And Then Life Happens (24 page)

Then he turned to the boy. “It was really nice to see you, little brother. I would have liked to exchange a few more words with you, but that's not possible right now.”

“See you soon, George,” I said, giving him my hand.

“Bye,” the little one replied politely. His facial expression revealed nothing.

What might have been going through his young head at that moment? Suddenly two strangers appeared claiming to be his brother and his sister. That must have been confusing!

“Does Jael have reasons to behave like that?” Barack asked, scarcely able to conceal his disappointment.

“She had a quarrel with my mother. It was about our father's inheritance. Since then, she doesn't talk to us anymore. I'm really sorry for you.”

A bit later Barack and I sat silently side by side in the car. Our father had not made it easy for us.

*   *   *

When no family visit was on the agenda, we took excursions, once to the coast, another time to the Maasai Mara game reserve. I wanted Barack to see how beautiful his father's country was.

To visit the national park, we joined a three-day safari tour. The driver chose the route along the ridge that led down into the Rift Valley escarpment. I knew this stretch well and told Barack every few minutes about the spectacular view that had eluded us on our train journey to Kisumu.

When I was a child, my father had often chosen this route when we visited our grandparents in the country. It had once been the main connection between Mombasa and Kisumu. Usually, we stopped along the way at a tiny church, which had been built by Italian POWs during the Second World War.

The journey went steeply uphill, and I remembered that I got dizzy when I looked through the car window into the depths. Now, this winding street was riddled with potholes, but then we finally came around the last curve—and before us lay a breathtaking panoramic landscape. Awestruck, I stood next to my brother and viewed the land of our ancestors.

After that, it took another five hours before we reached the national park. Our group consisted of Europeans and Americans. I explained to Barack that we Kenyans usually couldn't afford the expensive safaris.

“Look, a Thomson's gazelle,” the Italian sitting next to me suddenly exclaimed.

“What does Thomson have to do with it?” I objected didactically. “We've always had these animals here. Just because this Scottish explorer, Joseph Thomson, discovered with astonishment an animal that did not exist where he was from, now it's named after him? The Kenyans call it
swara
.”

The Italian looked at me with surprise. Barack had already gotten used to me and my Kenyan pride and just smiled. He probably also suspected that I was not yet done with my comments.

“Don't you think that's offensive?” I asked seriously.

The man didn't know how to answer my question. He looked around in confusion.

“I don't want to be impolite, but many other things here were renamed by Europeans, as if they were the first human beings to discover them. I just wonder what the Africans were for them, then. Apparently not human beings.”

Over the next two days, we saw many more animals, and what had initially been a very serious discussion turned into a game, in which we debated which name fit best, the official one or the traditional one.

*   *   *

Mombasa, the city on the coast, was an entirely different experience from Maasai Mara. Once again we took the train to reach our destination. We headed eastward. Early in the morning we arrived in the lively port city, then we took the ferry and finally a
matatu,
a local minibus. Barack, curious about the countrymen of his Kenyan family, tried to have a conversation with the driver in English. But the man answered him in Kiswahili, the customary language on the Kenyan coast. He refused to believe that Barack, who looked like many of the coastal dwellers with his light brown skin, spoke no Kiswahili.

“I'm an American,” Barack tried to explain, when he saw the man's puzzled look. I nodded affirmatively.

“If he's an American, then why is he taking a
matatu
?” the minibus driver asked me in Kiswahili.

“Because he's a poor American. He's a student,” I answered. I immediately translated the conversation into English, so that Barack knew what it was about, too.

“There's no such thing as poor Americans,” a fellow passenger from the back of the bus interjected in English.

“Yes, there is!” Barack replied. “You're looking at one right now.”

“But he's also Luo,” I added proudly.

“Well, that explains a lot,” said the driver, and laughed out loud. I wasn't sure whether the remark alluded to his inability to speak Kiswahili or his poverty.

The other passengers now wanted to know more about the strange American and asked him many questions. When we got off the
matatu,
we felt as if we were saying good-bye to good friends, even though passengers had been getting on and off along the whole way.

*   *   *

At the entrance to our hotel, we were greeted by a surly guard. But we didn't let that spoil our good mood. The weather was magnificent and the sea was invitingly blue. We swam and lazed about. I showed my brother the Mombasa old town and Fort Jesus, which had a checkered history. During their colonial period, the British had used the fortress as a prison, among other things.

“Not many Kenyans vacation here,” I explained to my brother, when he called my attention to the fact that there seemed to be scarcely any black tourists.

“That's a shame. It's really beautiful, and for the history alone more Kenyans should come here,” Barack replied.

“Unfortunately, it's too expensive for most of them. And even if they have money, they are not always welcome,” I said.

“Hopefully, that will change soon.” My brother looked at me thoughtfully.

I had already warned him that Africans were not readily accepted as guests in most of the hotels frequented by foreign, predominantly white tourists. Black women in particular frequently encountered that reaction, for they were typically regarded as prostitutes.

Years later, that changed, and I witnessed how the people who ran tourist establishments on the coast were forced by the political unrest to solicit native vacationers. Because foreign tourists stayed away, the hotels had to reorient themselves and seek to attract clientele in their own country.

*   *   *

When it was time to say good-bye, Barack had become for me a brother with shared experiences. For the two of us there was no question that we would remain in close contact.

 

21.

I
T WAS LOVE
that made me leave Kenya after a year and return to Germany. Certainly, I also wanted to pursue my doctorate—but if it hadn't been for my longing for Karl, I might have remained in my native country. In the previous twelve months, I had felt really at home and achieved more professionally than I had initially expected.

In any case, now I was back in Germany. I wanted to write my dissertation under Professor Alois Wierlacher, but because he had gone to Bayreuth during my “time-out,” I could no longer stay in Heidelberg—I, too, had to move to the Wagner city. Fortunately, Karl had been living in Nuremberg in the meantime to finish his law studies there, so that he was only an hour away from me by car or train. As often as possible, I visited him. But unfortunately, he visited me less frequently, which meant that I spent much more time in Nuremberg and as a result did not make many friends in Bayreuth. I often felt very lonely when I was there. Almost imperceptibly, this—among other things—led to my increasing dissatisfaction with our relationship. I felt as if I were pulling on a rope that would not give.

To top it all off, not everything in my studies was going the way I had imagined, either. My dissertation topic, which dealt with the perception of work in German literature, was not among my professor's major interests; at that point he was more interested in the subject of food in German literature. Therefore, I constantly had to vie for his attention. During that time of disillusionment, Barbara and Donald and their two daughters, Roma and Sandra, came into my life and saved the day. Donald was Kenyan. We unexpectedly became acquainted, and he invited me to his home. His Polish wife, Barbara, and I became close friends. Their family became my refuge whenever I sought a place of warmth and wanted to talk in depth about things.

*   *   *

In my own family, a lot happened in that period. In 1990, Karl and I had flown to Abongo's wedding in the United States. He had been living for several years near Washington, D.C., where he had met Sheree, an African American. A few days after the celebration, Karl and I drove a rental car to New York to meet up with Ann and Maya, who had also been at the wedding but had left earlier. Maya was still a student and lived with her mother.

*   *   *

New York did not disappoint us. The metropolis entirely lived up to its reputation; it was loud, fast, exciting, and truly never slept. We strolled along Fifth Avenue and looked at the display windows of the expensive shops. From the Twin Towers and the Empire State Building we viewed the city, and one evening we ate dinner in a high-rise restaurant. In Times Square, we admired the colorful scene of the neon advertisements that lit up the city as bright as day. A trip to the Guggenheim Museum was a must, and, of course, we also paid the obligatory visit to the old lady: the Statue of Liberty.

Our days were completely filled with activities. And when Maya celebrated her birthday at one of the many clubs in downtown Manhattan, we also got to experience New York nightlife.

After that trip, Bayreuth struck me as even more sedate, and despite my brief absence it took a while before I had accustomed myself again to the leisurely rhythm of the small city.

*   *   *

But there was one exciting development: Before Karl and I flew to the United States, I had applied to the German Film and Television Academy in Berlin (Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin, known as DFFB). The solitary work buried in books had become more and more difficult for me. That is why I had recently done a three-month internship with WDR, the West German broadcasting company. The media experiences I gained at that Cologne station fostered a desire in me: I wanted to tell people more about the life of Africans, though no longer in seminars and lectures, but in visual images.

I was thrilled to find out that I was among the few selected to take the entrance exam for the DFFB. The first hurdle was cleared. The exam process took four days—and in the end I could hardly believe it: Among the roughly five hundred people who applied to the academy in 1990, I was accepted with nine other candidates to the three-year film and television program.
I'm in! I'm in!
I kept thinking, as I read my name on the bulletin board of the academy. Now I will finally learn how to tell my stories in image and sound and will receive professional support for it.

Karl, who was done with his studies, was now even farther away from me geographically. He had moved to Lake Constance, where he had gotten a job in Koblenz. I really liked the area, especially the fact that the winter months there were relatively warm in comparison to other German regions.

But due to the many miles that separated us, we saw each other even less than before. Increasingly, I had the feeling that we each led our own lives and were not necessarily willing to make compromises for each other. I vaguely sensed that the end of our relationship was approaching.

In this state of various emotions I flew to Kenya again. Wanjiru, a fellow student at the DFFB and also a Kenyan, was shooting her graduation film there and had asked for my assistance.

And there was another reason for the trip: Barack and I had arranged to meet again in my native country. Since our brother Abongo's wedding, things had gotten more and more serious between Barack and his girlfriend, Michelle. Now she was his fiancée, and he was eager to introduce her to his Kenyan family. Because I still didn't know Michelle very well, I was really looking forward to the time with her. She exuded a calm and composure that made it very easy to talk to her.

In accordance with Luo tradition, Abongo planned at that time to move the immediate Obama family, meaning my mother, out of our grandfather's compound (Konyango) and to establish our own homestead (Kobama) directly adjacent to it. For this custom, particular rites had to be performed. Among them was the requirement that the oldest members of the Obama family be present—that meant my grandfather's brothers, who still lived in Karachuonyo. We, too, wanted to take part in the ceremony.

Due to complicated flight connections, Barack, Michelle, and I unfortunately did not arrive in Alego until a day after the end of the ritual and found there only a few of the relatives who had come. The new homestead was bare; there were only two hastily erected mud huts, one for my mother and one for her oldest son, Abongo. So I was glad that my grandfather's compound was not many yards away. There, I could—as always since my childhood—spend the night at my grandmother's, this time with Barack and Michelle.

During the few days of our stay in Alego, we shuttled back and forth between the compounds. Since Abongo lived in America, he had become very traditional. In contrast to what I had known of him previously, he now seemed to attach great value to following the Luo ways and customs. And so he also wished for us to spend as much time as possible on the new homestead of the Obama family.

Against the background of the inauguration of the compound, Barack introduced Michelle to the family as his wife-to-be. Everyone welcomed her warmly, and our grandmother insisted on serving only the best food to celebrate her visit.

Michelle's visit upcountry to our ancestral home meant a lot to the family. As I watched her interact comfortably with everyone, eating with her hands—as is customary for our traditional dish of
ugali,
fish, and greens—I was filled with fondness for her. I imagined that many Americans would have found it difficult to fit into our rural routine, which included sleeping in a thatched hut with no running water, electricity, or modern comforts.