And Then Life Happens (20 page)

After my long explanations, I briefly paused for breath, but only to resume my reflections immediately.

“I could imagine that in his personal life our father tried for a long time to make the best of his difficult situation—and also that he and Ruth noticed very early on that their relationship wasn't working. But instead of ending it, they stayed together until nothing was salvageable. When, after those hard times, our father also had the serious car accident and lost his job, we were all in tough straits. Though distraught at the collapse of our family, I could take refuge at boarding school, but Abongo, who was a day student, was completely derailed by the events. I don't think that he ever forgave them for putting him through all that.”

“Forgave whom?” Barack asked. He had sat there silently and pensively the whole time. I was startled. His voice brought me back into the present. I had been so absorbed in my father's story that I had almost forgotten my brother's presence. As I was talking, it had dawned on me that I was trying to explain Barack Sr. to myself, too.

“His father, his mother, Ruth, and even me,” I answered sadly. “The relationship between Abongo and me was always difficult.”

“What a shame. One might have thought that going through all that together would have brought the two of you closer.”

“True, but unfortunately that wasn't the case. We never managed to share our pain.” It hurt to say that. I had tried for years to get closer to Abongo, but he had never allowed it. Although we remained in contact and now and then got in touch with each other, there was no close relationship between us.

I looked at Barack Jr. sitting opposite me, and suddenly my heart warmed. Thank God I had found him. He seemed to understand me instinctively, my longings and hopes, my motivations and my disappointments. He listened without evaluating or judging and took each of my words seriously. It felt good to know that this was only the beginning, that he was now part of my family, of my life.

During the time with him we spoke daily about our family, but also about his work, about my studies and my experiences in Germany, and I sensed that he grappled intensely with many things. For the first time, I had found someone in my family with whom I could really talk about anything that was important to me without having to constantly explain and justify myself. Our encounter was an enormous gift for me.

*   *   *

When we weren't sitting together and talking, Barack showed me Chicago. We visited museums together, took walks, and went shopping. I posed in front of the Picasso sculpture and Barack took a photograph of me.

I also did some things on my own while he was working. I wandered through Chicago's streets and looked at the beautiful buildings.

The days went by really fast. Soon, Elke and Robert arrived in Chicago, as we had planned before my departure from Carbondale.

We all spent one night in Barack's small apartment and had a big breakfast the next morning before we headed to Wisconsin.

I was sorry to have to say good-bye to the new brother I had gained. I had only just discovered him and was reluctant to let him go. The visit had exceeded all my expectations. I not only liked Barack as a person, but I also immediately felt incredibly comfortable with him. In the brief time we had spent with each other, we had gotten so close that we had actually managed to bridge the years of separation between us.

We didn't even need to promise each other to stay in touch. For both of us, that went without saying. When I hugged him tightly in parting before getting into Elke's car, I said only, “Now it's my turn to show you my hospitality. Next time we'll see each other in Kenya.”

 

18.

I
LEFT MY BROTHER
and my best friend behind in the United States with a heavy heart, but at the same time I was really looking forward to seeing Karl again.

Karl studied law. We met through a carpool. I fell in love with him. Shortly after my return from America, we saw each other almost daily. I told him in detail about my moving journey to visit my brother.

Karl was tall and athletic. He played handball, a sport with which I hadn't previously been familiar. He was also a passionate fan of the German rock band BAP. I liked his energy and charisma, his cheerful nature. To this day, I can see his dimples in my mind's eye, when he smiled at me or burst out laughing.

Shortly after our relationship had begun, he invited me to his home. He was still living with his parents in a village near Heidelberg. I was excited about the visit with his family. Karl had a younger sister, Gerda. His father, who had since retired, had been a baker, and the family lived in the house in which the bakery had once been.

When we got out of the car and his parents came toward us, I looked into two astonished faces. I sensed how both of them almost imperceptibly but instinctively recoiled.
Oh no,
I thought,
Karl forgot to tell them that I'm black!
My boyfriend approached his parents with a smile and introduced me. Hesitantly, I held out my hand to his father, who stood directly in front of me. He, too, hesitated, but then took my hand and shook it vigorously.

“Guten Tag, Fräulein Auma,”
he said.
“Guten Tag.”

The mother stared at me and also said,
“Guten Tag.”
She gave me her hand only reluctantly. Immediately, I knew: It bothered her that her son was with an African.

However, the visit with Karl's parents did no harm to our young love. Not long after, my boyfriend moved out of the house, but continued to insist on us visiting his parents together. In his view, they had to accept me. He didn't want to have to choose between us. I respected that. As an African, I set great store by family, and didn't doubt that, if I loved Karl, I would have to accept his, too. Still, each time I noticed how much trouble his mother had with me. I simply did not fit into the picture. That became clear to me when Karl's sister got married.

The upcoming wedding was a constant topic of conversation in the family, because Karl's sister's fiancé was the owner of the largest company and thus also the most important employer in the village. Of course, I assumed that I would be invited together with Karl. I was the girlfriend of the brother of the bride, after all. I had also already met the groom. So I was all the more surprised one evening when my boyfriend, somewhat embarrassed, said, “Unfortunately, I have to go to the wedding alone.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, taken aback. I noticed how he shifted on his feet and searched for the right words.

“It's because…” In his embarrassment, he could not continue speaking.

I looked at him expectantly.

“Uh, um … Not many guests are being invited, so I have to go alone.”

“What you actually mean is that your parents are embarrassed to introduce a black woman to the guests as their son's girlfriend, right?”

Karl looked at me helplessly, and I didn't want to make it easy for him. I was angry about his behavior. He had simply accepted that his family excluded me from this event. So now it had happened, after all: He had been forced to choose between me and his family. And he had chosen the latter.

“What am I supposed to do?” he pleaded with me. “I can't abandon my sister on that day. But my parents are afraid of what people might think when they see you. They haven't really accepted yet that we're together.”

“And you?” I asked him. “What do you think about it?”

“You know the answer. I stand by you!” Karl sounded distraught. “But I have to participate in the wedding. Please understand.”

But at that moment I didn't want to understand. I wished that he had made a different decision, if only to make his position clear. But deep inside I knew that I was neither able nor willing to compete with his family—especially since I was always telling him to respect his family. In the beginning of our relationship, I had witnessed a few times how harshly he could behave toward his parents. The first time, I was really shocked. If I had spoken that way to my parents, I would have regretted it forever! Even when I had not agreed with something and was right, as was also sometimes the case with Karl, I had always had to find a way to make it clear to them without being disrespectful or even sounding annoyed. I told my boyfriend that in my whole life—and I was already twenty-five years old at the time—I had never really argued with my parents.

*   *   *

Despite the unpleasant family situation, we spent wonderful times together. One of the high points was our ten-day trip to Italy in the summer of 1985.

We planned to drive to Tuscany and spend the nights at campgrounds there, which I could not really imagine. Previously, I had only gone camping during my school days, and it had always been in the wild and without any comforts.

Our route was to take us to Lake Garda and then through Tuscany. We wanted to visit Assisi, and, of course, Florence and Pisa were on the agenda.

We reached our first campground in the evening, checked in, paid, and picked out a site to pitch our tent. That night, Karl got to know me as a city dweller who was afraid of the dark. Later on in the journey, we even had to spend the night in the car a few times because I simply felt too uneasy in the tent. In Tuscany, I was actually more afraid of people who might mug or abduct me than I had been of dangerous animals in the Kenyan wilderness.

In Florence, we viewed the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore with its beautiful dome, visited the Uffizi Gallery, strolled through the narrow streets of the city. There were swarms of tourists everywhere, and we kept coming across Senegalese and Ghanaian street peddlers. We liked it there so much that we extended our planned stay.

We had decided that Florence would be the southern boundary of our trip. On arriving in Pisa on our way back, I was disappointed to discover that the famous leaning tower was much smaller than I had imagined it.

Finally, we reached Milan, the last Italian city we wanted to visit. The first stop was the cathedral, the Duomo di Santa Maria Nascente. No sooner had we entered the magnificent church than we saw a monk slowly approaching us. We smiled politely, and he spoke to us softly.

“Miniskirt is not permitted here,” he whispered.

“Miniskirt?” we asked, surprised.

He nodded toward me and said to Karl, “The lady. She is not allowed to show her legs like that.”

I couldn't believe my ears. The denim skirt I was wearing reached down to just over my knees. For me it was anything but a miniskirt. Karl, the Catholic and former altar boy, seemed to understand immediately. He apologized profusely, promptly took my hand and directed me toward the church gate. He knew me all too well and was aware that I would not yield without a good explanation. In his mind, he undoubtedly already heard me protesting. “But why? That's hypocrisy! What matters is what is in people's hearts, not how long their skirt is.” But before I could open my mouth, we were already outside again.

“It wouldn't have been worth it to argue with them about your skirt. They still would have thrown us out,” Karl said. “There wasn't much to see anyway.”

The vast cathedral square lay before us, lined with the expensive boutiques for which Milan, the city of fashion, is so famous. In the shop windows, mannequins presented the latest fashions, among them clothes that barely covered the most intimate body parts.

“What hypocrisy!” I said with a strained voice. Milan was ruined for me. We didn't stay longer in the city and set off again on our return trip to Heidelberg. There, I faced new challenges.

*   *   *

The discovery of my “African identity” in Germany went hand in hand with dealing with the Germans and their view of us Africans. It shocked and disappointed me that most of the Germans I met knew so little about Africa. They talked about it as if it were not a continent with fifty-three states, but one big country. Time and again, I had to correct my conversation partners, “Africa is not a country, Africa is a continent!” And then I would often just get the reply, “Yeah, yeah, but as I was saying…” And the person in question would go on speaking as if my remark had been merely a trifling interruption of an important statement.

The fact that our massive continent in all its diversity was given such little regard moved me to deal more intensively with the prevailing image of Africa in Germany. For me, the question of how this could be changed became central.

*   *   *

One day I met Ali, who had studied economics and was actually named Alfons. He had very light skin, curly, almost ash-blond hair, and was a typical “alternative” German. To my ears, his Arabic-Muslim sounding name did not at all fit with his appearance.

Ali and I decided to work as a team. We organized a series of seminars with which we intended to portray Africa and the Africans more realistically than we felt the media did. In doing so, we also wanted to emphasize the connection between the prevailing clichés and Germany's Africa policy, and make clear to what extent these false images also influence government decisions in matters of development aid.

In the beginning, it was great fun to hold these seminars with Ali. From Heidelberg, we traveled to the various places where our events were planned. Usually, the seminars took place on the weekends and extended over several days. The participants arrived on the first evening, and then spent two days discussing Africa, its individual countries, the diverse cultures, languages, and people—all this against the background of the preconceptions of Africa that the participants brought with them. We also employed film footage, presenting documentaries and feature films made by Africans or Germans in order to convey a multifaceted, nuanced image. Our work was so well-received that we got further engagements, particularly from the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, a foundation for political education that was closely associated with the Social Democratic Party.