Barack Obama Dreams from My Father

pile of rocks and sticks, saying something to Roy in Luo.

“That’s Obama’s grave,” Roy explained. “Our great-grandfather. All the land around here is called

K’Obama-‘Land of the Obama.’ We are Jok’Obama-‘the people of Obama.’ Our great-great-grandfather was

raised in Alego, but he moved here when he was still a young man. This is where Obama settled, and

where all his children were born.”

“So why did our grandfather go back to Alego?”

Roy turned to Kezia, who shook her head. “You have to ask Granny that question,” Roy said. “My mum

thinks maybe he didn’t get along with his brothers. In fact, one of his brothers is still living here. He’s old

now, but perhaps we can see him.”

We came to a small wooden house where a tall, handsome woman was sweeping the yard. Behind

her, a young shirtless man sat on the porch. The woman shaded her eyes with her forearm and began to

wave, and the young man slowly turned our way. Roy went up to shake hands with the woman, whose

name was Salina, and the young man stood up to greet us.

“Eh, you people finally came for me,” Abo said, hugging each of us in turn. He reached for his shirt. “I

had heard you were coming with Barry so long ago!”

“Yah, you know how it is,” Roy said. “It took us a while to get organized.”

“I’m just glad you came. I’m telling you, I need to get back to Nairobi.”

“You don’t like it here, eh?”

“It’s so boring, man, you would not believe it. No TV. No clubs. These people in the country, I think they

are slow. If Billy hadn’t shown up, I would have gone crazy for sure.”

“Billy’s here?”

“Yah, he’s around somewhere….” Abo waved his hand vaguely, then turned to me and smiled. “So,

Barry. What have you brought me from America?”

I reached into my bag and pulled out one of the portable cassette players that I had bought for him and

Bernard. He turned it over in his hands with a thinly disguised look of disappointment.

“This brand is not a Sony, is it?” he said. Then, looking up, he quickly recovered himself and slapped

me on the back. “That’s okay, Barry. Thank you! Thank you.”

I nodded at him, trying not to get angry. He was standing beside Bernard and their resemblance was

striking: the same height, the same slender frame, the same smooth, even features. Just shave off Abo’s

mustache, I thought to myself, and they could almost Pass as twins. Except for…what? The look in Abo’s

eyes. That was it. Not just the telltale redness of some sort of high but something deeper, something that

reminded me of young men back in Chicago. An element of guardedness, perhaps, and calculation. The

look of someone who realizes early in life that he has been wronged.

We followed Salina inside the house, and she brought in a tray of sodas and biscuits. As she set down

the tray, a strapping, mustached young man, as good-looking as Salina and as tall as Roy, walked through

the door and let out a yell.

“Roy! What are you doing here?”

Roy stood up and they embraced. “You know me. Just looking for a meal. I should ask you the same

thing.”

“Me, I am only visiting my mother. If I don’t come so often, she begins to complain.” He kissed Salina

I’ve heard so much about you, Barry, I cannot believe you are now here.” He turned to Salina. “Have you

given Barry food?”

“Soon, Billy. Soon.” Salina took Kezia’s hand and turned to Roy. “You see what mothers must put up

with? How is your granny, anyway?”

“Same.”

Together with Kezia, she went out of the room, and Billy fell onto the couch beside Roy.

“So, you still crazy, bwana? Look at you now! Well-fed, like a prize bull! You must be enjoying yourself

in the States.”

“It’s okay,” Roy said. “How’s Mombasa? I hear you’re working at the post office.”

Billy shrugged. “The pay is all right. Not too much thinking, you know, but steady.” He turned to me.

“Let me tell you, Barry, this brother of yours, he was wild! Truthfully, we were all wild back then. We spent

most of our time chasing the bush meat, eh Roy!” He slapped Roy on the thigh and laughed. “So tell me,

how are these American women?”

Roy laughed, but he seemed relieved when Salina and Kezia brought in dinner. “You see, Barry,” Billy

said, setting down his plate on the low table in front of him, “your father and my father were age-mates. Very

close. When Roy and I were growing up, we were also age-mates, so naturally we became very close. Let

me tell you, your father, he was a very great man. I was closer to him than to my own father. If I was in

trouble, it was my Uncle Barack that I went to first. And Roy, you would also go to my father, I believe.”

“The men in our family were very good to other people’s children,” Roy said quietly. “With their own,

they didn’t want to look weak.”

Billy nodded and licked his fingers. “You know, Roy, I think there’s truth in what you say. Myself, I don’t

want to make the same mistakes. I don’t want to mistreat my family.” With his clean hand, Billy pulled his

wallet out of his pocket and showed me a picture of his wife and their two young children. “I swear, bwana,

marriage takes you! You should see me now, Roy. I’ve become so calm. A family man. Of course, there are

limits to what a man should take. My wife, she knows not to cross me too often. What do you say, Sayid?”

I realized that Sayid hadn’t spoken much since we arrived. He washed his hands now before turning to

Billy.

“I am not yet married,” he said, “so perhaps I should not speak. But I admit, I have been giving these

paused to look around the room. “This thing between men and women. Our men, we try to be strong, but

our strength is often misplaced. Like this business with having more than one woman. Our fathers had

many wives, so we also must have many women. But we do not stop and look at the consequences. What

happens with all these women? They become jealous. The children, they are not close to their fathers. It is-”

Sayid caught himself suddenly and smiled. “Of course, I have not even one wife, so I shouldn’t carry on

so. Where there is no experience, I believe the wise man is silent.”

“Achebe?” I asked.

Sayid laughed and clutched my hand. “No, Barry. That one was only me.”

It was dark by the time we finished dinner, and, after thanking Salina and Kezia for the food, we

followed Billy outside onto a narrow footpath. Walking under a full moon, we soon came to a smaller house

where the shadows of moths fluttered against a yellow window. Billy knocked on the door, and a short man

with a scar along his forehead answered, his lips smiling but his eyes darting around like those of a man

about to be struck. Behind him sat another man, tall, very thin, dressed in white and with a wispy goatee

and mustache that made him look like an Indian sadhu. Together, the two men began shaking our hands

feverishly, speaking to me in broken English.

“Your nephew!” the white-haired man said, pointing to himself.

The short one laughed and said, “His hair is white, but he calls you uncle! Ha-ha. You like this English?

Come.”

They led us to a wooden table set with an unlabeled bottle of clear liquid and three glasses. The white-

“This is better than whiskey, Barry,” Billy said as he lifted his glass. “It makes a man very potent.” He threw

the drink down his throat, and Roy and I followed suit. I felt my chest explode, raining down shrapnel into

my stomach. The glasses were refilled, but Sayid took a pass, so the short man held the extra drink in front

of my eyes, his face distorted through the glass.

“More?”

“You may perhaps have something for me?” the white-haired man said. “T-shirt maybe? Shoes?”

“I’m sorry…I left everything back in Alego.”

The short man kept smiling as if he hadn’t understood and again offered me a drink. This time Billy

pushed the man’s hand away.

“Leave him be!” Billy shouted. “We can drink more later. First we should see our grandfather.”

The two men led us into a small back room. There, in front of a kerosene lamp, sat what looked like the

oldest man I had ever seen. His hair was snow-white, his skin like parchment. He was motionless, his eyes

closed, his fleshless arms propped on the armrests of his chair. I thought perhaps he was asleep, but when

Billy stepped forward the old man’s head tilted in our direction, and I saw a mirror image of the face I’d seen

yesterday in Alego, in the faded photograph on Granny’s wall.

Billy explained who was there, and the old man nodded and began to speak in a low, quaking voice

that seemed to rise out of a chamber beneath the floor.

“He says that he is glad you have come,” Roy translated. “He was your grandfather’s brother. He

wishes you well.”

I said that I was happy to see him, and the old man nodded again.

“He says that many young men have been lost to…the white man’s country. He says his own son is in

America and has not come home for many years. Such men are like ghosts, he says. When they die, no

one will be there to mourn them. No ancestors will be there to welcome them. So…he says it is good that

you have returned.”

The old man raised his hand and I shook it gently. As we got up to leave, the old man said something

else, and Roy nodded his head before closing the door behind us.

“He says that if you hear of his son,” Roy explained, “you should tell him that he should come home.”

Perhaps it was the effects of the moonshine, or the fact that the people around me were speaking in a

language I didn’t understand. But when I try to remember the rest of that evening, it’s as if I’m walking

through a dream. The moon hangs low in the sky, while the figures of Roy and the others merge with the

shadows of corn. We enter another small house and find more men, perhaps six, perhaps ten, the numbers

constantly changing as the night wears on. In the center of a rough wooden table sit three more bottles, and

the men begin pouring the moonshine into the glasses, ceremoniously at first, then faster, more sloppily; the

dull, labelless bottle passed from hand to hand. I stop drinking after two more shots, but no one seems to

notice. Old faces and young faces all glow like jack-o’-lanterns in the shifting lamplight, laughing and

shouting, slumped in dark corners or gesticulating wildly for cigarettes or another drink, anger or joy pitching

up to a crest, then just as quickly ebbing away, words of Luo and Swahili and English running together in

unrecognizable swirls, the voices wheedling for money or shirts or the bottle, the voices laughing and

sobbing, the outstretched hands, the faltering angry voices of my own sodden youth, of Harlem and the

South Side; the voices of my father.

I’m not sure how long we stayed. I know that at some point, Sayid came up and shook my arm.

“Barry, we are going,” he said. “Bernard is not feeling well.”

I said I’d go with them, but as I stood up, Abo leaned over to me and grabbed my shoulders.

“Barry! Where are you going?”

“To sleep, Abo.”

“You must stay here with us! With me! And Roy!”

I looked up to see Roy slumped on the couch. Our eyes met, and I nodded toward the door. It seemed

then that the entire room became silent, as if I were watching the scene on television and the sound had

gone off. I saw the white-haired man fill Roy’s glass, and I thought about pulling Roy out of the room. But

Roy’s eyes slid away from mine; he laughed and poured the drink down his throat to much cheering and

applause, cheering that I still could hear even after Sayid, Bernard, and I had started making our way back

toward Salina’s house.

“Those people were too drunk,” Bernard said weakly as we walked across the field.

Sayid nodded and turned to me. “I’m afraid Roy is too much like my eldest brother. You know, your

father was very popular in these parts. Also in Alego. Whenever he came home, he would buy everyone

drinks and stay out very late. The people here appreciated this. They would tell him, ‘You are a big man, but

you have not forgotten us.’ Such words made him happy, I think. I remember once, he took me to Kisumu

town in his Mercedes. On the way, he saw a matatu picking up passengers, and he said to me, ‘Sayid, we

will be matatu drivers this evening!’ At the next matatu stop, he picked up the remaining people and told me

to collect the regular fare from them. I think we squeezed eight people into his car. He took them not only to

Kisumu but to their houses, or wherever they needed to go. And when each of them got out, he gave them

all their money back. The people didn’t understand why he did this thing, and I also didn’t understand at the

time. After we were done, we went to the bar, and he told the story of what we had done to all of his friends.

He laughed very well that night.”

Sayid paused, choosing his words carefully.

“This is what made my brother such a good man, these things. But I think also that once you are one

thing, you cannot pretend that you are something else. How could he be a matatu driver, or stay out all night

drinking, and also he is writing Kenya’s economic plan? A man does service for his people by doing what is

right for him, isn’t this so? Not by doing what others think he should do. But my brother, although he prided

himself on his independence, I also think that he was afraid of some things. Afraid of what people would say

about him if he left the bar too early. That perhaps he would no longer belong with those he’d grown up

with.”

Sayid looked at his nephew with something like regret. “I did not mean to speak so freely, Bernard. You

must respect your elders. They clear the way for you so that your path is easier. But if you see them falling

into a pit, then you must learn to what?”

“Step around,” Bernard said.

“You are right. Diverge from that path and make your own.”

Sayid put his arm over the younger man’s shoulders. As we approached Salina’s house, I looked back

behind me. I could still see the dim light of the old man’s window, and sense his blind eyes staring out into

the darkness.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

another day. In slightly better shape, I decided to make the trip back to Home Squared with Sayid and

Bernard by bus, a decision I soon regretted. We had to stand for most of the way, our heads forced down by

the bus’s low roof. To make matters worse, I’d come down with a case of the runs. My stomach lurched with

every bump. My head throbbed with each wayward turn. And so it was in a cautious trot that I first appeared

to Granny and Auma upon our return, offering them a curt wave before racing across the backyard, around

an errant cow, and into the outhouse.

Twenty minutes later I emerged, blinking like a prisoner in the light of the early afternoon. The women

were gathered on straw mats under the shade of a mango tree while Granny braided Auma’s hair and

Zeituni braided the hair of a neighbor’s girl.

“Did you have a nice time?” Auma said, trying not to smile.

“Wonderful.” I sat down beside them and watched as a skinny old woman came out of the house and

took a spot next to Granny. The old woman was in her early seventies, I guessed, but was dressed in a

bright pink sweater; she folded her legs to the side like a bashful schoolgirl. She peered at me and spoke to

Auma in Luo.

“She says you don’t look so well.”

The old woman smiled at me, revealing two missing bottom front teeth.

“This is our grandfather’s sister, Dorsila,” Auma continued. “The last child of our great-grandfather

Obama. She lives in another village, but when she heard-Ow! I tell you, Barack, you are lucky you don’t

have braids to undo. What was I saying? Yah…Dorsila says that when she heard that we had come she

walked all the way to see us. She brings greetings from all the people of her village.”

Dorsila and I shook hands, and I mentioned that I’d met her older brother in Kendu Bay. She nodded

and spoke again.

“She says her brother is very old,” Auma translated. “When he was younger, he looked just like our

grandfather. Sometimes even she couldn’t tell them apart.”

I agreed and took out my lighter. As I pulled at the flame, our great-aunt hooted and spoke rapidly to

Auma.

“She wants to know where the fire comes from.”

explained, “She says that things are changing so fast it makes her head spin. She says that the first time

she saw television, she assumed the people inside the box could also see her. She thought they were very

rude, because when she spoke to them they never answered back.”

Dorsila chuckled at herself good-humoredly, while Zeituni went into the cooking hut. A few minutes

later, Zeituni came out with a mug in her hand. I asked her what had happened to Sayid and Bernard.

“They’re asleep,” she said, handing me the cup. “Here. Drink this.”

I took a sniff of the steaming green liquid. It smelled like a swamp.

“What is it?”

“It’s made from a plant that grows here. Trust me…it will firm up your stomach in a jiffy.”

I took a tentative first sip. The brew tasted as bad as it looked, but Zeituni stood over me until I had

gulped down the last drop. “That is your grandfather’s recipe,” she said. “I told you he was a herbalist.”

I took another puff from my cigarette and turned to Auma. “Ask Granny to tell me more about him,” I

said. “Our grandfather, I mean. Roy says that he actually grew up in Kendu, then moved to Alego on his

own.”

Granny nodded to Auma’s translation. “Does she know why he left Kendu?”

I asked Granny to start from the beginning. How did our great-grandfather Obama come to live in

Kendu? Where did our grandfather work? Why did the Old Man’s mother leave? As she started to answer, I

felt the wind lift, then die. A row of high clouds crossed over the hills. And under the fanning shade of the

mango tree, as hands wove black curls into even rows, I heard all our voices begin to run together, the

sound of three generations tumbling over each other like the currents of a slow-moving stream, my

questions like rocks roiling the water, the breaks in memory separating the currents, but always the voices

returning to that single course, a single story….

Owiny sired Kisodhi, Kisodhi sired Ogelo, Ogelo sired Otondi, Otondi sired Obongo, Obongo sired Okoth,

and Okoth sired Opiyo. The women who bore them, their names are forgotten, for that was the way of our

people.

direction of what is now Uganda, and that we were like the Masai, migrating in search of water and grazing

land for great herds of cattle. In Alego, the people settled and began to grow crops. Other Luo settled by the

lake and learned to fish. There were other tribes, who spoke Bantu, already living in Alego when the Luo

came, and great wars were fought. Our ancestor Owiny was known as a great warrior and leader of his

people. He helped to defeat the Bantu armies, but the Bantu were allowed to stay on and marry Luo, and

taught us many things about farming and the new land.

Once people began to settle and farm, the land in Alego became crowded. Opiyo, son of Okoth, was a

younger brother, so perhaps that is why he decided to move to Kendu Bay. When he moved there, he was

landless, but in the custom of our people, a man could use any unused land. What a man did not use

reverted to the tribe. So there was no shame in Opiyo’s situation. He worked in the compounds of other

men and cleared the land for his own farm. But before he could prosper, he died very young, leaving behind

two wives and several children. One wife was taken in by Opiyo’s brother, as was the custom then-she

became the brother’s wife, her children his children. But the other wife also died, and her oldest son,

Obama, was orphaned when still a boy. He, too, lived with his uncle, but the resources of the family were

strained, and so as Obama grew older, he began to work for other men as his father had done before him.

The family he worked for was wealthy, with many cattle. But they came to admire Obama, for he was

enterprising and a very good farmer. When he sought to marry their oldest daughter, they agreed, and the

uncles in this family provided the necessary dowry. And when this eldest daughter died, they agreed that

Obama could marry the younger daughter, whose name was Nyaoke. Eventually Obama had four wives,

who bore him many children. He cleared his own land and became prosperous, with a large compound and

many cattle and goats. And because of his politeness and responsible ways, he became an elder in Kendu,

and many came to seek his advice.

Your grandfather, Onyango, was Nyaoke’s fifth son. Dorsila, who sits here, was the last child of

Obama’s last wife.

This is the time before the white man came. Each family had their own compound, but they all lived

under the laws of the elders. Men had their own huts, and were responsible for clearing and cultivating their

land, as well as protecting the cattle from wild animals and the raids of other tribes. Each wife had her own

vegetable plot, which only she and her daughters would cultivate. She cooked the man’s food, drew water,

and maintained the huts. The elders regulated all plantings and the harvests. They organized families to

rotate their work, so that each family helped the other, in doing these things. The elders distributed food to

widows or those who had fallen on hard times, provided cattle as dowry for those men who had no cattle

themselves, and settled all conflicts. The words of the elders were law and strictly followed-those who

disobeyed would have to leave and start anew in another village.

The children did not go to school, but learned alongside their parents. The girls would accompany their

mothers and learn how to grind the millet into porridge, how to grow vegetables and pack clay for the huts.

The boys learned from their fathers how to herd and work pangas and throw spears. When a mother died,