In the footsteps of her brother, Obama

Dr Auma Obama during the public reading of her autobiography, Das Leben Kommt Immer Dazwischen (Life Happens), at the Goethe Institut in Nairobi last week. Dr Obama is US President Barack Obama’s half-sister.

By John Makeni jmakeni@ke.nationmedia.com
Posted  Friday, April 8 2011 at 22:00

In Summary

• Dr Auma Obama releases an autobiography that dwells on the famous family’s long history

At 6.30pm, all the seats are already occupied. A bespectacled man walks to the stage and announces that the public reading will start in a minute.

Soon Dr Auma Obama emerges from a side door and proceeds to the podium. She is greeted by a round of applause, and she flashes a smile back.

Dr Obama steers clear of the limelight, and this was a rare moment when she appeared in a public podium. After all, she is the half-sister of the world’s most powerful man, US President Barack Obama.

Dr Obama is at Nairobi’s Goethe Institut auditorium for a public reading of her autobiography, Das Leben Kommt Immer Dazwischen(Life Happens).

The book is written in German, and the English translation is not yet available.

“Life happens. I have always planned to do things in a certain way and something happens and it takes you to a different direction,” she said of her choice of the title.

Following in the footsteps of her half-brothers, the US President and Mark Ndesandjo, Dr Obama is the third in the family to write a memoir.

She begins with the tale of her family, about the misrepresentation of the family’s story. “A lot has been written claiming that my father was a polygamist…” she said.

When taken to task to explain this further, she skilfully avoids it.

“The book is not about my father or brother,” she politely answers matter-of-factly. But she cannot avoid the topic for long. She reveals how the election of Barack as President of the US changed her life.

“It was great, but a challenge because it came as a surprise. You get to be treated differently, which is awkward. I was used to my private life. Even if I am Barack Obama’s sister, I could be boring,” said Dr Obama, a technical advisor of CARE’s Sports for Social Change.

Separated by space and time, Auma and Barack had never met until in the 1980s, after their father died in a car accident.

Like President Obama’s Dreams from my Father, Dr Auma in her autobiography reveals the moment she met Barack and how apprehensive she was.

“Would my brother be there? Would he recognise me? Is my brother boring or interesting? What if he doesn’t like me?” Just as Barack had described in his memoir, Auma says they had kept in touch, writing between Chicago and Frankfurt.

Scanning the crowd at an airport in Chicago, she heard a voice roar: “Auma!”

“It had to be Barack,” Auma reads. “Just by the sound of his voice, I knew he was family.”

In his autobiography President Obama says: “I had never met this African half-sister; we had written only intermittently. I knew that she had left Kenya — the home of our shared father — to study in Germany.”

Though in her autobiography she talks of the fear she harboured, in his book, President Obama reveals the new-found love between a brother and sister.

“At the airport, I scanned the crowds. How would I find her? I looked down at the photo she had sent me, smudged now from too much handling.

“Then I looked up, and the picture came to life: an African woman emerging from behind the customs gate, moving with easy, graceful steps; her bright, searching eyes now fixed on my own... as she smiled. I lifted my sister off the ground as we embraced.

“I knew at that moment, somehow, that I loved her so naturally, so easily and fiercely...,” President Obama wrote.

Dr Obama tells the audience of the challenges she met on her first days at university in Frankfurt, the culture shock of living with a German family.

She tells of an awkward moment she had with the family at the dinner table, and how virtually every member of the family puffed away marijuana.

“When I refused, the son asked me, ‘I thought everybody smokes in Africa,’” she reads. “I was living with a family of drug addicts. I pretended that I wasn’t horrified, yet I was.”

Auma came back to Kenya four years ago after living in Germany for 16 years.

Her rendition was crisp. She was quick-witted when taken to task by the head of information and library department, Eliphas Nyamogo, with whom she was sharing the podium.

Mr Nyamogo’s questions avoid either her father or brother.

The audience is, however, keen to hear about President Obama.

“I know many people in the audience who will not forgive me for failing to ask you about your brother,” says Mr Nyamogo.

She says her publisher had wanted her story: “I wrote so that people could hear my story. And the publisher said, ‘tell us your story. The world would love if you mention it because it will boost sales,” says Auma, a holder of a PhD from the University of Bayreuth.

She says she did not consider the issue of fame as she lived in Germany, and writing in the German language felt more natural.

At some point in the reading, she communicates her thoughts in German, with Mr Nyamogo providing the English translation.

An alumna of Kenya High, she left Kenya for Germany when she was barely 20.

She studied German at the University of Heidelberg, and film production at the German Film and TV Academy in Berlin. The English translation of her book, she says, will be in the bookshops soon.

Currently, the copies in German language are available at Sh1,500.