The Other Barack

by Sally Jacobs

  Ruth endured for two reasons. The first was Mark Okoth, and the second would be named David Opiyo. Within a few months of their return to Nairobi, Ruth learned that she was pregnant again and thus linked ever more inextricably to her husband. Obama had made it clear to her that if she ever left him, he would prohibit her from seeing their children, and in Kenya’s patriarchal culture she had little doubt that he could do so easily. Determined to raise her children as best she could while struggling to preserve the marriage that had produced them, Ruth took stock of her situation. Her job at Nestlé continued to provide both a professional outlet and much-needed emotional support. Best of all, it gave her a source of self-esteem that she was not finding at home. She also had an extensive network of friends, some of whom strongly urged her to take the children and flee under cover of night. But Obama had never struck any of the children. As long as it was only she upon whom he inflicted his rage, she felt she could manage.

  But it wasn’t easy. One night Obama came home drunk as usual, but this time he had a pretty young woman clinging to his arm. It was not the first time he had done so. In the past Ruth had simply turned tearfully away as Obama and his woman friend slipped into one of the bedrooms together. But on this particular night Obama insisted that Ruth leave their house so that he could use their marriage bed without her interfering. He was, after all, a Luo and had a right to any woman he might desire, he declared, his voice growing steadily louder. But this time Ruth put her foot down. She refused to move anywhere, and as she screamed out her hurt, the neighbors, as ever, got an earful.8

  One of those neighbors was Achieng Oneko, one of the Kapenguria Six who were convicted in 1952 of supporting the Mau Mau rebels along with Kenyatta and sentenced to seven years in prison. Oneko, who had abandoned his old cellmate to join Odinga and the Kenya People’s Union, was a legendary freedom fighter and a pioneering newspaper editor. He was also a former Maseno student, although he attended many years before Obama. Upset by the Obamas’ domestic furor, Oneko picked up the telephone and called his friend Ndolo Ayah. “He said, ‘You young people, you better talk to that friend of yours, Barack. He’s making a mess of himself,’” Ayah recounted. “So I got another friend of mine and we headed on over to Obama’s place to see what we could do.”

  The situation was chaotic. Ruth was screaming so forcefully that it took her awhile to realize that there were visitors in the house. Obama was drunkenly explaining to her that, according to Luo tradition, “he could bring any woman into the house at any time.” said Ayah. “I said, well, he comes from a different Luo group than ourselves because we are Luo and you don’t do this kind of thing. We tried to get Barack to come to Oneko’s place so we could talk it out but he just told us to go to hell, you know. And so we left. I suppose at some level we felt it was none of our business.”

  As his marriage with Ruth grew increasingly strained, Obama turned to his first wife, Kezia, for solace—at least that is what she maintains. While working as a waitress in a Mombasa restaurant in the late 1960s, Kezia says that Obama occasionally visited her when he passed through town on business. On one of those trips Kezia became pregnant with a son she claims Obama fathered. In 1968 Sampson Nyandega, called Abo, was born. Two years later Bernard Otieno, whom she says is also Obama’s son, was born.9

  Many family members, however, do not believe that the boys are Obama’s. They point out that he did not take them into his home, as he did with his other children, nor did he talk much about them. More compelling, the Nairobi High Court Judge who ruled on Obama’s disputed estate in 1989 did not believe the evidence of Obama’s paternity that Kezia presented and concluded that the boys were not his children. Judge J. F. Shields noted in a ruling that Kezia did not obtain the boys’ birth certificates until after Obama died and did so then only in an effort to have them named as beneficiaries to his estate. Shields also wrote that Kezia had presented evidence of having access to Obama only during time periods after Bernard and Abo were born.10 Whether or not Obama fathered the boys, Kezia is adamant that Obama remained her lover throughout his entire life regardless of whom he was married to or when. “Ruth, these other women, even Anna, I just said I do not care,” Kezia shrugged, speaking in an interview. “Marry any of them. I am the first wife. Whoever wants to marry you, marry them. I do not care. He always came back to me.”

  AS RUTH UNDERSTOOD HIM, Obama’s reckless behaviors stemmed from a couple of sources. The first were the rich and varied temptations of Nairobi life in the years after independence. Although Obama had managed to curb his more extreme inclinations while under scrutiny in the United States, once he returned to Kenya in the heady days of the mid-1960s, it was another story. On a scholarship in America, she noted, “he was being judged on a daily basis. He had to behave properly. There were parameters. But once he was back in Kenya and all his friends are saying, ‘Let’s go for the drink, let’s go dancing, let’s go find some women, let’s do this and that,’ he couldn’t hold back. All those pressures were too much for him. He just didn’t have the strength of character to resist. And the more he succumbed, the more he succumbed.”

  But Ruth believes the greater source of Obama’s undoing lay deeply embedded in his gnawing lack of faith in himself, exacerbated by the perils of Kenyan politics. Kenyatta’s chokehold on matters of state meant that little could happen without his sanction or that of members of his inner circle. Obama had already been blackballed for his aggressive critique of Sessional Paper No. 10, and his critical commentary at Central Bank hadn’t helped matters. Much as he yearned to be a Big Man, Obama was far from it. That his fortunes were dependent on favors from others and the shifting sands of Kenya’s powerful elites made matters only worse. Indeed, since his collision with Harvard administrators, he had found the doors to power closed to him at almost every turn. Uncertainty, coupled with the Luo habit of self-inflation, drove him to chronic exaggeration intended to compensate for his perceived shortcomings.

  “One day he was charming, charming and loving and wonderful. He was just the way a woman wants a man to be. And then the next day he’s beating you and abusing you,” Ruth said. “You see, he was confused, very confused about himself. He had a great, enormous insecurity. He pretended to be this great fellow, but we all know that confident people do not have to blow their own horn like that. Nor do they have to drink all the time to give themselves false confidence.”

  Gladys Ogolah tried reasoning with him when he was sober. Why, she asked, do you beat on Ruth? “He’d say, ‘Naaaaaah, I don’t beat her. She just likes making noise.’ I said that is not right. When my husband talked to him, he said he is just drinking too much and that is why he is loud.”

  Although Obama had abundant company in his heavy drinking, he was driven by more than the cultural excesses of the moment. Also contributing to his dark mood was the evolving cast of Kenyatta’s inner circle, ever more authoritarian and intolerant of challenge. By the end of 1967 the mushrooming political schism between Kenyatta and the radicals led by Oginga Odinga had distinctly worsened. Kenyatta had tolerated the formation of the socialist Kenya People’s Union, but far from yielding on his positions, he became increasingly trenchant as the months passed. He reviled the opposition’s leftist platform, and at a public rally in Nairobi on Kenyatta Day he denounced KPU members, declaring that from then on they would be regarded as “snakes in the grass.... Let them try and reexamine their minds and return to KANU. If they do not do so, KPU should beware! The fighting for our Uhuru is on. Whoever has ears to hear, let him heed this. We say we are ready to fight for our Uhuru.”11

  Between 1966 and 1969 Kenyatta moved to stymie the opposition and isolate his Luo challengers. One means of effectively limiting the KPU’s ability to expand was by refusing to authorize the registration of new party branches.12 Those who attempted to organize opposition on a local level were overtly intimidated by KANU officials or else were likely to find the government withholding a sorely needed business permit or school document as a form
of payback. As the government issued a series of laws and amendments that made it increasingly difficult for the KPU to compete with the dominant KANU party, it seemed likely that Kenyatta would soon crush the opposition altogether.13

  With Odinga now effectively marginalized, Kenyatta’s Kikuyu coterie began to look increasingly askance at Tom Mboya, who now stood as the likely heir apparent. Mboya was not only immensely popular among a broad swath of trade union members and members of parliament but was also believed to have the critical support of the Western countries, particularly the United States. As the aging Kenyatta’s health began to deteriorate, many Kikuyus were increasingly alarmed at the possibility of the presidency falling to a non-Kikuyu. Rumors about Mboya’s political intentions were rampant. That he was interested in the presidency was no secret. Some whispered that he was forging a secret alliance with Odinga to assume a spot within the KPU.14 Others suspected a more devious agenda. Either way, the hostility of Kenyatta’s inner circle toward Mboya escalated rapidly. As Mboya’s biographer David Goldsworthy wrote, “Far from secure incumbency, his position was one of exposure, of vulnerability to the plottings of those who were securely incumbent.... By the later 1960s, [Mboya] was having to count his friends perhaps more intently than ever before.”15

  Of his enemies, there seemed to be no end. In December 1967 a sentry keeping guard at his home on Convent Drive fired a series of shots at Mboya’s empty white Mercedes. The man, who was apprehended and jailed, was said to be mentally ill. Nevertheless, according to Goldsworthy, Mboya was increasingly fearful for his safety. After Robert Kennedy was assassinated in June of 1968, Mboya finally agreed to allow his American friends, William Scheinman and Frank Montero, both with the African American Students Foundation, and Robert Gabor, an official with the New York–based cultural funding organization, Peace with Freedom, to hire him a personal bodyguard.16

  Unlike many who threw their lot with either one of the two Luo giants, Odinga or Mboya, Obama retained ties with both political camps, as he was drawn to aspects of each of their platforms. As he had expressed so forcefully in his critique of Sessional Paper No. 10, Obama believed that certain socialist principles that Odinga articulated should be a feature of the country’s economic underpinnings. But he also saw a place for the capitalist principles that the West-leaning Mboya espoused. He was particularly incensed at the factions within KANU that were seeking to undermine Mboya, their own party’s secretary-general. Although removed from Mboya’s exalted circle, Obama continued to look to Mboya for guidance. Their relationship had grown more distant over the years as Mboya’s star rose ever higher, but they nonetheless maintained a friendship throughout. Mboya’s increasing political isolation gave Obama one more reason for dismay.

  Like others disillusioned with the government’s performance, Obama regarded Kenyatta as a bitter disappointment. In the months after he returned with Ruth, it seemed that much of what he had long dreamed for his country had failed to materialize. Far from standing as a boldly independent African nation, dependence on foreign capital still hobbled Kenya. At the same time, its domestic assets were being amassed in the hands of a privileged few. Obama was an economist who believed that free enterprise played a critical role in a democracy, but he also had a deep respect for African communalism. He felt strongly that the majority should share in the country’s bounty. Instead, he saw unfettered capitalism and, increasingly, a rampant tribalism eroding the promises of uhuru.

  Although Obama clearly had difficulty with authority of any kind, he was hardly alone in believing that his own Luo roots were coming to be a distinct liability. As he grew increasingly frustrated with the Kikuyus’ tight grip on the country’s politics, he began to drink ever more heavily. His frustration with the country’s course coupled with his own personal failure to attain the heights that he believed should have been within easy reach were fast congealing into an acid stew of resentment. As was his habit, he did not hesitate to speak out. “He did not like the aggressive capitalism that Kenyatta was putting into place, the acquisition without taking into account all the poverty that there was,” said Peter Aringo, Obama’s longtime friend and an MP from Alego. “This sharing the crumbs from the table did not impress him and he said so. I pleaded with him to be moderate in what he said, but he would not. He took it very personally. He felt Africa needed someone who was courageous and he needed to speak out.”

  AS KENYA EMERGED FROM THE TURBULENT drive for independence, its new leaders turned to an unlikely group of people for an economic boost. They were wazungu—the plural form of mzungu—for the most part. They carried cameras. They knew little about Kenya and less about the African continent. But they generally had a generous amount of money in their pockets. In Swahili they were called watalii. Elsewhere they were known as tourists.

  Tourism was hardly new in Kenya. Even before independence was declared in 1963, visitors predominantly from the United Kingdom, Europe, and the United States had journeyed to Kenya’s interior on safari to photograph or bag the legendary game there. Others came to sample the undulating beaches of Mombasa and Malindi. In the two years after Kenya’s rippling black, green, and red flag went up, the number of visitors coming on holiday leapt by 45 percent from 22,363 to 32,351. The number of visitors from the United Kingdom alone more than doubled from 1964 to 1965, whereas the total number of all visitors, including those doing business or in the military, peaked at 81,448.17 Calculating that tourism would not only create employment more rapidly than any other sector of the economy but also generate substantial foreign exchange earnings, government leaders embarked on a major expansion of the accommodations and infrastructure that would stimulate the industry.18 Their expectations were not modest. In the Kenya Tourist Development Corporation’s five-year plan written in 1968, they projected that by 1973 the number of tourists coming to Kenya would reach 385,000 a year and would generate a net contribution to the economy of £16.2 million.19

  To achieve that goal, the fledgling KTDC needed a highly skilled economist, someone who could attract foreign investors as well as parse the African tourist’s appetite. Obama’s name, invariably, arose from the small circle of Nairobi economists. But he was not the only one considered for the post of KTDC’s senior development officer. Another candidate was Washington Jalang’o Okumu, a bright young economist who also happened to have a Harvard degree, a BA he received in 1962. Both men were unabashedly self-confident and impressed the KTDC board with their poise and performance. Both men were also impeccably turned out in the latest European attire. But in the end the board offered the post to Obama. Okumu went on to become a personal assistant to Kenyatta and an internationally acclaimed negotiator credited with mediating a critical 1994 compromise between South African presidents Nelson Mandela, F. W. de Klerk, and the Inkatha Freedom Party’s Mangosuthu Buthelezi that paved the way for multiracial elections. “Obama was a very impressive man, very smooth and articulate,” said Jeremiah Owuor, the general manager of the KTDC and Obama’s immediate superior. “You could see immediately that he could deliver. The board was quite taken with him.”

  Indeed, Obama’s economic skills must have dazzled the board, for they hired him despite the substantial liability of his spotty employment record. Although he beat out Okumu, Obama was assigned to a trial period of six months and placed on a full year’s probation. The board instructed Owuor to “have a word with Mr. Obama” and to explain that the trial period was necessary due to some “adverse reports received from his former employers,” according to the minutes of the KTDC’s September 8, 1967, meeting. What’s more, Owuor was advised to “keep a very tight control over [Obama] during this trial period. While problems such as over-drinking outside office hours may be considered personal they can no longer be considered personal if they affect and impair the performance of a member of the Corporation.”20 Less than two months later Obama was the subject of just the kind of headlines that KTDC board members had most feared.

  “TOURISM OFFICER ON DRINKS CH
ARGE,” the Daily Nation declared on November 4, 1967. Obama had been at a cocktail party before he collided with a milk handcart as he sped along the Ngong Road at 4 a.m. He had then pulled to the side of the road and telephoned police to report the accident. A medical report presented at his court hearing indicated that he had consumed “the equivalent of six beers or twelve whiskies,” according to the news story. Pointing out that Obama had pleaded guilty to the charge and had a Harvard University degree, Obama’s defense attorney asked for leniency. F. E. Abdullah, the magistrate hearing the case, was moved by what he called the “mitigating circumstances” in the case and fined Obama £50 and prohibited him from driving for one year. Adding that he could have decided to have him put in prison, Abdullah concluded, “The services of the accused to the nation will be more valuable outside prison.”21

  The KTDC board might have argued otherwise. Obama made good use of his formidable economic skills as an economist and forecaster during his three years at the KTDC, but his tenure there was a rocky one that culminated in disaster. He often showed up late for work smelling of alcohol and was chastised on a host of occasions for usurping his superiors. But his more egregious offense was his perennial impersonation of general manager Owuor while engaged in business in order to gain the perks of the other man’s rank. Offended at having to work beneath a man he considered less educated than himself, Obama corrected the situation by simply giving himself a promotion. At the same time, his personal charm won him accolades from both tourists and investors alike, whom he regaled with dramatic stories of his childhood in the bush. Never mind that apparently few of them were true.