Baggage

As all of the Groupons for gym memberships putrify my inbox, here’s a thematic posting on weight and health.

One of the ways I gauge the power of my own cultural context is body image. I do a fairly good job of ignoring it in the States, but in Ghana it emerges with full force because Ghanaians tell it like it is.  Over the past 2 weeks I have been told by 3 different people that I am getting fat.  Well actually 2/3 of the sample said fat.  1/3 indicated that I was getting plumpy.  Even if people were not commenting upon it, my snugger jeans have told me the truth.  I arrived in Ghana at the lower end of my weight spectrum and have now crept up to the higher end.  No big deal.  But to have it pointed out in such bluntness is punching my psyche in the face. 

This is a compliment in Ghana.  While we may pass pleasantries in the US by congratulating someone on weight loss, Ghanaians suck up by telling someone they look plumpy. For here, to have some meat on your bones is to show that you are taking good care of yourself.  A friend told me that people sometimes go to the pharmacist for pills that will make them gain weight.   Personally I am finding that switching to a starch and oil heavy diet, (with further supplement provided by reliance on Coke and HobNobs to make the toils and foils of fieldwork feel less bleh), is working wonders.   Though I try wholeheartedly to embrace the Ghanaian ideology, I can’t shake the American ideology when I’m faced with interpreting comments that make my weight gain publicly acknowledged.   Maybe when Jennifer Lawrence no longer has to serve as the ambassador for female weight and body image issues I’ll be able to embrace being plumpy.

60 Ghana Cedis (about 20 US bucks) for this derriere enhancing undergarment. 

It’s not that Ghanaians are promoting obesity or are immune from health issues that stem from too much weight and too little activity.  There’s a strong public health discourse to bring awareness about the non-communicable diseases (NCDs) that are on the rise in Ghana, including hypertension and diabetes.  People are concerned about maintaining a weight that reduces their risk for disease.  For those not involved in physically demanding jobs, intentional exercise is practiced and more cautious consumption adhered to.

Words from the Ghanaian Ministry of Health at a park where inevitably people will be playing basketball and some really great volleyball (not a popular sport here)

Ad for a walkathon promoting heart health in Accra, the largest urban center in Ghana and thus an area of the country where heart disease is more of an issue to do urban lifestyles

It’s that the weight you do (or don’t carry) in Ghana does not come to define you as individually in charge or weakly willed.  Food is not something that instigates emotions such as shame or is associated with characteristics such as will-power. When I eat with women in Ghana, never do we engage in the kind of self-congratulatory or self-loathing language reifying or vilifying our food intake that pads dining conversations in the States.  Here you aren’t what you eat. It is acknowledged that being self conscious about my weight whilst I pursue research on food insecurity is incredibly tacky. I regularly deride myself for my toolishness. But it’s hard to shake your cultural baggage, and sometimes you don’t even realize your cultural baggage until it is challenged in paradoxical ways.