Dreams from My Father - Barack Obama [103]
“Because of the accident, the Old Man had now lost his job at the Water Department, and we had no place to live. For a while, we bounced around from relative to relative, but eventually they would put us out because they had their own troubles. Then we found a run-down house in a rough section of town, and we stayed there for several years. That was a terrible time. The Old Man had so little money, he would have to borrow from relatives just for food. This made him more ashamed, I think, and his temper got worse. Despite all our troubles, he would never admit to Roy or myself that anything was wrong. I think that’s what hurt the most—the way he still put on airs about how we were the children of Dr. Obama. We would have empty cupboards, and he would make donations to charities just to keep up appearances! I would argue with him sometimes, but he would just say that I was a foolish young girl and didn’t understand.
“It was worse between him and Roy. They would have terrific fights. Finally Roy just left. He just stopped coming home and started living with different people. So I was left alone with the Old Man. Sometimes I would stay up half the night, waiting to hear him come through the door, worrying that something terrible had happened. Then he would stagger in drunk and come into my room and wake me because he wanted company or something to eat. He would talk about how unhappy he was and how he had been betrayed. I would be so sleepy, I wouldn’t understand anything he was saying. Secretly, I began to wish that he would just stay out one night and never come back.
“The only thing that saved me was Kenya High School. It was a girls’ school that had once been reserved for the British. Very strict, and still very racist—it was only when I was there, after most of the white students had left, that they allowed African teachers to lecture. But despite these things, I became active there. It was a boarding school, so during the school term I would stay there instead of with the Old Man. The school gave me some sense of order, you see. Something to hold on to.
“One year, the Old Man couldn’t even pay my school fees, and I was sent home. I was so ashamed, I cried all night. I didn’t know what I would do. But I was lucky. One of the headmistresses heard about my situation and gave me a scholarship that let me stay on. It’s sad to say, but as much as I cared for the Old Man, and worried about him, I was glad not to have to live with him. I just left him to himself and never looked back.
“In my last two years in high school, the Old Man’s situation improved. Kenyatta died, and somehow the Old Man was able to work again in government. He got a job with the Ministry of Finance and started to have money again, and influence. But I think he never got over the bitterness of what had happened to him, seeing his other age-mates who had been more politically astute rise ahead of him. And it was too late to pick up the pieces of his family. For a long time he lived alone in a hotel room, even when he could afford again to buy a house. He would have different women for short spells—Europeans, Africans—but nothing ever lasted. I almost never saw him, and when I did, he didn’t know how to behave with me. We were like strangers, but you know, he still wanted to pretend that he was a model father and could tell me how to behave. I remember when I got my scholarship to study in Germany, I was afraid to tell him. I thought he might say I was too young to go and interfere with my student visa, which had to be approved by the government. So I just left without saying good-bye.
“It was only in Germany that I began to let go of some of the anger I felt towards him. With distance, I could see what he had gone through, how even he had never really understood himself. Only at the end, after making