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I focus on Bonjour, touching his tiny fingers, looking in his eyes, trying to block out the Congolese exorcist. The little guy is getting better. His skin is darker and the half-light in his eyes is gone. He smiles.

I get up to leave. As I’m heading for the door, his mom asks, “What about sugar for my tea?”

I stop cold and look back at her, fed up with the muzungu routine. “You can live without sugar.” Without waiting for the translation, I leave and don’t look back.

HORTENSE CALLS. Zainab, Alice, and Christine will arrive at any time. The staff has cleared the compound completely, but my first group of sisters (“Money! More money!”) showed up three hours ago hoping for one last goodbye celebration. They refuse to leave.

We beeline it over there, load the women and babies ten at a time into the SUV, and take them to the vocation skills center down the road in the last harried minutes. On the main road, we pass the Women for Women SUV carrying Zainab and Alice.

At the skills center, we settle in and relax, drinking sodas. I notice I’m sitting across from little Lisa, so I greet her. The sister next to her holds a baby as well, her hair braided with pink ties and barrettes. “Her name is Lisa too,” the mother says. Two little Lisas! I wonder how many Congolese babies are out there sporting American names like Ashley and Deborah because their mom was sponsored when she was pregnant.

Another sister presents me with her newborn. “I told you, if I deliver the baby while you are here, you will name the baby.”

I’ve never had plans for children, so baby names have never been on my mind. I draw a complete blank. I stall. “Can I hold him?”

She hands him to me, wrapped in blankets. Yep, he looks brand-spanking-new, his face still pale and wrinkly. I ask her, “What do you hope he will be like?”

“Strong, responsible, someone who supports the family.”

No pressure there. I stare at the little guy, at a loss. Strong, responsible . . . a lightbulb goes on. “I have an idea, but it’s not going to sound like a Congolese name,” I say. They all laugh.

“My father was strong and responsible.”

They burst into applause, saying “Yes!” and “Amen!”

“My father’s name was S-T-E-W-A-R-T. Stewart.”

They look puzzled. They all try to rehearse it. It does not roll off the Swahili-speaking tongue. “Stu-ad. Stu-at.”

The new mom tries to write it on her hand, but I jump in. “I’ll write it.”

I hand the baby back. They cheer, laughing, as I write STEWART in block letters on Mom’s palm. She looks skeptical. “He was a loving, compassionate man,” I tell her. “He worked with people to heal their war trauma.”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to change the name?” I ask, hoping my smile gives her visible permission to name her baby anything she pleases.

“I will keep the name.”

They present me with a carefully wrapped gift. One woman, standing at my side, says, “We have nothing to give you as a present. But what we can do is thank and thank and thank you for what you did for us. May God bless you and increase your power to give and to give and to give and to give.”

They present me with a woodcarving, a sculpture of a woman with a baby strapped to her back. One woman interprets it for me. “This is your image as Mama Congo. We are like your babies.”

The expression of familial love is so sweet. I smile and thank them.

But the metaphor lands hard. I don’t want to be their mother. Oh, how I wish we could let this “mama” stuff go. I have grown tired of the muzungu role. I just want to be their friend.

NOELLA HAS HAUNTED me for weeks. I’ve pictured her at the child soldier center, alone with all those boys. After I say goodbye to my sisters, I decide to make good on a promise I’ve made to BVES boys every time we’ve run into them on Bukavu’s main road (which has been often). I pick up gobs of chocolate and soda, the sort of thing I would never feed kids at home, and head over to the center.

“Shanella!” They’re happy to see me. Looks like we’re buddies now. Luc