Dreams from My Father

trying to find new questions. It can be very tiresome, actually. It requires a temperament for mischief. You know, young black Americans tend to romanticize Africa so. When your father and I were young, it was just the opposite—we expected to find all the answers in America. Harlem. Chicago. Langston Hughes and James Baldwin. That’s where we drew our inspiration. And the Kennedys—they were very popular. The chance to study in America was very important. A hopeful time. Of course, when we returned we realized that our education did not always serve us so well. Or the people who had sent us. There was all this messy history to deal with.”
    I asked her why she thought black Americans were prone to disappointment when they visited Africa. She shook her head and smiled. “Because they come here looking for the authentic,” she said. “That is bound to disappoint a person. Look at this meal we are eating. Many people will tell you that the Luo are a fish-eating people. But that was not true for all Luo. Only those who lived by the lake. And even for those Luo, it was not always true. Before they settled around the lake, they were pastoralists, like the Masai. Now, if you and your sister behave yourself and eat a proper share of this food, I will offer you tea. Kenyans are very boastful about the quality of their tea, you notice. But of course we got this habit from the English. Our ancestors did not drink such a thing. Then there’s the spices we used to cook this fish. They originally came from India, or Indonesia. So even in this simple meal, you will find it very difficult to be authentic—although the meal is certainly African.”
    Rukia rolled a ball of
ugali
in her hand and dipped it into her stew. “You can hardly blame black Americans, of course, for wanting an unblemished past. After the cruelties they’ve suffered—still suffer, from what I read in the newspapers. They’re not unique in this desire. The European wants the same thing. The Germans, the English…they all claim Athens and Rome as their own, when, in fact, their ancestors helped destroy classical culture. But that happened so long ago, so their task is easier. In their schools, you rarely hear about the misery of European peasants throughout most of recorded history. The corruption and exploitation of the Industrial Revolution, the senseless tribal wars—it’s shameful how the Europeans treated their own, much less colored peoples. So this idea about a golden age in Africa, before the white man came, seems only natural.”
    “A corrective,” Auma said.
    “Truth is usually the best corrective,” Rukia said with a smile. “You know, sometimes I think the worst thing that colonialism did was cloud our view of our past. Without the white man, we might be able to make better use of our history. We might look at some of our former practices and decide they are worth preserving. Others, we might grow out of. Unfortunately, the white man has made us very defensive. We end up clinging to all sorts of things that have outlived their usefulness. Polygamy. Collective land ownership. These things worked well in their time, but now they most often become tools for abuse. By men. By governments. And yet, if you say these things, you have been infected by Western ideology.”
    “So how should we adapt?” Auma said.
    Rukia shrugged. “I leave such answers up to policy makers. I’m only a historian. But I suspect that we can’t pretend that the contradictions of our situation don’t exist. All we can do is choose. For example, female circumcision is an important Kikuyu custom. With the Masai also. To a modern sensibility, it is barbaric. Perhaps we could arrange to have all these operations performed in hospitals and cut down on the death rate. Keep the bleeding to a minimum. But you cannot really have half a circumcision. This leaves no one satisfied. So we must choose. The same is true of the rule of law, the notion of independent inquiry—these things may conflict with tribal loyalties. You cannot have rule of law and then exempt certain members of your clan. What to do? Again you choose. If you make the wrong choice, then you learn from your mistakes. You see what works.”
    I licked my fingers and washed my hands. “But isn’t there anything left that is truly African?”
    “Ah, that’s the thing, isn’t it?” Rukia said. “There does seem to be something different about this place. I don’t know what it is. Perhaps the