Barack Obama "Dreams From My Father"
She had taught me to disdain the blend of ignorance and arrogance that too often characterized Americans abroad.
- Obama about his mother.
A healthy dose of guilt never hurt anybody. It’s what civilization was built on, guilt. A highly underrated emotion.
- Obama’s mother about guilt
The railway had been the single largest engineering effort in the history of the British Empire at the time it was built - six hundred miles long, from Mombasa on the Indian Ocean to the eastern shores of Lake Victoria. The project took five years to complete, as well as the lives of several hundred imported Indian workers. When it was finished, the British realized there were no passengers to help defray the costs of their conceit. And so the push for white settlers; the consolidation of lands that could be used to help lure newcomers; the cultivation of cash crops like coffee and tea; the necessity of an administrative apparatus that could extend as far as the tracks, into the heart of an unknown continent. And missions and churches to vanquish the fear that an unknown land produced.
It seemed like ancient history. And yet I knew that 1895, the year that the first beams were laid, had also been the year of my grandfather’s birth.
- Chapter Eighteen - Kenya - p. 367
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.”
- Dr. Rukia Odero explaining why authenticity is unreal - Epilogue - p. 433