A Name and a Gift

This story happened during my hiatus from blogging, but it’s a good one, so I’ll share it now.  A few months ago, I was visiting some of the communities we are doing our program in that I had not been to yet. Some of them are hard to reach because the roads are really bad and they have never had an NGO work with them before. In each community in which we work, we have started a farmers association, and the community I was visiting that day had a farmers’ association composed of only women.  There are 4 other farmers associations in the area but their villages are inaccessible to vehicles, so representatives came to meet us. The women knew we were coming and they prepared a whole welcoming program. They made speeches, had singing and dancing, walked us out to one of their farms and then we returned for the close of the ceremony and lunch.

When we got back to the palava hut, I noticed that one of the women was holding a chicken. I leaned over to my boss and told him, “It looks like you’re getting a chicken.” “What?” he asked. I motioned towards the woman and said “I think you’re getting a chicken.” We both chuckled about it.

Imagine my surprise when a few minutes later, the interpreter (not all of the people speak English, especially outside of Monrovia) called me to the center of the palava hut. The women wanted to thank me for being a mother among the men (the colleagues I was with were all male). They then gave me a Liberian name, Daconte, a biblical name, they explained, which means everything in its time. They felt that this was the right time for the program to come to them and for me to be among them. It was a beautiful moment. Then, one of the women stepped up to give me a gift - the chicken with flapping wings and tied beak and feet.

I was thinking, “Oh, Lord! What do I do?!” But I smiled, took the chicken, holding it as she had, and thanked her. She then plucked one of the feathers from the chicken and stuck it in my hair and we posed for pictures. I whispered to one of our field staff, “What do I do??” He said I should give a thank you speech, so I did. Afterwards, the leader of the association told me, “Daconte, you can take that chicken home and cook it for your husband!”

I just smiled a big smile and said “Thank you!” I didn’t want to tell her I’m not married  - I have had that conversation many times – but that’s a post for another day.