You gettin' fat ooooo

“Aaaa Amuchee, you gettin' fat oooo” my counterpart called to me as I walked up to her porch.

“Tank you.....” I responded while smiling, pausing to pose, and laughing to myself.

I get comments like this alllllll the time in Liberia. And I got comments like this all the time in Malawi too. When you live in a developing country where having enough food is a luxury, being 'fat' is a good thing.

I remember learning about this same phenomenon in 9^th grade history class: that people judged your socioeconomic status based on your stature. Pleasantly plump people with extra meat on their bones were assumed to be rich and thin, feeble looking people were thought to be poor or struggling. At the time when I learned this, I thought this to be such a strange way of thinking. Then I lived in Malawi for two years, where at least 11% of the population in my district was living with HIV/AIDS. Over time, I began to view people through this same lens- naturally assuming that skinny people must be suffering from not having enough to eat or maybe from some sort of sickness and perceiving thicker people as people who must have more than enough to eat and/or they didn't have to do hard physical labor as their primary job.

In Liberia, food is somewhat scarce. This is recognizable in the food culture of this country. Liberians rely heavily on bush meat for sustenance because people are desperate for protein and calories. Rice with pepe soup (a combination of water, oil, bouillon cubes, tiny bitter balls, and spices) will only fill you up for an hour or two or until the rice bloating in your stomach goes down. But add some bush meat on top of it, and it's much more satisfying and sticks with you for longer.

Almost every day in my village, my landlord/neighbor ma cooks a bowl of food for me. I never asked her to do this, I never paid her for it, and I never expected her to do it, but I do appreciate it. Sometimes I buy them a 25 kg bag of rice or cook a fancy soup for them on the weekends in return for their generosity. Knowing that when I reach home after a morning at the clinic, I will most likely not have to go through the whole ordeal of cooking during the mid-day heat and sweating over a hot pot of whatever I'm cooking, is a huge relief.

My landlord ma dishing out rice 

However, what this also means is that I'm consuming a diet identical to the people living around me. The people who spend hours working in their fields, walking long distances, or who only eat once a day. These large, high-calorie, high fat, and high carbohydrate meals are filling and satisfying for this type of lifestyle. A typically meal might look like a big bowl of white rice and another smaller bowl of soup which is often small chunks of bush meat or dried fish, with some greens or beans or okra, swimming in a large pool of red palm oil. Even if I'm running and working out, this still seems to result in a nice cushion of 'meat' on my bones. I feel like I'm beginning to look like a true Bassa woman with thick hips, a soft belly, and big, strong arms. (Whether this is my own perception of my body in the mirror or the truth is beside the point).

But honestly, how I look to my community doesn't really matter to me (my work and purpose are much more important). While I would prefer them to not call me “fat” every day and comment on my body, I am also getting better about allowing it to roll off my back by realizing that it's just a cultural difference. I remind myself that they mean that I look “healthy” and like I'm setting into the lifestyle and getting enough to eat.

The grey area between the two cultural “ideals” pushed by society in Liberia and America is, to me, the most intriguing concept to consider. The runner in me wants to be strong and fit, the American in me wishes I could still fit into my 'skinny clothes' from college, and the new “Bassa” woman in me wants to accept whatever the rice is doing to my body as long as I can get enough to eat so that I'm not starving all the time.

To Liberians, I look strong and healthy; to Americans, I may look like I'm letting myself go. So which category do I fall into? Well, first of all, who cares? But secondly, my gut (wink wink) is telling me, 'when in Rome....' while my mind is encouraging a daily cardio workout to keep me happy and sane.

Balance, it's all about balance, amiright?