Linnea takes part in the first breast feeding and malnutrition outreach of the year
Today
I traveled to Mwazaro with GVI volunteers Sofia and Josephat. It was about 15
minutes north of Shimoni by matatu, and SAFE Shimoni’s Kopa was present. We met
SAFE Shimoni’s sister organization, Muungano Group and its Chairwoman, Madame
Binny. The outreach was on Malnutrition and Breast-feeding: about 30 mothers of
children 5 years and under were present so that their children could get
weighed and measured. It was adorable; some children loved the attention as
they were scrutinized by the community health workers against the measuring
board – others, not so much. It was really exciting, though, that the
volunteers got the chance to help take records – the names, heights, and
weights of the children were meticulously taken on a couple small, old notebooks,
later to be moved onto the well-kept massive log books that are maintained and
managed by each outreach group.
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| Sofia and Kopa explain the basics of breast feeding to community members in Mwazaro |
Before
the outreach had started, Kopa, Josephat, Sofia and I all discussed the poster
we had made. The poster was about the benefits of breast-feeding. I loved
learning about these things; the reproductive health packet provided by SAFE
Shimoni and the Shimoni Public Dispensary was so informative. I never knew that
the recommended time to start breast-feeding was within half an hour of the baby’s
birth, for example. The packets allowed us to present reliable information in a
fun way: volunteers like Dana, who didn’t attend the outreach, got into drawing
beautiful images of infants and children on the poster a day or two before the
event.
At
any rate, as Kopa looked over our poster, he said it would be more helpful if
the poster’s information were written in Swahili. We all agreed that could’ve
been a better method; unfortunately our poster was in English. Following a
pause in the conversation, I jumped to my bag, pulled out a pen and paper, and
got Kopa and Josephat to help us with translating the poster’s information into
Swahili.
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| Linnea helps conduct measurements as part of the malnutrition outreach |
Within
about 10 minutes, we had written down the words to about 2/3rds of the poster
and I stepped up to the plate when we all gathered around the women and their
toddlers and spoke Swahili from my notebook after asking, “Habari Zenu?!” And
they repeated, “Nzuri!”
With
each brief pause in speaking, the women giggled and laughed about the
situation: a mzungu reading Swahili off a notebook, understanding little of
what she was actually saying. The
women were extremely supportive, though, and kept patting me on the back
afterwards. It was an amazing morning!
Linnea Lundberg,
Shimoni community field staff
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