Mom of the world in Cameroon
"At home, we talk a lot to children, and we must treat them with respect", explains Babette. Mother of three boys, she talks about the education of children in Cameroon.
"What is the baby blues? , I ask the other mother who shares my room in the maternity ward. I have been in France for a short time, so the advice in the book "J'elève mon enfant" by Laurence Pernoud often surprises me...
"What is an allergy? , asks my mother in turn when I read to her, on the phone, a passage explaining everything that I must not feed the baby!
But a month later, when my son looks longingly at what's on my plate, I give him fish crumbs. I'm still afraid to tell my French pediatrician. I'm kidding with my husband: maybe we were going to be put in prison? !
So I consult my mother in Cameroon, who tells me that he must taste everything: "Dip your five fingers in everything on the table, even what is very spicy, and let him suck them,” she advises me.
And she tells me a legend: "Once, in a village, a couple was invited with their child to come and eat a goat. Everyone was having fun. Suddenly, the little one asked, angry, to his parents: "Why am I only allowed milk and tasteless vegetables?" So he left and never came back. »
The morality is that you should always treat your child with respect, just like an adult!
I am raising my three boys “à la française”, while maintaining my family customs. My mother often tells me: "Your children may be black, but they have white antibodies. She finds that they are always sick, because in France we are obsessed with germs. Several times a year, she sends me "home" remedies, such as palm kernel oil (extracted from the seeds from the kernel of the palm fruit, not to be confused with palm oil) which is applied to the skin of babies to lower fever. Sometimes certain mixtures don't work, but mom tells me that you have to believe in it for it to work. It is also a matter of faith.
In Cameroon, to give birth in good conditions, you have to pay for a private clinic or give a “bakchich” to the doctors. There, life is nothing . If you're poor, we don't care about your child. Perhaps that is why women, from the beginning, are surrounded by their family and “good luck”. After birth, to strengthen the baby, it is bathed in herbs, sometimes even accompanied by a gorilla bone with which it is massaged. To accelerate the mother's blood circulation, her belly is tapped with a ball of dried leaves soaked in boiling water. It brings out the “bad blood” and finds the line. This is called the “traditional broom”.
Just after the birth, when we go home with the baby, the grandmother of the mother comes to live with the young parents until the baby's cord falls off. During the two months following childbirth, it is forbidden to make love. It would delay the growth of the newborn… But in reality, it is to prevent the young mother from becoming pregnant again. The second month, the father presents his child to his parents, but in general, he does not try to take care of the baby. It is the women who manage the education of toddlers.
What I miss about Cameroon is freedom. In France, they always tell me “don't do this, don't do that”.
At home, we are much more relaxed. We also say that we have a duty to explain everything to our children. Once, my aunt said to her baby who was crying all the time: "Before you were born, we slept well. Why don't you let us rest? Today, we will let you sleep alone, you will surely manage. The little one understood, and since then he has been sleeping through the night!
