Baby weighing day

So, I have been here for almost two months, and I cannot believe how quickly training has whirled by. As scared and unprepared as I feel to go alone to my site, I am amazed at how much I can convey to my family, and I am slowly beginning to piece together their conversations. Theres nothing better than being able to joke, a key social factor here among the different ethnic groups. “I be sho dun!” – “You are a bean eater!” Somehow, still hilarious 7 times a day. (Yes, the fart joke has its rightful place here in Mali).
The other day we did a huge baby weighing session in my courtyard, the 6 of us working in an assembly line, taking down the names of the crowd of women, two of us weighing the babies, and three of us counseling the mothers on their babies growth progress. 2 ½ hours and 130 babies later we put the last squirming baby into the snowsuit like balance roped to a vegetable scale. We compared their weight to their age, and separated them into the healthy green zone, the moderately malnourished yellow zone, and the life threatening red zone. Much to our surprise (and dismay), about half of the babies ended up in the yellow zone, and we tried in our best Bambara to tell them that they needed to improve their child’s protein and vitamin intake, as “their strength is little.” Still, there were about ten in the red zone, tiny things with shrunken in bellies and absent expressions. Those who were severely malnourished we sent immediately to the health center and urged them to improve their babies nutrition now. We also urged all of the children’s mothers in the yellow and red zone to return the next morning, where we did a huge ameliorated porridge demonstration with about 60 women. We showed them how to add protein and fruit juices to increase the nutrition of their carbohydrate dominated diet. As much as we tried, we still felt the large disconnect between the mothers and ourselves.