Dreams from My Father

always good-natured towards his classmates, and would help them whenever they asked. His boasts were like those of a child who discovers that he can run fast or hunt well. So he did not understand that others might resent his ease. Even as a man, he did not understand such things. In a bar or a restaurant, he would see classmates of his who were now ministers or businessmen, and in front of everybody he would tell them their ideas were silly. He would say to them, “Oy, I remember that I had to teach you arithmetic, so how can you be such a big man now?” Then he would laugh and buy these men beers, for he was also fond of them. But these fellows would remember their school days, and know what Barack had said was true, and although they might not show it, his words made them angry.
    By the time your father was a teenager, things were changing rapidly in Kenya. Many Africans had fought in the Second World War. They had carried arms and distinguished themselves as great warriors in Burma and Palestine. They had seen the white man fight his own people, and had died beside white men, and had killed many white men themselves. They had learned that an African could work the white man’s machines and had met blacks from America who flew airplanes and performed surgery. When they returned to Kenya, they were eager to share this new knowledge and were no longer satisfied with the white man’s rule.
    People began to talk about independence. Meetings and demonstrations were held, and petitions were presented to the administration complaining about land confiscation and the power of chiefs to commission free labor for government projects. Even Africans who had been educated in mission schools now rebelled against their home churches and accused whites of distorting Christianity to demean everything African. As before, most of this activity centered in Kikuyuland, for that tribe bore the white man’s yoke most heavily. But the Luo, too, were oppressed, a main source of forced labor. Men in our area began to join the Kikuyu in demonstrations. And later, when the British declared their Emergency, many men were detained, some never to be seen again.
    Like other boys, your father would be influenced by the early talk of independence, and he would come home from school talking about the meetings he had seen. Your grandfather agreed with many of the demands of the early parties like KANU, but he remained skeptical that the independence movement would lead to anything, because he thought Africans could never win against the white man’s army. “How can the African defeat the white man,” he would tell Barack, “when he cannot even make his own bicycle?” And he would say that the African could never win against the white man because the black man only wanted to work with his own family or clan, while all white men worked to increase their power. “The white man alone is like an ant,” Onyango would say. “He can be easily crushed. But like an ant, the white man works together. His nation, his business—these things are more important to him than himself. He will follow his leaders and not question orders. Black men are not like this. Even the most foolish black man thinks he knows better than the wise man. That is why the black man will always lose.”
    Despite his attitude, your grandfather would once find himself detained. An African who worked for the district commissioner was jealous of your grandfather’s lands. This man had once been rebuked by your grandfather because he would collect excessive taxes and pocket the money for himself. During the Emergency, this man placed Onyango’s name on a list of KANU supporters and told the white man that Onyango was a subversive. One day, the white man’s
askaris
came to take Onyango away, and he was placed in a detention camp. Eventually he received a hearing, and he was found innocent. But he had been in the camp for over six months, and when he returned to Alego he was very thin and dirty. He had difficulty walking, and his head was full of lice. He was so ashamed, he refused to enter his house or tell us what had happened. Instead, he called me to boil him water and bring him one of his razors. He shaved off his hair, and I had to help him bathe for a very long time, just where you are now sitting. And from that day on, I saw that he was now an old man.
    Barack was away at the time and only learned about this detention later. He had taken the district examination, and