Under the baobab: A support group for exclusive breastfeeding keeps malnutrition away

Her two latest children defy the slender build commonly associated with their Fulani tribes people. Both are plump kids who look much bigger for their age, and far above the malnutrition commonly afflicting children in communities that neighbour their village of Ruba Bagga in Katsina’s Jibia council area, close to the border with Niger Republic.Basiru […]

Her two latest children defy the slender build commonly associated with their Fulani tribes people.
Both are plump kids who look much bigger for their age, and far above the malnutrition commonly afflicting children in communities that neighbour their village of Ruba Bagga in Katsina’s Jibia council area, close to the border with Niger Republic.
Basiru remembers being taught by one Mallam Babangida, a volunteer in her town of Zandam, as part of a project Working to Improve Nutrition in Northern Nigeria.
The six-year programme funded by DFID is spending $50 million in three states to push interventions, including infant and young child feeding practices like exclusive breastfeeding in Ruga Bagga, that can help cut the rate of malnutrition and shore up child growth.
The classes held in tree shades that have become regular meeting spots for support groups that have spawned since then to support women who opt to exclusively breastfeed their children through the first six months of life.
“I started doing it,” she recalls. “I held my child for six months before even giving water, and his healthy. He has never fallen ill.”
Her first child is three years, but looks bigger, and the second finds it difficult to convince any onlooker he is four months old.
Testimony about her previous baby went round the community, spurred by Ruga Bagga village head Ado Maianguwa, who regularly struck up conversation with heads of households whenever possible, before calling meetings in the shade of a baobab tree.
“Since an adult will not eat spoilt food, dont give a child spoilt food,” he says sagely. “I was taught [about exclusive breastfeeding. I cant hold it to myself without teaching others.”
As head, his influence with the men was instrumental to support for women.
Community volunteer Hauwa Ibrahim now preside over the class, in addition to combing Ruga Bagga for women left out of the loop.
These days, the classes hold regularly under the baobab, with dozens of women, grandmothers and their children poring over charts that detail the steps to exclusive breastfeeding.
The intervention is known to be beneficial for babies and their mothers, but Ruga Bagga is seeing those benefits firsthand. Baby illnesses that came with the onset of rains like dysentery, she said are less frequent.
Before now, colostrum – the first milk produced by a mother after giving birth – was expelled, said Ibrahim.
“People thought it was bad and they waited till the milk turned white before feeding their babies. Then six months on, children get dysentery.”
Colostrum, by contrast, is packed with vitamins and minerals that help build an infant’s immune system and ward off diseases right from day one of life.
Without it, children get diarrhoea at six months, says Ibrahim. Now that is gone. Even when they are teething, they have no diarrhoea, no struggles with teething.
Beyond six months, women use the maize, sorghum and millet abundantly cultivated around Ruga Bagga, along with foods as kunu, fura, pap and cowmilk.
The land is dry and sparse with vegetation for parts of the year, and harvest can sometimes be lean, but Ruga Bagga dont show signs of malnourishment.
“It gives me satisfaction when I see children in rural areas so plump and healthy,” says Aminu Usman, technical adviser for WINNN in Katsina, who started off working in Ruga Bagga helping to recruit community volunteers.
“I always want to see how to assist, and there is opportunity for me to assist. I want to see rural people [closing the gap between them and] people in urban areas,” he added.
Exclusive breastfeeding has come to stay in Ruga Bagga, after getting nods of support from household heads in the community. Lawal Modibbo remembers scheduling meetings with men who inevitably relayed the talks to their wives back home.
He is glad, he says, looking back on how far his community has come. “Then we were in the dark, now we are in the light,” he said.
The message of exclusive breastfeeding has become so commonplace that men sit only metres from their wives, mothers and infants in the shade of the baobab in efforts to keep their support network thriving.
“We will never stop, “Modibbo says, joining other men opposite the women. “They just started.”