BARACK OBAMA SENIOR, BARACK OBAMA’S FATHER
BARACK OBAMA SENIOR, BARACK OBAMA’S FATHER
A few months after Barack’s 21st birthday, when he was living in New York, a stranger called. It was his Aunt Jane, calling from Nairobi to tell Barack that his father had been killed in a car accident. She asked that
he call his uncle in Boston and relay the news. Telling him she would try to call again, the line went dead. The news about a father he hadn’t seen since he was 10, the father who had returned to Africa in 1963 when Barack was only 2 years old, wasn’t easily processed. Now, at 21 years of age, he heard from an aunt he didn’t know that his father, who was some- what more a myth than a man, was dead.
Barack writes in his book Dreams from My Father that, at the time of his father’s death, he really only knew him from the stories he had heard from his mother and grandparents. They each had their favorites that young Barack heard many times. His grandmother seemed to have a “gentler portrait” of Barack Sr. Barack’s mother said that his father could be a bit domineering and that he was an honest person and sometimes uncom- promising. She told him the story of his father accepting his Phi Beta
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Kappa key in his favorite outfit of jeans and an old knit leopard-print shirt. No one had said it was a big honor, and when he found everyone at the ceremony dressed in tuxedos, he was, for the first and only time in her memory, embarrassed. Barack’s grandfather said that Barack Sr. could handle just about any situation, a quality that made everyone like him. Barack’s grandfather said that one thing Barack could learn from his father
was confidence, which he believed was the secret to a man’s success. 13 The stories were often told in the evenings, and then stories about his father would be put away, to be brought up again at a later time. Later in life, Barack learned more about his father, the man he and his half sister Auma called the “old man,” from the stories he heard on his first trip to Kenya.
Barack’s father was a Kenyan, of the Luo tribe, born near Lake Victoria in a village called Alego. His mother Akumu, his father’s second wife, left the household when Barack Sr. was nine, leaving her first two children to be raised by his father’s third wife, known to her extended family as Granny, and taking her third child, an infant, with her. Granny described Barack Sr. as mischievous, appearing to be obedient in front of his father, but, outside of his father’s view, he usually did what he pleased. Even though he behaved badly sometimes, he was also very clever. At a very early age, he learned his alphabet and numbers.
As a young man, Barack Sr. tended his father’s goats and attended the local mission school that had been set up by the British. Learning came very easily to him, and he told his father he could not study there because
he already knew everything the instructor had to teach him. He was sent to another school, and even there he knew all the answers and corrected his teacher. He soon became bored with school and would sometimes stop going altogether. He would find a classmate to give him the lessons and would learn everything he needed to know for the exam. He was almost always first in his class. This pleased his father, because, to him, knowledge was the source of white man’s power, and he wanted to make sure his son was as educated as any white man. Life in Kenya was changing by the time Barack Sr. was a teenager. Many Africans had fought in World War II, and when they returned home, they weren’t satisfied with living under the white man’s rule. There was talk of independence from the British. Barack Sr. was influenced by all the talk, and when he returned home from school he often talked about what he had seen. Although his fa- ther, Onyango, agreed with many of the demands, he was skeptical of any sort of independence. He thought Africans could never win against the white man’s army. He said that the black man only wanted to work with his own family or clan, while all the white men worked to increase their power. “The white man alone is like an ant. He can be easily crushed . . .
11 the white man works together. His nation, his business—these things are
FA M I LY H I S T O RY
more important to him . . . he will follow his leaders and not question order. Black men are not like this. Even the most foolish black man thinks
he knows better . . . that is why the black man will always lose.” 14 Despite these views, Onyango was thought to be a subversive and spent time in a detention camp. Even though he was later found innocent, he never fully recovered from the experience.
While his father was in a detention camp, Barack Sr. was away at school, some 50 miles south of his father’s home. He had taken a district exam and was admitted to a mission school that admitted only a small number of the brightest Africans. The teachers of the school, impressed by his intelligence, overlooked some of his pranks. However, it was his rebelliousness in the end that caused him to be expelled. He returned home, and when his father found out, he was furious. He told Barack Sr. that if he didn’t behave properly, he would have no use for him. His father arranged for him to travel to Mombassa to take a job as a clerk for an Arab merchant, telling his son that now he would see how much he could enjoy himself, now that he had to earn money for his own keep. Having no choice but to obey his father, he took the job, but after an argument with the merchant, he quit. To find another job, he had to accept less pay, and his father told him he wouldn’t amount to anything. Onyango told his son to leave because he had brought him shame.
Barack Sr. then went to Nairobi and found work as a clerk for the railroad. Influenced by Kenyan politics, he became bored with the job and began attending political meetings. After being arrested and put in jail for taking part in a meeting, he asked his father for bail, but his father refused. Upon his release, Barack Sr. was discouraged and began to think his father was right, perhaps he would amount to nothing. At 20 years old,
he had no job, was estranged from his father, and was without money or prospects. And by now, he was married with a child, having met his first wife, Kezia, when he was 18. Attracted by her beauty, after a short court- ship, he decided to marry her. Having no money for a dowry, he’d had to ask his father for help. When Onyango refused, Barack Sr.’s stepmother intervened, saying it would be improper for Barack to beg for help for a proper dowry. After a year of marriage, a son, Roy, was born. Two years later, a daughter, Auma, was born.
Barack Sr. took any work he could find to support his family. He was desperate and depressed because many of his classmates from the presti- gious mission school were now leaving for university and some had gone to London to study. They all, he knew, could expect good jobs when they returned to a now liberated Kenya. Barack wondered if he would end up
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working as a clerk for the rest of his life. Then good fortune struck. Barack met two American women who were teaching in Nairobi. They loaned him books and invited him to their home. When they realized how intel- ligent he was, they suggested he continue his studies at university. Barack explained that he had neither a secondary school certificate nor sufficient funds to pay the tuition. The answer was to take a correspondence course to earn the needed certificate and pursue scholarship funds at a university in the United States. Once he began working on the lessons, he worked diligently, and a few months later, he sat for the exam at the American embassy. After several months, the acceptance letter came; he had earned the certificate. He still needed to gain acceptance to a university and find the funds to pay tuition and transportation expenses to the States. His father, once he saw how diligently Barack had worked, was proud and im- pressed; however, he wasn’t able to raise the needed money. Determined to further his studies, Barack Sr. wrote letters to schools throughout the United States. The University of Hawaii responded, saying they would provide a scholarship for him to attend. Moving his pregnant wife and son to his father’s compound, he left Nairobi in 1959; at the age of 23,
he became the first African student at the University of Hawaii, where he studied econometrics. A short time later, in a Russian language class, he met a young American woman named Ann Dunham and fell in love. A short time later they were married and, in August 1961, Ann gave birth to a son. He was named after his father and grandfather, but was called Barry. In 1963, after graduating in three years and first in his class, Barack Sr. won another scholarship to pursue his Ph.D. at Harvard University. He accepted the scholarship, moved to Boston, and left his wife and son in Hawaii. His son, Barack, was two years old. Barack Sr. and Ann di- vorced. After leaving Harvard, Barack Sr. returned to Africa.