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We got a new letter from Sadie
September 19, 2001 by Adam in Sadie & Greg
We got a new letter from Sadie. It's addressed:
The K.W.M.B.C. Family
And on the back is:
Yeah, you all have to get together to read this, so nya, nya, nya - S.
(Editor: I guess she hasn't learned about the Internet yet.)
The rest of the letter continues:
 Every day breaks and rebuilds me, and it's only the sheer pain of monotony that pulls days into weeks in some accelerated generalization of Kanye. "Very big. China" The joke we would roll around when no words or logic could encapsulate an experience. But if I could distill my daily experience to the first two hours of daybreak, it would describe the making of the fire. Gosa Molelo. The alarm dreams that I used to sleep through but now anticipate at 5:58 every morning. Wake for ten guilty minutes, hoping to hear the pata pata of bed shoes bringing wood and matches, and hearing none. Pull on Dick's old wool sweater, one arm above manufactured fabric at a time, or pulled into my sleeping bag before fresh air hits my skin. Sandal straps crusted with God knows I can't tell browns apart, and wash hands with last night's saline. Then balancing sticky contacts on a finger tip, tilting at candle light to make sure the 123 lines up so my eyes don't tickle with backwards plastic all day. Pull up the door so it doesn't scrape, scrape it closed. Look for wood - yesterday from our stick fence and straw from the thatched roof. I wish I knew how real women warm water without tearing down the house. The first week I brought a big box of matches so when the fire sputtered out there wasn't any fumbling in the house, perhaps waking the old women and the fucking rooster. (Editor: there goes our family-friendly rating)
I can't explain without succumbing to the actual monotony of the task, and had it not hurt, had I never cried in my life until my body was black and lungs coated with mogobe soot, I'd pass it over. Instead, I'd disect the pit latrine with its glossy shelled cockroaches and pretty pattern of flies that make flowers like my bedroom wallpaper before Martha Stewart. But the real shit is in the work outside of laminated living and matching green enamel.
 So I start the fire with sticks and ends of yesterday's successes. The most important thing is fanning so hard it goes dead 'cept the gwoosh gwoosh sounds of oxygen and fuel. Last weeks mistake was not enough panting. I took the plastic bucket top and waved it a bit, but molelo needs good hard slaps. And don't look at the sun 'till the fire's steady, because once I forgot my carbon tears and lost the whole fire on account of the sky. The it's smoke and cold all over again. But the smoke in my skin and the clouds that are too perfect for personification bring reference for the rest of my day. I don't envy the sleeping grandmother on the sitting room floor, sinking through a chicken coop patress and aching ten babies full. In sleep I can't own the memory of morning. I can't stick my flag in and claim the elusive time which could pass easy like old family jokes about China.
I wish I could really explain the chalky yellow paint or the way it drips on concrete, the way dirt brings out age and fingertips on fair skin, or the sunburnt exhaustion that is freeze framed and catalogued without cross references for translation. I wish I could write you volumes of untranslated beat haikus straight out of my diseased dog Lazarus, written on soot stained hands and copied to the margins of my journal pages. Rain on corrogated roofs. Desert at the edge of water. The nights that are too beautiful and grotesque for our native tongue. I am still trying to fail every day until I let go of my access and bullshit and the things I didn't
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here i am in gabarone, after the most incread...
September 14, 2001 by Sadie in Sadie & Greg
 here i am in gabarone, after the most increadible month. if i could hold these stars in my hands and send them, sweeping constilations and planets at a time, you know i would. my mother brought me into my room this morning and we held each other and she prayed for me, in setswana and english and i know you would have cried at least as much as i did. its hard to leave candlelight conversations, mogobe (think cream of wheat morning noon and night at various viscosities), and the most increadible language teachers, all either under three or over fifty and with glittering eyes that show a sense of the world untouched by what we might consider to be absolute poverty. i am at a strange edge, jumping into the small town research on monday, excited but in love with my place in kanye, and feeling more than I ever havehave, all at once and overlapping- that dumb adjustment curve they sent was not scaled right- \i do all that every day. yesterday was one of the most difficult days yet, for I had the delight to receive a few letters (thank you thank you thank you) and got to call home, all on top of finally hearing the news and watching cnn for a terrifying moment or two. i want to be with you so much, to hunker like the welsh should and touch all of you on the shoulder, just to remember my own place as well as yours. But I'm not alone here, and you are not alone there, and everything has a way of working out... so i hope. please send on letters, though i can't get them frequently, i'll write nevertheless and love you all the more. kisses to Noah.
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