As a rule I write very little about work, but this was a true To Bee Honest experience and share it I must.

She walked in with her head bowed, a head scarf tied loosely over her hair, her skirt and blouse I assume were once vibrantly colored, but that must have been many years and a couple of owners ago. The room was dark and her face in the shadows, but from what I could see she appeared no older than me,despite his obvious malnutrition her baby was too heavy for her arms. He looked like a little bobble head doll, his neck seemingly too scrawny to support his head, and even in sleep he clung limply to his mother, his unconscious grip saying, “if I let go I will fall.” I took all this in with a single glance, but I didn’t stop, didn’t analyze or empathize, just went back to thinking about me, “why is this doctor still seeing patients in here? Clinic hours are over and I need to focus on my work.” I paid only a cursory attention to their conversation, I was more taken with the child’s breathing, it was reminiscent of an old air-conditioner running on it’s very last bit of life, the type of AC that would produce only warm air, it was a jagged, broken and painful sound. I wondered that his breathing did not wake him up and his mother seemed able to ignore it, she was apparently desensitized, I was not.

I looked up in time to see the doctor push what appeared to be a N500 note into the mother’s hands, with instructions for her to buy breakfast for the baby. The baby would obviously never finish any meal that cost N500, so there was also the implied instruction that she get some food for herself. She asked the mother, “What will you give him?” Her response was, “Ogi”; Ogi, Pap or Akamu is a corn-based meal similar in consistency to custard, and it has been a staple meal for the sick and infants in Nigeria for eons, I recently realized that Akamu tastes a lot like finely ground grits (that’s for my Southern folks).

I expected to see a beaming smile across her face; I mean she basically just got a free brunch, that always puts a smile on my face. I couldn’t understand the defeated expression on her face, did she expected more? She thanked the doctor and me, hefted the baby and left the room, closing the door so softly behind her that I had to double-check that it closed completely.

The door was barely shut before the doctor began downloading her life history. Apparently she was a young single mother, the father of the baby refused to claim responsibility or have anything to do with the baby. She was a single parent, dependent on her mother, a widow, whose livelihood came from petty trading. The doctor got personally interested after listening to the baby wail all through the clinic. He had tried rooting at his mother’s breast, sucking his fingers, and had finally cried until he fell into a hunger induced sleep. It was noon, and he hadn’t eaten anything all day, his mother had to stop and think about when last she had a full meal. The doctor referred them to the Lagos State Welfare office and was hopeful that they could help the woman and her baby, either by getting the man to pay court mandated child support or giving the woman some additional income. She was moved by their plight but couldn’t really do anything beyond provide money for a few meals.

After hearing her story I thought about another baby born to a too young and too poor mother. She is also dependent on her mother, a woman who makes a living selling apples and pears by the roadside. While she and her child-mother man the stand, the baby has the time of his life crawling over stones, sand and bits of rubbish all day. He is a baby, and since the magnetic pull between the hand and mouth is so strong in babies, the same hands that have caressed bits of spit-up gum, apple pits and used water sachets, goes directly into his mouth. Watching him, I remember how different my brothers babyhood was, we disinfected the floor multiple times a day, and still rushed to ensure that his dirty hands didn’t make it to his mouth too often. They say, “Dirty no dey kill African man,” it may not kill our men but it sure does kill our babies.

Know I knew the mother at the clinics story, I began to reassess my earlier impressions of her. In her clothing, where I saw worn clothes, I now saw the efforts of one with very little to appear decently garbed in public. Her bowed head which had seemed like an exaggerated show of humility became significant. Wouldn’t you bow your head if tens of people had just watched your baby cry himself to sleep because he was hungry? How high would you hold your head if not only you, but a whole clinic of happy, well fed babies knew you couldn’t feed yours? The lack of joy at receiving breakfast for her baby became understandable. What joy is there in knowing your child has breakfast, when you have no idea of where dinner will come from? Sure it’s great that his hunger can be satisfied, but all it means is that you’ll be up at night listening to his renewed hunger cries, made stronger by the nourishment he received hours ago.

Her situation made me wish I could get angry at someone, but whom? The father who didn’t claim his child? He is probably someone just like her, maybe with a widow as a mother, or a father who can’t work anymore due to illness. He might be a bus conductor, a vulcanizer or a student like she was. It doesn’t mean that I excuse his negligence, but is it negligence when you have nothing to give?

The mother? I mean, why didn’t she us protection, she should have known better. Yet she is just one of the thousands, maybe millions, of young mothers around the world. She probably considered an abortion or giving the child up for adoption, would either of those have been the better or easier decision for her and the child? I want to believe she choose to have and keep the baby, but now she and her child pay for the decision.

In Nigeria, people get worked up about all sorts of “sins”, imagined and otherwise. Methinks that for a baby to suffer want in the midst of so much, that is a sin we should fight against.

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