TO ELENA

Hey Elena,

       I was thinking about what you said about what Nanny Moriarty would think about my stories about the Maasai and seeing houses out in the middle of nowhere. For the benefit of others Nanny Moriarty was that very special woman in my life who after raising her 7 children took me into her house and polished off her mothering skills on me. My grandfather died when he was 63 and she was about the same age at the time. I was eleven. She lived till ninety-nine. She is one of the great loves in my life. She was born in 1890 and saw the coming of the automobile, road paving but also many of the things that I am seeing here  in Africa today. I remember pictures from the past when I was a kid, which gave me a glimpse into the times that preceded me. As I walked with sister Asteria around Ashen Gai which is a highly Maasai area I was convinced that I had to write about Elena’s remark. The roads are all dirt. They have no maintenance to speak of. There are pothole mud holes and double passages that were the idea of someone avoiding some pothole or rock or fallen tree. The houses are very individual with totally practical characteristics that seldom correspond to esthetics. People are walking to and fro before the nightfall to finish their day tasks. Animals are grazing everywhere and anywhere. Men are gathering and talking. Life is so different than us in our houses in Tequesta with so little sight or knowledge of our neighbors barricaded with the air on behind closed windows. When I was walking around the neighborhood with Sister tonight  some women actually stopped her to ask who is that. She had to explain many times about what I was doing. I fell like a celebrity already. Many said they would come to get an Ultrasound. Life here is a vision of our past as I now experience it. What have we gained and what have we lost. Perhaps convience but have we lost relationship and togetherness.