Breast Is Best

Nothing like attending a breastfeeding week celebration and getting someone coming for a close up camera shot of your own breasts. That’s how the day started. A community durbar (meeting) was held in Tamale to promote breastfeeding. Many people were invited and attended to watch speeches, theatre groups, and traditional dancing.

The women with the most amazing voices singing to welcome us

Doing it all for the kids

Wearing my ‘Best Start For Life’ shirt (my contribution would have been for it to say breast start for life...), I listened to speeches in Dagbani being yelled down the microphone, welcomed the Mother to Mother Support Groups and pregnant women from the local hospitals, who were not given said shirts and were protesting. The women got up and sang some songs. So wonderfully in tune with plenty of fun and dancing at the same time.

Traditional drumming 

The community theatre group did a play: about a lady who was pregnant yet her mother in law and husband did not want her to have a skilled birth attendant present for the birth, but wanted to use traditional means. The antenatal clinic was attended, complete with a hilarious interpretation of an ambulance by simply using a steering wheel – let’s just say this is much better than the real ambulances around here (that do not have funding for fuel most of the time), and the pregnancy stages were clearly shown. The birth was complicated, and the mother ended up dying because she was not using the appropriate services, and so a community durbar was arranged, to advise the chief what had happened and discuss the importance of skilled delivery. The community agreed to use the health facilities, and a pregnant lady gave birth to a baby successfully and was able to breastfeed.

It wouldn't be a Ghanaian event without dancing

The message of the day was to exclusively breastfeed. That is, for 6 months, do not feed your child anything other than breastmilk. A large problem here is the feeding a child water, and often unclean water, as a part of traditional birth rituals. Water is given as a cultural welcome into the world, and it is thought the baby is thirsty after the exhausting birth. So this was discussed. It was such a fun day, and the traditional dancers were entrancing me, until I realised they were at my feet, and urging me to get up and join them! Oh no! So I took the feather thing, and swished it around, trying to shake my booty like a Ghanian, and hopefully didn’t shame myself too much. I’m not sure where the footage of my breasts ended up, but I have seen so many breasts in Ghana that I need not worry, if it helps breastfeeding, I’m out and proud!

Smock dancing

lets all celebrate breastfeeding!

Swishing the feathery thing - not sticking out and making a scene at all