Full day

Today was a really cool day. Not in the temperature sense as I’m pretty sure it was easily 110 degrees in the sun with a breeze that felt like it was straight from the Sahara but a full day of interesting stuff. Shortly after morning devos at the clinic we headed out to one of the nearby villages to teach.

We were back at the clinic in time for “mother/baby day” to be just getting into full swing. Leah did some more teaching about when to come for prenatal checkups, when to bring newborns into the clinic (of the roughly 20 women we were talking to 1 gave birth at a clinic, the rest all at home), taking care of yourself, that sort of thing. Then we weighed babies for a while, gave polio immunizations and tried not to get peed on. There was not a single diaper in the place, 40+ babies under the age of 6 months and not a diaper to be seen.  

Quick back up to the mission for a plate of posho and beans for lunch then a walk in the hot sun out to another village. We found a group of women sitting in the shade with their kids and joined them. Then we talked for hours about anything and everything. These women had no desire to be out working in the sun and seemed perfectly happy to be “chatting” with us. Leah brought her language helper and Martha who is also pretty fluent came along. So it was mostly me who didn’t really track with the conversation. But I know they talked about birth practices and material deaths, children born with mental and physical handicaps, marriage traditions and weddings, hair styles, taking care of ducks, and probably a few other things. I enjoyed sitting out in the shade, watching the kids and dozing between swatting flies.