Undeterred by Onyango, Obama returned to Kendu Bay to seek permission from Kezia's parents, which they granted, and eventually Onyango agreed to the union. A lengthy process of dowry payments were then made to Kezia's family. In all, fourteen cows were walked from Kanyadhiang to Gendia and presented as “bridewealth.” Family elders delivered the first pair of cows. One of Onyango's brothers delivered another set. And a final pair were delivered by a seven-year-old cousin, Wilfred Obama Kobilo, who was thrilled at the responsibility. “I had always looked up to Barack and it was a great adventure to take the cows across the river,” recalled Kobilo, who was sixty-one and a businessman in Nairobi. “We delivered them and then we went right back home.”
Obama and his bride married in 1957 under Luo customary law, an elaborate process involving go-betweens, dowry installments, and sometimes the literal capture, or
mako
, of the bride.
33
As such, no court of law or house of worship sanctioned their union, only communal consent. If they were ever to separate or desired their union to end, they were required to present their case to a council of elders that would consider if there were sufficient grounds. Terminations were allowed if the wife turned out to be a food thief, a witch, or extremely lazy. The marriage could also be ended if the husband was found to be “a wizard, impotent, a thief or if he interfered in the kitchen or served himself from the pot,” as it is spelled out in the revered encyclopedia of Luo ways Paul Mboya wrote in 1938,
Luo Kitigi Gi Timbegi
, or “Luo Customs and Traditions.”
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Under certain conditions, the dowry would be returned to the husband's family, a process called
waro dhok
.
Some Luo customs relaxed with the passage of years, and marriages were at times terminated without the approval of an elders' council. As men increasingly took up residence in Nairobi or other urban centers far from their tribal homes in the years after independence, they occasionally claimed to have dissolved their marriages merely by declaring them ended. Several years after Obama married Kezia and was contemplating marriage to the president's mother, that is precisely what he did. Kezia, however, claims that the two remained married at the time of his death and continue to be joined to this day. “Even now, I know I am his wife,” declared Kezia, tapping the floor with her foot to indicate Obama buried underground. “He is dead down there, but I know he is thinking about
me. He always came back to me. And then he realized that I am the wife, the real wife, always.”
In the joyful months after their marriage, however, such matters were years away. Obama and his bride moved into a home near to the Kaloleni estate on the east side of the city with several other Obama cousins and began their life together. It was a fitting place to begin, for Kaloleni's multitude of single-story brownstone homes was a cherished refuge for Luos. Many of their most prominent politicians lived there, and after weekend football games at the neighboring city stadium, scores of Luos would flood the bars and restaurants. Obama felt deeply at home there, and he would remain a habitué there until the final hours of his life.
At the time the Obamas were settling into their new routine together, the mood of the city had begun to change markedly. Even before the military defeat of the Mau Mau was accomplished by 1955, the colonial government had come to realize that the status quo was no longer a viable arrangement. Toward the end of 1954 a halting reform process had begun, with a series of initiatives intended to promote the development of an African leadership that would supplant Mau Mau and its followers. By allowing a controlled degree of political expression, British administrators hoped to stifle the burning embers of nationalism. One of the most significant of these initiatives was the Lyttelton Constitution of 1954, which introduced a new government structure that included African and Asian ministers and, more critically, embraced the principle of representational parity for different racial groups.
35
Under the constitution a defined stratum of voters would eventually be able to select eight Africans to sit on Kenya's Legislative Council, known as LEGCO.
The following year another door opened. Convinced that self-government for Kenya was still many years away, in 1955 the government cautiously moved to relax the ban on African political activity. Political organizations could be formed but only on a district level, and not in Central Province, which was the domain of the Kikuyu. But colonial administrators failed to take into account, as they had throughout the Mau Mau conflict, that the grievances that gave rise to the war were felt not just by a handful of weapon-toting rebels but instead ran deeply through the Kenyan heartland. And so it was that local leaders began to
surge onto the political scene, eager to participate in the first African election, which was to be held in 1957. Most of the candidates had a very definite agenda on their minds, and compromise with the colonial government was not on their list. Mau Mau may have been defeated in the forests and in the cities, but the balance of power was slowly shifting from the Europeans to the Africansâand both sides knew it.
Tom Mboya, aligned with the Nairobi Peoples Convention Party (NPCP), of which he would eventually become president, was one of four candidates running for a seat representing Nairobi. With a highly disciplined organization behind him, Mboya campaigned on many of the positions outlined in a political manifesto he had penned while at Ruskin College called, “The Kenya Question: An African Answer.” He wanted an end to the emergency regulations. There must be a one-person, one-vote franchise for Africans and a lifting of the limitation on national political organizations for Africans. Kenya was for Kenyans. His slogan: “To hell with European Domination.”
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The handsome young Kenyan's bold posture caught the attention of the American media in general and American labor leaders in particular. In the fall of 1956 the American Committee on Africa (ACOA), a group of liberal Americans and prominent black leaders interested in developing relations between the United States and Africa, invited Mboya to make a speaking tour of American college campuses. Mboya eagerly accepted. During his highly successful visit he forged a host of relationships that would blossom into a program of unique academic opportunity for hundreds of young Kenyans in the coming years.
During that trip it is also rumored that the Central Intelligence Agency recruited Mboya through his numerous labor contacts in the United States. In 1959 Mboya, the general secretary of the Kenya Federation of Labor, became a member of the board of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), a group of international unions financed by American labor and the U.S. government with the aim of opposing communism. Mboya worked closely with the ICFTU and received their ongoing financial support for years.
A 1969 article in the liberal magazine
Ramparts
, published only weeks before Mboya was assassinated, appraised the situation like this: “The
CIA's program in Kenya could be summed up as one of selective liberation. The chief beneficiary was Tom Mboya. ... Mboya was ideal for the CIA's purposesâthe main nationalist hero and eventual chief of state, Jomo Kenyatta, not being considered sufficiently safe.”
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Mboya's biographer points out that Mboya consistently declared that he never “knowingly” had any dealings with the CIA. But he also acknowledges that the young nationalist was determined to achieve his aims. Mboya's attitude, Goldsworthy added, was, “just as expedient as the Americans'. Quite simply, he wanted the money for domestic political purposes and had no qualms about its sources.”
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Such relationships were strictly behind the scenes and were of little matter to the many who rallied around Mboya in his bid for office. Even Obama, a nonjoiner by nature, was swept up by the enthusiasm that engulfed the legislative race. When he was not at his desk at the law firm, Obama headed to Mboya's office to help strategize and galvanize support among the Luo community. The NPCP was fast becoming one of the strongest political organizations in the country, despite the ban on colonywide organizations, and during his days working on Mboya's campaign Obama met many activists who would take key roles in the coming days of independence. Obama wanted to be one of them. Here, at last, was a direction in which he could funnel his ambition and intelligence and also have a hand in shaping his country's development as an independent nation. Increasingly, Obama began to adopt the Western dress and urban style that the nationalist crowd sported.
“Tom always surrounded himself with very smart people who helped him to develop strategies, and Barack was one of them,” recalled Phoebe M. Asiyo, a former member of the Kenyan parliament representing the Karachuonyo constituency in Nyanza Province for nearly two decades and a childhood friend of Obama's. “Barack was always there with him. He was very dedicated to Tom.”
And yet Obama was characteristically dissatisfied. He did not like his job and was adamant that he should be engaged in more challenging work. Although the pay was reasonable, he chafed at working for an Indian boss and had to rein in his sharp tongue every time he was given an assignment. More galling, many of his friends from the Maseno school were
heading to Makerere University in Kampala or even overseas to seek higher degrees. When they weren't talking about the impending election, his friends were debating the relative merits of schools in the United States versus those in the Soviet Union. Education was the key to everything. But because of his expulsion from Maseno, Obama could not even consider such options even though he easily qualified intellectually. Then there was the Old Man. Obama was keenly aware of his father's disappointment in him, and he was tired of listening to his father's litany of complaints. Lately, Obama had stopped dropping by the Hagberg's home to visit him.
Nor did it seem likely that anything was going to improve. Not long after the election, Kezia discovered that she was pregnant with their first child and was already talking about the clothes the baby would need. Obama was intrigued at the thought that he might soon have a son, but he knew that a child was going to add considerably to his financial burden. Some days Obama was despondent, fearing he would be stuck in a tedious clerk's job for the rest of his life. How could this have ever happened to
him
, Barack Obama, the son of Hussein Onyango and the smartest boy in the class?
What he couldn't know was that change was right around the corner. And it was coming in flats and a floral skirt.
4
MISS MOONEY
T
he crowd at Makadara Hall had been waiting for nearly half an hour. It was a humid Sunday in 1957, and over a thousand men and women were eager to see their political hero, Tom Mboya, take the stage. Craning for a glimpse of the presumed next president of the Nairobi Peoples Convention Party, the crowd churned against the sheet-metal walls that framed Nairobi's largest social hall, chanting bits of song, ever watchful of the European police officers stationed at the doorways.
Mboya was often late, but he always showed up at this weekly event, easily one of the city's most popular political meetings. Just as the crowd was growing impatient, a figure stepped on the stage. But it was not Mboya in his trademark red windbreaker. It was a woman. More astonishing, it was a
mzungu
. She was barely over five feet tall, her floral skirt falling just above her pale ankles, a tentative smile playing across her angular face. The crowd grew abruptly quiet, uncertain as Mboya appeared on the stage behind her. What did this mean? Surely, this could not bode well.
But when the white woman began to speak, with Mboya acting as her interpreter, they listened. Her name was Elizabeth Mooney. And she had come to change their lives.
The forty-three-year-old Texas native was a literacy teacher who the Kenyan government had employed under a U.S.-sponsored program to teach Kenyans how to read and write. In the four months since she had arrived, Mooney had had difficulty spreading word of her program. And so when the immensely popular Mboya, an ardent advocate of education, had offered to let her appear on stage, Mooney jumped at the chance.
Mooney made good use of her few minutes, explaining to the impatient crowd how easy it could be to learn how to read and write and exactly how her classes were taught. Although her appearance prompted much fluttering in the U.S. Consulate office and a reprimand in one of the local papersâboth parties were distraught at the impropriety of her appearing on stage with such a high-profile politicianâher mission had been accomplished. Her words that day turned the tide in her favor, and the numbers in her classroom tripled the following week. During her two-year stay in Kenya, Mooney would change the course of hundreds of Africans' lives, but none so completely as that of a young man named Barack Obama. In a matter of months Mooney not only helped give focus to his wandering ambition, but at a time when many doors seemed closed to him, she provided the critical assistance that ultimately put him on a plane to America, thus planting the seed of a political upheaval to come a generation later.
They had crossed paths several times in the city, for Obama often attended Mboya's afternoon addresses. But one afternoon, not long after her appearance at Makadara Hall, Mooney happened to visit the cramped office of the Indian law firm where Obama worked as a clerk typist taking dictation. This time they began to talk. Eager to staff her Spartan office on Ribeiro Street in the heart of Nairobi, Mooney observed that Obama was both fast and accurate at the keyboard as he worked. She promptly offered him a position as her secretary, and Obama started work for her a few days later.
Mooney was a colleague of world-renowned literacy expert, Dr. Frank C. Laubach of New York, who had recommended her for the Kenyan post and helped to fund the project. After paying Obama for several months out of her office expense fund, she turned to Laubach for the money to pay him on a more regular basis. Mooney was impressed with his performance. In a letter, she asked for $100 a month “for salary for Barack O'Bama for six months if possible,” she wrote, adding an Irish twist to the spelling of his name.
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