Baby weighings

About three weeks ago for Brenden's four month well baby checkup, I strolled in to the appointment knowing that I had a large baby - I mean he already wears twelve month old clothing but I still wasn't prepared for the Doc to say he was 98% for both weight and height. Oh actually she said > 98% for height. I guess he is off the charts on that one. The stats to be exact were 19.31 lbs for weight and 28" for height. She made sure I understood that the two should correspond and that he looked like a great weight for how tall he was. So naive was I to think that the infant car seat we bought would last the lad at least six months ~ nope afraid not. It's only good until they weigh 22 pounds or 29" in height. It was time to move to the new car seat we bought that he can sit in until he is 80 lbs. Is that next year?
All of this got me remembering when I was in the Peace Corps in Benin, West Africa years ago. Thirteen years ago to be exact. I was a young twenty five year old college grad ready to make a difference but so naive to what the rest of the world is really like. I was in Rural Community Development or RCD as they call it. We... well....ummm....developed rural communities which is a broad definition to say the least. One of the more memorable things I did were baby weighings. One Saturday each month, we would travel by canoe or bush taxi to a remote village and collect the women and babies of that village together for a talk on nutrition for themselves and their infants. When I say 'we' I mean myself and a woman that in french is called a Mere Anamatrice. Translated means Animated Mother. Mere Anamatrices speak whatever local language that is needed for the day depending on where you travel to. In a country where French is the official language, it isn't spoken unless one is lucky enough to be educated and that means very few if any of the remote villagers actually speak French. A stumbling block for a young yovo (white) girl trying to make a difference. The small villages speak their own local language which were I was located was called Fon. With the Mere Anamatrice with me, I could speak French and she would have to translate my speech into Fon. A long process from start to finish because I am thinking of what to say in my head in English then saying it in French and she turns around and speaks Fon with animations (major hand gestures) so that the women understand what the message is. A few translations later, you have a group of women sitting there staring at you and you are REALLY hoping that the Mere got it right. The message was always one of showing what their babies should weigh on the same graph that everyone has seen at their Pediatrician's office. So heartbreaking because almost ninety percent of the babies that we weighed were below the tenth % and most were less than zero %. The cause of this was clearly poor nutrition. Not that the women were doing any thing wrong. They all ate what was available locally which was rice millet. Sounds like it would have some nutrition but it really doesn't. It just fills the belly with some calories but isn't fortified with iron like our rice cereal is here and those calories are empty. It was no surprise to hear the statistics of two out of every three babies dying before they are aged five.
I tried to look for pictures of my time there but I can not find them. Too many moves have displaced them. That was also the time of film cameras and the few rolls of film that I took, I had to send back to the states to get developed and my parents would then be nice enough to send them back to me... all in about three months time. Damn them not being digital! The pictures that I have somewhere though aren't of the horrifically sad things I saw. I don't have any photographs of the baby weighings or the leper colonies or the orphanages where I worked. They were much too emotional to document that way. No, the photos I have are of a vibrantly alive culture that truly celebrates each and every day they are alive. They are smiling in the photos because they are truly happy. Happy to be alive and have what they have - frail infants and all.
I enjoyed my time there~ don't get me wrong. It's just that I was a changed woman after I came home. One that appreciated our opportunities here to thrive into adulthood and beyond. Peace Corps... the toughest job you will ever love (and not forget).