BOOBS!

I was sitting in the waiting room of the CSPS, doing my new job of taking everyone’s temperature, and couldn’t help but admire this Peul woman sitting with her baby.  She was very tall and slender, as most Peul women are, and she had exquisite soft yet defined facial features. I couldn’t help but thing, “America’s Next Top Model could do wonders with this women”.  Yet there was something off, and I didn’t know what it was until she stood up and I realized that she had abnormally large breast… that hung around her stomach like a pool float.  I couldn’t help but analyze the situation the hole rest of the time she was at the CSPS- She was skinny with such large boobs that if they were in the right spot she would be a life size Barbie.  But her boobs sagged so low she actually had to life them up when she adjusted her pagne skirt.  Her child, about a year old, could lay with his head in her lap and breast feed.  This made ne notice all the boobs in the waiting room- I see a lot of them. I mean A LOT.  

Breast feeding here is used like a pacifier at home- if a baby starts to fuss just wave a tit in it’s face.  Women walk around all the time with a boob out, just chilling, for her child to grab at any time.  Or sometimes they will be peeking out from under neither her shirt, like a game of peek-a-boo, and she may walk around like that (Why bother with a shit at all?). And the children know that they can just go up to their mother and latch on, holding a tit like they are sucking a water balloon.  I’ve even seen some babies prod and pull on their mothers breast, like they are trying to milk her into their mouth.  One little girl at the CSPS the other day was actually suckling on one tit and tweaking the nipple of the other.  Every couple of minutes she would switch boobs. If I had to guess, I’d say I’ve seen more boobs in the first month I’ve been here then most 17 year old boys.  And it’s totally no big deal for me to take a babies temperature, via the armpit, while it’s attached to a breast, or for the Major to examine a baby while it’s still on the boob.  Breast feeding is the best thing for the child, so it’s good it;s so widely accepted here, but it’s slightly odd that women are not allowed so show their kneecaps, but going topless it totally fine. 

And bras? Who needs them?!  The only women here that wear them are wealthier women that may come from functionaire families or really young mothers, like my age or younger.  No doubt that is because this is the demographic that would be most interested in Western culture.  This leads to a lot of very unfortunately shaped breasts.  One women bent over the other day to tie her biega on her back and her one breast flopped out of her shirt and hung there perfectly shaped like a sausage link.  It was all I could do not to stare, but it was long and perfectly round and looked exactly like a bratwurst.  Most women have unbelievably saggy breast, which remind me of my sister singing “do your boobs hang low” when we were children.  You know how usually you have to hold a baby up to the breast, well not here.  They have to lift the boob to the baby as it sits on the lap. Older women’s breasts hang on their chests like deflated balloons, stretched out and drained form a countless number of children.  And there is hardly a trace of breasts at all on grandmothers, they’ve almost completely been dissipated. 

No wonder I look so funny to these women, My ta-tas are in the anatomically correct position.