Seen Around Town

"And to think that I saw it on Mulberry Street..." - Dr. Seuss

- T-shirts from US colleges and universities and decade old cheerleading camps. Today a girl on my sotrame was wearing a Long Beach t-shirt so I asked if I could take a picture. Erika this one is for you...


Girl w/Long Beach t-shirt on Sotrame

- Women who shave all their eyebrows off and then redraw them dark and wide and high in two semi-circles on the low forehead. Once I saw that a woman had taken the time to draw eyebrows on her months old baby girl too...that was the scariest looking baby I ever saw.

- It does me good to see that breastfeeding is no big deal here where American Puritanism is not in effect. When babies are hungry women either pull their sleeves aside to allow access, some sleeves drop as low as the waist, or they lift their tops or lower their tops, all in public. No one bats an eye and no one considers it as anything other than nature in effect. In fact people are grateful because it keeps children from crying and keeping up a fuss, especially during close, claustrophobic Sotrame rides.

- Unpotty-trained babies not wearing diapers. Hmmm, I wonder what will happen...Sure enough the baby boy in mention was soon standing, albeit off-balance, in a puddle inside a store. He cried only because his feet were wet as he had no clothes on waist down. Someone brought a plastic jug and a rag and the mother washed him down with a little water and mopped the floor with the rag. Interesting. I guess it makes sense if the kids are playing outside, especially since diapers are 5500 CFA a pack, but I kind of had an issue with the pee on the floor. And was there some bleach on that rag? At any rate it appeared the mother had been waiting for him to go, perhaps why she removed his pants, and she took the opportunity to use her last "diaper": a strip of cotton cloth laid in the middle of a piece of plastic that she drew between his legs and tight around his waist.

- People who buy beer in a store, duck in a corner to avoid being seen and drain the bottle in seconds before walking back out onto the street. Is it that serious?

- At the Projet Jeunes clinics more women than men come in for STD treatment but more men than women submit to voluntary HIV testing. This is troubling since exposure to STDs can often mean the opportunity for exposure to HIV. It seems the women shy away from knowing their status. In 2006, almost 3% of men who came to Projet Jeunes clinics for voluntary testing were positive while just over 7% of women were. Likely this is a reflection of the polygamous and adulterous relationships previously discussed. Unfortunately the reactive needed to conduct the tests is available in spurts and so in 2006 they were only able to conduct a third of the HIV tests that they conducted in 2005.