Aunt Mary

Aunt Mary is our housekeeper. My host mom hired her because she works so much, and has very little time to cook or clean. At first the idea of a maid sounded unfamiliar and uncomfortable to me, thinking that she would treat us like royalty and she'd expect us to treat her lower than she. This is not the case.
Each morning we wake up, and she is at the house making breakfast for us. She makes us hot tea, eggs and toast every morning, and we make her laugh every morning. She speaks some English, and yet she is absolutely hilarious! The moment we met her, Noxy and I both knew we'd have fun with her. She is very sassy and humorous herself and so responds so well to our constant joking around. What we've come to discover is how much we genuinely do care for each other.
On Friday she took us to what our host mom calls "the slums". I will go into more detail about them in another blog for they were like nothing I'd ever seen. When we got onto the matatu from our apartment, with Mary, we were all a little nervous. But Mary assured us that we would be fine and showed the driver of the matatu that she was not playing around when she said "keep these girls safe". Once we entered the slums, Noxy, Tumi (Noxy 8 year old cousin who is visiting from South Africa) and I all immediately reached for her hand. We were all unfamiliar with the squalor living and working conditions we were surrounded by and we turned to Mary for confidence. What we later found out is that Mary lives in that area and to her, those streets were home. Later my host mom explained that Mary lives in a one-room house that is the size of our bedroom here where her kitchen, bedroom and living room are all in one room, and everyone sleeps in one bed or on the floor.
When I'm here, living in a beautiful apartment, with an abundance of food and clean water, it is easy to forget for a moment that down the street just ten minutes, is a community where people are constantly dying of hunger, AIDS, murder and disease. What I've learned is that these people are not too unlike myself. I feel like I know and understand Mary very well. She is a dear motherly figure and we have provided so much joy to each other. Never would I have guessed that she lives in such a poor area, with so much less than me. Her smile seems just as bright as ours and her joy just as genuine, do these things always reflect the conditions which were are brought up in? Does our material wealth have as much to do with the richness and beauty of our lives as we think?
I wish Mary did not have to live in such a small house, I wish that she could afford to travel to see the birth of her first grandchild next month, I wish that she could live more carefree and have to work less than she does. But she can't and I am so inspired by her wonderful and positive way of living her life, a life most would let bring them down.