Sunday, June 23, 2013

Day waiters refused to serve Obama in favour of blond American customers



By MURITHI MUTIGA
Posted  Saturday, June 22  2013 at  20:00
IN SUMMARY
  • Obama's unhappy encounter at the hotel also served to sum up his character: a relaxed, analytical, deeply thoughtful and mild-mannered fellow who would go on to show exactly those qualities in what has been a cautious but on balance fairly successful presidency
Various social media forums have been alight all week with complaints that blacks are not treated as well as their more light-skinned colleagues at an up-market Nairobi restaurant.
Barack Obama, who will start his trip to Africa this week, would have recognised that picture. Obama has many talents. One of these is that he is a writer of unsurpassed ability.
In his memoirs, Dreams from My Father – a book which must surely be incorporated into the school curriculum one of these days – he describes an encounter he had at a prominent five-star hotel with waiters who had no intention of serving him and his sister, Auma.
One of the fascinating things about Obama’s first book – written with great freedom and panache, unlike his second one which was penned with the caution of an aspiring president – is that it reveals Obama to be possibly the most liberal, anti-colonial individual ever to occupy the White House.
His unhappy encounter at the hotel also served to sum up his character: a relaxed, analytical, deeply thoughtful and mild-mannered fellow who would go on to show exactly those qualities in what has been a cautious but on balance fairly successful presidency.
Here is his recollection of the meal gone sour in downtown Nairobi: “(When we got to the hotel) I took the opportunity to study the tourists as Auma and I sat down for lunch in the outdoor café.
“They were everywhere – Germans, Japanese, British, Americans – many of them dressed in safari suits like extras on a movie set. In Hawaii, when we were still kids, my friends and I had laughed at tourists like these, with their sunburns and their pale, skinny legs, basking in the glow of our obvious superiority. Here in Africa, though, the tourists didn’t seem so funny. I felt them as an encroachment, somehow; I found their innocence vaguely insulting.
“It occurred to me that in their utter lack of self-consciousness, they were expressing a freedom that neither Auma nor I could ever experience, a bedrock confidence in their own parochialism, a confidence reserved for those born into imperial cultures.
“Just then I noticed an American family sit down a few tables from us. Two of the African waiters immediately sprang into action, both of them smiling from one ear to the other. Since Auma and I hadn’t yet been served, I began to wave at the two waiters who remained standing by the kitchen, thinking they must have somehow failed to see us.
“For some time they managed to avoid my glance, but eventually an older man with sleepy eyes relented and brought us two menus. His manner was resentful, though, and after several more minutes he showed no signs of ever coming back.
“Auma’s face began to pinch with anger, and again I waved to our waiter, who continued in his silence as he wrote down our orders. At this point, the Americans had already received their food and we still had no place settings… Auma stood up.
‘Let’s go.’ She started heading for the exit, then suddenly turned and walked back to the waiter, who was watching us with an impassive stare. ‘You should be ashamed of yourself,’ Auma said to him, her voice shaking… Did our waiter know that black rule had come? Did it mean anything to him?
“Maybe once, I thought to myself. He would be old enough to remember independence, the shouts ofUhuru! and the raising of new flags.
“But such memories may seem almost fantastic to him now, distant and naive. He’s learned that the same people who controlled the land before independence still control the same land that he still cannot eat in the restaurants or stay in the hotels that the white man has built.
(He) straddles two worlds, uncertain in each, always off balance, playing whichever game staves off bottomless poverty, careful to let his anger vent itself only on those in the same condition.”
Murithi Mutiga is the special programmes editor, Sunday Nation mmutiga@ke.nationmedia.com

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