it was already planned that my father would go to study in the United States.

  At that time, Kenyan students were being sent to the United States to be educated at universities there. Most of them received support from a scholarship program initiated by Tom Mboya. The program was funded by private sponsors—later by John F. Kennedy, among others. This exodus of students to the United States, which took place between 1959 and 1962, has been dubbed the “airlift.”

  * * *

  Tom Mboya was not only a politician, but also a union leader. He advocated tirelessly for Kenya’s independence. His vision of an Africa free of colonial rule could only be realized, in his view, with the help of a sufficient number of well-educated Africans. In his eyes, there was a need for qualified Kenyans who would take over the leadership of the country after the end of colonialism—which he never doubted was coming. But to attain those qualifications, the journey abroad was necessary. As senior officials, diplomats, and representatives of the educational system, the young academics would lead the nation to independence and ensure its self-government.

  Unfortunately, Mboya didn’t live long enough to see his vision become a reality. In 1969, six years after Kenya’s independence, he was shot. He was thirty-eight, and the forces behind the assassination were never fully determined. But it was speculated that the government had something to do with it. My father, who was hit hard by the murder of Mboya, was himself firmly
convinced that it was a politically motivated act.

  * * *

  Though my father was not an airlift student, he traveled to the United States at the same time with private American support. Once he was there, he to some extent joined the “airlift family.” Thus the program’s records reflect that he received financial aid for the purchase of books and that he was supported a few times with tuition payments. But the main funding was actually organized by two American women, whom my grandmother curiously remembers today only as “Monica and Mary.” She means Elizabeth (Mooney) and Helen (Roberts). The two of them had come to Kenya with the organization World Wide Lit to teach the people there reading and writing. My father participated in this program as a teacher. Both women were impressed by my father’s intelligence and wanted to help him get into a university in the United States. They requested applications from several universities, and members of Elizabeth’s family mailed books so that he could prepare for the entrance exams. After he had passed those, he was accepted by the University of Hawaii in Honolulu to study mathematics and economics.

  By my grandmother’s account, my father met the two American women at a time when he was employed by East African Railways, the railroad company founded in 1948 that served the three East African countries of Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania. He and my mother really liked to dance, and Helen and Elizabeth must have, too, because they supposedly picked up my parents often to go out with them.

  My grandfather at first reacted with concern when my father came to Alego to give the family the good news that he had the opportunity to attend a university in the United States. It was not exactly cheap to study in the States, and my father, who was only in his early twenties, already had a wife and son to provide for. A second child (I) was on the way. But by mentioning the support from the two American women, he managed to reassure his parents. All he asked of them was to take care of his wife and children in the meantime.

  Incidentally, my father maintained contact with his two sponsors even after his return from America.

  Some of the young students who went to the United States at that time took their families with them. But my father wanted to leave us behind so that he could complete his studies more quickly and thereby return home sooner. However, when he finally did come back to Kenya, things turned out differently from what our family had imagined.

  Before his departure, my father visited a photo studio with his wife and son, accompanied by my grandfather, to have a farewell picture taken of the family. To this day, that portrait hangs on the wall of my grandmother’s living room, and whenever I look at it, the thought crosses my mind that, although I am not visible in the picture, I, too, was present, comfortably nestled in my mother’s womb.

  * * *

  After my father’s departure, my pregnant mother and little Abongo moved in with her parents-in-law in Alego, the small village in Siaya District near Lake Victoria and not far from the border of Uganda. There she awaited the birth of her second child. She was seventeen years old at the time.

  With my grandparents, my mother and Abongo—and, shortly thereafter, I, too—led a glorious life. The family property consisted of numerous fields, pastures as well as untilled land, and in the middle was the compound with its thatched clay houses. A tall hedge of dense trees and bushes protected it, and my grandfather’s house, in which he lived with my grandmother, formed its center. In front of this house was, on one side, a small hut that served as a kitchen, and a short distance away my mother’s house, which was in the place traditionally designated for the first wife of the oldest son. Further places were reserved for my grandfather’s other sons, though they were not yet married at the time.

  My grandfather owned many cows and goats, which were kept in a pen. My grandmother Sarah took care of the poultry, which were driven back every evening into their coop in the rear of the cooking hut.

  Numerous fruit trees grew on the homestead, all of which had been planted and carefully cultivated by my grandfather: mango, papaya, guava, orange, and avocado trees. He could even show off an apple tree, of which he was especially proud. Here, in western Kenya, apple trees have a very hard time thriving. He had managed to raise such a tree and from time to time even to harvest an apple—always only one, because, despite loving care, only one fruit ripened at a time on the somewhat puny plant. We children always eyed that apple full of curiosity and with intense longing. We were strictly forbidden to pick it, and to break that rule would have definitely meant a beating. My grandfather was a very strict man, who suffered no disobedience. Thus we did not dare even to touch this forbidden fruit.

  I no longer recall who ultimately got to eat each of those single apples. But I seem to remember that I, too, at one point enjoyed the coveted fruit. In any case, its sweet and sour taste has stuck in my memory.

  * * *

  About one and a half years after my father’s departure, a letter from the United States was delivered to my grandfather. Many years later, my grandmother told me in detail about the excitement that its arrival provoked.

  Apart from the letters my mother received at wide intervals from overseas, no one in the family got mail from distant America. So it was understandable that my grandfather immediately feared the worst. Why should anyone write to him from the United States, if not to inform him that something terrible had happened to his oldest son? After the message that he had arrived in Hawaii, Barack had not sent his father another line.

  My grandfather hesitated to open the envelope. The family had gathered around him, and everyone was looking with anxious concern at the letter in his hand, as if it were a bomb that would explode when opened. My mother, holding me in her arms, fearfully held her breath.

  Finally, her father-in-law opened the envelope. The handwriting was that of his son Barack. With relief, my grandfather read the lines—and breathed in sharply. No one dared to ask a question; everyone waited silently for an explanation.

  “What is he thinking?” he suddenly cried. “And what will become of his studies now?” he went on with irritation.

  My grandmother could no longer contain herself and asked the question that was burning in everyone’s mind. “What happened?”

  “Your son wants to get married again!”

  * * *

  I believe my mother had expected the worst. Now she took a deep breath; she was relieved that her husband was still alive, but at that same moment, something died inside her.

  Occasionally, I have imagined how she must have inwardly screamed at my grandfather’s words—and how she nonetheless remained silent, because she did not dare to show her true feelings in front of her parents-in-law. For the news that the letter contained was nothing out of the ordinary. Since a Luo man was permitted to have several wives, it would not have done my mother any good to protest against it. She knew that. But the fact that she should lose so quickly everything that connected her and my father struck her like a terrible blow.

  For my grandfather, the message posed a different problem: The new bride was not Luo, not even Kenyan. She was American, and so came from an unknown country with foreign customs and traditions. And she was a white woman. Having grown up under colonialism, and after many years in the service of the colonial regime, he could simply not imagine how such a marriage could turn out well.

  “And she’s pregnant, too,” he added after a while.

  My mother had to sit down.

  “Her father is insisting that the two of them get married,” my grandfather explained.

  “So Barack is being forced to marry her?” my mother ventured to ask, hopefully.

  “No. He writes that he intends to marry her anyhow. He only needs my blessing. So I am supposed to give my consent—but I don’t really have a choice.”

  “Oh,” my disappointed mother let out.

  “And he wants to know from you whether you have anything against it.” With this remark, he turned to his daughter-in-law.

  My mother gave no reply. What did it matter if s
he had something against it or not? In the end, all that counted was what my grandfather decided. On top of that, a child was on the way. Thus her husband and the new woman were practically already married.

  “Is this girl going to come with Barack when he returns to Kenya?” my grandfather asked his wife. The concern in his voice was unmistakable.

  He didn’t doubt for a second that his son would come home immediately after his studies. But what would become of his second marriage, what of the child, in the event that the mother did not want to follow Barack to Kenya?

  My mother must have felt horrible in light of the news. The letter meant the end of the dreams she had associated with her marriage. Despite the fact that polygamy was customary among the Luo, she later told me she had not expected to be affected by it herself one day. After all, she herself had defied tradition and gotten married against her father’s will. Barely sixteen years old, she had met Barack at a dance when he was staying in Kendu Bay on Lake Victoria, where he was visiting family. At the time, he was working in Nairobi. For both of them, it was love at first sight. Without thinking twice about it, my mother followed her heart, dropped out of school, and ran off with my father. After a seemingly endless back and forth between the two families, the new lovers were finally permitted to get married.

  For them, ballroom dancing was more than just a hobby. Soon they participated in contests held in the various African social halls around Nairobi. And often the two of them were the winners. Abongo was born, and they went on dancing. If no babysitter was available, they wrapped the little one in a warm blanket and took him along in a Moses basket. While his parents enjoyed themselves on the dance floor, Abongo slept peacefully, looked after by the many friends who loved to watch his parents.