We got a chicken!
When I was a child, I used to read those exciting stories, about a doctor who went to the bush in a leaky canoe and started working there as a doctor. He did that for nothing, he paid for everything himself. I always found those exciting stories. I always wondered how that man could meet his basic needs. (food is quite useful and that canoe also had to be rented or paid for, right??) Then I also read in those booklets that people sometimes brought him a chicken as a kind of “thank you”.
As a young boy, I didn’t understand it that much because honestly… what good is one chicken? The medical procedures, the hospital, that doctor himself, they were not paid for by that one chicken. Why didn’t those people just pay with money, just like you and me?
We got two “chickens” in the past two months. One chicken per month.
One was a delicious bar of chocolate and the other was a tube of “something”. Two beautiful “chickens”!
And now that I’m a bit older, I understand “the chicken”. The people we are trying to help cannot pay the bill for what we do. They usually can’t even pay for their own rent (let alone food) if they even have a house…. The bar of chocolate came from a homeless person, the tube of “something” from a refugee. They both have little to nothing and for them that “chicken” is huge!
And no, our bills are not paid with “chicken”, but we are so happy when we get “chicken”. And with that, we have also answered the question: “why don’t your customers pay you a little because then you need fewer donations.” They want to pay, trust me, but they can’t. And if they can do say thanks with “chicken”, we are happy with every “chicken” we get. It really tastes delicious, every time.
