African Babies

While adults have been trained not to stare too long at strange things, babies have no inhabitation at staring pointing or even touching things they don’t understand. For babies, I could be the first white person they have ever seen, or maybe the second one but nonetheless I am very strange to them. So children as you pass them on motorcycle will watch you, even turning their neck all the way around just to keep watching you. Some will call out Nasara to get you to look, and others will peer at you from the safety of being tied to their mothers back. Today I had a funny experience with a little girl probably around two. I was sitting talking to Mirabelle in the hospital and from behind a girl came up just to touch my hand quickly and then looked at her own as if my color would spill onto hers. She did this two or three more times, and running away afterwards. She finally got brave enough to come up to me and really gave me a good looking over like I had some weird disease on my face. Children here are also supposed to offer their right hands to adults as a type of respect so she held her little hand out and I shook it and she walked away staring at her own hand. The women watching laughed in the hallway. Another baby today was giggling at me when I smiled so his mother brought him over and tried to hand him to me. People will often offer their babies, even to strangers because babies represent happiness so it is seen as sharing a type of joy. I love babies so I was thrilled, but he was not so sure about me up close. Mirabelle tried to hold him and he scream bloody murder so I’m glad it wasn’t me. Women will also go in to see the doctor and leave their kids out in the waiting room and other women will watch them, its like the whole city is a daycare. Children also have no problems touching strangers, they will use other women to get down stairs or climb onto their lap if they want, the kids are much more comfortable with adults than American babies.

On the topic of babies I should also include breastfeeding. Women here, even those wearing Muslim veils will whip out a breast in public to feed their children. I have seen probably over 100 boobs this trip. Boobs are not a private part, or even a sexual part they are for feeding children, and feeding children solely after you have a child. There are some women who would NEVER show you their knees but to feed their baby they will whip the boob right out. But also after you have breast fed, as a woman in her 30’s and up, since most women have 5 children or more they no longer wear bras so when they bend down to wash some clothes or dishes you can see straight down, and it just seems to be natural. I think its helpful that I don’t like boobs to begin with but I could see men having trouble seeing them so much.