And Then Life Happens (15 page)

From Gogo I learned that he had previously been with a woman who had a twelve-year-old child. On the weekends, he had always gone to stay with his girlfriend in their shared apartment, where she had cooked for him and done his laundry. Then he fell for me and broke up with her. Now he stayed in the residence hall on the weekends to be with me—and had to do all his household chores himself.

When I had fallen deeply in love with him, he must have realized that the stranger to whom he had once been so drawn was now too foreign to him. Soon, he again began to go “home” over the weekend. At first, I thought nothing of it. In my naïveté, I didn't notice that my first great romance was heading for its end. Once again, it was Gogo who opened my eyes.

“Haven't you noticed anything?” she asked with a hint of indignation in her voice.

We were sitting in her room. It was the weekend, and Dieter wasn't there. Puzzled, I stared at her.

“He's back with his old girlfriend!” Gogo suddenly blurted out.

“But you told me that he broke up with her when he fell in love with me,” I replied apprehensively. I didn't want to hear her suspicions. I couldn't bear the thought that Dieter might not love me anymore. I had devoted myself to him wholeheartedly.

“Listen to me, Auma,” she insisted. “I'm sure that he is cheating on you with his old girlfriend. You have to do something about it.”

Horrified, I stared at Gogo.

“What?” Suddenly I saw everything around me falling to pieces.

“Ask him. He has to tell you the truth.”

“But I don't want to know, Gogo!” I cried desperately.

“You can't be that naïve,” she said peevishly. I knew, of course, that her anger was directed at Dieter, but nonetheless her words pierced me like needles. “If you don't ask him, I will. After all, it's my fault that you're together. I have to make up for it.”

“Things won't get better,” I murmured, trying to imagine a life without Dieter. Pain spread in my chest.

Finally, I summoned all my courage and confronted Dieter myself. He didn't deny it when I asked him whether he still visited his former girlfriend. He explained that he had obligations to her. After all, they had been together for eleven years and bore responsibility for a small child, who was not his but who nonetheless regarded him as a father. He could not just disappear from his son's life.

Even as he was defending himself, I knew that I had lost Dieter. It took me two years to be open to love again.

 

14.

I
F MY FATHER TAUGHT ME
anything, it was this: “Always tell the truth, whatever the consequences.” What he actually meant by that became apparent to me once on a flight from London to Amsterdam. I was beginning my second semester at Heidelberg University. My father, who was on a business trip through Europe, had invited me to accompany him to England and the Netherlands.

We had last seen each other when he had made a stop in Germany on a business trip to the Soviet Union in order to see me after my “escape” from Kenya.

At the thought of that visit, the terrible jumble of emotions that had seized me when he had called immediately came back to me. Now, months later, I was sitting next to my father with the confident sense that he would not impede me on my path and would not force me to go back to Kenya. We were on an airplane on our way to Amsterdam.

We had just been brought lunch. On the tray was a glass I really liked. In those days, airlines still served their economy passengers drinks in real glasses and not in the plastic cups that are customary today. I decided to keep my glass as a souvenir, and without much hesitation I put it in my pocket, hoping that the stewardess wouldn't notice.

Unfortunately, however, my father saw what I did and reprimanded me with the words: “You don't need to do it secretly, Auma. Just ask whether you can have the glass.” Shortly thereafter, he beckoned to a stewardess and told her in his charming gentlemanly way that his daughter—he pointed to me—would like to keep one of those glasses as a souvenir. “Actually, two would be best,” he added, before she left.

Other passengers must have heard the deep baritone voice, and at that moment I wished that the ground—or rather, the vast sky around us—would swallow me up. The stewardess had probably noticed how embarrassing the situation was for me, for when she returned with two glasses, she said in a soothing voice, “Passengers often ask us for them.”

When she left, my father turned to me.

“Always have the courage to say what you want to say, Auma,” he said. “Often you'll be pleasantly surprised by the outcome.”

Indeed, that had applied to this situation. But however convinced my father was that you should always be honest and express what you thought, it was, of course, not always a pleasant surprise that awaited him. Still, he remained true to his convictions, and frequently had to accept the negative consequences of his candor—for example, when he had gotten into trouble due to his unconcealed criticism of the Kenyan government, lost his job, and only obtained a post in the ministry again with the utmost effort.

*   *   *

The glass episode would not be the only embarrassing experience during that flight—for my father tried to talk to me about men. It was as if he had suddenly noticed that I had grown up and felt obligated to address the thorny subject.

I let him speak—but suddenly I winced when he proudly declared that when the time was ripe he would definitely find a proper husband for me. In the face of such a statement, how was I supposed to explain to my father that Cupid had already beaten him to the punch? For at that time I had just fallen in love with Dieter and was by no means only
his
little girl anymore, as he probably still believed.

In Rotterdam—after his business appointments in Amsterdam we had gone to the Dutch city on the North Sea—we ate in a Chinese restaurant on the last evening of our trip together. My father ordered wine for the two of us. I had never drunk wine before, and I didn't actually like the taste. But I emptied the glass, because I felt really grown-up for the first time in front of my father.

When we returned to the hotel, a sad message had been left for my father. He had gotten a call from Kenya informing him that his cousin George Were had died in a car accident in Kisumu. Beyond their familial relationship, Uncle Were and my father had been very close, and so his cousin's death was a heavy blow for him—especially as another relative with whom he had felt connected had also recently had a fatal accident.

Along with my father and Uncle Were, this second uncle, a lawyer, had been among the “chosen ones” who had been granted a Western higher education. This privilege was bound up with the lifelong duty to provide for the welfare of those who had remained behind.

All the chosen ones were confronted with these expectations, whether they were financially capable of fulfilling them or not. They were deeply convinced that they owed something to their families. For them it was understood that what belonged to them also belonged to the extended family. Among our relatives, it had therefore become routine, when in financial straits, to go to my father—after all, he was doing better than they were in this respect—or to Uncle Were. But the number of relatives in need far surpassed their capabilities. In those days, the Obama family did not include many educated members with good incomes. Most of them had neither a well-paying job like my father nor a thriving business like Uncle Were. Even if it had been their intention, they could not have helped all the family members in need. Nonetheless, they tried to do everything in their power.

But now Uncle Were, the second supporting pillar of the family, was dead. The fact that two of his closest allies had died within such a short time hit my father hard. I saw him suffering, here in a foreign country, far away from home. But how was I supposed to console him? Although our evening together had been going very pleasantly until we received the news of Uncle Were's death, and I had felt a little bit closer to my father, I was incapable of mustering the necessary sympathy to stand by him in his grief. That would have meant letting him in emotionally, and I was simply not prepared to do that.

I stood in the doorway between our hotel rooms and looked over at my father lying on the bed and weeping, incapable of going to him. The ever-present thick, impenetrable wall of pain and disappointment, undoubtedly mixed with awe and shyness, stood between us. I balked at acknowledging my father's suffering. And what amazed me was that at that moment I even felt an old resentment welling up in me again.

When I saw him there in his grief, I could not help thinking of how often I myself would have needed more comforting. He had never been there for me, I now told myself defiantly. How often had
he
come to console me? And now
I
was supposed to comfort him? I was too proud and too worried about my own emotional equilibrium to feel sympathy.

Ultimately, I was deeply afraid that with one step in his direction I would be overwhelmed by all the pain of the past years that I had so successfully suppressed, and would be left alone and defenseless with those feelings. And yet I suffered inwardly with my father. He looked so helpless and sad—completely devastated. He called me over to him, but I stood motionless in the doorway. I could not go to him. Today, I tell myself that as his daughter it was hard for me to bear seeing my father so weak and hurt—this man, of all people, who was always supposed to be a vital support.

My fears preoccupied me so much that I completely forgot to mourn the person whose death had started the whole drama, Uncle Were, whom I had really loved.

I will always remember the sadness of that evening—in particular because those were to be the last hours my father and I would spend together. The next time I saw him, my father was lying in a coffin.

 

15.

A
YEAR AFTER
my father had mourned the passing of the “strong men” in the family, I, too, got a shocking phone call one evening. I was informed—almost fatefully—of another deadly car accident. This time my father was the victim. My father was no longer alive.

I received the call from Aunty Jane. At that point, I had regular contact with her and always found out the latest family developments from her.

“Auma, are you still there?” she asked worriedly.

Her news had rendered me speechless. I couldn't get a word out and struggled for air.

“Can you hear me?” Now she spoke louder and sounded almost frightened.

I began to cry. The most important person in my life was dead. Suddenly I grasped it, and a horrible sense of loss overwhelmed me.

“Yes, I'm still here,” I sobbed softly. “I'm coming home.”

I hung up and just kept staring at the phone. Unable to budge, I remained in the small telephone booth.

How was it possible that the brief sentence that had just reached my ear through that small contraption could cause me such boundless pain? Pain I had not even suspected I was capable of feeling. Why did it hurt so much? Hadn't I been angry with my father? Hadn't I experienced as recently as in Rotterdam that I scarcely felt anything for him? Those were all questions for which I had no answers. As I stood in the small, dark booth and the tears ran soundlessly down my face, I knew only one thing: My father was gone.

After his return from the United States eighteen years earlier, his death in 1982 now meant a radical change in my life for the second time. I felt as if the most important organ had been torn out of my body and my air cut off. While I had previously thought of my father only with mixed, mostly defensive feelings, I now felt an irrepressible longing to see him again, to talk to him and tell him that I loved him and understood his woes, which were mine, too.

In a horrible way, it suddenly became clear to me that all the years I had fought against my father and refused him my affection, I had basically only been struggling for his love, and that my own suppression of feelings for him, my early quest for independence, the escape to Germany, and even my striving to get good grades at the university had arisen only from the desire to show him that I was worthy of him.

Years later, long after my father's death, a good friend of his told me that he had been very proud of me and had always told all his friends about his wonderful daughter in Germany.

*   *   *

Eventually I left the telephone booth and went back to my room.

At that time, I was a member of a dance group known as the Afro-Ballet-Ensemble. It included several German and foreign professional and amateur dancers. In our choreography, we incorporated dance styles like Afro dance, modern dance, classical ballet, disco, and break dancing in an idiosyncratic way. Our goal was to combine different dance cultures in order to present their similarities and commonalities and playfully highlight the contrasts.

The dance group had an international character: Jai, our choreographer, was from Peru; Patrice, José, and Felix were French with Caribbean roots; Susanne came from Germany; Elfie from Ghana; and I from Kenya. Now and then, dancers from other countries joined us, too.

With Jai, who was my flat mate for a period of time, I also had a close friendship outside of the dance group. I appreciated her sense of humor and her ability to alleviate difficult situations.

When the news of my father's death reached me, we were in a phase of daily rehearsals, because several performances were coming up. After long months of intense work, the first performance was to take place that week and another shortly thereafter. During the preparations for my trip to Nairobi, I decided not to fly until after these performances.

After a last rehearsal, we all sat together.

“You don't have to dance with us. Go ahead and leave right away,” Jai had said with concern when I told the group that my father had died, but I would not be flying home until after the second performance.