And Then Life Happens (2 page)

I was the only girl in our nuclear family. While our city life had modern features, in the countryside with my grandparents, where things were particularly traditional, I experienced how the boys were always treated differently than the girls. Women and girls were constantly occupied with various activities in house and home—at least that was how it seemed to me—while the male family members did next to nothing in the household and only rarely made themselves useful on the homestead.

I remember that my grandfather Onyango, in accordance with Luo custom, always ate with the boys and men of the house, never with the girls and women, who dined separately in the kitchen. We women—among us were also cousins and aunts—cooked, served the meals, cleaned up, and did the dishes, while the men and boys had everything brought to them. It especially rankled me that my older brother visibly enjoyed this allocation of duties. But it bothered me even more that most of the women and girls seemed not to mind waiting hand and foot on the male family members. I resisted fiercely what I experienced as gender inequality and tried not to subordinate myself—though without great success. I had to fall into line.

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Years later, when I delved deeper into Luo traditions, I learned that the gender roles in our ethnic group had originally been distinct but rather balanced. The main tasks of the male family members were raising livestock (usually they herded cattle), hard physical farming work, fishing, building huts, and producing a variety of objects. For example, they made musical instruments, did metalwork and carpentry, wove baskets, and tied fishing nets. Their jobs also included herbalism and the protection of the community in times of war. Girls and women were responsible for the household. They fetched water in gourds, plastered the house walls, made pottery, and, like the men, wove baskets. It was their duty to sow the fields, to bring in the harvest, and to store the grain. Among the animals, they were responsible for the goats, sheep, and calves; in case the men went to war, they learned how to herd the cattle as well. And, of course, they took care of the children and their upbringing.

By learning these tasks, girls and boys prepared for their future lives as husbands and wives. Taught obedience, a sense of responsibility, and deference from an early age, they largely accepted these traditions. Only by passing them on could the Luo ensure the economic and social survival of their people.

But then the time-honored structures, as they had existed for centuries, fell victim to the colonization of Kenya. The colonial rulers introduced the so-called hut tax: Overnight the native Africans had to pay taxes on their huts in the form of money. As a result, they were forced to work on the farms of the white people, because not paying the taxes was a punishable offense—at the worst, with imprisonment. Because the men could only earn money from white people, they had to leave their own land and seek wage work in the areas of Kenya settled by white people.

While the men now worked for the colonists, the women and girls who had stayed behind had to take over their duties. When the men returned home, it was usually only for a few vacation days. During those stays, they did not have the necessary time to participate in a meaningful way in the farming activities. As a result, they did not take on larger tasks; most of the time, they just let their wives and daughters serve them, until it was once again time to return to the cities or to the white peoples' farms.

In this way, all the farming work became the women's responsibility. In marriage, great value was attached to the bride's ability to work in the fields and perform all the necessary tasks on the homestead. This did not, however, alter her position in the hierarchy of the family.

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As an eight-year-old girl, I did not grasp this development. Though the traditional societies had changed under external pressure, which also affected how boys and girls were brought up for adult life and the customary division of their roles, the Luo families preserved their child-rearing principles. They did not question all too much how and whether these were compatible with the altered circumstances. And I, too, was expected to submit unquestioningly to the old values.

Unfortunately, no one took the time to explain contexts and backgrounds to me, the inquisitive girl. My grandmother Sarah was only amused by my constant questions, or shook her head when I was too persistent. Occasionally, she jokingly threatened to marry me off to an old neighbor, who was already over fifty, if I would not stop questioning everything. She would certainly get a few fine cows from him in exchange, she always added with a laugh.

I couldn't for the life of me wrap my head around this custom either: How was it possible that a man could simply take a woman as his wife without her consent—with only the agreement of the parents, or the father? This prospect unsettled me so much that I had a recurring dream in which a very old man—even older than my grandmother's neighbor—forced me to marry him. In the dream, he hid in the bushes and suddenly seized me when I was about to return to the homestead after fetching water from the river. No one heard me crying for help as the man tried to drag me home with him. Eventually, I managed to break free from him and run away. But when I finally got back to my parents, I found out that he had already given my family several cows as a bride price. So I was already married, and no one had thought it necessary to ask me or even inform me. For nights on end, I was haunted by this nightmare, and whenever I woke up from it, I would lie sleepless and sweating in my bed for hours.

In general, marriage among the Luo was actually far from being as dramatic as it was in my nightly fantasies. Although the Luo regard it (along with death) as one of the most important events in a person's life—that goes for men as much as for women—a marriage in those days amounted to little more than a contract between two families.

In this, the woman often had no choice—that is, she had no say at all in the marriage negotiations. In most cases, however, the fears and anxieties of both partners abated quickly. It was simply not expected that getting married necessarily had anything to do with love.

Thus my grandmother married my grandfather when she herself was only nineteen and he was already around fifty. When I asked her how she felt about having a husband who was so much older than she was, she answered with the simple declaration that it didn't bother her at all. My grandfather was a reputable, well-off man, and for my grandmother it was important that her family viewed him as “a good match.” With that, it was settled for her that he was the right man, and that was enough for her.

“But he was so old!” I replied, indignant at her explanation. “Did you even love him?” I could not just accept the reasons she had given for her consent. At the age of eight, I already found the idea of not being able to choose my future husband for myself unbearable.

“You really are a true Baker granddaughter,” my grandmother often rebuked me. “That's why you don't understand our customs and traditions.” Baker was the maiden name of my North American stepmother, whom my father had married when I was four years old. As an American, she abided by Luo customs only to a minor degree, if at all. And although my grandmother never criticized her in my presence, I knew that she did not always approve of this.

Even though I adored and respected Granny Sarah, I decided that I would definitely not follow her example. I would never permit a man to rule over me just because I was a woman, and I would certainly never let anyone else decide whom I had to marry. I was convinced that life (and marriage) meant more for a woman than submitting to a man. And although I had no idea how I would do it, I was already pretty certain back then that I would one day leave Kenya to find this “more.” Not forever, because I loved my country, but for a certain period of time.

In fact, the older I got, the more intensely I longed for a place where I could simply be myself, without having to subordinate myself to the cultural constraints and expectations of my family and my fellow Kenyans. In short: a place where no one demanded that, just because I was a girl, I behave any differently than my headstrong and independent nature inclined me to.

Like the books in which I buried myself for hours on end, my journey to Germany was ultimately an escape. I wanted to avoid at all costs a fate as a submissive wife.

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My path to Germany actually began when I was in high school. In Nairobi, where I lived from the age of four onward, I attended Kenya High School, an all-girls boarding school still renowned today. The original name of the school, European Girls School, was also reflected in its architecture, for it had been built during the colonial period in the style of a British private school exclusively for the daughters of the European colonists; in those days, admission was denied to native Africans.

At the time of British rule, separate schools were established for the children of the Africans, usually by missionaries. These schools had substantially fewer resources than the European ones. In his day, my father had attended such a school, the Maseno Boys Secondary School, founded in 1906.

But when I went on to high school after the seven years of primary school customary in Kenya, that era was past. Now my boarding school was no longer called European Girls High School, and although there were some white students—along with a few Indian ones—the Africans clearly outnumbered them. But, despite the fact that the student body of Kenya High School was now predominantly African, the rules in force there were far from being tailored to Africans. On the contrary: It was
we
who had to conform to regulations dating from the colonial period. For example, we were not allowed to braid our hard-to-control curly hair, even though braiding gave us a neater appearance and spared us the painful morning combing. Nor were we permitted to speak our respective native tongues at school. We were also prohibited from stepping on the meticulously tended lawn of the school grounds, and running around anywhere was strictly forbidden. Sometimes I had the feeling that they were trying to educate us to be little British girls.

On the whole, though, these rules didn't bother me much. In my primary school, Kilimani Primary School—which, just like Kenya High School, had formerly been a school for white children—I had already been prepared for this to some extent. There, too, we had been obliged to follow countless rules similar to those at the all-girls boarding school later on. As a consequence, many Kenyan men and women of my generation did not master their native tongue and destroyed their skin and hair with chemicals, just to adapt their appearance to the British norm.

Before I entered Kilimani Primary School, I had attended another primary school—also modeled on the British system—for over a year: Mary Hill Primary School. Run by Catholic nuns, the boarding school was a short distance outside Nairobi, in Thika, and was regarded at the time as one of the best all-girls schools in the country. I was sent there at the age of six, and there was a reason for that: My father had the same high standards as the other members of the small group of “chosen ones” who were the first generation of Kenyans to have completed their studies in the United States or Europe. In a sense, they represented the hope of the nation. And it was important to all of them that their children receive the best possible education.

The daughters of many prominent Kenyans went to Mary Hill Primary School, including the daughter of the politician Tom Mboya, who played a significant role in Kenya's history. Mboya was a leading Luo politician and, in 1960, one of the founders of the Kenya African National Union (KANU), the party that led Kenya to independence. Later, he was the first Minister for Economic Planning and Development. Our families were close friends at the time. At the beginning of each school trimester, the Mboyas drove me to school or we took their daughter with us. A few other girls carpooled with us as well, allowing our parents to take turns with the long drive to and from the school.

I can still see a bunch of us girls packed into one of those cars. One car in particular I remember clearly, a Citroën, at the time a state-of-the-art, posh model with a long, wide front. The car was unusually low, and in the back, where we children sat, the vehicle seemed practically to touch the ground. On the wide backseat, I always had the feeling that I was almost sitting on the road. I could barely look out the window; it was like being in one of those large spinning cups on a carnival carousel. At the same time, the Citroën reminded me of the huge tubs in which the bigger girls washed us younger students every day in the large washroom of the school.

Mary Hill Primary School was run by the Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of Africa, an order that had settled in Kenya in 1907. First and foremost, this educational institution admitted children from culturally mixed families. In those days, each individual cultural community in Kenya—European, Asian, African—had its own school, but at Mary Hill the unique attempt was made to integrate the groups.

In this nuns' school, religious education was central, of course. They were determined to make us into good, devout Catholic girls, as required by their missionary duty. We had to go to church regularly, and not a day went by without some religious activity. But to this day, one question remains for me: What affiliation did my father, who was never religious to my knowledge, indicate when he enrolled me in this school? If he didn't specify one, how was it possible that I was admitted there as a child who belonged to no denomination?

We non-Catholic girls were not expected to go to confession, but I remember well that participation in the Sunday Mass was obligatory. After church we walked around the cemetery with the priest, gathering nuts that had fallen from large trees. Although I have fond memories of those walks, I still shudder today at the thought that on those cemetery paths we might have consumed bodily remains that had turned into nuts.