Le Bebe En Brousse: A Comparative Analysis

There are many misconceptions that have been universally accepted mentioned in Curtis Keim’s book Mistaking Africa, many of which are based on biased and incorrect accounts and are extremely offensive. Three important myths are that Africa is a land of cannibals, it is backward and very uncivilized, and that it is one country where everyone and the climate are the same all over. These will be explained, refuted, and the detriment to the people of Africa will be discussed.

Katherine Dettwyler’s work in the field while she was in West Africa was exciting, filled with humor and even terrifying at times. She dealt with seeing various life-threatening diseases that affected the lives of children her daughter’s age, as well as adults. Dettwyler found that almost all of the people she came in contact with were completely oblivious and uninformed of the ways to prevent diseases such as malaria, Schistosomiasis, malnutrition and other infectious diseases unique to their region of the world. In her book, Dancing Skeletons: Life and Death in West Africa (1994), Dettwyler discusses tons of the health problems she comes across, in

Between America and other European nations, stereotypes and misrepresentations have ultimately plagued the continent of Africa. To every side there is often another story, yet unfortunately for the many countries of Africa, they are ultimately victimized and suffer through further oppression. According to Curtis Keim’s book Mistaking Africa, Keim suggests that Africa is essentially under the public microscope, it tends to be scrutinized, and compared to European nations and America. Keim elaborates on human natures need to group people, places, and things, which creates the theory of superiority or dominance over races, cultures, and even religions.

As Kris gets to know Monique better, she learns of her friend's deep unhappiness with her marriage. Monique also reveals that she's having an affair with the man she would have married, had the cultural practice of arranged marriage not existed. The village of Nampossela has a clinic and birthing house. Monique was able to help the mother’s in the prenatal stages and the birthing process, teach them how to clean water, make baby food and wash their hands to stay clean and prevent the spreading of germs. She weighted the babies to show the mothers if their children were in a healthy weight range or if they were in the dangers of being malnourished. She could provide some vaccinations and administer first aid to wounds. Women of Mali faced many health risks. Since women were to have many children they were at danger during childbirth. “I knew that Mali had one of the highest rates of maternal death in the world. I’d read a sobering statistic that placed a Malian women’s lifetime risk of dying in pregnancy and childbirth around one in twelve, compared to a women’s risk of one in over three thousand” (8). Excessive bleeding, straining after pregnancies, unsanitary conditions are some of the risks for women. Female genital cutting (FGC), was common amongst the women in Mali. At a young age they experience the cutting of their genital area, because they are not to experience pleasure during intercourse. This process is painful. It causes problems

In the book “Monique and the Mango Rains,” by Kris Holloway, a woman from United States, was influenced by a young woman named Monique Dembele during her time serving as a volunteer Peace Corps in Mali, West Africa in 1989-1991. Monique, a young Malian woman, became a midwife in a country where healthcare was almost non-existence. In this autobiographical account tells the story of Monique from the view of the Author as she gets to know her and the city. They became friends and mention how she was able to witness and assist Monique delivered numerous births throughout the village. The author mentions that during her time in Mali her biggest concern was healthcare and fighting for women’s rights. This is also an example of how males using their gender role to control the woman in their lives.

A Heart for the Work: Journeys Through an African Medical School by Claire L. Wendland is both an first hand account of time spent in an African medical school and hospital as well as a critique on Western medical practices. Dr. Wendland, an accomplished anthropologist and physician, provides a first hand account of her time in a Malawi, one of the poorest countries in the world. Through this account she provides insight into the complete journey a student must take to become a doctor in conditions much different than our own. These insights and research are used to argue that medicine, or biomedicine as it is called, is part of a cultural system and is predicated on the cultural ideals and resources of developed nations. Wendland uses the differences in moral order, technology, and resources between the Malawian culture and our own culture to provide evidence for her main argument.

Midwifery has been practiced in several communities of the world since time immemorial. A midwife is a trained person, mostly a woman, who assists in the pregnancy, delivery and post-partum care of an infant. In most countries of the world, the act of midwifery has been neglected for more modern and westernized medical practices deemed safer. In the First nations community, midwives have always been an integral part of the health system assisting expecting women during delivery. In the mid nineteenth and twentieth century, midwifery was outlawed in many communities and reserves ‘for the sake of the health of the country’ (Parkland Memorial Hospital School of Nurse Midwifery). With the outlaw of midwifery in First nation reserves, expectant mothers were transported to hospitals and clinics in urban centers for delivery. With this came several new challenges for expectant first nations women and mothers including, ‘increased maternal newborn complications, increased postpartum depression and decreased breast-feeding rates’ (O’Neil et al., 1990, Smith, 2002 and Klein et al., 2002a. The relegation of first nations midwifery has done more harm than good because it makes the birth process more medical, has led to the inflict of new post natal diseases and has led to the neglect of the traditional and spiritual roles in child

Throughout Kidders book Mountains Beyond Mountains, it is strongly argued that many of the impoverished nations around the world have extremely inadequate and horrible health care.

Most Americans associate hospitals to be the standard place where women can give birth. However, women did not always deliver in hospitals. Gynecology, the medical practice dealing with the female reproductive system, did not emerge until the early nineteenth century. Before doctors came along, women used to hire midwives to deliver babies in the comfort of their own homes. In this paper I will examine the social, political, and scientific implications of how giving birth has transitioned from being a midwife’s job into that of a doctor’s. Furthermore, I will attempt to show how these implications intersect together to make birth a feminist issue. To support my argument, I will be referencing Tina Cassidy’s “The Dawn of the Doctors,” Abby Epstein’s documentary film The Business of Being Born, and Eesha Pandit’s article “America’s secret history of forced sterilization: Remembering a disturbing and not-so-distant past.” I argue that the processes surrounding birth are intersectional feminist issues because they are often manipulated by male figures pursuing money and authority, which ultimately compromises women’s health and power of choice.

Watson and Mason’s article, “Power of the first Hour” and Risworth, et al.’s article “I was on the way to the Hospital but I Delivered in the Bush” both focus on aspects of maternal and infant care and demonstrate the fundamental differences between western policies enacted to improve women’s lives in developing countries and the local realty in those developing countries.

Africa is a continent plagued by misinformed and false stereotypes, rarely being seen or portrayed as what it really is. Countless amounts of myths and ideas are formulated based off of single stories or one-sided stories from the region, often without a second thought. These stereotypes give Africa an overall negative image to the rest of the world and suppress the reality that is hidden behind the slew of stereotypes. The belief that all of Africa is poor and undeveloped is an uninformed statement that harms the reality and worsens the image of the continent by perpetuating an incomplete idea into the world.

In Susan Greenhalgh's study, Situating Fertility: Anthropology and Demographic Inquiry, she studies the pitfalls of analyzing reproduction and fertility through classic demographic theory. Greenhalgh argues that the lens of political economy offers a more comprehensive understanding of global reproductive trends. An understanding of the foundational differences between political economy of reproduction and classic demographic theories in terms of their respective views on social, political, and economic factors, illuminates the benefits of a political economy framework. Utilizing two cases studies one concerning the practice of Birth Spacing in the Belgian Congo, and the second focusing on the reproductive history of women of color in the United

However, it is now becoming apparent to me, that for many of these third world countries, historical practices can sometimes be the only information that people are receiving in regards to healthcare. I can now see that health is indeed very different in cultural group, as they perceive illness differently due to their surrounding environment. Third world countries really only have cultural traditions to base there medical practices on. Not only this but Mcmurray also mentioned that the environment around them is the only source of availability. It makes me question the prevelegeses that I have coming from a structural westernised society.

Cultural boundaries have been the epicenter of driving apart individuals from different cultural backgrounds. The movie The African Doctor is the perfect example of such differences. It also portrays how and why overcoming these boundaries is significant to the wellbeing of the community. The community in which the African doctor is integrating has multiple things in common but the uncertainty avoidance that the community had was too high to permit any exchanges between the two cultures. The way the African doctor adapted to the way the locals where is proof that communication competence is key when it comes to dealing with and ingroups when being part of the out group. And trying to break the barrier of closed minded people that were born and raised in a specific environment that wasn’t proan to interact with anything other than themselves is very difficult, but in fact possible. The African Doctor shows us the tenacity of how to deal with these instances. Overcoming the obvious boundaries that exist between two separate cultures by focusing on how beneficial they are to each other is key to improving the eachothers lives.

The goal of a health care system is to improve the health of its people. However, universal health care in Africa in nonexistent and the majority of regional health systems are unable to deliver interventions to improve health conditions on an