Discourses on infant malnutrition and “Bad Mothering” in a West African setting

Reflections on the crisis of 2005 in Niger provide an occasion to reflect upon how health crises are “read” in the media, by NGOs, and in policy circles. Analysis of the crisis shifted gradually from a drought- and locust- induced famine, to a moderate food shortage aggravated by the slow response of national and international actors, to a failure of market mechanisms that called into question the warning systems in place to monitor food conditions in the Sahel. Most recently it has become clear that among other things we also witnessed the real implications of a chronic but largely ignored malnutrition crisis in Niger that was rendered more acute by an unusually sharp spike in the price of staple foods and of forage and was rendered more visible by the presence of the disaster relief specialists of Doctors Without Borders, for whom an incidence of malnutrition of this scale was tantamount to humanitarian disaster in a war zone. As the causes and responses to the crisis have been evaluated in the wake of the disaster, more and more attention has been given, at long last, to the problem of malnutrition. This paper responds to the common perception that malnutrition in the West African Sahel is a “cultural” problem rather than an economic problem. The paper explores the history of the trope of the “bad mother,” whose irrational behavior governed by “tradition' is implicitly argued to be responsible for high infant and child mortality. The study concludes by offering a rather different image of mothers, one emphasizing their willingness to seize upon a novel treatment for sick children offered at Doctors Without Borders treatment centers using ready to eat nutrition packets.