How old are you?

Here, there is a new policy that most health care is free for pregnant women and for children under the age of 5. However, it gets a bit complicated knowing how old kids are, especially in the village, since they often don’t have birth certificates and people often don’t actually know how old they are. And even if they do have birth certificates, they’re often not right, since parents will purposefully cut off a few years of their child’s age so that they can still be considered young enough to start school even when they’re a little older.
Anyway, my host mom took her niece to the doctor’s the other day (her niece lives with her), and since I drove them on my motorcycle, she mentioned on the way that she didn’t know if it would be free or not, since she was right around 5 years old.
So we get to the doctor’s office, and when it’s her turn, my host mom said that she was about 4 or 5. The doctor looks at her, thinks that she looks a bit older than that, and does what I remember as an entrance test to kindergarten – reaches her one arm up and over her head to see if it reaches her other ear. It was one of those “it’s a small world” kind of moments! Her hand reaches her ear and the doctor is even less convinced that she’s young enough to qualify for the free health care, but my host mom says that she really does think that she’s young enough, but doesn’t know for sure since it’s not her own child. But she added that she was born in 2015 (if I heard her correctly). I don’t know if that convinced the doctor or not, but he at least decided to give up trying, so let her have the free care.
But there you go – they do the same thing here as in the US – see if you can reach your ear with your other hand. But here, it’s to see if you qualify for free health care, not if you’re ready for kindergarten. And that’s often how it is – I can be excited when I see something familiar, but often it’s not quite the same as what I’m used to.