Dreams from My Father

breath of my brothers, and thinking about the stories of our grandfather. It had all started with him, Auma had said. That sounded right somehow. If I could just piece together his story, I thought, then perhaps everything else might fall into place.
    I finally fell asleep, and dreamed I was walking along a village road. Children, dressed only in strings of beads, played in front of the round huts, and several old men waved to me as I passed. But as I went farther along, I began to notice that people were looking behind me fearfully, rushing into their huts as I passed. I heard the growl of a leopard and started to run into the forest, tripping over roots and stumps and vines, until at last I couldn’t run any longer and fell to my knees in the middle of a bright clearing. Panting for breath, I turned around to see the day turned night, and a giant figure looming as tall as the trees, wearing only a loincloth and a ghostly mask. The lifeless eyes bored into me, and I heard a thunderous voice saying only that it was time, and my entire body began to shake violently with the sound, as if I were breaking apart….
    I jerked up in a sweat, hitting my head against the wall lamp that stuck out above the bunk. In the darkness, my heart slowly evened itself, but I couldn’t get back to sleep again.
             
    We arrived in Kisumu at daybreak and walked the half mile to the bus depot. It was crowded with buses and
matatus
honking and jockeying for space in the dusty open-air lot, their fenders painted with names like “Love Bandit” and “Bush Baby.” We found a sad-looking vehicle with balding, cracked tires that was heading our way. Auma boarded first, then stepped back out, looking morose.
    “There are no seats,” she said.
    “Don’t worry,” Roy said as our bags were hoisted up by a series of hands to the roof of the bus. “This is Africa, Auma…not Europe.” He turned and smiled down at the young man who was collecting fares. “You can find us some seats, eh, brother?”
    The man nodded. “No problem. This bus is first-class.”
    An hour later Auma was sitting on my lap, along with a basket of yams and somebody else’s baby girl.
    “I wonder what third-class looks like,” I said, wiping a strand of spittle off my hand.
    Auma pushed a strange elbow out of her face. “You won’t be joking after we hit the first pothole.”
    Fortunately, the highway was well paved, the landscape mostly dry bush and low hills, the occasional cinder-block house soon replaced by mud huts with thatched, conical roofs. We got off in Ndori and spent the next two hours sipping on warm sodas and watching stray dogs snap at each other in the dust, until a
matatu
finally appeared to take us over the dirt road heading north. As we drove up the rocky incline a few shoeless children waved but did not smile, and a herd of goats ran before us, to drink at a narrow stream. Then the road widened and we finally stopped at a clearing. Two young men were sitting there, under the shade of a tree, and their faces broke into smiles as they saw us. Roy jumped out of the
matatu
to gather the two men into his arms.
    “Barack,” Roy said happily, “these are our uncles. This is Yusuf,” he said, pointing to the slightly built man with a mustache. “And this,” he said, pointing to the larger, clean-shaven man, “this is our father’s youngest brother, Sayid.”
    “Ah, we have heard many great things about this one,” Sayid said, smiling at me. “Welcome, Barry. Welcome. Come, let me have your bags.”
    We followed Yusuf and Sayid down a path running perpendicular to the main road, until we crossed a wall of tall hedges and entered a large compound. In the middle of the compound was a low, rectangular house with a corrugated-iron roof and concrete walls that had crumbled on one side, leaving their brown mud base exposed. Bougainvillea, red and pink and yellow with flowers, spread along one side in the direction of a large concrete water tank, and across the packed earth was a small round hut lined with earthenware pots where a few chickens pecked in an alternating rhythm. I could see two more huts in the wide grass yard that stretched out behind the house. Beneath a tall mango tree, a pair of bony red cows looked up at us before returning to feed.
    Home Squared.
    “Eh, Obama!” A big woman with a scarf on her head strode out of the main house drying her hands on the sides of her flowered skirt. She had a face like Sayid’s,