Barack Obama Dreams from My Father

university fees and transport abroad. Some in the village were willing to help, but many were afraid that if

Barack went off with their money they would never see him again. So Barack wrote to universities in

America. He wrote and he wrote. Finally, a university in Hawaii wrote back and told him they would give him

a scholarship. No one knew where this place was, but Barack didn’t care. He gathered up his pregnant wife

and son and dropped them off with me, and in less than a month he was gone.

What happened in America, I cannot say. I know that after less than two years we received a letter

from Barack saying that he had met this American girl, Ann, and that he would like to marry her. Now, Barry,

you have heard that your grandfather disapproved of this marriage. This is true, but it is not for the reasons

you say. You see, Onyango did not believe your father was behaving responsibly. He wrote back to Barack,

saying, “How can you marry this white woman when you have responsibilities at home? Will this woman

return with you and live as a Luo woman? Will she accept that you already have a wife and children? I have

not heard of white people understanding such things. Their women are jealous and used to being

pampered. But if I am wrong in this matter, let the girl’s father come to my hut and discuss the situation

properly. For this is the affairs of elders, not children.” He also wrote to your grandfather Stanley and said

many of these same things.

As you know, your father went ahead with the marriage. He only told Onyango what had happened

after you were born. We are all happy that this marriage took place, because without it we would not have

you here with us now. But your grandfather was very angry at the time, and threatened to have Barack’s

visa revoked. And because he had lived with white people, perhaps Onyango did understand the white

people’s customs better than Barack did. For when Barack finally returned to Kenya, we discovered that you

and your mother had stayed behind, just as Onyango had warned.

Soon after Barack came, a white woman arrived in Kisumu looking for him. At first we thought this must

be your mother, Ann. Barack had to explain that this was a different woman, Ruth. He said that he had met

her at Harvard and that she had followed him to Kenya without his knowledge. Your grandfather didn’t

believe this story and thought that again Barack had disobeyed him. But I wasn’t so sure, for, in fact, Barack

did seem reluctant to marry Ruth at first. I’m not sure what finally swayed him. Maybe he felt Ruth would be

better suited to his new life. Or maybe he heard gossip that Kezia had enjoyed herself too much during his

absence, even though I told him that this gossip was not true. Or maybe he just cared for Ruth more than

he liked to admit.

Whatever the reason, I know that once Barack agreed to marry Ruth, she could not accept the idea of

his having Kezia as a second wife. That is how the children went to live with their father and his new wife in

Nairobi. When Barack brought Auma and Roy back to visit, Ruth would refuse to accompany him and would

not let Barack bring David or Mark. Onyango did not discuss this directly with Barack. But he would say to

his friends, in such a way that Barack could hear him, “My son is a big man, but when he comes home his

mother must cook for him instead of his wife.”

The others have told you what happened to your father in Nairobi. We saw him rarely, and he would

usually stay only a short time. Whenever he came, he would bring us expensive gifts and money and

impress all the people with his big car and fine clothes. But your grandfather continued to speak harshly to

him, as if he were a boy. Onyango was now very old. He walked with a cane and was almost blind. He

could not even bathe without my help, which I think caused him shame. But age did not soften his temper.

Later, when Barack fell from power, he would try to hide his problems from the old man. He continued

to bring gifts that he could no longer afford, although we noticed that he arrived in a taxi instead of in his

own car. Only to me would he confide his unhappiness and disappointments. I would tell him he was too

stubborn in his dealings with the government. He would talk to me about principles, and I would tell him that

his principles weighed heavily on his children. He would say I didn’t understand, just as his father had said

to me. So I stopped giving advice and just listened.

That is what Barack needed most, I think-someone to listen to him. Even after things had improved

again for him, and he had built this house for us, he remained heavy-hearted. With his children, he behaved

just as Onyango had behaved towards him. He saw that he was pushing them away, but there was nothing

he could do. He still liked to boast and laugh and drink with the men. But his laughter was empty. I

remember the last time he visited Onyango before the old man died. The two of them sat in their chairs,

facing each other and eating their food, but no words passed between them. A few months later, when

Onyango finally went to join his ancestors, Barack came home to make all the arrangements. He said very

little, and it is only when he sorted through a few of the old man’s belongings that I saw him begin to weep.
Granny stood up and brushed the grass off her skirt. The yard was hushed, the silence broken only by

a bird’s anxious trill. “It’s going to rain,” she said, and we all gathered up the mats and cups and carried

them into the house.

Once inside, I asked Granny if she had anything left of the Old Man’s or our grandfather’s. She went

into her bedroom, sorting through the contents of an old leather trunk. A few minutes later, she emerged

with a rust-colored book the size of a passport, along with a few papers of different colors, stapled together

and chewed at an angle along one side.

“I’m afraid this is all I could find,” she said to Auma. “The rats got to the papers before I had a chance

to put them away.”

Auma and I sat down and set the book and papers on the low table in front of us. The binding on the

red book had crumbled away, but the cover was still legible: Domestic Servant’s Pocket Register, it read,

and in smaller letters, Issued under the Authority of the Registration of Domestic Servant’s Ordinance, 1928

, Colony and Protectorate of Kenya. On the book’s inside cover, we found a two-shilling stamp above

Onyango’s left and right thumbprints. The swirls were still clear, like an imprint of coral. The box was empty

where the photograph once had been.

The preamble explained: The object of this Ordinance is to provide every person employed in a

domestic capacity with a record of such employment, and to safeguard his or her interests as well as to

protect employers against the employment of persons who have rendered themselves unsuitable for such

work.

The term servant was defined: cook, house servant, waiter, butler, nurse, valet, bar boy, footmen, or

working without such books, or in any way injuring such books, are liable to a fine not exceeding one

hundred shillings or to imprisonment not exceeding six months or to both. And then, the particulars of said

Registered Servant, filled out in the elegant, unhurried script of a nameless clerk:

Native Registration Ordinance No.: Rwl A NBI 0976717.

Race or Tribe: Ja’Luo.

Usual Place of Residence When Not Employed: Kisumu.

Sex: M.

Age: 35.

Complexion: Dark.

Nose: Flat.

Mouth: Large.

Hair: Curly.

Teeth: Six Missing.

Scars, Tribal Marks, or Other Peculiarities: None.
Toward the back of the book, we found the particulars of employment, signed and testified to by

various employers. Capt. C. Harford of Nairobi’s Government House said that Onyango performed his

duties as personal boy with admirable diligence. Mr. A. G. Dickson found his cooking excellent-he can read

and write English and follows any recipes…apart from other things his pastries are excellent. He no longer

needed Onyango’s services since I am no longer on Safari. Dr. H. H. Sherry suggested that Onyango is a

capable cook but the job is not big enough for him. On the other hand, Mr. Arthur W. H. Cole of the East

Africa Survey Group says that after a week on the job, Onyango was found to be unsuitable and certainly

not worth 60 shillings per month.

We moved to the stack of letters. They were from our father, addressed to various universities in the

States. There were more than thirty of them, to the presidents of Morgan State, Santa Barbara Junior

College, San Francisco State.

Dear President Calhoun, one letter began. I have heard of your college from Mrs. Helen Roberts of

Palo Alto, California, who is now in Nairobi here. Mrs. Roberts, knowing how much desirous I am to further

my studies in the United States of America, has asked me to apply to your esteemed college for admission.

I shall therefore be very much pleased if you will kindly forward me your application form and information

regarding the possibility of such scholarships as you may be aware of. Attached to several letters were

recommendations from Miss Elizabeth Mooney, a literacy specialist from Maryland. It is not possible to

obtain Mr. O’Bama’s school transcripts, she wrote, since he has been out of school for some years.

However, she expressed confidence in our father’s talents, noting that she had observed him making use of

algebra and geometry. She added that there was a great need in Kenya for capable and dedicated teachers

and that, given Mr. O’Bama’s desire to be of service to his country, he should be given a chance, perhaps

on a one-year basis.

This was it, I thought to myself. My inheritance. I rearranged the letters in a neat stack and set them

under the registry book. Then I went out into the backyard. Standing before the two graves, I felt everything

around me-the cornfields, the mango tree, the sky-closing in, until I was left with only a series of mental

images, Granny’s stories come to life.

I see my grandfather, standing before his father’s hut, a wiry, grim-faced boy, almost ridiculous in his

oversized trousers and his buttonless shirt. I watch his father turn away from him and hear his brothers

laugh. I feel the heat pour down his brow, the knots forming in his limbs, the sudden jump in his heart. And

as his figure turns and starts back down the road of red earth, I know that for him the path of his life is now

altered irreversibly, completely.

He will have to reinvent himself in this arid, solitary place. Through force of will, he will create a life out

of the scraps of an unknown world, and the memories of a world rendered obsolete. And yet, as he sits

alone in a freshly scrubbed hut, an old man now with milky eyes, I know that he still hears his father and

brothers laughing behind him. He still hears the clipped voice of a British captain, explaining for the third

and last time the correct proportion of tonic to gin. The nerves in the old man’s neck tighten, the rage builds-

he grabs his stick to hit at something, anything. Until finally his grip weakens with the realization that for all

the power in his hands and the force of his will, the laughter, the rebukes, will outlast him. His body goes

slack in the chair. He knows that he will not outlive a mocking fate. He waits to die, alone.

The picture fades, replaced by the image of a nine-year-old boy-my father. He’s hungry, tired, clinging

to his sister’s hand, searching for the mother he’s lost. The hunger is too much for him, the exhaustion too

great; until finally the slender line that holds him to his mother snaps, sending her image to float down, down

into the emptiness. The boy starts to cry; he shakes off his sister’s hand. He wants to go home, he shouts,

back to his father’s house. He will find a new mother. He will lose himself in games and learn the power of

his mind.

But he won’t forget the desperation of that day. Twelve years later, at his narrow desk, he will glance

up from a stack of forms toward the restless sky and feel that same panic return. He, too, will have to invent

himself. His boss is out of the office; he sets the forms aside and from an old file cabinet pulls out a list of

addresses. He yanks the typewriter toward him and begins to type, letter after letter after letter, typing the

envelopes, sealing the letters like messages in bottles that will drop through a post office slot into a vast

ocean and perhaps allow him to escape the island of his father’s shame.

How lucky he must have felt when his ship came sailing in! He must have known, when that letter

came from Hawaii, that he had been chosen after all; that he possessed the grace of his name, the baraka,

the blessings of God. With the degree, the ascot, the American wife, the car, the words, the figures, the

wallet, the proper proportion of tonic to gin, the polish, the panache, the entire thing seamless and natural,

without the cobbled-together, haphazard quality of an earlier time-what could stand in his way?

He had almost succeeded, in a way his own father could never have hoped for. And then, after

seeming to travel so far, to discover that he had not escaped after all! To discover that he remained trapped

on his father’s island, with its fissures of anger and doubt and defeat, the emotions still visible beneath the

surface, hot and molten and alive, like a wicked, yawning mouth, and his mother gone, gone, away….

I dropped to the ground and swept my hand across the smooth yellow tile. Oh, Father, I cried. There

was no shame in your confusion. Just as there had been no shame in your father’s before you. No shame in

the fear, or in the fear of his father before him. There was only shame in the silence fear had produced. It

was the silence that betrayed us. If it weren’t for that silence, your grandfather might have told your father

that he could never escape himself, or re-create himself alone. Your father might have taught those same

lessons to you. And you, the son, might have taught your father that this new world that was beckoning all

of you involved more than just railroads and indoor toilets and irrigation ditches and gramophones, lifeless

instruments that could be absorbed into the old ways. You might have told him that these instruments

carried with them a dangerous power, that they demanded a different way of seeing the world. That this

power could be absorbed only alongside a faith born out of hardship, a faith that wasn’t new, that wasn’t

black or white or Christian or Muslim but that pulsed in the heart of the first African village and the first

Kansas homestead-a faith in other people.

The silence killed your faith. And for lack of faith you clung to both too much and too little of your past.

Too much of its rigidness, its suspicions, its male cruelties. Too little of the laughter in Granny’s voice, the

pleasures of company while herding the goats, the murmur of the market, the stories around the fire. The

loyalty that could make up for a lack of airplanes or rifles. Words of encouragement. An embrace. A strong,

true love. For all your gifts-the quick mind, the powers of concentration, the charm-you could never forge

yourself into a whole man by leaving those things behind….

For a long time I sat between the two graves and wept. When my tears were finally spent, I felt a

calmness wash over me. I felt the circle finally close. I realized that who I was, what I cared about, was no

longer just a matter of intellect or obligation, no longer a construct of words. I saw that my life in America-the

black life, the white life, the sense of abandonment I’d felt as a boy, the frustration and hope I’d witnessed in

Chicago-all of it was connected with this small plot of earth an ocean away, connected by more than the

accident of a name or the color of my skin. The pain I felt was my father’s pain. My questions were my

brothers’ questions. Their struggle, my birthright.

A light rain began to fall, the drops tapping on the leaves above. I was about to light a cigarette when I

felt a hand on my arm. I turned to find Bernard squatting beside me, trying to fit the two of us under a bent-

up old umbrella.

“They wanted me to see if you were okay,” he said.

I smiled. “Yeah. I’m okay.”

He nodded, his eyes squinting at the clouds. He turned back to me, and said “Why don’t you let me

have a cigarette, and I will sit and smoke with you.”

I looked at his smooth, dark face, and put the cigarette back in the box. “I need to quit,” I said. “Come

on, let’s take a walk instead.”

We stood up and started toward the entrance to the compound. The young boy, Godfrey, was standing

beside the cooking hut, one leg propped like a crane’s against the mud wall. He looked at us and offered a

tentative smile.

“Come on,” Bernard said, waving to the boy. “You can walk with us.” And so the three of us made our

way over the widening dirt road, picking at leaves that grew along the way, watching the rain blow down

across the several valleys.

EPILOGUE
I REMAINED IN KENYA FOR two more weeks. We all returned to Nairobi and there were more

dinners, more arguments, more stories. Granny stayed in Auma’s apartment, and each night I fell asleep to

their whispering voices. One day we gathered at a photography studio for a family portrait, and all the

women wore flowing African gowns of bright greens and yellows and blues, and the men were all tall and

shaven and neatly pressed, and the photographer, a slight Indian man with bushy eyebrows, remarked on

what a handsome picture we made.

Roy flew back to Washington, D.C., shortly after that; Granny returned to Home Squared. The days

suddenly became very quiet, and a certain melancholy settled over Auma and me, as if we were coming out

of a dream. And maybe it was the sense that we, too, would soon be returning to our other lives, once again

separate and apart, that made us decide one day to go to see George, our father’s last child.

It turned out to be a painful affair, arranged hastily and without the mother’s knowledge: we simply

drove with Zeituni to a neat, single-story schoolhouse, where a group of schoolchildren were playing in a

wide, grassy field. After a brief conversation with the teacher supervising the recess, Zeituni led one of the

children over to us. He was a handsome, roundheaded boy with a wary gaze. Zeituni leaned down and

pointed at Auma and me.

“This is your sister,” she said to the boy, “who used to play with you on her knee. This is your brother,

who has come all the way from America to see you.”

The boy shook our hands bravely but kept glancing back at games he’d just left. I realized then that

we’d made a mistake. Soon the principal of the school emerged from her office to say that unless we had

the mother’s permission, we would have to leave. Zeituni began to argue with the woman, but Auma said,

“No, Auntie, she’s right. We should go.” From the car, we watched George return to his friends, quickly

indistinguishable from the others with round heads and knobby knees who were chasing a scuffed football

through the grass. I found myself suddenly remembering then my first meeting with the Old Man, the fear

and discomfort that his presence had caused me, forcing me for the first time to consider the mystery of my

own life. And I took comfort in the fact that perhaps one day, when he was older, George, too, might want to

know who his father had been, and who his brothers and sisters were, and that if he ever came to me I

would be there for him, to tell him the story I knew.

That evening, I asked Auma if she knew of any good books on the Luo, and she suggested we go visit

a former history teacher of hers, a tall, willowy woman named Dr. Rukia Odero, who had been a friend of

the Old Man’s. When we arrived at her house, Dr. Odero was about to sit down for dinner, and she insisted

that we join her. Over a meal of tilapia and ugali, the professor insisted I call her Rukia, then asked me

about my impressions of the country. Had I been disappointed? she wondered. I told her that I hadn’t,

although I was leaving with as many questions as answers.

“That’s good,” Rukia said, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “That’s how we historians

make a living, you know. All day long we sit, trying to find new questions. It can be very tiresome, actually. It

requires a temperament for mischief. You know, young black Americans tend to romanticize Africa so.

When your father and I were young, it was just the opposite-we expected to find all the answers in America.

Harlem. Chicago. Langston Hughes and James Baldwin. That’s where we drew our inspiration. And the

Kennedys-they were very popular. The chance to study in America was very important. A hopeful time. Of

course, when we returned we realized that our education did not always serve us so well. Or the people

who had sent us. There was all this messy history to deal with.”

I asked her why she thought black Americans were prone to disappointment when they visited Africa.

She shook her head and smiled. “Because they come here looking for the authentic,” she said. “That is

bound to disappoint a person. Look at this meal we are eating. Many people will tell you that the Luo are a

fish-eating people. But that was not true for all Luo. Only those who lived by the lake. And even for those

Luo, it was not always true. Before they settled around the lake, they were pastoralists, like the Masai. Now,

if you and your sister behave yourself and eat a proper share of this food, I will offer you tea. Kenyans are

very boastful about the quality of their tea, you notice. But of course we got this habit from the English. Our

ancestors did not drink such a thing. Then there’s the spices we used to cook this fish. They originally came

from India, or Indonesia. So even in this simple meal, you will find it very difficult to be authentic-although

the meal is certainly African.”

Rukia rolled a ball of ugali in her hand and dipped it into her stew. “You can hardly blame black

Americans, of course, for wanting an unblemished past. After the cruelties they’ve suffered-still suffer, from

what I read in the newspapers. They’re not unique in this desire. The European wants the same thing. The

Germans, the English…they all claim Athens and Rome as their own, when, in fact, their ancestors helped

destroy classical culture. But that happened so long ago, so their task is easier. In their schools, you rarely

hear about the misery of European peasants throughout most of recorded history. The corruption and