Page 35 - Dark Matter:Women Witnessing Issue2

‘Our’ Mourning Feast was peacefully attended by more than 5,000 people. And it catalyzed the

community to continue with many, smaller feasts – for children, women, healers, the land, the forests,

the animals, the birds and the water. One man, a traditional herbalist who cannot read or write and

has never traveled beyond Liberia’s capital, Monrovia, dreamed that a goat was to be sacrificed at a

particular stream in a particular village so that the blessings of peace (carried by the blood of the

animal as it mixed with the water) would flow to Europe and the United States. After the ceremony, I

was able to trace the stream on a map – barely a trickle at the site of the offering—and saw that,

indeed, it flows into the Atlantic Ocean.

In Liberia, as in much of Africa, animal sacrifices reflect a deep and conscious covenant with the natural

world – not unlike the spiritual partnership of traditional hunters, in which the animals ‘agree’ to give

their lives to feed the human community in exchange for mutual respect and devotion. In Liberia, the

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