The Other Barack (31 page)

With college and immigration officials no longer keeping an eye on his doings, Obama reveled in the city's burgeoning social life as never before. Even among the Nairobi men, Obama stood out. Dressed in elegant silk ties and tailored suits from Peermohammed, one of the city's finest clothing shops, Obama was careful that no upcountry dust dull his perennially polished shoes. The Sportsman cigarettes of the old days had been replaced with the more refined Benson and Hedges, and Johnnie Walker Black was now his drink of choice. Obama made it no secret that he preferred the company of educated men, and he referred to those he considered inferior as “intellectual dwarfs,” only partly in jest. If one dared to speak Swahili in his company, a swift reprimand would often be forthcoming. Only English—and proper English at that—would do. “You had to meet certain criteria,” recalled Obama's childhood friend Peter Aringo, a former member of Parliament who served six terms. “Obama wanted you to rise up to his standards.”

Obama's legendary baritone was now colored by his American years, a fact that elevated his status at the same time as made it difficult for some back home to understand his new accent. But his Luo grounding was as deep as ever, despite his elaborate airs and Western ways. On coming upon
his Luo friends in the city, Obama would often greet them fondly with Luo nicknames, and he was a loyal supporter of several welfare societies supporting schools and causes back in Kogelo. As tribal divisions soon became manifest in ongoing political debates over the country's direction, Obama embraced his Luo roots ever more fiercely. “
Wuod Akumu N'yar Njoga
,” or “the son of Akumu, the daughter of Njoga, we'd hail him when he showed up,” recalled Wilson Ndolo Ayah, who received a master's degree from the University of Wisconsin and was a businessman who would go on to hold several high-ranking ministerial posts. “‘What are you having to drink?' ‘
Jobungu
,' Obama would jokingly call back, using the Luo term for ‘bushmen.' ‘You must be paying then, I see.'”

Plunging into conversations about the latest government proclamation or political promotion, Obama often found a way to refer to his Harvard training. He insisted on being called
Dr.
Obama, despite his incomplete dissertation. Few were aware that Obama was a Dr. in his imagination alone. Anyway, it was more than sufficient that he had any Harvard degree at all. Only a handful of Kenyans could claim such a distinction, and Obama played it frequently, demanding, “Where were you when I was getting my training at
Harvard
?” He was, as Aringo recalls it, “the big voice from Harvard and he let everyone know that.”

When he arrived at the dim bar at Brunner's Hotel or pulled up a chair at the trendy Sans Chique, where he was a regular, he routinely trumpeted his standard order. “A double round of
scotch
,” he would say, lingering over a word he seemed to relish. He would then promptly order a chaser of another round of the same—two more shots of scotch. And thus did Obama earn himself the nickname, “Double-Double.”
⁵
Even in Nairobi's hard-drinking culture of the time, Obama was at the head of the pack in his alcoholic intake. By the count of some of his bar mates, Obama could down four “double-doubles”—or sixteen shots—at a sitting and still walk out of the bar. Never a big eater, Obama would reluctantly put down his glass for a plate of ugali and roasted meat or, one of his preferred dishes,
sukuma wiki
, a mix of leafy greens and tomatoes. “We drank quite often together and we went home not in a very nice condition. Sometimes he had trouble getting home at all,” recalled Philip Ochieng, then a columnist for the
Nation
. “Barack was always outspoken, very jocular. He liked people. But he was a lot about himself. He was arrogant but it was a very
seductive arrogance. Not unpleasant at all. He had big ambitions, big unrealistic dreams. He just needed to dominate and that is what caused so many problems for him.”

Obama did not join many of the private clubs in town, even those established expressly for the new urban elite such as the African Club, reserved for senior African civil servants, or the United Kenya Club, which had been founded as a multiracial club nearly two decades earlier. But he often dropped in to visit with his many colleagues, such as Fred Okatcha, a former board member at the UKC who had encountered Obama several times in New York during their college days. Obama never hesitated to speak his mind. “He was not a typical man,” said Okatcha. “If you didn't know what you were talking about he would say so right to your face. He'd say, ‘Man, you have no idea what you are saying.' If someone didn't know him, they might get annoyed or buy him another drink to placate him, but usually that only made it worse. But if you knew him, you knew that was just the way he was.”

Once at a cocktail party of Europeans and well-to-do Africans, Obama happened to overhear an American professor commenting on Kenya's political situation. Not liking what he heard, “Barack went right up to him and said, ‘You are ignorant on that subject and you should not talk about such a thing until you understand,'” recalled his friend Otieno O. Wasonga, a family friend who'd known Obama in Cambridge. “Well, it was probably the first time that professor had heard such a thing. But Barack would be the first to tell you to your face that you didn't have it right. He'd say, ‘Take this fact and maybe it will improve your knowledge on the subject.'”

He was no less reluctant to point out the errors of his superiors in front of others. Obama, ever sure of his position, would marshal his evidence, quote a scholar or two, and declare the person flat out in the wrong, seemingly unaware that he was embarrassing or humiliating them. “You know, he was just being Barack, just being bold,” said Arthur Reuben Owino, who attended the Ng'iya School with Obama and worked as a government information officer. “He didn't realize that someone in a high position might be very embarrassed at being corrected in such a way. After he'd said such things, he'd laugh and laugh and offer to buy everyone a drink. Most people you know they just thought, well, that's just Barack.”

For some, the newly minted Obama was an acquired taste. Like many African men of the time, he did not traffic much in personal talk. Only a handful of his closest associates knew of his son in Hawaii or much about his children back in Kogelo. Although he craved social interaction, he held himself apart, as though unwilling to be known or to know too much. It was as though the booming interrogations and prideful claims were intended to set a listener back, to keep him from coming too close. But those who understood Obama's style knew that the thumping bravado and interrogatory dialogue was his particular way of engaging. And once the cross-examination was done, there were drinks for all. Obama was famously generous at the bar, and he frequently ordered rounds for everyone to be put on his tab, even in later years when he could ill-afford to do so. His favorite barroom prank was to send his bill to someone else at the bar, particularly if he spotted someone of high rank. Obama took particular pleasure in sending his tabs to Tom Mboya himself or to Mwai Kibaki. That his targets paid up was a good measure of the tolerant fondness with which many regarded him.

The city's beckoning barrooms were not the only new development that won Obama's attention. He was equally smitten with the sleek sedans cruising the city's streets, often available for bargain prices from departing colonists eager to shed their belongings. For a while after he returned, Obama proudly ferried a large green Mercedes from his Rosslyn home to Shell's downtown offices. Ed Benjamin, a Boston lawyer who had been impressed by Obama's sophisticated repartee when he met him at a Cambridge cocktail party in the spring of 1964, wound up in Nairobi on a business trip not long after Obama returned to Kenya. When Benjamin called him on the phone from his room in the posh New Stanley hotel, Obama promptly offered to give him a tour of the city. “He said he would be by in an hour and to look for him in a brand new Mercedes,” recalled Benjamin. “He was obviously quite proud of that car. He drove us around, showed us the sights and told us where to have dinner. He was very gracious. Very charming. He was obviously an extremely bright and elegant guy.”

But Obama's far more impressive vehicle was a huge blue Ford Fairlane emblazoned with wide, white racing stripes running down the sides. A few young boys who encountered that car decades ago still remember it vividly today. Taa O. Pala was ten years old when he and his older brother,
Francis, who was a friend of Obama's, nearly ran into the car on a sunny afternoon in 1966 as it swung around a corner just outside Kisumu. The elder Pala and Obama, who had not seen one another for years, each jumped from their vehicles and ran to greet one another. “I still remember that incredible car. I had really never seen anything like it in my life,” recalled Pala, who would later become a captain with Rwanda Air. “Obama got out of the car smoking his pipe and then he reached into the car and pulled out a couple of cold beers and a pair of glasses. He put them on the bonnet and the two of them were talking and drinking. I mean, he was driving around with a bar in this incredible car. I was completely impressed. I think I remember it partly because it looked so much like a plane and I knew then I wanted to be a pilot.”

Erastus Amondi Okul, a cousin of Obama's, was several years older than Pala when he first saw the car, but even at seventeen he was stunned when the vast blue machine purred into Kendu Bay. A grinning Obama swung open the passenger door and beckoned to several giggling children to jump in. That was the first time Okul had ever ridden in a car. “It was like an airplane! It flew,” exclaimed Okul. “And when we got inside, it had air conditioning. I could not even imagine such a thing. He always encouraged us to go to school and on this day he said, ‘If you do not go to school you cannot drive a car like this.' We all decided we would go to school just like Dr. Obama.”

On his return to the villages of his childhood, Obama came laden with gifts. There was colored fabric, bags of potatoes and guavas, and, for the luckiest child of all, a pair of shoes. In the eyes of the villagers, Obama was one of the biggest men around, and they anticipated his visits with excitement. His message was always the same. “He always, always talked about education, that was the thing he valued most of all,” said Ezra Obama, a first cousin whose own education Obama paid for in large part. “Later he would tell me, the best thing you can do for your children is get them an education. Don't save the money for them for later. Get them an education. If you give them that, you've given them everything.”

And then the bird from Kanyadhiang, the
winyo
who had flown so high that he had obtained a Harvard degree and a car more magnificent than a jet airplane, added something even more stunning to his list of achievements. He was going to have a
mzungu
wife. Obama may not have entirely
expected that his Cambridge girlfriend would follow him to Kenya, but only five weeks after he left Cambridge, Ruth Baker made up her mind to take him up on the invitation that he had laid before her.

Her decision was a most improbable act of faith. Since graduating from Simmons College as a business major in 1958, Ruth had trod a conventional path. As befitted her role as member of the school's honor board, she had always been keen on doing the right thing—or at least trying to figure out what that was. She had worked as a legal assistant for a Boston lawyer for a couple of years and then tried her hand teaching the sixth grade in a suburban school. A tall young woman with a straightforward manner, “Ruthie” was not a particularly adventurous sort as far as her friends were concerned. But she was nothing if not determined. Her doting parents in nearby Newton kept a close eye on their well-mannered daughter who lived with some girlfriends on tony Beacon Hill. And although she embarked on a number of blind dates, Ruth was neither a dreamer nor a romantic. And so when Ruth announced to her elementary school friend Judy Epstein that she was considering following her African lover to Nairobi, Epstein was shocked. But Epstein was just as much taken aback by Ruth's matter-of-fact manner. “She was very much in love with him, but she was pretty businesslike about it all,” said Epstein. “She was thinking of going to Nairobi to check it out and see if she wanted to marry him. It was pretty factual.”

Ignoring her parents' urgent remonstrations, Ruth packed a small bag of essentials. She could not stop thinking about Obama and the way he talked in such bold, declarative sentences, as though he knew exactly what was what. To a young woman struggling to find her way, his authority was as seductive as his full-lipped smile. “The truth was I had no self-esteem,” Ruth said later. “People did not know that but I did not have the self-confidence I should have. And I was very innocent because I had led a very conservative life. Obama was just the opposite. He seemed to be very confident and he was very, very charming.” At the end of her long solitary flight to Nairobi, Ruth walked expectantly into the waiting area of the Embakasi Airport, searching for her lover's face in the crowd. Obama was not there. Ruth took a deep breath and began to wander through the airport asking if anyone knew of a Barack Obama. Many people did, as Obama's name was widely known. A Luo woman took her hand and drove
her to her house where they called Obama on the phone. He appeared, ebullient, an hour later. But it was not an auspicious beginning. “You know, I am not supersensitive so I was not hurt,” said Ruth. “I probably thought what's wrong here, you know? But then he came and we were together. So, it didn't matter.”

Obama was immensely proud of his bride-to-be.
Mzungu
wives were still rare, and in general only those of advanced education and means could claim such a trophy. He took her around town and dropped in on some of his most prominent associates to show her off. Visiting his old Kendu Bay friend Samuel O. Ayodo, a member of Mboya's inner circle who served as Minister of Natural Resources and Wildlife, Obama clapped him on the back and excitedly insisted, “‘Tell Ruth that my father is a
king
and my family is very,
very
important.' We just laughed,” recalled Ayodo's widow, Damaris Ayodo. “He really wanted to impress her.”
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