Pledge paralysis

We had our first Rwandan experience of “pledging” in church last Sunday. This is the custom of publicly announcing your offering. It’s usually for something special, not just the normal weekly giving and it’s not so common in Episcopal circles : we have been here for 15 months before encountering it.
We are still not too sure what it was all about, as our neighbour, who was translating for us, was called up to the front and after some discussion ended up leading this part of the service. He was very good at it. There are visitors coming to the diocese next week-end to hold some special meetings and so the pledges were mostly for food, but even afterwards Charles was not really sure who the visitors are. However, he obtained many offers of sweet potatoes, potatoes, other vegetables, sugar and even meat, along with some money. There was quite a variety of pledgers, including a few children.
Events like this, so against our culture, produce a strange kind of paralysis. It is just impossible to participate, not because I feel it is wrong, but because it would require me to break a deeply-held belief, taboo, I suppose, about giving publicly.