The life and times of the bold but reckless Barack Snr

The crowd at Makadara Hall had been waiting for nearly half an hour. It was a humid Sunday in 1957, and over a thousand men and women were eager to see their political hero, Tom Mboya, take the stage.

Craning for a glimpse of the presumed next president of the Nairobi Peoples Convention Party, the crowd churned against the sheet-metal walls that framed Nairobi’s largest social hall, chanting bits of song, ever watchful of the European police officers stationed at the doorways.

Mboya was often late, but he always showed up at this weekly event, easily one of the city’s most popular political meetings.

Just as the crowd was growing impatient, a figure stepped on the stage. But it was not Mboya in his trademark red windbreaker.

It was a woman. More astonishing, it was a mzungu. She was barely over five feet tall, her floral skirt falling just above her pale ankles, a tentative smile playing across her angular face.

The crowd grew abruptly quiet, uncertain as Mboya appeared on the stage behind her. What did this mean? Surely, this could not bode well.

But when the white woman began to speak, with Mboya acting as her interpreter, they listened. Her name was Elizabeth Mooney. And she had come to change their lives.

The 43-year-old Texas native was a literacy teacher who the Kenyan government had employed under a US-sponsored programme to teach Kenyans how to read and write.

In the four months since she had arrived, Mooney had had difficulty spreading word of her programme. And so when the immensely popular Mboya, an ardent advocate of education, had offered to let her appear on stage, Mooney jumped at the chance.
Impatient crowd

Mooney made good use of her few minutes, explaining to the impatient crowd how easy it could be to learn how to read and write and exactly how her classes were taught.

Although her appearance prompted much fluttering in the US Consulate office and a reprimand in one of the local papers — both parties were distraught at the impropriety of her appearing on stage with such a high-profile politician — her mission had been accomplished.

Her words that day turned the tide in her favour, and the numbers in her classroom tripled the following week. During her two-year stay in Kenya, Mooney would change the course of hundreds of Africans’ lives, but none so completely as that of a young man named Barack Obama.

In a matter of months, Mooney not only helped give focus to his wandering ambition, but at a time when many doors seemed closed to him, she provided the critical assistance that ultimately put him on a plane to America, thus planting the seed of a political upheaval to come a generation later.

They had crossed paths several times in the city, for Obama often attended Mboya’s afternoon addresses. But one afternoon, not long after her appearance at Makadara Hall, Mooney happened to visit the cramped office of the Indian law firm where Obama worked as a clerk typist taking dictation.

This time they began to talk.

Eager to staff her Spartan office on Ribeiro Street in the heart of Nairobi, Mooney observed that Obama was both fast and accurate at the keyboard as he worked. She promptly offered him a position as her secretary, and Obama started work for her a few days later.

Mooney was a colleague of world-renowned literacy expert, Dr Frank C. Laubach of New York, who had recommended her for the Kenyan post and helped to fund the project. After paying Obama for several months out of her office expense fund, she turned to Laubach for the money to pay him on a more regular basis. Mooney was impressed with his performance.

In a letter, she asked for $100 a month “for salary for Barack O’Bama for six months if possible,” she wrote, adding an Irish twist to the spelling of his name.