Read Online And Then Life Happens by Auma Obama - Free Book Online

she would very rarely talk to me or allow me into the house. I think that she was not comfortable with the fact that her daughter’s best friend was a black girl. In the early sixties, shortly after the end of the colonial era, she had to accept that many Africans moved into her neighborhood, in which only white people used to live. The fact that my stepmother was white probably mitigated my blackness in her eyes a bit—and I suspect that was the only reason she tolerated my friendship with her daughter—but Ruth’s marriage to an African must at the same time have been a considerable demerit.
    My friendship with Barbara lasted only until the end of primary school. Afterward, our ways parted because I went to a different school than she did. Shortly thereafter, Barbara’s family became one of the last white families to move away from Woodley. Little by little, all the white people had left the neighborhood, and besides the African families, only a few Indian families now stayed behind. I never saw Barbara again. Thus ended an almost six-year friendship, without either of us ever inquiring about the other again.
    Shortly before Barbara’s departure, my friend Sharon’s family had also moved away. They left the country when it became known that the Ugandan head of state Idi Amin was expelling the Indian population en masse from his country. He claimed that they would exploit the country and deprive the indigenous people of the chance to participate in Uganda’s economic success. Fearing that the same fate could befall them in Kenya, Sharon’s parents ultimately decided to immigrate to Canada.
    Suddenly, due to events beyond my control, my world changed radically once again. From the familiar primary school, I entered high school, my two best friends moved out of the neighborhood, and—what hit me hardest—my stepmother then divorced my father and left us forever, taking my two younger brothers with her.
    This time, I was actually glad to go to boarding school, because an oppressive emptiness had permeated our home. Not only because my stepmother was gone, but also because she took many household objects with her, which made the rooms look bare and dismal, as if no one was living in them anymore. The house turned into a quiet, depressing place. On top of that, Ruth was awarded our father’s only real estate—it was in Lavington, an elegant neighborhood of Nairobi—after the divorce. He thereby lost the bulk of his wealth.
    One might have thought that Abongo and I would have grown closer in our shared fate. But the opposite was the case. My brother showed barely any interest in me, took pleasure in teasing me, and acted as if it meant nothing at all to him that three important people vanished from our lives. Only years later did he confess to me that he, too, had cried himself to sleep at night in his room out of sheer grief.

 
    6.
    A S A THIRTEEN-YEAR-OLD GIRL , I experienced the new boarding school as a true salvation. Without the security of Kenya High School, I might not have recovered my shaken balance so easily—for the six years I spent there were among the most difficult in my life. Far from the ruins of my former family, this all-girls high school became a second, more stable home. The school’s orderly world with clear rules and structures provided me with an urgently needed foothold.
    The large offering of academic and extracurricular activities proved to be an additional source of help in that. We were advised to make full use of them, and with this wide palette of possibilities we were instilled with the sense that the world was at our fingertips. There were no limitations at all, and the school subjects generally reserved for boys were regarded at Kenya High School as fully appropriate for us girls. As long as our grades permitted it, we could learn anything we pleased in addition to the required curriculum. Apart from our own laziness, nothing and