I like to imagine some of the things happening here going down in the American clinic setting... a goat walking into the clinic, for example. Or the parents forgetting their baby's name entirely at a postnatal visit. (Often the baby is named by a family member or member of the church, so I guess it's not too uncommon to not quite remember what the babe's given name is.)
One day I had to give a girl an IV because the hospital told her she had malaria, wrote her prescriptions for meds, and gave her some bags of fluids but told her she had to find someone to do the IV. She came to us because she'd had her baby with us a month ago, so she laid down and breast fed her baby outside in the shade, while I got her going on IV fluids....
Even stranger, we had a woman come in with baby who had infected breasts (yes the baby, not the mom). I should be able to stop there with the strangeness, but it continues with the cause of infection. Folk tradition dictates to squeeze the baby's breasts to ensure that the babe doesn't smell badly when he/she get older... The mom had been doing this every time she changed the baby and as a result, the baby's chest had swollen so much that it looked like the poor child had breast implants. They were hard and red and huge.
Another mom came in saying that her child hadn't gained a pound since it was born 6 months ago! She decided that the baby was allergic to her milk and so started feeding her tea and some small amounts of food... This child will now be living off of "medicated mamba" aka peanut butter enriched with vitamins and a whole bunch of other stuff to re-nourish her quickly.... I can't imagine anyone feeding peanut butter to a 6 month old baby in the US, let alone the background story..... BUT I suppose the US has it's own crazy myths, like that male circumsicion is beneficial or that babies need to cry a lot when they're first born, or that baby's benefit from artificial supplementation (formula feeding).
Other than the few oddities, I'm happy to report that we have had a baby for almost every day I've been here, and every single one was born very healthy, without any medical intervention (except a few who needed some stitches following). I am so pleased to be able to be witnessing life coming into the world in a non-violent, non-invasive, mamma-driven, beautiful way. Yay! And Justin has thoroughly enjoyed his part in the process, which is burying the placentas and planing things over them :)
for more photos, see:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2594174&id=14805993&l=7c5ae6230
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