Dreams from My Father (Adapted for Young Adults) Read online

  “What has happened to you?” his father, Obama, asked. “Why do you wear these strange skins?” Onyango said nothing, and Obama decided that Onyango must be wearing trousers to hide the fact that he was circumcised, which was against Luo custom. He thought that Onyango’s shirt must be covering a rash, or sores. Obama turned to his other sons and said, “Don’t go near this brother of yours. He is unclean.” Then he returned to his hut, and the others laughed and shunned Onyango. Because of this, Onyango returned to Kisumu, and would remain separated from his father for the rest of his life.

  Nobody realized that the white man intended to stay. We thought they had only come to trade their goods. Some built a religious mission and spoke of their god, who they said was all-powerful. But most people thought their talk was silly. Even when white men appeared with rifles, we didn’t resist because we hadn’t seen how deadly they were. Many thought the guns were fancy stirrers for ugali, the cornmeal porridge we ate.

  Things began to change with the first of the white man’s wars. A district commissioner arrived—we called him Bwana Ogalo, “the Oppressor”—and he told us we had to pay a tax on our huts with the white man’s money. Many men began to fight and were beaten or shot and their huts burned to the ground.

  Onyango had learned to read and write English, which made him useful to the white man. During the war he was put in charge of road crews. When he finally returned, he cleared land for himself in Kendu but away from his father’s compound, and he rarely spoke to his brothers. He chose to live in a tent instead of a hut. People had never seen such a thing and they thought he was crazy. After he had staked his claim, he traveled to Nairobi, where a white man had offered him a job.

  He was not the only one who moved to town. After the war, many Africans began working for the white man’s money. The war had brought famine and disease as well as large numbers of white settlers, who were allowed to seize the best land. Respect for tradition weakened. Beer now came in bottles, and many men became drunks. More fathers agreed to send their children to the mission schools, but even the children who got an education were not allowed to do the things the white man did. Only white people were allowed to buy certain land and run certain businesses. Many of us began to taste the white man’s life, and we decided that compared to him, our lives were poor.

  By these standards, your grandfather prospered. He thought many things the white man did were foolish or unjust and would not allow himself to be beaten. Once he was arrested for thrashing his white employer, who had tried to cane him. He used the man’s own cane! But he respected the white man’s power. He would say that the white man was always improving himself, whereas the African was suspicious of anything new. So he learned how to prepare the white man’s food and organize the white man’s house. Because of this, he worked in the estates of some of the most important white men. He saved his wages and bought land and cattle in Kendu.

  Finally, he found a wife, Helima. No one knows how she felt toward your grandfather, but she was quiet and polite—and most important, she could maintain his high housekeeping standards. He built a hut for her in Kendu, where she spent most of her time. After a few years, it was discovered that Helima could not have any children. Among the Luo, this was grounds for divorce. But your grandfather chose to keep Helima, and in that sense, he treated her well.

  Still, it must have been lonely for Helima, for your grandfather worked all the time and had no time for friends or entertainment. He did not drink with other men, and he did not smoke. His only pleasure was going to the dance halls in Nairobi once a month. But he also was not such a good dancer—he was rough, and would bump into people and step on their feet. Most people did not say anything because they knew Onyango had a temper. One night, though, a drunken man complained about Onyango’s clumsiness and then mocked him for being unable to have children.

  People who overheard the conversation began to laugh, and Onyango beat this man severely. But the drunk man’s words must have stayed with your grandfather, for that month he set out to find another wife. Finally he chose a young and beautiful girl named Akumu. Even though she was pledged to another man, he bribed her father with cattle. The next day, your grandfather’s friends captured Akumu while she was walking in the forest and dragged her back to Onyango’s hut.

  The young boy, Godfrey, appeared with a washbasin, and we all washed our hands for lunch. Auma stood up to stretch her back, her hair still half undone, a troubled look on her face. She said something to Granny, and drew a long response.

  “I was asking her about grabbing the woman, which was part of Luo custom,” said Auma. “Traditionally, once the man pays the dowry, the woman must not seem too eager to be with him. She pretends to refuse him, and so the man’s friends must capture her and take her back to his hut. Only after this ritual do they perform a proper marriage ceremony.”

  Auma took a small bite of her food. “I told her that some women might not have been pretending.”

  Zeituni dipped her ugali into the stew. “Yah, Auma, it was not as bad as you say. If her husband behaved badly, the girl could always leave.”

  “But what good was that if her father would only end up choosing someone else for her? Tell me, what would happen if a woman refused her father’s choice of a suitor?”

  Zeituni shrugged. “She shamed herself and her family.”

  “You see?” Auma turned to ask Granny something, and whatever Granny said in response made Auma hit her—only half playfully—on the arm.

  “I asked her if the man would force the girl to sleep with him the night of her capture,” Auma explained, “and she told me that no one knew what went on in a man’s hut. But she also asked me how a man would know if he wanted the whole bowl of soup unless he first had a taste.”

  I asked Granny how old she had been when she married our grandfather. Granny told us she had been just sixteen when she married; our grandfather was a friend of her father’s. I asked if that bothered her, and she shook her head.

  “She says it was common to marry an older man,” Auma said. “She says in those days, marriage involved more than just two people. It brought together families and affected the whole village. You didn’t complain, or worry about love. If you didn’t learn to love your husband, you learned to obey him.”

  At this point, Auma and Granny began to speak at length, and Granny said something that again made the others laugh. Everyone except Auma, who stood up and began to stack the dishes.

  “I give up,” Auma said, exasperated.

  “What did Granny say?”

  “I asked her why our women put up with the arranged marriage. The way men make all the decisions. The wife-beating. She said that often the women needed to be beaten, because otherwise they would not do everything that was required of them. You see how we are? We complain, but still we encourage men to treat us with no respect.”

  Granny’s voice suddenly became serious.

  “Perhaps if I were young today,” she said in Luo, “I would not have accepted these things. Perhaps I would only care about my feelings, and falling in love. But that’s not the world I was raised in. I only know what I have seen. What I have not seen does not make my heart heavy.”

  After we finished eating, Auma and the neighbor’s girl resumed their positions in front of the older women, and Granny returned to her story.

  By the time I came to live with Onyango, Akumu had given birth to two children. The first was Sarah. Three years later came Barack, your father. I did not know Akumu well, but I could see that she was unhappy. Her spirit was rebellious, and she found Onyango too demanding. Perhaps she still loved the man she was supposed to marry before Onyango took her away. More than once, Akumu ran away, but Onyango would follow her and bring her back.

  Life became easier for her when the Second World War came. Your grandfather went overseas as the cook to the British captain, and I c
ame to live with Akumu and Helima, helping both with the children and their crops. Onyango traveled widely with the British regiments, and we did not see him for some time. When he returned three years later, he came with a gramophone and a picture of another woman he claimed to have married in Burma.

  Onyango was now almost fifty. More and more, he thought of quitting his work for the white man and returning to farm the land. He saw, though, that the land surrounding Kendu was crowded and overgrazed. So he decided to go back to Alego, the land that his grandfather had abandoned.

  When we arrived in Alego, most of this land that you now see was bush, and life was hard for all of us. But your grandfather had studied modern farming techniques while in Nairobi, and he could make anything grow. In less than a year he had enough crops to sell at market. He planted the mango and banana and pawpaw trees that you see today.

  He built large huts for Akumu and myself and a hut of his own. He had brought back a crystal set from England that he displayed on a shelf, and on his gramophone he played strange music late into the night. When my first children, Omar and Zeituni, were born, he bought them cribs and gowns and mosquito nets, just as he had for Barack and Sarah. In the cooking hut, he built an oven in which he baked bread and cakes like you buy in a store.

  His neighbors in Alego had never seen such things. At first they were suspicious of him and thought he was foolish. But soon they came to respect his generosity, as well as what he taught them about farming and herbal medicines.

  Akumu was perpetually unhappy. Onyango beat her, and she often argued with him. She was also proud and scornful of me, and often refused to help in the household chores. She had a third child—named Auma, like this one sitting here—and as she nursed this new baby, she secretly planned her escape.

  One night, when Sarah was twelve and Barack was nine, Akumu woke up Sarah and said that she was running away to Kendu. She told Sarah that it was too difficult a journey for children to make at night but that they should follow her as soon as they were older. Then she disappeared with her baby into the darkness.

  When Onyango found out what had happened, he was furious. At first he thought he should let Akumu go, but when he saw that Barack and Sarah were still young, and that even I, with two children of my own, was little more than a girl, he went to Akumu’s family in Kendu and asked that she be returned. But the family refused. They had heard how harshly Onyango treated Akumu, and, in fact, had already accepted the dowry for Akumu’s remarriage to another man. Together Akumu and her new husband had already left for Tanganyika. There was nothing Onyango could do, so he told me that I was now the mother of all his children.

  But Sarah remembered her mother’s instructions, and only a few weeks passed before she woke up Barack in the middle of the night, just as her mother had done to her. She told Barack to be quiet, helped him get dressed, and together they walked down the road to Kendu. I still wonder that they survived. They were gone for almost two weeks, walking many miles each day, hiding from those who passed them on the road, sleeping in fields and begging for food. Not far from Kendu, they became lost, and a woman saw them and took pity on them, for they were filthy and almost starved. When she realized who they were she sent for your grandfather. And when Onyango came to get them, and saw how badly they looked, this is the only time that anyone ever saw him cry.

  The children never tried to run away again. But I don’t think they ever forgot their journey. Sarah kept a careful distance from Onyango, and in her heart remained loyal to Akumu, for she was older, and perhaps had seen how the old man had treated her mother. I believe she also resented me for taking her mother’s place. Barack reacted differently. He could not forgive his mother for having abandoned him and acted as if Akumu didn’t exist. He told everyone that I was his mother, and although he sent Akumu money when he became a man, to the end of his life he always acted coldly toward her.

  The strange thing was that in many ways Sarah was more like her father—strict, hardworking, easy to anger. Whereas Barack was wild and stubborn like Akumu.

  As you might expect, Onyango was very strict with his children. He worked them hard, and would not allow them to play outside the compound, because he said other children were filthy and ill-mannered. Whenever Onyango went away, I would ignore these instructions, because children must play with other children, just as they must eat and sleep. But I would never tell your grandfather what I did, and I would have to scrub the children clean before your grandfather came home.

  This was not easy, especially with Barack. That boy was so mischievous! In Onyango’s presence, he appeared well-mannered and obedient. But behind the old man’s back, Barack did as he pleased. When Onyango was away on business, Barack would take off his proper clothes and go off with other boys to wrestle or swim in the river, to steal the fruit from the neighbors’ trees or ride their cows. I would always cover up his foolishness, for I loved him as my own son.

  Although he did not like to show it, your grandfather was very fond of Barack, because the boy was so clever. When Barack was only a baby, Onyango would teach him the alphabet and numbers, and it was not long before the son could outdo the father in these things. This pleased Onyango, for to him knowledge was the source of all the white man’s power, and he wanted to make sure that his son was as educated as any white man. He was less concerned with Sarah’s education, although she was quick like Barack. Most men thought educating their daughters was a waste of money.

  This created more friction between Sarah and her younger brother, especially because she knew that Barack was not always serious about his studies. Everything came too easily to him. At first he went to the mission school nearby, but he came back after the first day and told his father that he could not study there because his class was taught by a woman and he knew everything she had to teach him. The next closest school was six miles away, and I began to walk him to this school every morning.

  His teacher there was a man, but Barack discovered that this didn’t solve his problems. He always knew the answers, and sometimes would even correct the teacher’s mistakes before the whole class. This caused Barack many canings at the hand of the headmaster. But it also might have taught him something, because the next year, when he switched to a class with a woman teacher, I noticed that he didn’t complain.

  Still, he was bored with school, and when he became older, he would stop going for weeks at a time. A few days before exams, he would find a classmate and read through the lessons. He could sit down and teach himself everything in just a few days, and when the marks came in, he would always be first. The few times he was not, he came to me in tears, for he was so used to being the best. But usually he would come home laughing and boasting of his cleverness.

  By the time your father was a teenager, things were changing rapidly in Kenya. People began to talk about independence. There were meetings and demonstrations, and petitions were presented to the government, complaining about white people taking land. Like other boys, your father was influenced by the early talk of independence. But your grandfather doubted that the movement would lead to anything, because he thought Africans could never win against the white man’s army.

  Despite his attitude, your grandfather was once held in a detention camp for six months. Another African, a tax collector, was jealous of his lands and had once been scolded by your grandfather for pocketing some of the tax money. This man told the authorities that Onyango was a rebel, and one day soldiers came to take your grandfather away. Eventually he was found innocent, but he was in the camp for over six months, and when he returned to Alego he was very thin and dirty. He had difficulty walking, and his head was full of lice. He was so ashamed, he refused to enter his house or tell us what had happened.

  Barack was away at the time and only learned about this detention later. He had taken the district examination, and had been admitted to Maseno Mission School, some fif
ty miles south. This should have been a great honor for Barack, since only the best students got into Maseno. But your father’s rebellious nature caused the school much grief. He would sneak girls into his dormitory. He and his friends would raid farms for chickens and yams because they did not like the dormitory food. The teachers overlooked much of this, for they saw how smart he was. But eventually Barack went too far and was expelled.

  Onyango was so furious when he found out that he beat Barack with a stick until Barack’s back was bleeding. But Barack refused to run or cry out, or even explain himself to his father.

  Barack moved to Nairobi and found a job working as a clerk for the railway. But he was bored, and he became distracted by the Kenyan independence movement. He began to attend meetings and came to know some of the rebel leaders. At one of these meetings, the police burst in, and Barack was jailed. He sent word to his father that he needed money for bail, but Onyango refused. He told me that he needed to teach his son a lesson.

  Because he was not a leader, Barack was released after a few days. But he had begun to think that what his father had once told him was true—that he would amount to nothing. He was a man of twenty and had no money or prospects. And he now had a wife and a child. He had met Kezia when he was only eighteen. One year after they married, Roy was born. Two years later came your sister, Auma.

  Barack was deeply depressed, almost desperate. He saw that he might end up working as a clerk for the rest of his life. Then, good fortune struck. He met two American women who were teaching at a religious organization. When they saw how smart he was, they arranged for him to take a correspondence course that would give him the certificate he needed to go to college. If he was successful, they said, they would try to help him get into a university in America.

  Barack became very excited and for the first time in his life, he worked diligently. Every night, and during his lunch hours, he would study. A few months later, he took the exam at the American embassy. The exam took several months to grade, and during this wait he was so nervous he could barely eat. He became so thin that we thought he would die. One day, the letter came. I was not there to see him open it. I know that when he told me the news, he was still shouting out with happiness.