One thing about moving into a new place or community is that everyone easily notices you and seems to know who you are since you are the new face in the neighborhood. The community also expects you to recognize them or at least be familiar with them. What they do not know is that you are struggling even to remember their names at some point, you are not sure whether you’ve seen them somewhere either at the market, by the roadside, or on the farm. It usually takes time and sometimes it is a difficult task bearing in mind that you are a single person trying to know a whole community compared to an entire community trying to know a single person.
In most scenarios, I meet random community members and they wave or greet me with a big smile and I find myself replying with the same even though inside my head, my brain is trying to place or remember where we’ve met with him or her. In other cases where we exchange contacts, I am left wondering and ashamed to ask for their names which they had told me more than 6 times at some point during our interactions. Do not even count the times when a new contact calls you and they introduce themselves as ‘David’ or ‘Jennifer’ and you have no idea who they are even after asking for further description from them. What you are sure of is that they are one of the community members in the area, otherwise, you cannot put a face to their name and all you have to say is ‘Ooh I remember you’.
In the few months I have spent with my community, I have tried familiarizing myself with the community members and getting to know both their names and faces and that’s a great step for me. Even though sometimes I find myself having the name with no face, a face with no name, and in worst cases I have none. What I’m grateful for is that most of them understand how overwhelming the task can be for one person and they sometimes even help me remember them.
Even with all my struggles, I came up with a technique to save myself from embarrassment. It includes flashing a very big smile at everyone I meet accompanied by a warm greeting at some point even shaking hands. This has saved me multiple times. It might take a little more time to get to know them each by name and face and I am working on that but until then I’ll let my magical smile do its magic.