The Other Barack by Sally Jacobs Page A

suffering, as legions of Mau Mau suspects were detained without any trial and often brutally tortured in detention camps. Although the government put the number of those Kikuyu detained at 80,000, historians have subsequently reported that the actual tally more likely ranges from 150,000 to 320,000. 22 The estimated number of Kikuyu rebels who died in the war also varies widely. Although the official tally rests at 12,000, Oxford historian David Anderson estimates that in fact more than 20,000 Kikuyu fighters died. But Caroline Elkins, a Harvard historian, contends in her Pulitzer Prize–winning book, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya , contends that the figure was far higher than Anderson’s. She concludes that the colonial government launched “a murderous campaign to eliminate Kikuyu people, a campaign that left tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands dead.” 23 Whatever the final numbers, the Mau Mau war was, by any assessment, as Anderson writes in his book, Histories of the Hanged: The Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire , “a story of atrocity and excess on both sides, a dirty war from which no one emerged with much pride, and certainly, no glory.” 24
    Working in Mombasa nearly three hundred miles away on the Kenyan coast, Obama was far removed from the crisis gripping the highlands, though he was surely keenly attuned to the ongoing conflict. He also had some pressing problems of his own. The first job he had landed, working as a clerk for an Arab merchant, came to an end when Obama quarreled with his boss and angrily quit without being paid. He managed to find another job, although at significantly lower pay. Onyango learned of his son’s difficulties from a Mombasa relative, and when Obama came home for a visit, Onyango railed at him for his impetuous behavior. The headstrong Obama insisted that he was now employed in a job that paid much more money, but when Onyango demanded to see his wage book, Obama could only stand silently before him. His father ordered him away, saying he had brought shame upon him. 25
    Uncertain where to turn in 1954, Obama headed to Nairobi, where he had friends from his school days and hoped that he would find another job—and perhaps some adventure. In a few weeks Obama again secured work as a clerk, this time with an Indian law firm, but he soon found the churning life of the city far more consuming. During the emergency years
many city residents vented their frustration with chronic unemployment and low wages through the evolving trade union movement. Although the Kenya Labor Department closely monitored the formation of employee organizations to ensure they were not being used for political ends, it discreetly encouraged the growth of collective bargaining in part to counter the extremism of the radicals’ appeal. 26 Generally, the government hoped to encourage the development of a middle class that would have a tempering influence on African politics and might eventually serve as a bulwark against radical elements such as Mau Mau.
    When Obama arrived in the city, one young man’s name was inextricably linked to the emerging trade union movement: Tom Mboya. He was, like Obama, a Luo, and a very ambitious one at that. The two men would develop a friendship, drawn to one another by their deep ethnic roots and rapidly developing political passions. Six years older than Obama, Mboya would act as Obama’s mentor during a critical juncture in his life, a kind of benevolent father figure of the sort that Obama had never had.
    The son of a sisal plantation overseer from Rusinga Island in Lake Victoria, the engaging and polished Mboya had already established himself as an officer with the Kenya African Union and was a prominent union activist by the time Obama arrived in the city. Only twenty-four, the moon-faced organizer had begun his career three years earlier as a sanitation inspector for the