Trip to Muhu

Today I took a side trip to a little island in the Baltic Sea called Muhu (moo-who). My father was born in Muhu in 1911. Yes, he was old enough to be my grandfather. I think I was an accident. Dad was 49 when I was born. Mom was 39. My aunt Roosi still lives on the old homestead. She is 82 years old and as smart as can be. One of the main reasons for this visit to Estonia is that I am working on my father's family tree. Roosi gave me all kinds of information. I was able to add about 100 people to the tree with her help.

The reason I am writing about this leg of the trip is because I want to share with you how some people still live. In our busy world, with so many modern conveniences, we often take things for granted. As I mentioned, Roosi is 82 years old. She lives alone. Her health is not great. She has had a hip replacement recently, her back aches and she is going blind. There is no running water in her home. She has to carry it in from the well. She does not have a bathroom. She has an outhouse and for bathing she has a sauna. A real sauna, an Estonian sauna, has lots of steam and buckets of water to wash with. Their purpose is to be a bath house. They are not like the dry sauna's we are used to where you just sit and sweat. Roosi has to heat her water for washing anything on her wood stove. The stove is also her only source of heat as well as her only stove to cook on. She has a very spoiled dog who she loves dearly. She takes him and bathes him in the sauna when she takes her own sauna. He is her dearest friend and so she has always fed him by hand. She calls him in from outside and he rolls onto his back and she breaks bread of leftovers into small pieces and feeds him one bite at a time. He looks like a little king laying there.

Life is simple for Roosi, though hard. She gets only a small pension from the government of about $200 a month. Groceries cost the same in Estonia as they do in Canada. She rides her bike to the store. Her eye sight is bad but she says she can still tell where the edge of the road is.
As little as she has and as hard as it is for her to get around, she made a lovely meal for me today. She baked chicken with a delicious sauce in her wood stove. She pealed and boiled potatoes that she had dug last fall from her own garden. She served the meal with delicious Muhu rye bread and home made cranberry sauce. For desert she served the best cakes she could afford. She greeted me with proud welcoming arms and when I left she shed tears. I am so humbled. She gave so generously out of her need. There seems to be a lesson here. Often those who have little give much, yet often those who have much, give little.