Breasts in the Democratic Republic of Congo

This is part of a post I read on Joanna Goddard's blog. She blogs about life in NYC, motherhood, children, clothes, accessories, and other things occasionally. I really like the series she is currently working on dealing with parenting in different countries and communities.
I felt this excerpt on breastfeeding and breast milk in Congo was wonderful news to me and it sounds like a dream to be a breastfeeding mother in Congo. You can read the full post here.

On breastfeeding: Sarah: When your baby makes the slightest cry in public, Congolese women come out of the woodwork to insist that you nurse immediately. I’ve had mamas nearly reach down my shirt to get me to give my baby what she wants. Most moms nurse their babies anytime anywhere, and I've wholeheartedly adopted this cultural norm.

Another expat friend and her husband went to the grocery store here in Kinshasa with their three-week-old in a front baby carrier on her father. The baby began to cry. Three or four Congolese women rushed over and admonished both parents for having the baby so far away from the breast: "She must eat! She shouldn't cry! The mother must carry her!" Mama NouNou told me that in her experience, if there is a baby crying on the bus, all the women on the bus shout, "Feed the baby! Give it the breast!" She explained it as, "Everyone wants the mama to know that she should feel comfortable feeding her baby—no matter where she is."

On breast milk: Sarah: No one thinks twice here about sharing breastmilk. Why let something so valuable go to waste? Not long after my second daughter was born, I went on a work trip to Kenya. I pumped the whole time I was there and couldn’t bear to throw away my breast milk, nor imagine the nightmare scenario of leakage in my luggage. So I saved it all up in the hotel fridge in Ziploc bags. On the day I left, I took all the little bags to the local market and said, “All right, ladies. Who’s got babies and wants breast milk?!” Not a single Kenyan woman at the market thought twice about taking a random white woman’s breast milk. My driver even heard I was handing out milk and asked if I could pump some extra to take home to his new baby.