I’ve been asked several times what Marabou is and where the name comes from.
Okay, here’s the story:
Some time ago, March 2014 to be exact, I went on holiday to Nairobi, Kenya. I was visiting my friend who had been living there with her family for a while. It was a great pleasure; it was my little time away from all my woes back at home. The weather there was beautiful, the people were welcoming, the food was – well, different (in a good way…sometimes- lol?) – and everything was in place. I had a great time.
While I was there, my friends gave me a nickname. They called me Marabou. At that time I didn’t know what (a) Marabou was or what the word meant or why they gave me that name. You’d think I would ask, right? Or at least Google the word? I didn’t, I just decided it was a local name given to people and so I went along with it; plus it sounded good, especially the way my friend pronounced it.
One time, towards the end of my stay there, we were driving around and when we came across the Marabou stock, my friend asked me if I knew what a Marabou was. After I’d said no, and after she’d pointed to it and I’d looked at her in disbelief; I began to feel from that point, that our whole friendship had been a lie. Why would she have given me that name when this was what a Marabou stock looked like? Right?
If you don’t know what it, this is what it looks like:
(Source: http://creepyanimals.com/)
Gasp!
Sometime later, back at home after I had started creating my accessories and I was looking for a name to give the products, I thought of this name. I thought of how much I had owned it and I especially thought of what it sounded like (the way my friend had pronounced it). I toyed with different variations of it and finally decided on the name Marabou Essentials.
So as you might have seen, the Marabou stock is a noticeable feature in the branding behind Marabou Essentials. The Marabou is a large bird that is prominently found south of the Sahara in the African continent. The name is pronounced by many as “Mara-boo” but we at Marabou Essentials pronounce both the O and the U in the name so that it sounds like “Mara-bow-oo”, you know, phonetics.
And it turned out to be quite something, wouldn’t you say?
Let me know what you think on the comments section below.
Till next post…
-Fentse
