I learned of the gift from the Masai in April I think it was after the 9/11 event. And I lived in Atlanta, Georgia, I still do, I was walking to my front door, early morning BC, that’s before coffee in my house, I had a mug, nothing in it yet, and I opened the door and there was my New York Times. And there was a compelling picture, for one thing it was very bright, lots of reds, and then it spoke of some occurrence that had happened in Kenya related somehow to the 9/11 attack.
So I go into the kitchen, I pour my cup of coffee, I sit down and I start to read. And I’m first of course captured by the image, I’m a visual person, and so there were Messi women and they were holding this sign written in the most exquisite manner, it said we send these cows to help you 9/11 tragedy. And I thought what is this?
So I start reading and I find out that the story is one of a young man, a Masai who is, was in New York City when the towers fell, who returned to his tribe in Kenya, it’s a little more complicated than that, but this is truncated, tells them the story of what happened to us. They had seen Americans as people who had cared for him while he was here, he had lived with many American families while he was at Stanford and so forth, and the chief said what can we do to help these poor people?
And it was decided among the elders and the tribe that they would give these cows to us. It would be 14 cows from a tribe of 500 or so people. This is like the U.S. giving away a couple of states. This is their wealth. If you know anything about the Masai, they have an incredible history. They are wandering tribe. I just couldn’t believe it.
It was such a strange and wonderful story. The first to crawl out of the ashes, the detritus of that terrible event. But like all artists I wasn’t ready to write about it. I mean, people weren’t making music. They weren’t writing poems. They weren’t doing anything with it, because it’s like you’re stepping on holy ground, it’s not the time.
So some years passed and then I was offered the Carson McCullers Fellowship in South Georgia. And I could only go for a short time. I had children at home. And I went down there to write an entirely book. And while I stayed, you actually stayed in Carson’s house, and this is the story that came from there. And I did a lot of research in the interim of course and I interviewed a lot of people and eventually found the young man, Wilson Kimeli Naiyomah, and asked his permission to tell the story, because it felt like that was important and respectful. And I’m not that nice, but this one I was pretty sure, God takes seventh circle of somewhere that you went to if you didn’t check with Kimeli about this story.
And I said would you like to write? He said no, I don’t feel like I can. But he read it and he agreed to it and seemed to have, meant a great deal to him. And to this day a portion of those books go to the tribe.