By the early 1970s, Barack was regularly coming home very late at night and very drunk. Although he was still living with Ruth at this time, he was also seeing his first wife, Kezia, who was now living in Nairobi with Obama’s two eldest children. (Kezia had two more children in the late 1960s; according to Dreams from My Father, the family doubts whether either of them is a biological son of Barack senior, as Kezia had other partners during this period. Nevertheless, this seemed to make little difference to Barack, who in traditional Luo style said they were all his children, and welcomed them into his wide, extended family.) Inevitably, his relationship with Ruth began to deteriorate. Ruth has always kept a discreet silence about her marriage to Barack Obama senior, but her eldest son, Mark Ndesandjo, claims that his father beat his mother and his young sons:
It’s something which I think affected me for a long time, and it’s something that I’ve just recently come to terms with. I remember situations when I was growing up, and there would be a light coming from our living room.… I could hear thuds and screams, and my father’s voice and my mother shouting. I remember one night when she ran out into the street and she didn’t know where to go.19
Leo Odera also recalls this period of Obama senior’s life:
He was becoming almost an alcoholic. Soon after, he began to have a problem with his American wife, Ruth. She was getting very frustrated with him getting drunk. At that time, I was told that he was even passing out on the bed. And Ruth was telling people that she was getting disappointed and she wanted to leave. So she eloped with this Asian. And she stayed with him for some time before eventually settling in with my former work colleague, Simeon Ndesandjo, who was to be the head of the Swahili service in the Kenyan Broadcasting Service.
The relationship between Ruth and Obama senior never recovered and Obama’s two sons, Mark and David, took the name of Ruth’s second husband, Simeon Ndesandjo. Ruth had a third son, Joseph, in 1980 with Ndesandjo, and the couple still lives in Nairobi, where Ruth runs a kindergarten. In Dreams from My Father, President Obama writes of a very uncomfortable visit to Ruth and her oldest son, Mark, in Nairobi in 1987. (Her second son, David, had died in a motorcycle accident not long before.) Today, Mark works in Shenzhen, China, and runs an Internet company that helps Chinese companies export to the United States. Joseph lives in San Antonio, Texas, and is president and owner of a security systems company.
Barack always had a reputation as a reckless driver; now that he had lost his wife, his two sons, and his job, his drinking became a serious problem. He had several major motor accidents, including one which involved Leo Odera:
He was a very bad driver. He was a drunkard, he had to have one for the road. So [one evening] we took one or two beers and I was sleeping. The first I knew, we were off the road and the dashboard hit my chest. After taking a double—he would say “give me another double”—then he’d have a blackout and would cause an accident.
Leo Odera told me that Obama senior had four major accidents, including one in which his good friend Adede Odiero died:
That was his first major accident. He doesn’t remember [how it happened]. They were drunk and they hit a pavement, and this boy had a brain hemorrhage and he died. He was a very popular boy. That was the first incident when the community in Karachuonyo [Kendu Bay] started losing faith in him [Obama].
It was after one of his road accidents in 1971 that Obama senior went back to Hawaii to see his young son. Despite reports that Obama senior had his legs amputated after one serious accident, people who knew him say this was not true, although for a while he did wear leg braces. When he went to Hawaii just before Christmas in 1971, he was still on crutches, and this was the only occasion on which President Obama recalls meeting his father. For Obama senior, the visit was difficult; he knew that his life was falling apart around him in Nairobi, and now in Honolulu he found it hard to relate to a ten-year-old son he did not know. The young Barack too found it impossible to form a relationship with this big man with a deep, resonant voice who had suddenly appeared in his life.
The last decade of Barack Obama senior’s life played out like a Greek tragedy. After he lost his job at the Central Bank, he found another through his personal connections back in Nyanza. James Odhiambo still saw Obama senior regularly during this time, he recalls:
He had a lot of friends, very powerful friends.… Somebody from Alego called Owuor—he was the managing director of the Kenya Tourist Development Corporation, the KTDC. I understand Obama was an extension officer—but an economist all right. He was pleased with the job.
Unfortunately, Obama senior did not learn his lesson, and before long his inflated ego got the better of him again. In his job at the KTDC, Obama senior had dealings with influential people, many of whom were from overseas, and James Odhiambo recalls that Obama habitually implied that he was rather more senior in the corporation than was actually the case:
So Jerry [Owuor] would say, “Now Barry, what is all this again? Because a letter comes in, ‘For the attention of … Barry Bwana’?” [Bwana is Swahili for “boss.”] … But you see, Barry wanted to look big. He was much brighter than the other man. His intellect went far beyond. He complained about the amount of money he was being paid.… That’s Barry Obama. He had to be given his marching orders—that is all that I will say! Barry now suffered a great deal for some time.
Once again, Obama senior found himself without a job, and his heavy drinking continued.
Then, in 1975, Obama suffered another blow. His father, Onyango, was now eighty years old, and his health had deteriorated. Whenever Barack visited his father in K’ogelo, he could not bring himself to talk about his problems, although he did confide in Sarah on occasion. Instead, Barack would behave as if nothing were wrong, bringing gifts that he could ill afford. Onyango could now walk only with the assistance of a stick, and he was almost totally blind—which made him more irascible than ever. He was so frail that Sarah had to bathe him, something this proud and self-righteous man found difficult to accept. He died later that year and was buried inside his compound, as is customary in Luoland. Barack came up from Nairobi to organize the funeral and he gave his father a Muslim burial, with his body wrapped in a simple cotton shroud rather than a traditional Luo bull skin.
Three years after Onyango’s death, on August 31, 1978, Jomo Kenyatta died suddenly from cardiac arrest during a visit to Mombasa. Although he had suffered a previous heart attack in 1966, his death was still unexpected. Kenyatta was succeeded by his vice president, Daniel arap Moi, popularly known as “Nyayo”—a Swahili word meaning “footsteps,” because Moi always claimed that he was following in the footsteps of Kenyatta. During the first few years of his presidency, Moi enjoyed widespread support throughout the country, even among Luo. In stark contrast to Kenyatta’s imperious manner, Moi was a populist, and people liked him for it. However, his public approval did not last, and soon he was accused of nepotism, tribalism, political assassinations, torture, corruption, and allowing a collapse of governance in the country.
Barack Obama senior had reached a crisis point in his life, and once again his friends stepped in to help. James Odhiambo remembers that those who knew him well were concerned about his drinking and thought that he needed support. “He was a man of substance, and they could not risk leaving him alone there, bickering and talking a lot of nonsense. They would rather absorb him. So they felt the gentleman must come and work in the Finance Ministry.”
In the Finance Ministry Obama senior worked for Mwai Kibaki, who was then minister of finance and economic planning. (In 2006, when Senator Obama visited Kenya, Kibaki—now the country’s third president—was keen to point out that he had given Obama’s father this position.) With his reputation for having a massive ego and a big mouth, both of which grew alarmingly when he started drinking, Barack Obama senior was lucky to get the job.
Even his closest friends, such as Leo Odera, are realistic about Obama senior’s failings during this period. As Odera says: “Y
ou know what happened to Barack? Many of our people, especially those who are very bright at school, when they come out, they don’t make a good life outside. There is too much brain, and when they have the whiskies, they go off the rails. Even in journalism, some of my contemporaries have drunk themselves to death.”
Ruth and her sons were long gone, and Barack remained single for some time. By 1978, however, he had met a young Luo girl called Jael Otieno, and they married in 1981. She became his fourth wife but he still remained legally married to Kezia. In the summer of 1982 Jael gave birth to a son, George. Then, on the night of November 24, Barack Obama senior reached the end of the road. He had been drinking all evening in a Nairobi bar, as he commonly did in those days. He left alone and started to drive home. Minutes later his car drove off the road and hit a tree, but this time it was not just another road accident. Charles Oluoch, who is cousin to the president, happened to be working just outside of Nairobi at the time:
I was in Nairobi [at the time]. So Malik, his eldest son, told me his father had disappeared. So I rushed into Nairobi and we went up to the police station on my motorbike. We saw the vehicle which he was driving, and it seemed as if it had left the road and hit a tree. The impact seemed to have killed him. We went into the city mortuary and we found him there. And from there we went back to his house and informed the people there. People were crying, and so we stayed throughout the night. The next day, we started making arrangements for the funeral.
Obama senior’s body was taken from Nairobi back to K’ogelo in a coffin. Although he had been raised a Muslim, by the time he went to Hawaii he was a confirmed atheist and considered religion to be nothing more than superstition.20 Even so, his body was taken out of the coffin and wrapped in a white shroud before burial, as is customary in an Islamic funeral. Several senior Luo leaders were present, including the foreign minister, Robert Ouko, and the education minister, Oloo Aringo. His old drinking friend James Odhiambo was also there, and remembers:
It was a traditional Luo funeral, and there were a lot of people. Three hundred vehicles I would say—cars, matatus, minibuses. Quite a number of friends and the elite who were available. Luos say that a funeral lasts for ever. According to the Luos, death will not diminish us.
To be honest with you, he was the man I liked most. He was a man who loved almost everybody—no discrimination at all, at all, at all. Barry was one of the best people you could find—he was somebody who cared for the people.
From the very beginning, members of the family had their suspicions about how Barack senior actually died. Charles Oluoch was at the scene of the accident, and he saw the body soon after:
When our family saw how he was, it was very hard to realize how the accident killed him. Barack had [many other] accidents and they were [potentially] very fatal, but he didn’t die. [This time] there was no way anything was broken, but he was dead. Although it looked like an accident, our family suspected that there must have been foul play. I am not a medical doctor, but the way we saw Barack lying there, he didn’t look like somebody who was involved in an accident. When you see somebody who is said to have died in an accident, but doesn’t have anything to show for it—you know, you become suspicious.
You see, in these corridors of power, there’re a lot of people here and there … maybe he’d made enemies. Because, you know, Barack was very outspoken, and he was very flamboyant, and he was very bright. So maybe some people thought they were threatened.
We talked to the mortuary attendant. He had washed him, and when I went to the mortuary with Malik, he was already dressed in a suit. He was very clean. In fact, I wondered if this man had really died. I was so shocked.
Charles was making very serious accusations, and I wondered if perhaps he was a grieving relative unable to come to terms with the death of a man whom he loved and respected. With Obama senior’s reputation as a reckless driver, a fatal crash would seem to be an entirely plausible consequence. I raised the issue with Sarah Obama one afternoon, when we were talking in her compound in K’ogelo. She explained:
We found him sitting by the steering wheel. [The car] did not roll. So after it was said that he had hit the tree, we just had to believe it, because he could not talk back. We really didn’t believe it was a real accident. Because his body was never broken, his vehicle was not badly crashed. He was just dead after the accident. Not even much blood was seen.
So why should we believe it was an accident? Even the policeman who was recording this—he was a very high-ranking officer, very big—but he could not say anything because the government was watching his lips. We think there was foul play there, and that is how he died, and they covered it up [by saying] that he had an accident.
But we just had to leave it like that because the government then was very ruthless.
Everybody I spoke to in the family believed much the same thing; his sister Hawa Auma is particularly bitter about the episode. Indisputably, the assassination of leading Luo has been a regular occurrence over the years. As we have seen, six months before Tom Mboya was killed in July 1969, the Kenyan foreign minister, Argwings-Kodhek, was shot and his death made to look like a road accident. More recently, the 1990 death of Robert Ouko—the minister of foreign affairs in President Moi’s government and a leading Luo politician—caused another outrage. On the night of February 12, Ouko was staying at his farm near Kisumu. The following morning, his body was found nearly two miles away from his homestead: his right leg was broken in two places, and there was evidence that he had been tortured. He had been killed by a single shot to his head and his body left partially burned, with a gun, a can of diesel, and a box of matches also found nearby. The initial police reports claimed that Ouku had committed suicide. Public pressure forced President Moi to request that Britain’s Scotland Yard send a team of detectives to investigate Ouko’s death. They were unable to determine who had actually killed Dr. Ouku, but the investigation proved that he had been brutally murdered.
Roy Samo is a Luo local councilor who lives and works in Kisumu, and he has taken a strong stand against corruption and poor governance. He understands from firsthand experience the risks of becoming involved with politics in Kenya; he has been beaten up on more than ten occasions and has received many threats on his life. As recently as October 2009 a group of thugs raided his compound and stole his TV and other valuables. They left him a note in Swahili: Roy wacha siasa, tumetumwa tukumalize, mamayako, baba, ndugu, mke wako sana sana wewe kwani unashinda Ouko or Mboya. Loosely translated, it means: “Roy, leave politics. We’ve been sent to kill you, your mother, father, brothers, and wife, but especially you. We’ve warned you; do you think you are greater than Ouko or Mboya?” When they left, they decapitated his dog and left its body by the front gate to his compound. Unsurprisingly, he too thought foul play was an entirely plausible explanation for Barack Obama senior’s death:
If you want to talk about political death, it’s common. We know of people like Tom Mboya, who was a son of this area. There have been other powerful cabinet ministers like Robert Ouko. Three years ago [in 2006], a professor, Odhiambo Mbai, was helping us with the drafting of a new constitution. Mbai was a very wise and influential man. He was shot dead in his house. So many Luos have been killed because they have always been very outspoken. They’re bright, they’re the professionals—the professors and the doctors—so they are believed to be very wise. So many of them have been killed in cold blood. And it is not only Luos, but anybody who is viewed by the government of the day as anti-establishment.
Patrick Ngei is another of Obama’s old friends. He is not a member of the Obama family, so I thought that he could perhaps look on the event more dispassionately. Yet he too seemed to suspect the worst:
There were serious allegations of foul play—Obama didn’t die out of a pure accident. The Kikuyus were feeling that if we eliminate these bright Luos, then they can rule forever. That was the idea. Bright Luos were eliminated by the Kenyatta government. They had this belief that if
these people aren’t there, then maybe one day they may stop [the Luo] from going on with the leadership.
Believing that Barack Obama senior died at the hands of others is one thing; proving it more than twenty-five years after his death would be impossible. But if it is true, how might such a killing have been orchestrated? Charles Oluoch had a theory: “Let’s say you are in a place where they put something in your drink and they know you will be driving. At a certain point, you will lose control. It will look as if it was an accident. But already they have poisoned you, so you lose control.”
This was a very serious accusation that Charles was making, and I wanted to be absolutely clear what he was implying: “So you would die from the poisoning anyway?” I asked.
“It’s very common,” he replied.
“So even if you had a small accident by driving off the road,” I suggested, “you would still be dead.”
“You’d be dead.”
On the day that Barack Obama senior died in Nairobi, a twenty-one-year-old student at Columbia University in New York was making himself breakfast. The telephone rang, but the line was crackly and the caller indistinct.
“Barry? Barry, is that you?”
“Yes … who’s this?”
“Yes, Barry … this is your Aunt Jane. In Nairobi. Can you hear me?”
“I’m sorry—who did you say you were?”21
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