Working moments

We arrived to what I had come to realize is the normal setting for meetings of these newly-forming farmer groups - the women in myriad-colored print wraps and headscarves sitting on papyrus mats spread out under the shade of a mango tree, and the men arrayed on rough wooden benches laid out in a curve under the shade not already claimed by the women.  Chairs, empty were placed facing the mats and benches, closing the circle of the meeting.  We were welcomed and ushered to the chairs.  A murmur of voices softly chatting or giggling at the visitors mixed with the rustling of leaves and the clucking of chickens and turkeys milling about around us in the dirt, as people continued to trickle in and find their places.

Finally, Elias, the facilitator, rose and began the necessary and customary preliminaries - Which local language shall we proceed in?  Who will translate for the visitors? What is our agenda?  Who shall lead the prayer before we begin?  After the prayer, the introductions began, going around the circle, at last reaching me, then Ben C-M from Thanksgiving Coffee Company, who had come on his annual trip to the cooperative, and then to Ben Schmerler, visiting from TransfairUSA, the US fairtrade labelling organization, who expressed his happiness at being part of the meeting with these fairtrade coffee farmers by getting up and dancing, instilling the meeting with energy and inspiring the women to clap out a rhythm for him to move to, everyone laughing and smiling at Ben's funky solo dance.  It was like a joyful confirmation of collaboration in its truest reality - people supposedly incomprehensible to each other through language or culture, finding common ground and creating something (a rhythm and a dance, or in this case, a trade relationship) together in spite of it.  The women in the meeting christened Ben S. "Sanyo", or Smiling Man.
....
During the progress of the meeting, I would be distracted by a movement in the corner of my eye, over my right shoulder.  It was a turkey.  It had wandered over and begun puffing itself up, edging closer to the back of Ben C-M's chair, and then backing off and relaxing its plumage.  Repeating this over and over, the turkey would make threatening gestures to Ben, who sat with his attention rapt on the meeting, complete oblivious to his aggressor, even as the turkey gobbled intimidatingly at his back.  This turkey had a grudge against Ben, maybe because it knew that Ben was an American and in just a couple of weeks millions of its turkey brethren would be slaughtered for the annual Thanksgiving feast.