And Then Life Happens: A Memoir

by Auma Obama

  I laughed.

  “By the way, if I were you, I would put on different shoes,” she added. “It’s going to be pretty wet outside.”

  I looked down at my feet. In my rush to see the snow from up close, I had not even considered whether winter boots would be more sensible than the slippers I was still wearing.

  Finally, we were outside, bundled up warmly and equipped with the proper footwear. We had fetched Manou, a student from the Ivory Coast, to share with him the experience of the phenomenon “snow.” Manou had already been awake for a long time. He was a serious, disciplined student, an early riser who always did everything in an organized and conscientious manner. His room was invariably tidy. He liked to cook and was very good at it and occasionally invited us to eat with him. I think he had a bit of a crush on Elke, but did not have the courage to tell her. I teased her about that sometimes, but she always pooh-poohed it. In any case, we really liked Manou. Behind his serious face was a person with a great sense of humor, who could tell wonderful jokes.

  Now he had joined us to look at the snow, touch it, taste it, and play with it. It was a wonderful experience. Like children, we frolicked in the white splendor, started snowball fights, did cartwheels and handstands, and even ate the white stuff—and all the while one of us was taking photographs, for I absolutely had to document this event for my family in Kenya. Even though it was cold and wet in the snow, we weren’t freezing. The sun was shining, we broke a sweat horsing around, and soon we even took off our winter jackets.

  * * *

  Shortly thereafter came the next impressive experience: my first German Christmas. Elke invited me to spend it with her family. To avoid the expensive train ride to Trunkelsberg, a village in the Unterallgäu district of Bavaria, we arranged a carpool through a ride-sharing agency.

  I found the idea of splitting gas costs brilliant, and during the car ride, I wondered whether something like that could work in Kenya. There this form of shared travel would spare many poor people the high costs for public transportation. But then it occurred to me that Kenya lacked several important prerequisites for it—first and foremost, the trustworthiness of drivers and passengers. The danger of being robbed or of something even worse befalling you was great. In Germany, if something was fishy, you could usually find out without too much difficulty from the register of residents where the driver or passengers lived. That fact alone seemed to me a guarantee for a safe journey. In Kenya, there was no comparable registration of the population (nor is there one to this day). And not least importantly, the gulf between poor and rich is simply too wide to inspire you with the necessary confidence in a carpool made up entirely of complete strangers.

  * * *

  Having arrived in Trunkelsberg, I realized excitedly that there was even more snow here than in Saarbrücken. But it was also considerably colder than it had been there.

  On the day after our arrival, Elke, her sister Gabi, and I immediately went out and hiked through the snowy landscape to a hill at the edge of the woods, where village children were sledding or hurtling down the slope on black truck inner tubes. At the bottom, they turned around and tramped back up the steep slope to race downhill again.

  It was not long before Gabi had found a few schoolmates who were willing to lend us their rubber tube. Clinging to Elke, I hurtled down the slope on the strange vehicle. It was so much fun that we repeated the up and down several times until, tired and soaked with sweat, we gave back the tube.

  In Trunkelsberg, I also became acquainted with cross-country skiing, a sport that was actually not difficult, but had unforeseen consequences. As easy as it was to glide on the skis over flat, snow-covered ground with the help of two poles, the aches and pains caused by this mode of locomotion were terrible. The next day I felt muscles that I previously hadn’t even known existed. Everything hurt; I could barely move.

  “You actually should have done a few weeks of ski gymnastics first,” Elke commented sympathetically. “Then you wouldn’t be sore now.”

  * * *

  Before our arrival, Elke’s mother had spent days baking and precooking for the holidays. When I asked in amazement why so much preparation was necessary, it was explained to me that Germans celebrate Christmas over several days, unlike Kenyans, who, like the British and the Americans, observe only December 25, which requires much less effort. Of course! I thought at the time, and found my conclusion quite clever. That’s why the German word for Christmas, Weihnachten, is plural.

  The rituals that accompanied my first German Christmas were very foreign to me, but spending the holiday with Elke’s family made me appreciate it. The mood in her home was cheerful and relaxed. The fact that this time I was there, an African who was a stranger to everyone except Elke, made the festive gathering into a very special event. To celebrate Christmas Eve, I wore a wide-cut, light-blue West African robe.

  The hospitality of this family, who accepted me so quickly and warmly as a third child, restored a little bit the sense of familial security that I had lost in the previous years, and for that I was really grateful. I had been living in Germany for only a few months, and already the country was far from as foreign to me as it had been on my arrival.

  11.

  AS TIME WENT BY, I learned from certain experiences with which I was repeatedly confronted. Unsuspecting as I was, I at first responded with a polite smile to every stranger who approached me and asked me questions. Some of them, especially men, would then regard this as an invitation.

  One day, when I was sitting outside on a bench and enjoying the last warming rays of the sun on a spring afternoon, a man of around forty walked by. He smiled at me, and as usual I smiled back—I was still the “nice little African” who reacted without reservations to encounters with strangers. Visibly interested, the man stopped, came over, and sat down next to me. I thought nothing of it, and so we talked for a while. Finally, he suggested exchanging our addresses and telephone numbers. Because he did not relent, I gave him, naïve as I was, my residence hall address.

  That was the beginning of a strange and somewhat unpleasant story, which taught me to be less open toward strangers. For, to my great surprise, the man fell in love with me. He visited me a few times at the residence hall, took me out, and made a lot of fuss over me. I wasn’t sure how I should behave. Still rather inexperienced with respect to men, I didn’t know how to make it clear to my admirer without offending him that I was not interested in him and didn’t want to go out with him. I was too polite for that. He was nice, after all, and behaved like a gentleman.

  My new acquaintance, Peter, was a musician and played in an orchestra. One day he took me with him to one of his concerts. Afterward, we went out with his colleagues. But in the group of strangers, I felt like a fish out of water. Peter and his friends were much older than I was; I recall nothing but gray-haired men and women. Although they otherwise acted as if it were completely normal that I was sitting with them, I noticed how they kept glancing over at me. Where had he snagged such a young, exotic thing? their eyes seemed to ask. I smiled courteously, but my whole being screamed silently at them: No! I don’t belong to him!

  Even though I never encouraged Peter, his invitations became more frequent. At the same time, I felt an increasingly strong need to put an end to the matter. Only I didn’t know how. Peter mistakenly believed that our “relationship” was progressing, while I was desperately trying the whole time to figure out how to get rid of him. Finally, I went out with him only when Elke was willing to come along. Up to that point, she had watched Peter’s advances with amusement. She knew quite well that I was not attracted to him, but had assumed that I enjoyed going out with him.

  When there were thirty red roses outside the door of my room one day, it became too much for me. I knew that I had to draw a line. I dreaded the confrontation, but it was unavoidable.

  Shortly thereafter, the unsuspecting man called to ask whether I had received the flowers, and at the same time he invited me to go out once a
gain. Without thinking twice, I interrupted him in the middle of his sentence.

  “I’m sorry, Peter, I can’t see you anymore.”

  “We can meet another time, if today doesn’t work for you,” he said. Apparently, he had not understood.

  “No!” I replied, this time with a louder, somewhat shriller voice. I felt hot and cold all over with nervousness. My hands were sweaty. “I mean really, never again. I can’t see you anymore.”

  I felt Peter freeze at the other end of the line. There was a long silence. To create distance, nothing better had occurred to me than to address him with “Sie,” the formal “you” in German.

  “Why?” he asked. His voice suddenly sounded serious.

  I was silent.

  “You don’t want to meet me anymore? Why?”

  I still said nothing. There was simply no kind answer to his question. I would have had to explain to him that I had felt nothing for him from the beginning, that the whole relationship had taken place only in his head, and that at our very first encounter I had expected nothing more than a simple “hello” from him.

  Instead, I said only, “I just can’t see you anymore. I’m sorry. I have to go now. Good-bye.”

  The clipped sentences had simply come out of me. I didn’t even wait for his reply, but hung up the phone and hastily left the telephone booth in the hallway of the residence hall.

  Thus the relationship that had never been came to an end. Nothing crazy like that ever again! I resolved at the time. But it wasn’t long before I was in another jam.

  By that time, Elke had gotten her international scholarship and had gone to study in the United States. A large void had opened up in my life in Saarbrücken. I missed her above all as a friend, but also as a daily guide to the German language and culture.

  But then I met Nora, who came from Nigeria and also attended the preparatory language proficiency course. When I had complained to her about my unhappiness over Elke’s departure and the fact that I had not spoken enough German since then, she said she had the perfect solution for me.

  “What is it?” I asked with curiosity.

  “You can find a family through the newspaper.”

  “For what?”

  “A German family!” It sounded as if she had discovered the magic formula to win the lottery.

  “You place an ad in the newspaper saying ‘African student seeks family to improve her German,’ or something like that. You wait for the offers and just choose one, and then you visit regularly to practice your German with them! Great, isn’t it?” Nora beamed at me and added, “I myself have found a family in this way.”

  Not a bad idea at all, I thought. With a German family, I would have to speak German the whole time—the ideal language training. The more I thought about it, the better I liked the idea.

  “I’ll help you,” said Nora, after I informed her that I had decided to take her advice. “It’s really simple.”

  Indeed, with her help, I found such a family within a week. They lived near Saarbrücken in the countryside. Where exactly was not so important to me during our first telephone conversation; the fact that it was a young couple with two small children appealed to me more than anything else. They must be nice, responsible people, I assumed, and without thinking twice I accepted their offer to spend the next weekend with them.

  On Friday evening, I waited excitedly for my German family, who were picking me up from the university in their car. Today, I can no longer recall any doubts or fears. Nor do I remember whether I told anyone that I would be spending the weekend out in the countryside with complete strangers. The family was there, and I simply went with them.

  The young parents and their two children, who were about seven and nine years old, made a nice impression. Most of the forty-five-minute drive took us past tilled fields; only now and then was there a solitary farm or a small village. When we finally reached their house, it was dark. I could only vaguely make out that it was on a sort of farm. Through the long, narrow hallway, we entered a spacious living/dining area. The large table was already set for dinner.

  My host parents immediately showed me my room, which their son had had to vacate for me—a typical boy’s room with a lot of toys and blue walls. I put my bag next to the freshly made bed and returned to the living/dining area. There the two children were sitting on the floor and playing. Only now did I notice that there were things lying around everywhere and the room looked pretty messy.

  Next to the dining table, the door to the kitchen was open, from which I heard noises. For several minutes, I stood around not knowing what to do. Should I stay with the children, or did they expect me to help in the kitchen? The boy and the girl, who had asked inquisitive questions during the drive, seemed in the meantime to have lost interest in me. So I went into the kitchen.

  It was large and just as messy as the living room. I was amazed. In our home the kitchen in particular always had to be clean and tidy to avoid attracting vermin. Much of this kitchen looked like an ideal breeding ground for moths, bugs, mice, and other such creatures.

  “You don’t have to help,” the mother said with a cheerful voice. She had just begun preparing dinner. So I retreated into the living room again, sat down quietly on the sofa, and waited. I didn’t feel completely comfortable, but I didn’t know whether as a guest I was allowed to return to the kitchen uninvited. In Kenya, where even poorer families usually have servants, you would never enter that room without the host’s express permission.

  When the father entered the living room with a bottle of wine and said, “If you want, you can help put the dinner out on the table,” I was saved.

  “Yes, thank you!” Relieved, I jumped up and followed him into the kitchen.

  “Come on, children. You help, too!” he called to the two little ones. The answer was a moan of “Ooooh.” Reluctantly, they stood up and joined us.

  I tried to suppress my vermin fantasies and set to work putting the various components of the dinner out on the dining table: several types of bread and rolls, butter, an assortment of sliced cheeses and sausages, and some other things that were unknown to me. To drink there were juices—homemade, as was proudly announced to me; the fruit came from the garden—wine, and mineral water.

  Then we all sat around the table. The mood was merry, and I began to relax and lose my shyness. From my visits with Elke’s family, I was used to having a cold Abendbrot (“evening bread,” as Germans call this type of supper) at this time of day instead of a warm meal.

  After eating, we remained seated and talked. In the meantime, a brother of the father’s who lived nearby had joined the group. The new guest took a small paper bag out of his pocket and poured something out of it onto the table. It looked like dried herbs. He took a portion of it, rolled it in white paper and shaped it into a sort of oversized cigarette. He lit it and took a drag. I watched with astonishment. But I was even more surprised when he handed the huge cigarette to his brother, who then took a drag and passed it to his wife. My eyes grew wider and wider. What were they doing? And now she was holding the thing out to me. Aghast, I stared at her.

  “Go ahead and take a drag,” the mother said.

  “No, thanks,” I replied, barely managing to conceal my distaste. “Thanks, I don’t smoke.”

  “Have you never tried a joint before?” asked the brother. “I thought that everyone in Africa smokes pot. Try it.”

  “No!” I insisted. I suddenly felt miserable.

  “Oh, come on. It’s not a cigarette. It’s a joint.” He saw my uncomprehending face and added, “Marijuana.”

  Marijuana! I’d heard of that; it was called bangi in Kenya. Now I grew frightened. Bangi was a drug! I had ended up in a house in which the family smoked bangi, and I didn’t even know where I was! I had no idea where the telephone was and whether they even had one. Suddenly, I realized that I had made a huge mistake. Why had I simply gone off with these people without having the faintest idea who they were? Now I was stuck here. Words l
ike “heroin” and “LSD” were floating around in my head. We had always been warned about drugs, and I had ended up here with drug addicts, of all people. My imagination ran wild; I saw myself lying in a half-stupor in a ditch.

  I don’t know whether the family noticed any sign of my inner turmoil. In any case, I acted outwardly as if everything were fine. Just don’t show any fear, I thought. For even though I was telling myself the whole time that everything would be all right, I was afraid of just the opposite.

  Apart from the large bangi, which continued to go around, the evening actually went quite smoothly and pleasantly. Although I participated in the conversation, my fear did not subside, and I was trying all the while to figure out how I could cut my visit short. There was only one thing I wanted: to get back to my safe room in the student residence hall in Saarbrücken.

  The next morning I got up early. The house was quiet; the family was still asleep. I packed my things, made the bed, and went into the living room. There I sat down on the sofa and waited impatiently for the first signs of life.

  Eventually, the children showed up in the living room in T-shirts and underpants and began to play with their scattered toys. Shortly thereafter, the father entered the room. He, too, was wearing a T-shirt, but that was all. I froze. I had never seen a naked man before, let alone a naked man who was a stranger and on top of that was in a living room in which small children were playing.

  They did not seem to notice anything out of the ordinary. In our home, such a scene would have been completely unthinkable. For Kenyan children, the sight of the naked father was a major taboo. I was experiencing the ultimate culture shock! (Only later did I find out that I had ended up in a typically “alternative” circle of early 1980s Germany.) The effort I had to muster not to sit there with my mouth hanging open made itself painfully felt in my cheek muscles.

  If it had been up to me, I would have left immediately with an empty stomach. In the meantime, the horror visions in my head had also expanded: They could be lunatics, criminals, drug dealers, who could somehow harm me, I thought anxiously. I worried that my fear could alarm the family, and who knew what they would do to me then? For that reason, I could not leave until after breakfast, lest I attract attention.