A baby on my back

So I have a baby. Her name is Fatima and I made her out of cardboard. She has two heads- one is a skinny crying face, the other is a big fat-cheeked smily one. My homologue and I were to do a skit about child weaning. Her chubby baby, Noelle, is the poster child for our program. And I’m the bad mother who let her child get malnourished. To prepare, I’ve been walking around village for the past few days, carrying this cardboard baby on my back just like the Malian women. It’s sick, sad face draws a playful concern from my neighbors. I take it to the doctor’s office, and the pharmasit refuses to give it medicine because she says its too ugly. I wait with the mothers for baby weighing, and they ask me who the father is. They laugh and scold me because my baby isn’t even 1 kilo. My neighbors even made an afternoon visit to the doctor’s office- we heard your baby’s sick, we came to give it blessings. So they begin the traditions “May God lessen the pain.” Amiina. “May god make it eaiser.” Amiina. “May God banish the sickness completely.” Amiina. I travel the village, they point and laugh at my back, and I tell them I am taking my baby to the doctor’s office to enroll him in the malnutrition program, and donni, donni, I begin to explain what we do there. I return home, and the neighbors see my baby’s cardboard leg is broken and give more blessings. After they are done, I am supposed to say, “May God answer these prayers.” Amiina. Then Shaka appears from behind his house. “Aminata!” Yes? “May God strike your baby dead!” “Shaka! May God strike you dead! May he send snakes to bite your feet so you can’t run” “Aminata- may God give you ugly babies, uglier than this one.” And so it started. I love how at this point, my Bambara is good enough where I can really rip on people, and understand when they rip on me. It’s true, Malians do two things better than anyone else in the world- drink tea and joke.