Dreams from My Father - Barack Obama [177]
“Is that a Luo expression?” I asked. Sayid’s face broke into a bashful smile.
“We have similar expressions in Luo,” he said, “but actually I must admit that I read this particular expression in a book by Chinua Achebe. The Nigerian writer. I like his books very much. He speaks the truth about Africa’s predicament. The Nigerian, the Kenyan—it is the same. We share more than divides us.”
Granny and Roy were sitting outside the house and talking to a man in a heavy suit when we returned. The man turned out to be the principal of the nearby school, and he had stopped to share news from town and enjoy the chicken stew left over from the night before. I noticed that Roy had his bag packed, and asked him where he was going.
“To Kendu Bay,” he said. “The principal here is going that way, so myself, Bernard, and my mum, we’re going to go catch a ride with him and bring Abo back here. You should come, too, and pay your respects to the family there.”
Auma decided to stay back with Granny, but Sayid and I went to gather a change of clothes and piled into the principal’s old jalopy. The drive to Kendu turned out to be several hours long by the main highway; to the west, Lake Victoria appeared intermittently, its still, silver waters tapering off into flat green marsh. By late afternoon we were pulling down Kendu Bay’s main street, a wide, dusty road lined with sand-colored shops. After thanking the principal, we caught a matatu down a maze of side streets, until all signs of town had disappeared and the landscape was once again open pasture and cornfields. At a fork in the road, Kezia signaled for us to get off, and we began walking along a deep, chalk-colored gully at the bottom of which flowed a wide, chocolate-brown river. Along the riverbank, we could see women slapping wet clothes against exposed rock; on a terrace above, a herd of goats chewed on the patches of yellow grass, their black, white, and roan markings like lichen against the earth. We turned down a narrower footpath and came to the entrance of a hedged-in compound. Kezia stopped and pointed to what looked like a random pile of rocks and sticks, saying something to Roy in Luo.
“That’s Obama’s grave,” Roy explained. “Our great-grandfather. All the land around here is called K’Obama—‘Land of the Obama.’ We are Jok’Obama—‘the people of Obama.’ Our great-great-grandfather was raised in Alego, but he moved here when he was still a young man. This is where Obama settled, and where all his children were born.”
“So why did our grandfather go back to Alego?”
Roy turned to Kezia, who shook her head. “You have to ask Granny that question,” Roy said. “My mum thinks maybe he didn’t get along with his brothers. In fact, one of his brothers is still living here. He’s old now, but perhaps we can see him.”
We came to a small wooden house where a tall, handsome woman was sweeping the yard. Behind her, a young shirtless man sat on the porch. The woman shaded her eyes with her forearm and began to wave, and the young man slowly turned our way. Roy went up to shake hands with the woman, whose name was Salina, and the young man stood up to greet us.
“Eh, you people finally came for me,” Abo said, hugging each of us in turn. He reached for his shirt. “I had heard you were coming with Barry so long ago!”
“Yah, you know how it is,” Roy said. “It took us a while to get organized.”
“I’m just glad you came. I’m telling you, I need to get back to Nairobi.”
“You don’t like it here, eh?”
“It’s so boring, man, you would