Yesterday, I celebrated Easter Mass with the Foundation for Women. FFW is a non-profit organization that provides small micro-finance loans to women and disabled people throughout Liberia. They are an amazing team of motivated and dedicated men and women. They are trying to address many of the inequities present in society by empowering the most marginalized members of society.
Great group of people.
Not so great church service.
Members of the church reenact Christ's sacrifice by offering the fruits of the labor. Some brought toiletries. Others brought clean cleaning supplies. Many brought farm fresh produce. Plantains. Bitter balls (fruit related to the eggplant.) Spicy peppers. Edoes (tuber related to the potato.)
And a large rooster.
As the priest is delivering a most Solemn Mass complete with incense and incantations, the rooster sounds loudly on the altar. The priest continues, but the rooster has found his own rhythm. He boasts and crows right along with a flock of boastful roosters passing outside. I begin to pray that the rooster at the altar will be freed tor un around the church. I think a three hour Solemn Mass will be more interesting if a rooster is running around. The priests dressed in his vestments. Altar boys in robes dropping their incense and picking up their hems to chase the chivalrous cockerel would be hilarious. "Come on rooster. Come on rooster. Saint Kizito please grant me an Easter Rooster." Yet, he isn't freed and I have to sit for three more hours on a hard wooden pew in an overcrowded church with no air- conditioning. Happy Easter!
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