The Other Barack (28 page)

Obama managed to master the new techniques and would ultimately pass both his general and oral exams in the spring of his second year at Harvard. But in the version of his Harvard experience that he recounted when he got back home, the story line went quite differently. By his
account, Obama was not the one who needed tutoring in math but rather Philip Ndegwa, his budding rival. And the man to whom Ndegwa turned for help was none other than Barack Obama. Obama, who clearly learned his stuff, likely did give Ndegwa a hand. Although Ndegwa had attended the prestigious Alliance High School in Kenya and Makerere University before he came to Harvard, he apparently struggled with some of the advanced math himself. Nor did he get a degree from Harvard, as he left after only one year. But for years afterward, as Ndegwa rose steadily higher, Obama would flaunt his tutelage and angrily denounce Ndegwa as unfit for his job. “Obama would slam his fist on the table and say that Philip knows
nothing
, he knows nothing about math or economics,” recalled Francis Masakhalia, Obama's friend and a prominent Kenyan economist who served as Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning. “He would say, ‘I am a much better economist than he can ever hope to be.'” In a particularly creative twist on his Harvard years, Obama claimed to have been taught there by Ken Arrow and recounted in detail to his superiors the classes he took with the famous economist.
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But Arrow did not even arrive at Harvard until 1968, four years after Obama left.

Still, Obama loomed large to the growing number of young Kenyans arriving in Boston in the early 1960s, eagerly seeking a college degree and, in some cases, a high school diploma. They came with little money and less an idea of what to expect in the churning cities of America. What they did know was that Obama had already achieved many of the things to which they aspired. He had not only earned a college degree but had also been recognized as Phi Beta Kappa. Now at one of the world's most famous universities, he had a summer job at the International Marketing Institute in Cambridge, a small firm that offered programs in product marketing to business people from around the world, and this meant that he had a little extra cash. Just as impressive, he had a series of girlfriends who hovered over him and cooked rice and novel meats. And when the younger students came knocking at the door on Magazine Street, Obama welcomed them warmly and offered them not only a place to sleep but also all the advice they could absorb. “We looked upon him as a model. He really gave us inspiration,” said George Saitoti, a former vice president of Kenya and later Minister for Internal Security. “This was a serious person
who was very well respected and who was very approachable. We were just young boys, you know, and he spoke very firmly to us about education and what we needed to do. He sounded just like President Obama does now.”

Saitoti, then eighteen and a senior at the Cambridge School of Weston was one of a half-dozen young men who made their way to Obama's apartment. Some would stay for only a night or two, while others spent an entire summer there while working odd jobs in the area after school. Brothers Moses and Otieno O. Wasonga, who were attending high schools north of Boston, routinely spent their weekends with Obama, who nicknamed them
wuod ruoth
, Luo for son of a chief. The Wasongas' father was, in fact, a chief and had known Hussein Onyango well, which drew them even closer to Obama.

Oyuko Onyango Mbeche was only fourteen when he arrived in Massachusetts on the second of Tom Mboya's airlifts in 1960 to attend Assumption Preparatory School in Worcester before going on to Assumption College. But Mbeche quickly found that conventional sources of guidance were not particularly helpful. When he sought assistance from the Kenyan Mission at the United Nations in New York to help find a job a few years later, he claims that simmering tribal hostilities between the Kikuyu and Luo had already poisoned the waters. For a Kenyan whose name began with an O, thus immediately identifying him as a Luo, no guidance would be available from the Kikuyu-dominated office. Mbeche asked around for help, and when he learned of an older student named Obama, he too headed for Magazine Street. Mbeche wound up not only spending the summer on Obama's floor while working as a technician at a nearby hospital at Obama's suggestion, but he also eventually changed his career objective as a result of Obama's influence. Obama, he recalled, frequently talked about the importance of advanced math and urged Mbeche to study calculus so that he could take on more sophisticated mathematic challenges. Intrigued, Mbeche enrolled in Harvard Summer School to study math and eventually abandoned his plans to go to medical school in order to become an engineer. “He was always saying that math is a language like any other and I began to understand what he was talking about,” said Mbeche. “You get curious, you know.”

At twenty-six years of age, Obama was the old man of the group. Some evenings, far from the cerebral intensity of the Littauer Center, he would
sit with his pipe jutting out of his mouth and riff with the young men staying with him. They listened to his favorite Lingala music or the innovative jazz compositions of Tabu Ley Rochereau, an immensely popular Zairian singer who popularized the “Independence Cha Cha.”

Another favorite pastime drawn from Obama's childhood was an exchange of
pakruoks
, a Luo game in which several people would trade humorous or self-flattering phrases about those in attendance. Obama would often raise his hand, call a halt to the music and declare of himself, “
An wuod akumu nya Njoga, wuod nyar ber
,” meaning, “I am the son of Akumu, the daughter of Njoga, who was a beautiful woman.” Or he might say, “
An Obama wuod kogello, wuoyi madichol manyiri thone, wuoyi mochamo buk ma musungu oyie
,” meaning, “I am Obama, son of Kogelo, a dark man who ladies die for, a man who has eaten books until the white man acknowledged.” The young men were accustomed to hearing the admonishment, “
Wuoyi mariek somo kwano kendo ok dhi e miel
,” meaning, “A smart man studies math and stays away from parties.” The game would devolve into a riotous play on personal characteristics or foibles that would leave them all weak with laughter.
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When Obama was around there was always a steady stream of conversation that sometimes stretched into the early hours of the morning. The situation back home was always high on the list. In the months after independence leading up to the declaration of the Republic in 1964, Kenya bustled with activity as the real job of nation building got underway. Already simmering differences between the political parties KANU and KADU over critical issues of Africanization and the country's economic structure were becoming more fraught. Obama's mentor, Tom Mboya, had been named Minister for Justice and Constitutional Affairs, and Obama was anxious to see that Mboya had increasingly aligned himself with Kenyatta's more conservative supporters. Obama paid close attention to such developments, and on his return would insert himself directly into the evolving political debate over the country's future shape.

Although Obama clearly took pleasure in mentoring the young Kenyans who flocked to his apartment, his thoughts were preoccupied with his own brothers and sisters back home. As the eldest male, it fell to Obama to provide financial assistance for school fees for his siblings and to help out generally. What that really meant was that he needed to help
his brothers. In a Kenyan family of the early 1960s people generally thought that daughters would get married and be consumed by domesticity, and thus they would have no need for postsecondary education. Obama's older sister, Sarah, was just as clever and willful as her brother, and she often begged for advanced schooling, but Hussein Onyango would hear nothing of it. In the Obama family the next male in line after Barack was Omar Okech Obama, the first son born to Hussein Onyango and his wife, Sarah Ogwel. Omar was eleven years younger than his big brother in America, and it was his education that the family was now anxious to advance.
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Obama took his responsibility to heart, and in the little spare time he had he explored high schools in the area that might be suitable for his brother. As it happened, Obama had become friendly with a woman who had close ties to what was then called Browne & Nichols, a tony boy's preparatory school that had graduated many of Boston's preeminent politicians and businessmen and just happened to be located in a leafy Cambridge enclave a short distance from Harvard. Her name was Ellen Frost, a Radcliffe student with an interest in developing countries. Frost had gotten to know Obama at a party of African students, and the two had an occasional coffee together. Not only had Frost's brothers attended Browne & Nichols, but her father, a downtown investment banker, was a treasurer at the school. Perhaps her father could mention Omar to the school's admission officers, she suggested.

Frost's father agreed, and in the fall of 1963 a sturdy young man with a somber expression arrived in Cambridge eager to go to work. Omar had apparently been brought to the United States on Tom Mboya's 1963 airlift, as his name is included on one of the early student lists. According to a notation on that list, his brother, Barack, had put up $300 toward his brother's travel expenses.
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“Omar was a tall, gangly good-natured adolescent,” recalled Frost, who went on to have a varied career in international affairs in the U.S. government and in business. “He did not look much like his half brother. But his classmates were fascinated with this boy from the jungles of Africa.”

Although Omar was apparently the only African student on campus, he seemed to fit in with the privileged prep school crowd in his trim blazer bearing the school's seal and his starched white shirt, which he wore daily
just as his brother did. A good three years older than the rest of the members of the class of 1966, he entertained his fellow tenth graders with elaborate stories of wild animals roaming the bush and of the indomitable Mau Mau freedom fighters. Mesmerized by his arched British accent, other students hung on tales of a life that seemed vastly different and more exotic than their own tame suburban existence.

Omar Obama squeezed in with his brother and his roommate on Magazine Street at times during the first few years he lived in Boston. With Obama Sr. immersed in his own studies, the younger Omar must have lived a fairly independent life. Given the substantial age difference between them, the half-brothers often seemed to visitors more like an uncle and nephew than siblings. By his second year on campus Omar was deeply involved with both the campus newspaper and the school's debate team. But where he really excelled was on the soccer field. Soccer coach Stephen “Hummer” Holmes remembers the first day Omar headed out to play. He had on a T-shirt and shorts, but nothing else. No soccer cleats or shin-guards, not even a pair of socks. Like most any young soccer player in Kenya, Omar was accustomed to playing in his bare feet. And when Holmes insisted he wear something on his feet, Omar loudly objected. “‘Coach,' he'd say,” as Holmes recalls, “‘I need to take off the shoes. Please coach. I can't feel the ball. When I kick the ball, I cannot direct it. Please coach.' And I'd answer, ‘Omar, I wish I could help. But when we play the game here, we wear shoes. It's the rule.'”

Finding cleats that would fit him was no easy task. Omar's feet were not only extraordinarily wide but were also deeply layered with callous from his years of playing soccer in his bare feet or, as Holmes describes it, “as if he had sewn in shoe leather for soles.” Custom cleats had to be made for Omar's extraordinary feet, and he then took weeks to adjust to them. But when he finally got back on the field, Omar quickly became one of the team's highest scorers with a unique kicking style that propelled the ball clean off the top of his foot. Although a far more talented player than others on the team, Omar readily volunteered to teach his teammates his skills. “He put his team first, his teammates second, and himself third,” said Holmes. “A very humble guy.”

Whether because of a lack of funds or poor grades, Omar did not graduate from the school. He withdrew after two years and enrolled in the
public high school in nearby Newton in the fall of 1965.
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By then Obama had gone back to Kenya and Omar was on his own, apparently struggling without his older brother's supervision. In his move to Newton, Omar was sponsored by John R. Williams, the amiable alumnae coordinator at the International Marketing Institute in Cambridge where Obama had worked years earlier and whose son was also enrolled in the Newton High School. For reasons that are unclear, Omar did not graduate from that school either but dropped out before the end of the year.
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Shortly afterward Omar changed his name to O. Onyango Obama, preferring his father's African name to his own.
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He remained in Cambridge for several years, living in an apartment on Perry Street several blocks from his brother's old apartment, and his residence became a legendary meeting place and crash pad for visiting Kenyan students. When Barack Obama came to visit in the early 1970s, he too spent Sunday mornings exchanging pakruoks and listening to music over ugali and fish on the porch at Perry Street. Achola Pala Okeyo, a graduate student in anthropology at Harvard at the time, also recalls Obama's half-sister, Zeituni Onyango, who was visiting the United States and would periodically drop in for a visit. “Perry Street was a rite of passage, an initiation. If you were a Kenyan in Boston, you had to go there,” recalled Okeyo. “We'd do praise names and dance until we dropped. It was a huge amount of fun.”

Until their nephew became the president and the hordes of eager cameramen came in hot pursuit, Obama's aunt and uncle lived relatively quietly in the Boston area. Apparently, in the early 1990s the same “Uncle Omar” who the president wrote in
Dreams
had gone missing in Boston was the treasurer of a small convenience store called the Wells Market in Dorchester, Massachusetts, where he sometimes pitched in and worked as a clerk.
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He was the one who was on duty when two men in black masks attacked the store one night in the summer of 1994, and he was beaten with a sawed-off rifle and robbed, according to press accounts. Now sharing a house with several other Kenyans in the western suburb of Framingham, Omar maintains his low profile and declined to be interviewed.