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

evenings were the weekends when the students went home. Every other weekend we were allowed to visit our families. On Saturday morning, we were picked up at an appointed time by our parents or a relative and had to be back at the boarding school punctually the next evening. All the girls seemed to look forward to it, and it was considered the worst punishment to lose the privilege of going home. For me, however, it was not a punishment; I was happy to be able to stay at school.
    To be in our empty house, without my stepmother and little brothers, was much worse. If I spent a weekend there, I was mostly alone. My father worked a lot, putting in long hours, and did not come home immediately afterward, but instead spent the evenings with his friends. That was nothing out of the ordinary in those days. Kenyan fathers rarely dealt with the children; that was a woman’s job. Only there was no woman in our home anymore. Abongo, who attended his school as a day student, came home every day, but after a brief greeting spent most of his time elsewhere. Both of them, my father and my brother, seemed to flee the silence of our house as often as possible. Frequently, I was already asleep when they got back. And from time to time, it would happen that my returning father would wake me up to talk with me.
    While I sat on the sofa in the living room, rubbing my eyes sleepily and pretending to be listening to him attentively, he talked to me late into the night about all the great things he was planning for us. He spoke about his love for us children, about the fact that he was doing everything in his power to provide for us.
    On those nights, my father would also talk about my brother Barack and his mother, Ann. Over the years, I had heard a lot about this brother in the United States whom I had never met. But I was never particularly curious about him. Despite the fact that my father spoke regularly about Barry, as he called him, to us children and our extended family, ensuring that he was definitely part of the Obama family, he was too far removed from my everyday life for me to show real interest. Even now I only listened with half an ear as my father repeated the stories from letters and showed me photos sent to him by Ann updating him on Barack’s progress. He was very proud of Barack and also seemed to still care a lot for Ann.
    Longing for a return to a tight-knit family circle, I would prick up my ears only when my father talked about Barack and his mother coming to live with us in Kenya. I detected in his voice a desperate need to believe that with the two of them he could re-create a home that was not tarnished by a sense of failure and discord. I did not question how likely this reunion was. When talking about it, my father’s voice was tinged with sorrow and loneliness, and deep down I probably knew it would never become a reality.
    Sometimes he simply played a piece of classical music and told me this and that about the composer. I thus became acquainted on those nights with Bach, Schubert, Brahms, and other great figures of European classical music.
    I often have vivid recollections of those nighttime scenes. I can see us sitting together on the couch, my father talking, me nodding. I rarely respond to what he is saying and am distant toward him. I did not understand his deep sadness, and his loneliness did not arouse my sympathy. At that time, I firmly believed that he himself was to blame for the situation into which he had brought all of us, which had resulted in a broken family.
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    Ultimately, my father’s attempt to get closer to me during those late-night conversations was doomed to fail. My pain was simply too great to allow any intimacy. I remained distant and mistrustful and felt as if I were sitting opposite a man I didn’t know at all. I resented the fact that he made me sit through his suffering when I felt that he did not acknowledge mine, when in my eyes he was, in