Wednesdays. My love/hate day.

You now know that I love Tuesdays. Well, I have a love/hate relationship with Wednesdays. Here’s why:

Wednesdays are dubbed “Malnourished Kids Day” at Ediofe Health Center. Basically, about sixty children between about 4 months and 2 years come on the backs of their mothers. Many bring sets of twins. When the twins come, it is very rarely a mother and a father who bring them but rather a mother and an older sister. When they come, it is my job to weigh the kids and record it on their sheet. Weighing the kids entails tying the scale to the tree with a sturdy rope and putting the kids in the type of bags with holes for the legs and a strap attached to hang them from the scale. You hang them up there, make sure they aren’t going to fall forward or backward, and then check the weight. The moms start coming one by one at first, and it is easy to weigh them, but soon the start coming five by five. I have no idea what is going on three feet in front of me because I am surrounded by crying babies being stuffed into bags, moms trying to get their hands on a bag before someone else snatches it up, and trying to figure out which card is whose and which weight I am supposed to record. Sometimes I weigh one baby and before I can find their card to write it, someone else has their baby hanging from the scale, crying. By the time I find the card of the original baby, my head is spinning with figures and I have completely forgotten the weight. This is also when I, not only have the opportunity, but the need to know a bit of Lugbara. “Mva ma ru adi?” “What is the child’s name?” “Card engua?” “Where is the card?” Now I just need to figure out how to say, “Can you please form a line? Awadifo.”  

After all the babies have been weighed, one of the workers pulls out a book and starts calling names out. When the mom hears her baby’s name called, she goes to the desk (which is a table and chair under a tree in the courtyard between the clinic and ward), has the progress of her baby looked at, and then goes over to get food. The get one cup of rice, one cup of sugar, one cup of milk mix (mix it with hot water to make milk), and one bar of soap. I usually hand out the soap and sugar.

Anyways, back to the love/hate relationship. I love Wednesdays because when there aren’t swarms of moms and babies, I get to hold the babies when I weigh them and then hog them for a bit while I play with them. It’s great! They are super cute.

The hard part is that these are the malnourished babies. I can’t even stand to think about it when I see a baby that is one year and two months and they weigh 4.9 kilograms (10.8 lbs). Or a three month old who weighs 3.4 kilograms (7.4 lbs). I’ve seen plenty of pictures of kids with their shoulder bone sticking out about an inch above the meat and muscle of their arm. But when I actually held one of those babies in my arms with their skin in rolls because there is not enough meat to hold it up……. Even now, just thinking about it, I start choking up.

Many of these babies are wearing clothes with holes in them, or they have a shirt but no pants. Also, there are no diapers here. The moms tie a towel very tightly around the baby’s bottoms and then a sort of plastic bag goes over that. Well, it’s not like there are diaper changing stations on their two mile walk from home to the health center. The babies just sit tight with their wet towel until the mom gets a dry one to put on.

I told you that older sisters help bring the babies when the mom has twins. By older sisters, I don’t mean “older girls”, I mean a sister who is just big enough to wrap the baby on her back. One girl, she must not have even come up to my waist, came over silently in the crowd, picked up a bag, put the baby from her back into the bag, walked over to me and held up the baby. I weighed him, recorded it on the card the young girl had fished out for me, and handed him back. I never saw the girl smile once. She was timid around me, the Mundu, but her face had the eyes of a thirty year old and she showed no signs of “girlish” behavior. When I looked around for her mother I could not find her. The young girl took the baby back over and sat patiently on a bench waiting for the food. She comes every Wednesday. Keep in mind that this is all happening during school hours, which means that girl doesn’t get to go, she has other responsibilities. When her brother’s name was called, she brought him over to the desk, talked to the worker, and came over with an empty container for me to fill. “Mi elisi adi?” I said with a smile. (“How old are you?”). “Mudri,” she replied with a timid smile. Ten. Ten years old and already with the cares of a mother. I want to follow her home to see what her life is like. When does she play? Does she play? When does she talk with her friends? When does she dream? My own sister, Sarah, the one who comes home and tells me about her current school girl crush, the one who sings Hannah Montana in the shower, is ten years old.

Another young girl followed her mother around with one of the twins on her back and one on her mothers. “Mi elisi adi?” I asked again with a smile. After looking at me and swaying back and forth, she seemed to decide that I wasn’t dangerous and responded, “Azia.”Six.  She had a four month old baby on her back that she was rocking back and forth.

When I first came across these situations, I saw them, registered them, and then pushed them to the very back of my mind. I just couldn’t deal with them. I couldn’t think about them. Why am I complaining about missing subway sandwiches when a family here could just about buy meals for week for the same price as that five dollar footlong?

Wednesdays. My love/hate day.  Now you know why.

“And raising his eyes toward his disciples he said: ‘Blessed are you who are poor, for the kingdom of God is yours. Blessed are you who are now hungry, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who are now weeping , for you will laugh.’” Luke 6:20-21