The Obamas Read online

  In this part of Kenya, most people live modestly, working as small-scale farmers growing subsistence crops such as maize, millet, and sorghum, supplemented with the occasional cow and a few chickens. The province of Nyanza, often locally referred to as Luoland, does not have the rich farming land of the central highlands, and therefore this area was less attractive to the white colonists who settled in the region a century ago. The close proximity to Lake Victoria also makes this one of the worst places in Kenya for mosquitoes, and malaria is a common killer, especially among young children; almost three thousand children die every day from malaria in sub-Saharan Africa. (However, the recent introduction of free mosquito nets in Kenya has helped decrease child mortality from the disease by over 40 percent.)7

  Like the more fortunate villages in Kenya, K’ogelo also has two schools. The land was donated by President Obama’s grandfather, and after Barack Obama visited the village in 2006 they were named the Senator Obama Primary School and the Senator Obama Secondary School. These two schools are typically Kenyan: simple brick structures with no window frames and few facilities. Outside, cattle graze on the school grounds; inside, the classrooms are packed with eager young faces. Everywhere in Africa, you will find schoolchildren with an enthusiasm to learn and improve themselves, a commitment that somehow eludes many pupils in the Western world. But here in K’ogelo, the children have a clear pride in their village school for a very obvious reason. The pupils in the Senator Obama schools of K’ogelo seem to have absorbed the campaign slogans of their local hero—“Change we can believe in” and “Yes we can”—just as fully as Obama’s most fervent supporters in America.

  For Sarah Obama, change was certainly happening. This eighty-seven-year-old woman had hosted the world’s media for the previous two years, with all the regal patience and good humor of an African queen mother. Sarah still lives in her husband’s compound, which he established when his family moved to K’ogelo in 1945. But within a few months of moving there, Onyango’s other wife, Habiba Akumu, left home and returned to live with her parents. (Many months later, I would learn about the extraordinary circumstances behind this acrimonious family squabble, which left Sarah to care not only for her own four children but for Habiba Akumu’s three children as well—a young girl also named Sarah, Barack Obama senior, and his younger sister Hawa Auma.) Although Mama Sarah is related to the president only by marriage, she raised Barack Obama senior from a young boy. For this reason President Obama often refers to her as “Granny Sarah.” Sarah has only a few words of English and prefers to speak either Dholuo (the traditional Luo language) or Swahili. Nevertheless, on most days when she is in K’ogelo, she sits patiently in her front garden under the shade of a large mango tree planted by her husband. There she holds court, welcoming the dozens of visitors who come to pay their respects.

  Being the oldest surviving relative of the U.S. president has been a mixed blessing for Sarah Obama. She certainly welcomes the new borehole that was drilled just outside her front door, which relieves her of the daily chore—shared by practically every woman in Africa—of collecting water from the nearest well or river. But Sarah was less enthusiastic about the ten-foot-high wire fence that now encircles her compound, or the dozen members of the Kenya police force who are now camped at all times in a makeshift security post nearby. “It is God’s will,” she said. “The electricity and the water are good. But now I cannot go anywhere without being mobbed by all the people. I am like a prisoner in my own house.”

  Sarah is not the only member of the Obama family who spends time in K’ogelo. Kezia Obama, Barack Obama senior’s first wife, also keeps a hut next to Sarah, although she now lives in southern England. Being a large and extended family, other members periodically pass by “Home Squared” to give Sarah their support. Still, most days the visitors and journalists coming to Mama Sarah’s house vastly outnumber the few Obama family members in the village.

  I was puzzled why the media seemed to show so much interest in such a small, sleepy village as K’ogelo. After just a few days in K’ogelo I had seen everything that there was to see: the Obama compound, the Catholic church, the two schools, the clinic, and the market. Yes, there was grand talk of building a conference center and a modern hotel in the village, but Luo have a reputation for making grandiose plans and I doubted whether anything would change very quickly in this quiet African outpost.

  Several of the people I spoke to in K’ogelo had mentioned that there were more Obamas living in another place called Kendu Bay, on the opposite, southern side of Winam Gulf. Barack Obama wrote about visiting this township in Dreams from My Father, but he said little about the town, focusing instead on his time in Nairobi and K’ogelo. Now, with only one day left of my visit to Nyanza, I decided to try my luck elsewhere.

  I had been warned that the road from Kisumu to Kendu Bay was very poor, so I made an early start. However, like many of the major roads in this part of Kenya, it had recently been resurfaced and driving was really not a problem—except for the appalling driving standards of most Kenyans. Nor was it really that difficult to find the Obama homestead. By now, Obama was easily the most famous name in Africa, and after a few inquiries we were directed off the main road from Kendu Bay and up a dirt track.

  Even though Africans tend to be notably relaxed and welcoming to total strangers, even to a mzungu who arrives unannounced, I was feeling a little uncomfortable about arriving at the Obama homestead without making any arrangements. I had not been able to phone ahead, and I did not even know whom I should talk to about the family. Yet within five minutes, I was walking through the family homestead with Charles Oluoch, a cousin to President Obama. Charles is a tall, thin, handsome man, just past his sixtieth year. As such, he is one of the family elders, and, as he explained to me in excellent English, he is also chairman of the Barack H. Obama Foundation.

  With obvious pride and with grand sweeping gestures, he took me around part of the Obama homestead—K’obama—a large area of sprawling compounds with scores of small brick huts stretching out into the distance among the trees. “Here is the entrance to the Obama home. There are several homes here. It is a big home because the children are many. This one is Joshua Aginga’s home. He was the third son of Obama Opiyo. This is his first wife’s house, and this is his second wife’s house.…”

  Charles continued telling me an extraordinary history of the Obama family as he guided me through what was only a small part of the homestead. My mind reeled as he recited, in extraordinary detail, the family history—husbands with four or five wives, a dozen children, brothers, cousins, and uncles … The complexity of the family tree was mind-boggling.

  I soon learned that it is a Luo tradition for the husband and each of his wives to have separate huts, with the first wife having a bigger dwelling than the second wife, whose house is slightly larger than that of the third wife, and so on down the pecking order. Every building here was very modest by any standards, and typical of this part of Africa. Traditionally, Luo huts had round walls made of wattle and daub, and were thatched with a straw roof. But in recent years, as the Luo have begun to add furniture to their households, the round huts have mostly been replaced with a square design so that cupboards and dressers and sofas can be pushed back against a flat wall. Today the huts are also built more permanently of brick or stone, sometimes daubed with mud; the traditional straw thatch has given way to corrugated iron roofs.

  Charles took me by the arm and walked me in a new direction. “I want to show you something special,” he said. We arrived at a tiny hut, with wooden shutters in place of the windows. “This house is where the president slept in 1987. He came visiting—he wanted to know his roots. So he came up to Kendu Bay, and this is where he slept.”

  We pushed open the simple wooden door with its faded, peeling paint and noisy, doubtful hinges. Inside, the room was dark and cool, in contrast to the oppressive tropical heat and light outside. On the hard earth floor was a thin straw mat, which had taken on almost my
thical status within the family: “This is the mattress he was given to sleep on. We could not afford the big mattresses from the supermarket.” Charles lit up the dark room with a broad grin. “He must have been very uncomfortable for the whole night, because he is not used to such things.”

  I asked Charles how many journalists had come to Kendu Bay. He tensed noticeably at the question. “Very few. Very, very few. They all go to K’ogelo. They don’t come here.”

  “But there is very little to see in K’ogelo, and so many more Obamas are living here,” I said. “So why do all the journalists go to K’ogelo?” Charles looked rueful and said nothing.

  A couple of months later, when I joined the family to watch the presidential inauguration on television, I began to understand the real reasons for the press’s interest in K’ogelo rather than Kendu Bay. First, when Barack Obama came to Kenya in 1987, his half sister Auma served as his guide. As the second child of Barack Obama senior and his first wife, Kezia, Auma was brought up in K’ogelo, even though most of the huge, diverse Obama family lived elsewhere. So it was not surprising that Barack would spend most of his time in K’ogelo, where Auma grew up, rather than the village where most of the Obamas lived.

  Second, I learned that Raila Odinga, the Kenyan prime minister and a Luo, is from Bondo, a small town just eight miles southwest of K’ogelo. His family still has very strong ties to the area, and his brother is the local MP. I was told that when President Obama visited in 2006 as a U.S. senator, the prime minister’s office had channeled press interest in the Obama family to K’ogelo and not to Kendu Bay. After all, any politician would want positive international or regional attention to come into his own patch, rather than anywhere else in the region.

  Time was beginning to run out for me with Charles Oluoch in Kendu Bay. Driving in Kenya is a hazardous business even in daylight, and I was keen to return to Kisumu before it got dark. But Charles had one more thing to show me. He led me around a hedge of small trees to a clearing to one side of the huts. There was a simple grave, not dissimilar to the two I had seen in Mama Sarah’s compound in K’ogelo. Here, on a brass plaque screwed to the concrete headstone, was an inscription:

  HERE LIES OBAMA K’OPIYO OF ALEGO K’OGELO

  FROM WHOM ALL OF US JOK’OBAMA COME.

  DEDICATED BY THE BARACK H. OBAMA FOUNDATION,

  ABONG’O MALIK OBAMA

  I was intrigued and a little confused. Obama Opiyo? Charles explained: “The man who is lying here is Obama Opiyo, our great-grandfather. Obama had four wives, and between them there were eight sons and nine girls, and one of his sons was Hussein Onyango, who is the grandfather to the president now of America.”

  I did some quick mental arithmetic. If Charles was sixty and Opiyo was his great-grandfather, then Opiyo must have been born around 1830. I was keen to know from Charles what had happened to the family in the intervening years.

  “That,” said Charles, with another of his big smiles beginning to break out, “is a very long story, and it will have to wait until you come back to visit us next time!”

  2

  MEET THE ANCESTORS

  OYIK BIECHA KALUO KAE

  My placenta is buried here in Luoland

  FLIGHT JO 831 leaves Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi for Juba, in southern Sudan, every morning at 7:30 sharp. It is a short flight, only about 600 miles to the northwest, and it usually takes less than ninety minutes. Yet the cheapest round-trip ticket costs nearly $750. Mile for mile, the Nairobi–Juba route must be one of the most expensive flights anywhere in the world, and I asked the ticket assistant at Nairobi airport why the price was so high. He shrugged. “No other airline really flies there so often,” he said with a smile, “and all the aid agencies must go there now.”

  Between 1983 and 2005 southern Sudan was embroiled in a vicious, bloody conflict between the Muslim government in the north and the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army in the mainly Christian south. It was Africa’s longest-running civil war; nearly two million civilians were killed, and another four million were forced to flee their homes. Since January 2005 a United Nations–sponsored settlement has brought an uneasy peace to the area and offered a chance to rebuild a region that has been devastated by twenty-two years of fighting. Within a few months of the peace agreement, the Nairobi-based airline JetLink opened its lucrative daily flight into Juba, the historic capital of the south, giving access to hundreds of humanitarian aid workers from the United Nations and other international agencies.

  After flying over Kisumu at the eastern end of Winam Gulf, the aircraft crosses over some of the most remote regions of East Africa. To the north is Mount Elgon, Kenya’s second highest mountain, which straddles the Kenya-Uganda border. Soon it passes over Lake Kyoga, a vast, shallow lake and swamp in eastern Uganda, and home to large numbers of crocodiles. Another thirty minutes into the flight and the aircraft flies over the White Nile, at 4,145 miles the longest river in the world. Providing there are no delays, the aircraft begins its approach into Juba International Airport before ten in the morning, losing altitude over the foothills of the Imatong Mountains, which straddle the border between Sudan and Uganda. To the north is the Sudd, the world’s biggest swamp—a vast and formidable expanse of waterlogged lowland the size of Florida. In the hot season, the smaller rivers frequently run dry; during the wet season in late summer, the waters of the Bahr al-Jabal (White Nile) and its western tributary, the Bahr al-Ghazāl (River of Gazelles), burst their banks. It is an annual pattern of flooding that has recurred for thousands of years, and the locals have learned to use it to good effect.

  Historians and anthropologists believe the southern part of the Sudd to be the “cradleland” of Barack Obama’s ancestors. These early people, called the River-Lake Nilotes or the Western Nilotes, were mainly pastoralists and fishermen, and they lived a hand-to-mouth Iron Age existence in this part of Sudan more than a thousand years ago.1 The area is dotted with a series of ironstone plateaus incised by the tributaries of the big rivers that flow north toward Egypt and the Mediterranean. During the wet season when the waters were high, these people gathered on the islands formed by the floodwaters; during the dry season, they moved out to the lower land, where their cattle could graze. When they moved away from their villages during the dry season, they lived in temporary huts called kiru, which were made from branches and leaves.

  Migration of the Luo ancestors from southern Sudan from c. 1300 to 1750.

  Between six hundred and eight hundred years ago, these people left the Sudd and started on a perilous migration south into Uganda and eventually Kenya. This almost biblical movement of people, which took more than a dozen generations to complete, was a long and painful process that in time laid the foundation of the Luo tribe of Kenya. It is a journey that started with a local chief living in a mud hut overlooking the White Nile, and ended seven centuries later with the leader of the most powerful nation on earth living in the White House.

  Nobody can be absolutely sure what triggered the migration of the Nilotes from southern Sudan in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, but one likely possibility is that climatic change gradually forced the pastoralists to move in search of a more hospitable environment. Rock paintings throughout the Sahara portray elephant, rhino, hippo, buffalo, crocodile, and giraffe—animals associated with much wetter conditions than exist today—suggesting that conditions across the northern half of Africa have become progressively drier over thousands of years. In southern Sudan too, the climatic conditions are thought to have been much wetter than at present.2 Successive years with poor rainfalls would have had potentially catastrophic consequences in this region, where the water floods over a very large area and is therefore highly prone to evaporation.3

  One elder from Alego, Lando Rarondo, offered me another theory. He thought the Nilotes moved from Sudan because of an anthrax epidemic. His suggestion is entirely plausible; anthrax is one of the oldest recorded diseases, and it is believed to be the sixth plagu
e recorded in the book of Exodus. An acute, lethal bacterial disease that affects grazing animals, including sheep and cattle, anthrax can also be passed on to humans, either through direct contact or through eating the flesh of an infected animal.

  Whatever initiated the migration of the Nilotes, whether it was climate change, overcrowding, disease, drought, conflict, or some combination of these, historians are confident that the diaspora began around AD 1400. This was not a grand, organized movement of people but rather a gradual dispersal, as extended families began to migrate south and east from southern Sudan. Over the next four hundred years some of these migrants slowly moved toward what is now Kenya. Over the generations, their language changed and they adopted traditions that made them distinct from other peoples, until a clear Luo tribal identity slowly emerged.

  Historians have broken down the Luo diaspora into three distinct phases. The first involved leaving the Sudd. These Nilotic peoples dispersed to the north, west, east—and one group, under the leadership of Obama’s ancestors, began a long trek southward toward Uganda, following the course of the Upper Nile.

  For any people on the move, there are three essentials for survival: water, food, and shelter. For this reason, the Luo never strayed far from the river; it provided fish to eat, and water for their cattle, and a clear route to follow. This movement up the White Nile likely gave the Luo their name, which is derived from the vernacular saying oluwo aora, which means “the people who follow the river.”

  In many ways the traditional lifestyle these people had followed in the Sudd prepared them perfectly for their migration. They were used to moving their cattle up to higher ground when the Nile flooded every year and then taking them back down during the dry season. The dry-season camps in the Sudd probably provided a model for their temporary migration encampments as they moved along the Upper Nile.4