Sometimes I like to juggle babies.

You would think that weighing a kiddo isn't that hard. Just take off all of its clothes and toss it on one of those little shelf scale things in the pediatrician's office. Well, theoretically. But when you're en brousse, it doesn't work quite like that - instead, we suspend a little meat scale from a gnarled rope hanging from a nail above a doorframe, undress the kiddos, and hang them from the meat scale. the problem is that babies wiggle, and the little hooks on the scale aren't exactly the most stable hooks ever, because the people who designed them aren't THAT concerned about their cuts of meat wriggling out of the scale and crashing to the floor!

Anyhow I have a newfound respect for Marie Benoit, Sophie, and Hortance, who juggle babies, meat scales, pens, anti-worm pills, and carnets (medical history booklets) at least two times a week in the middle of little villages in Gabon.