Mr. Wilson Kimeli Naiyomah

Naiyomah, now a Stanford University graduate student, appears at Brenau Tuesday, April 15, to talk about the gift his people gave to the citizens of America following the Sept. 11, 2001, tragedy.GAINESVILLE - The Maasai warrior who initiated the touching gift from his remote village in Kenya to the United States following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the Atlanta author who is retelling the story in a forthcoming book "14 Cows for America," will appear at a public lecture at 6:30 p.m.April 15 at the Northeast Georgia History Center, 322 Academy Street.

There will be a brief reception at 6 p.m.The event is free and open to the public.

Award-winning children's author Carmen Deedy will talk about her forthcoming book, set for publication next year, and will introduce the man who inspired the story, Wilson Kimeli Naiyomah.

A Maasai warrior, Naiyomah was studying in the United States at the time of the attacks.When he returned to his village, Enoosaen, Kenya, several months later, he told tribal elders what had happened.
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Naiyomah, who is completing his master's in molecular biology this spring at Stanford University, now is consulting with author Deedy, who has completed the manuscript for the book, which will be published by Peachtree Publishers in Atlanta in 2009-10.

Click hereAccording to Stanford's alumni magazine, Naiyomah's people had "only a limited understanding of" the events of 9/11."The village only recently received electricity.So when Naiyomah returned for a visit last May, they were shocked by his stories about ‘buildings that almost touched the clouds' crumbling to the ground, killing thousands of people.Naiyomah, who was in New York City visiting the Kenyan ambassador when the terrorist attack occurred, encouraged the villagers to offer a gesture of sympathy and support.

Most villagers did not hear about the al-Qaeda attacks on the U.S. until six months after the event, when Wilson Naiyomah, a native of the village and a scholarship student at Stanford University returned for an initiation ceremony and told village elders what he had seen. (Naiyomah witnessed the collapse of the Twin Towers.)
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Naiyomah, the Stanford student, said it would have been easy enough for him to donate a cow, but he decided to involve the elders who raised him.He asked them to bless the cattle and offer them as a consolation and comfort to a nation that had taken care of him - providing him with an education and a home.

"I just couldn't ignore their pain," Naiyomah said.

The idea of the gift was that of a native of the village, Wilson Naiyomah, a Maasai who was a student at Stanford University in California in 2001, and happened to be in New York on 11 September.

"It was six months after 9/11 that I actually finally made it here," he said.
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We shall guard them like our own cattle," said Mzee Ole Tetia Olepemba Seneyoyi, one of the elders consulted by Mr Naiyomah.

And the Maasai's kind gesture to the US is bearing fruit.

Touched by their compassion, the US is now supporting various projects within the Maasai community as a way of saying thanks.