Struggle: Weight

Over the last sixty years in South Africa, the word struggle often referred to the struggle against the Apartheid government. According to my Pietermaritzburg Agency for Christian Social Awareness (PACSA) advisor, only recently people have used the word struggle in other contexts. In the US, it seems that people use the word struggle most often in the context of weight. People also talk about weight in South Africa, but in my communities, they talk about weight in a different way.
On Christmas Eve, the deputy principal of the school at which I volunteer visited my home. He and my host mom go way back. At one point in our conversation, the Deputy Principal commented that he was amazed that I didn’t seem to have lost or gained weight since I arrived. My host mom shot back that I had gained weight. The Deputy Principal didn’t agree and my host mom stated that I had gained a little weight. I said nothing.
In my communities, people associate gaining weight with being well taken care of. Last weekend, one of my guardians in South Africa stated, “I want you three sizes bigger by the time you leave here or people will think we didn’t take care of you.” Friends and family, even if I am not three sizes bigger by the time I go home, I promise that the people in South Africa are taking good care of me.
People in my communities also associate weight with age. When my friend, who is six years older than me, asked a local person who was older, she said to my friend, “You are.” I asked why. She bluntly said, “Because she is fatter.”
People will even give me contrasting opinions about my weight over a couple of days. About a month ago, I was playing outside with the neighbor kids and a neighbor said, “The last time I saw you, you were skinny, and now you’re getting fat.” Two days earlier, a girl guessed I was sixteen years old. I replied that although I am twenty-three years old, people often guess that I am sixteen or seventeen. She replied, “People think you are young because you are so beautiful.”
Even after six months here I am still poor at guessing people’s age. Last week at PACSA, I thought two younger girls were in their mid-twenties, and instead they are nineteen and twenty-two. They thought I was younger than them.
In general, people are not as uptight about their weight here, for better and for worse. For better, people seem more comfortable with their bodies. For worse, when I am on a public taxi (seating sixteen people), I may realize that someone’s arm was on my knee, but know it because the person was squishing me. Perhaps I’ve lost touch with the size of the American people, but I would say many people, especially women, are larger here. May we take care of, but not obsess over, our bodies as we struggle to follow the Spirit.