And Then Life Happens: A Memoir

by Auma Obama

  “She’d rather go to preschool than see her mother again? I don’t think so!”

  “You’re really selfish, Auma,” my husband merely repeated.

  “Akinyi is just two years old. I don’t think it will do her any harm to miss one day of preschool and see her mother instead,” I replied irritably.

  Ian just shrugged and looked at the road. In the crawling London traffic, we made only slow progress. But the heavy atmosphere between the two of us was even more impenetrable than the mass of cars around us. I wondered how the man who sat next to me at the wheel, the father of my child, had become such a stranger to me. An immense sadness came over me.

  Ultimately, I ignored his disapproving demeanor and spoke on his cell phone with my mother. Ian and I then continued to sit next to each other in silence. I was anxious and couldn’t wait to see my daughter again. At the same time, my thoughts kept wandering back to the airport, where Marvin and I had just parted.

  I didn’t dare to look at Ian, out of fear that he could read in my eyes what had happened the previous night on the airplane. So I turned my head away from his rigid profile and looked out the window.

  At that exact moment, the Heathrow Gatwick Express, which shuttled passengers from one airport to the other, passed our car, a high four-wheel drive, the windows of which were almost level with the bus. Absentmindedly, I looked at the vehicle, which was two lanes over from us. I caught my breath—and I fervently hoped that Ian hadn’t noticed it. For there, in the bus, sat Marvin, only a few yards away! His head was bowed; he was probably absorbed in a book or a magazine. His black leather cap and the blue denim shirt left no room for doubt. Startled, I looked away, out of fear of my own reaction.

  Luckily, the lines of cars in the various lanes shifted so that the express bus remained behind us. After a second of relief, however, I wished with all my might that it would pull up again and bring Marvin back alongside me. And it actually did catch up. But Marvin still didn’t raise his head. Then began an arduous process of the two vehicles nearing each other and drifting apart again, which must have lasted about half an hour, until Ian declared that he was now going to take another route, not the usual one, to escape the heavy traffic. Although I was inwardly in complete turmoil, I prayed for Marvin to look up just once, to give me one last chance to look at his face. But it was not to be.

  Overwhelmed by the intensity of my emotions, I heaved a deep sigh as we finally turned off the highway.

  “What’s wrong?” Ian asked.

  “Oh, I’m just tired.”

  * * *

  After a while, I came to terms with the idea that I would never see Marvin again. At first, life in Bracknell took its familiar course. Ian and I returned to everyday life and tried to patch up the cracks in our marriage. But neither of us was happier as a result, and we knew that our separation was only a question of time. We even broached the topic of divorce. Ian blamed me for our rifts; he had the impression that he himself had tried everything. He regarded me as ungrateful and too demanding. All my explanations that I had wanted something different from him fell on deaf ears. I felt like one of his children—even worse, like a piece of his furniture, without my own identity. I didn’t want to go on living like that.

  * * *

  The second African screenwriting workshop took place six months after the first. This time, I wanted to take Akinyi with me. On the way to Zimbabwe, I planned to stop in Nairobi and leave her with my mother, so that after the seminar I could then spend three months in Kenya with the two of them. In the meantime, Ian and I had actually filed for divorce, and I felt exhausted from the domestic tensions. I was looking forward to an eagerly awaited break in my native country.

  In the first days before the workshop, Akinyi and I stayed with my friend Keziah in Nairobi, who had offered to share the care of my daughter with my mother during my two-week absence.

  I was playing with her in the garden when Keziah’s domestic help called me to the telephone.

  “A call for you from abroad!”

  I ran into the house and took the receiver on the assumption that it was Ian.

  “Hello,” said a soft, deep voice. “Do you still remember me?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said hesitantly. I couldn’t believe my ears. And then I blurted out, “How did you find me?” The butterflies in my stomach were suddenly back.

  “Believe it or not, your husband gave me this number.”

  “What? How? What did you say to him?” I stammered.

  “I asked for you, and he gave me this number,” Marvin said dryly. But I could tell that he could not quite believe his luck that he really had me at the other end of the line. “I think he thought I was a brother of yours who lives in the United States, a certain Mark, can that be?”

  “Mark!” I burst out laughing, almost hysterical in the face of the irony of fate. “Yes, I have a brother in America named Mark. As far as I know, he lives in California like you.”

  “A lucky coincidence,” said Marvin.

  I told him how close we had been to each other on the drive through London after our encounter, he on the express bus, I in the car with Ian. Then he told me that he had sent me a homemade card disguised as a prize voucher, which I must, however, have thrown directly in the trash, not recognizing what it was. He had remembered my second workshop in Zimbabwe, which had already been planned back then. That’s why he was calling, he said, because he, too, would be there again at the same time.

  I could hardly believe it. Eventually, we arranged a meeting in Zimbabwe; there, he would give me more details about his further travel plans.

  As much as I was looking forward to seeing him again, the thought of it also made me uneasy. I didn’t know him at all. What would it be like to spend time with him, how would it end?

  “Aren’t you nervous?” I asked him.

  “No, just excited at the idea of seeing you again,” he said with a seductive undertone in his voice.

  I laughed. I was happy, and tried to disregard my fears. We said good-bye, and I remained seated next to the telephone for a while longer. No, I really hadn’t planned my Africa trip this way.

  * * *

  When he entered the restaurant, I had been waiting for him nearly an entire day. At the arranged time, he had not shown up, and so I had stayed an hour and had finally gone back to my hotel, where I found a message from him: He had missed the train and had to wait for a bus; unfortunately, that could take hours.

  The previous day I had arrived in Harare. I had a free weekend ahead of me, since the workshop would not begin until Monday. Because several other participants had also arrived early, the organizers had invited us to a barbecue. I had thought up an excuse in order to be free for my rendezvous. And now I had to be patient.

  “Sorry for the delay,” said Marvin, when he finally sat down with me. He was wearing a straw hat and a Hawaiian shirt and looked very American.

  “No problem. I had no other plans anyway.”

  We smiled at each other across the table and enjoyed looking at each other in peace, without the semidarkness and the tension of the first encounter. Finally he broke the silence.

  “Who would have thought it?”

  “Who would have thought it?” I repeated.

  He took my hand. “Who would have thought that we would see each other again so soon?”

  “That we would see each other again at all,” I corrected him, smiling.

  “True. Who would have thought that we would even meet?”

  I shrugged.

  “It must have been meant to be.”

  Thus Marvin came back into my life. Yes, it was meant to be.

  Over the next two days of his stay in Harare, we saw each other almost without interruption. Because he knew the city well, he showed me where he bought his arts and crafts, as well as other beautiful places. He took me out to eat and spoiled me. We talked nonstop. He told me about himself, about his two daughters, and that he—though I initially refused to bel
ieve it—was already a grandfather.

  In the excitement of seeing each other again, we forgot to give each other more detailed information on the further course of our travels. So I assumed wrongly that he would be in Kenya while I was in South Africa, where I had been invited to a film festival after the workshop. Later, I found out that he was there at the same time as I was; he came to Kenya on the last leg of his business trip.

  Thus, after my return from South Africa, I was surprised once again by a phone call in Keziah’s house. Marvin had been staying in Nairobi for a week and was convinced that I was still in South Africa. He had merely wanted to try to reach me. I was terribly disappointed that we had missed each other, especially as his plane was leaving that same evening. A meeting at the airport seemed to be our last chance, but due to timing issues we couldn’t manage that, either. What a tragedy! But could I complain? The fact that our paths had crossed again at all was astonishing enough. I had gotten more than I had ever imagined.

  25.

  THE DIVORCE PROCEEDINGS went quite smoothly. As I left the courtroom, I heaved a sigh of relief: A new stage was now beginning in my life. But at the same time, an intense fear of a fresh start made itself felt. For four years I had been by Ian’s side in England. Together we had moved into our two-story single-family house in Bracknell, where I had spent the whole time, with only brief interruptions, as a housewife and mother of a small child. Everything beyond that Ian had taken care of. I didn’t even know how to pay the electricity and water bills. Somehow, I had forgotten that I had handled all my affairs on my own for years before moving to Great Britain. The many responsibilities that now seemed to be in store for me frightened me.

  Ian kept the single-family house, while Akinyi and I moved into a small two-bedroom row house, which I had a hard time getting used to. I functioned like a robot, took care of my daughter, tried to do the necessary paperwork properly, and kept my eye out for a job. In the evening, I sat alone in front of the television.

  I was in contact with Marvin mainly by e-mail, though only sporadically. What I had at the time imagined as true love was in reality something one-sided, coming from me. I gathered from our occasional exchanges that Marvin, even though he felt really drawn to me, was in a phase of his life in which he did not want to get involved in any relationship. Soon after our encounter, he broke up with his girlfriend and was happy to be alone. What luck! I thought, frustrated. Now, of all times. It reminded me of my time in Germany, when everyone was on a self-discovery trip. I had not understood this phenomenon back then, either. Either you liked someone and wanted to be together with that person—or not. For me, it was that simple. The suspicion that Marvin didn’t love me tormented me, and yet I could not let go. I longed for him and, against my rational judgment, eagerly took all his phone calls and promptly answered all his e-mails, even if I sometimes had to wait weeks for a response from him.

  * * *

  Little by little, I found my feet in my new existence in Bracknell; I got a job in a marketing firm and thus managed to pay the expenses for the house, the food, and Akinyi’s preschool. Even though the job was not very interesting, I met people, and gradually the loneliness that had accompanied me for so long in England left me. A reassuring routine took its place. The small house became cozy, and I came to appreciate my new life.

  For financial reasons, I took a job in elder care on alternate weekends, which Akinyi spent with her father. In that way, I unexpectedly gained insight into the life of older people in England. I was shocked by how many of them were alone. Often, they were ill and required a great deal of attention. For days, they saw no one, only the uniformed care staff who, like me, briefly dropped by and quickly dealt with the bare necessities. The fact that we were always in a hurry was due to the strictly limited time available to us for each of these women and men, an hour maximum, usually scarcely more than half an hour. Thus, on my house visits, I quickly prepared a microwave meal, helped the old people out of bed or got them ready for it, assisted them with washing or bathing, and chatted for a few minutes with them—always with a side glance at the clock, because I sometimes had up to twelve visits to make in a day.

  Many of the stories I heard from those old people made me melancholy. As an African, I found it inconceivable that so many parents had been abandoned by their children. Often, at the end of a long day with those sad people, I came home completely exhausted. In comparison to them, I was doing really well. I still had my family and a home in Kenya that was close to my heart. But these people no longer found pleasure in anything. Many were only waiting for death. And some of their relatives who no longer showed their faces were probably doing the same.

  “They’ll all come back,” an old man once told me with resignation. “As soon as I’m dead. They want my house.”

  * * *

  After brief spells with various marketing firms, I worked for a company in telemarketing, where I was responsible for drumming up German customers for products from the computer technology sector. That at least gave me the opportunity to speak German. I brought in many new buyers, and after not even a year—when I had, parallel to my job, completed the required further training at Bracknell College—I was offered a position as project manager.

  With the new position, my salary improved, too, and I felt as if I finally had a “real” job with a “serious” title. No one in the company knew that I held a doctorate. When I applied, I had deliberately withheld this information for fear of being rejected as overqualified.

  The work was now considerably more demanding and also more interesting. I assumed greater responsibility, was more committed as a result, and enjoyed the contact with customers. But as time went on, it bothered me that in the world of marketing only the product and the profit had priority, while people seemed to be more a means to an end. I wanted to work for people and not for a product, especially one that was overpriced and rather superfluous, because there were more than enough of them on the market. For me, everything didn’t always have to be faster, better, and more compact. But that was precisely what was expected in the computer industry.

  So I looked for something more suitable, for work with people, preferably with young people. Soon I managed, through an ad, to get a second job at the Youth Service in Bracknell. Two evenings a week, I now worked on a bus that had been converted into a mobile youth center. A distant relative who lived with me at the time took care of my daughter while I worked.

  We would drive the bus to a designated location where the vehicle would be parked and open for the young people to board. We dealt mostly with members of the marginalized Sinti and Roma peoples.

  Working with young people gave me great pleasure. We not only offered them the chance to spend time with friends in a safe environment, but we also used the opportunity to teach them about safe sex, drug abuse, and other challenging topics. The three hours in the youth bus flew by, and I sensed that I had found something that was really for me.

  26.

  ONE DAY, while I was working as a project manager, the phone rang. It was my brother Ben, who asked me to call him back. This immediately made me uneasy, because in recent years I had always been the one who contacted the family. During my next break, I called him back.

  “Mum is sick and in the hospital,” said my younger brother. “The doctors don’t know what she has. You have to do something.”

  Although Ben’s news frightened me, I had to smile to myself. As had happened so often in recent years, this time, too, I was expected to fix things. That would probably never change.

  “What’s wrong with her?” I asked. “What are the doctors saying?”

  “Oh, all sorts of things. They seem unsure.”

  “Haven’t you asked for more details?”

  “Yes, but they’re groping in the dark.”

  Since Ben had given me a telephone number of the hospital where my mother was staying, I asked him to get a doctor. He sounded relieved that I was taking the matter in hand.

>   For a while now, my mother had been unwell. Whenever I spoke to her, she complained of fatigue, and at our last encounter, after my workshop in Zimbabwe the previous year, she had looked thinner to me. I felt guilty, because I had not flown to Kenya during my last vacation, but had gone to Greece with Akinyi instead. The divorce, the move, and the various jobs had exhausted me, and I had needed to get away from everything.

  After fifteen minutes, I again dialed the telephone number that Ben had given me. He immediately put me on with the doctor.

  “My sister is on the phone,” I heard him say, and then an unfamiliar, somewhat exhausted-sounding and slightly testy voice reached my ear.

  “Hello, I’m Auma,” I introduced myself. “I hear you are treating my mother, Kezia.”

  “Yes, she has been with us in the hospital for a few days.”

  “Can you tell me what’s wrong with her?” I held my breath. I didn’t really want to know. I wanted to avoid the anxiety and the unavoidable responsibility for what might now lie ahead of me.

  “We can’t say exactly, but it looks as if something might be wrong with her kidneys.”

  “Her kidneys? What do you mean?”

  The doctor described my mother’s symptoms, spoke about the medical diagnosis, and told me how critical her condition was. Though he didn’t want to frighten me, he finally said it would be best if I came immediately.

  When I had Ben on the phone again, I explained to him that we absolutely needed a second opinion. That evening, I would give him the address of another doctor to whom he should bring our mother. I also told him that I would come home soon. Yet I had no idea how I would pay for the trip. And then something else occurred to me.

  “Does Abongo know about this?”

  “I’ve tried to reach him, but so far it hasn’t worked.”

  “Okay, I’ll try, too. Now I have to go. Talk to you this evening.”

  My thoughts raced as I returned to my workstation. I was terribly afraid that time could run out for my mother. I could already see myself as an orphan—even at my age, I needed my mother, and Akinyi should not lose her grandmother, whom she was only just getting to know. I had taught her Luo so that she would be able to communicate with all her Kenyan relatives without any difficulty.