Dreams from My Father - Barack Obama [192]
People began to talk about independence. Meetings and demonstrations were held, and petitions were presented to the administration complaining about land confiscation and the power of chiefs to commission free labor for government projects. Even Africans who had been educated in mission schools now rebelled against their home churches and accused whites of distorting Christianity to demean everything African. As before, most of this activity centered in Kikuyuland, for that tribe bore the white man’s yoke most heavily. But the Luo, too, were oppressed, a main source of forced labor. Men in our area began to join the Kikuyu in demonstrations. And later, when the British declared their Emergency, many men were detained, some never to be seen again.
Like other boys, your father would be influenced by the early talk of independence, and he would come home from school talking about the meetings he had seen. Your grandfather agreed with many of the demands of the early parties like KANU, but he remained skeptical that the independence movement would lead to anything, because he thought Africans could never win against the white man’s army. “How can the African defeat the white man,” he would tell Barack, “when he cannot even make his own bicycle?” And he would say that the African could never win against the white man because the black man only wanted to work with his own family or clan, while all white men worked to increase their power. “The white man alone is like an ant,” Onyango would say. “He can be easily crushed. But like an ant, the white man works together. His nation, his business—these things are more important to him than himself. He will follow his leaders and not question orders. Black men are not like this. Even the most foolish black man thinks he knows better than the wise man. That is why the black man will always lose.”
Despite his attitude, your grandfather would once find himself detained. An African who worked for the district commissioner was jealous of your grandfather’s lands. This man had once been rebuked by your grandfather because he would collect excessive taxes and pocket the money for himself. During the Emergency, this man placed Onyango’s name on a list of KANU supporters and told the white man that Onyango was a subversive. One day, the white man’s askaris came to take Onyango away, and he was placed in a detention camp. Eventually he received a hearing, and he was found innocent. But he had been in the camp for over six months, and when he returned to Alego he was very thin and dirty. He had difficulty walking, and his head was full of lice. He was so ashamed, he refused to enter his house or tell us what had happened. Instead, he called me to boil him water and bring him one of his razors. He shaved off his hair, and I had to help him bathe for a very long time, just where you are now sitting. And from that day on, I saw that he was now an old man.
Barack was away at the time and only learned about this detention later. He had taken the district examination, and had been admitted to Maseno Mission School, some fifty miles south, near the equator. This should have been a great honor for Barack, because few Africans were allowed to get secondary education, and only the best students got into Maseno, but your father’s rebellious nature caused the school much grief. He would sneak girls into his dormitory, for he could always talk very sweetly to girls and promise them all that they dreamed. He and his friends would raid nearby farms for chickens and yams, because they did not like the dormitory food. The teachers at the school overlooked many of these infractions, for they saw how smart he was. But eventually Barack went too far with his mischief and was finally expelled.
Onyango was so furious when he found out, he beat Barack with a stick until Barack’s back was bleeding. But Barack refused to run or cry out, or even explain himself to his father. Finally, Onyango told Barack, “If you cannot behave properly in my compound, I have no use for you here!” The following