Maasai Warriors

Since April, I've been corresponding with a man named Ezekiel Noah Moirana. He is my age, about three years older. He is from Tanzania. We were put in touch by my doctor, Kimberly Shriner. She specializes in infectious diseases and is the one responsible for keeping me bug free over two years of wound care. I would not be healed today without her. In 1996, Dr. Shriner founded the Phil Simon Clinic, a premier nonprofit, multidisciplinary HIV/AIDS facility & organization operating out of Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena. In addition to the incredibly comprehensive service the clinic provides to the San Gabriel Valley, there is also the Tanzania Project. This is a small, but effective, community-based approach to bringing the same kind of service to East Africa, where it is desperately needed. Each year, the Phil Simon group tends to Tanzania with the care, attention, and skilled medical background that the group possesses.

Kimberly and Ezekiel met, somewhat fortuitously, several years ago. She and all the Tanzania Project people were so impressed with him, with what he's all about, that the Phil Simon Clinic took on another goal: to help Ezekiel earn his medical degree. It's not an exaggeration to say that Ezekiel is an amazing person. His goal is to help make things better for his country, and he says that the best way for him to do that is through medicine, and I could not agree more. He told me that the ratio of doctors to patients in his country is 1 to 26,000. So, he feels an enormous duty to set an example and show other people that love and a desire to help others should be our priority. He is a warm, gentle, and yet strong person. I recall how he touched my arm with both hands when he said hello. He has a way of embracing each person strongly in a greeting without smothering. That is his way in all things. He talked to me about treating people with an affliction like HIV or even some kind of addiction. He pointed out that these persons are not just bodies filled with symptoms, and that we are, all of us, not any better or worse than these persons. Don't treat them with anger or contempt, or pity. Look them in the eye, and interact with them, person to person. The Phil Simon Clinic donors funded Ezekiel's education in medicine. I believe that he is now one year away from his residency.

He and I communicated through e-mail for about six months. Although our words were sometimes confused, we spoke the same language. This past October, Ezekiel came to the states for a month with another doctor, Dr. Palapala, to gain invaluable experience learning and working at the Huntington. It was near the end of this time that we were able to finally meet and visit. We had a nice, long conversation in the afternoon on October 26. It was a very special time, and that is when he gave me a very special gift. Ezekiel is a member of the Maasai, a tribe whose name is not usually recognized in America but its distinctive bright red clothing is. Ezekiel is also a morani, or warrior. He presented me with a morani shuka, a sheet used for clothing. He made me a Maasai Warrior, telling everyone that, "Jonathan is a warrior." Later, he came back on Halloween to see me one last time before he returned home to his wife Jessica, his daughter Nancy, and his newborn son Collin. He said that he would not say goodbye, only "see you later," and that he would be back next year.

I'm really still processing everything that happened in Ezekiel's visits. He's not much of a small talker as it is, even though we spent some time on American football. These were quite momentous visits, the kind where you give each other the Cliff's Notes of your lives. Ezekiel and I are certainly very similar, so we were able to easily talk about things like the ways of the world, the meaning of life, how you should best perceive society, and how you could impact it. Ezekiel is the kind of guy where, when he looks you in the eye and says something, you believe absolutely that he is telling the truth and that he will accomplish what he sets out to do. He could tell you he was going to swan dive Niagara Falls and you'd be at the shoreline with a towel for him. So, when he talked about his goal to help his fellow Tanzanians, especially by turning the tide against HIV, I had no doubt. When he said he hoped to one day talk to Hashim Thabeet, the 7'3" NBA rookie from Tanzania, about donating money to the cause, I believed unequivocally that he would follow that up and get to Thabeet on sheer will alone if he had to.

Ezekiel taught me some extremely important things. He taught me that kindred spirits are real. He taught me that a soulmate does not have to be tied to a romantic connection. That two men, from most different backgrounds & circumstances, living on near opposite sides of the world, with no blood relation and never having met before in person, can be brothers. Think about that. I mean it. Brothers. That's remarkable. For me, that realization changed some of my perceptions and strengthened some others. He taught me about love. Here, we are so used to trying to redirect those overwhelming feelings of love & desires to share our hearts from the relationships that do not involve sex or romance to the ones that do.

For Ezekiel, he is so much more open and giving and free with his love to all. I'm certain that he loves his wife Jessica dearly and I'm certain that they have an incredible bond. But Ezekiel doesn't let that stop him from also sharing his heart with others. He also listens to his heart, with surprising clarity considering how intelligent he is. My experience with brilliant people is that they are sometimes up in their own heads too much. It only took a couple of minutes in my house for Ezekiel to feel in his heart that my parents are special people and that we have a happy home. So, Ezekiel has taught me to trust my instincts more. He taught me about hope. Because he has so much wisdom, when he says to always have hope, no matter what, that's something you take to heart.

Ezekiel seems so full of his emotions and his life and yet simultaneously not at all controlled or dominated by his emotions or his own concern for his life. He has a fullness to him without any trace of excess. No hurry, no stress. No pressure. In speech or deed. Everything he did was slow and calm and measured. It seems like he wants to genuinely do everything with the utmost honesty & concentration. He would tell a story and maintain eye contact the whole way, but I never felt like he was staring at me. He would say a phrase or sentence and then pause and let it sink in, without the silence being uncomfortable or without him making a noise like, "um," to fill it in. Then, he would continue. It took me a few times to figure this out and not feel like he was waiting for me to break in. He just has such a deliberate way about him, and again, without being boring or something like that.

What I haven't been able to figure out is how someone like Ezekiel can get as much done, and actually more so, while also having that calm & mellow demeanor and way of going through life. Honestly, they must have 30 hour days in Tanzania. I don't know why, but the phrase I keep coming back to for describing him and his people is to say that the Maasai are people of the earth. Ezekiel was born in a mud hut in Arusha, one of the most-used base towns for African safaris. I think there is something to that, that closeness with the natural world. Obviously, there are things that need to change in Tanzania. There are ways of ours that the Tanzanians need. However, it gives me pause to think about the external factors Ezekiel faced growing up, as well as my own. Although I know that Ezekiel & I both feel like we're simply living the way were supposed to live, I can take a step back and see that we are probably special people. So, it gives me pause to think about changing anything that helps to shape people like that. There's something to be said about struggling through adversity and living "closer to the ground."

He talked about what I have called: maximizing the experience, which is learning from every situation, every experience. He said that he thought you could find the good in every person and learn from it, and accept that we all have the bad but you don't have to put the emphasis on it. Continuing with the natural world thing, he also talked about learning from the animals. One of his goals, I believe, is to learn from everything and put it into practice. He wants to help people and get others to help as well, but he doesn't think you can tell people to do these things. He is all about learning & acting, and being the example. If people change themselves and become a part of the solution, great, if not, then we will just keep on going.

Another thing that Ezekiel showed me was what it is to interact with another person and gain knowledge in doing so. He talked about how, when I meet you, I am now connected to you so that your special qualities are now mine and my special qualities are now yours. So, too, are your problems mine and my problems yours. In this way, we strengthen each other. Perhaps something that makes you special can help me with my problem, and vice versa. As Ezekiel pointed out, he is a doctor and I need medical care, while I am a writer and he needs someone who believes what he believes and can conceptualize it more succinctly. It is simply a matter of connecting with each person and finding how we each strengthen each other. Here again, Ezekiel teaches me a way to reconcile individualism with communalism, just as he can maintain eye contact without staring or be my kindred spirit without it feeling weird. That is one large reason why he is remarkable. He is not about division. He is about union.

Ezekiel is the closest thing to being Heaven sent that I've ever experienced. And I know that that's putting a lot on him, but I also know that he has a similar feeling about me. He told me that, at first, he thought maybe I was told what to write to him in my e-mails because my beliefs & feelings were so close to the beliefs he has and the way he sees the world. I went back and read a couple and realized that most of the things I expressed to him, I came to feel strongly about well before I had even met Dr. Shriner, let alone heard of Ezekiel. It is interesting to me that my name means "gift of God," while his name means "God strengthens." I am not someone who reads into coincidence or leaves his faith up to the happenings of events & institutions, but there is such a synergy in everything to do with Ezekiel that I can't deny that it's a real God-strengthening experience for me. Without any notion that I'm forgoing reason or logic, there's true happiness there, a feeling that it's right.

Clarity Practice Balance

Words are very important to me. For many obvious reasons, both artistic and personal, I have always had an interest in being able to find and use the right words in a given situation. The artistic importance of this is pretty self-evident. As for the personal, well, that comes from a life of needing to express myself through words. Ironically, that is easier said than done. It is mostly intuitive. I don't read words of the day or look through the thesaurus. I am blessed with a great memory that allows me to simply pick up great words here and there. And I try not to force their use.

My meditation practices are also fairly commonplace: concentrating on breathing, counting, humming a simple sustained note, or just being mindful of my own thoughts. Another thing I like to do is to choose a word, close my eyes, and focus deeply on what that one, particular word means to me.

Lately, I've been meditating on clarity. There is an analogy I read about somewhere that says the mind is like a glass of water with sediment in it. When your thoughts get all mixed up and start flying around, it's like sediment getting dusted up and clouding the water in the glass. In order to think more effectively, you need to slow down and relax and basically stop thinking. Then, the sediment sinks to the bottom and the water in the glass becomes clear.

So my meditation has been to try and maintain careful focus on clarity, and only clarity. I mean this literally. For weeks, I would concentrate on attempting to keep my mind clear. Each time I sensed random thought creeping in, I would repeat (not verbally) the word "clarity" to myself until any other thought passed away. Eventually, one thought began to come back continually. It was a conversation I'd had with my aunt about the idea of practice. That is, both practicing some particular event in your mind before actually carrying it out, as well as the act of putting things into practice. My view of it is that each time we put something into practice, it is our chance to do it the right way in that moment and also to use it as an opportunity to practice & prepare for future moments.

I knew, then, that the meaning of clarity had something to do with practice. I needed to figure out what that was. Now, most of my meditation sessions involve using more than one technique. The mind ties them all together. After the "clarity" technique, I would always listen to my thoughts without trying to control them. Finally, one day the words "clarity, practice, balance" came to me, in that order. Eureka!

Balance has always been important to me. I'm an optimist by nature, but as I've gotten older I've tried to pair that with realism. Balance is where I find that. I believe it is very difficult for us to keep a clear focus when we fall to extremes. Whether it's gluttony or starvation, moving hard to either side of the emotional spectrum can cloud our judgment. If the water in the glass is knocked off balance, the sediment at the bottom will dust up as the water finds its own level.

Since this insight, my mantra has been these three words: Clarity Practice Balance. It tells me that a clear mind is found by practicing balance at each opportunity.

Clarity. Practice. Balance.