Ghana: Where my body is everybody’s business

I’m the biggest I have been in five years, almost back full circle to the size I was six years ago. I managed to drop from a UK size 16 to a UK size 12 but now all my size 14 clothes fit a little too snugly. I suspect I’m right back to being a size 16 but I can’t be sure because I haven’t bought any new clothes. I’ve merely stopped wearing the clothes that feel too tight and choose only those items that were once loose on my body.

It’s horrible being overweight in Ghana. Everybody will readily tell you how obolo (fat) you’ve become. Aunties will screech, “Ei. W pai o!” (You’re bursting at the seams!) even though they themselves are spilling over their kaftans and are probably twice your size. Once when I was working out with the office trainer, my manager exclaimed, “Ei Nana. Look how fat the back of your neck has become.” “That’s why I’m working out,” I muttered under my breath. She had the nerve to comment on my body when she’s at least a size and a half bigger than I am. Maybe it’s because she has children – women with children get a pass, I think. But from what my friends with children say, that pass doesn’t last very long.

Many years ago, before the white man came to the Gold Coast, it was a good thing to be fat. Fat women were treasured. Being fat was a sign of prosperity and wealth. Times have indeed changed. The last time I visited my farming village, Kwadarko, in the eastern region of Ghana, one of the women who lives in the community said to me, “Ei. You have become fat. She must’ve seen the reaction on my face because she swiftly added, “But it really suits you.” So even in a small farming village of less than 100 people, 50% of whom I’m related to, it’s not a good thing to be big.

I’ve always had issues with my weight. I was a skinny child, mainly due to the asthma that frequently racked my body. In secondary school I developed breasts really quickly and generally felt uncomfortable with my body. In sixth form, my friend Lauren and I would wake up early, jog around the football field, and do countless sit-ups in an effort to control our weight. When I look back at photos from that time I realise how “normal” my body was. I definitely wasn’t overweight as a child or teenager.

The weight gain happened in my early adult years when I moved from Ghana to London. I was initially unhappy there, living with relatives but not really feeling at home. I got a job at Pizza Hut, and was entitled to a free meal every shift I worked. Another perk was a 50% staff discount on products sold by Pizza Hut, including Häagen-Dazs ice cream. That was when I began to gain weight. Food became my emotional crutch. When I eventually rented a flat with a friend, I had crept from a size 10 to a size 12. She was a size 8 and proud of her body, perhaps too proud. She’d walk around our flat naked and tease me about my weight gain. We stopped doing the weekly grocery shopping together after she complained, “You’re eating us out of house and home.”

“I start diets all the time and I’m sick of them.” (sxc.hu)

Years later, I got married to a (slim) man. He was one of those people who sometimes forgets to eat but I have never forgotten a meal in my life. When we began having problems in our marriage, he kept losing weight and I kept gaining it. I remember him saying, “You don’t even care. Look how much weight you’re gaining while I keep getting skinnier.” The fact that he is now my ex-husband has nothing to do with the different ways in which we dealt with emotional issues.

The worst bit about my weight battle is that I know being fat is a feminist issue. I recognise that women are fed images of ultra-skinny models, actresses and other unattainable ideals via television screens, magazines and billboards. I know that I am not as fat as I feel. When I was at my skinniest I didn’t automatically feel happy, even though I had assumed that being able to buy size 10 clothes would have brought me automatic joy.

I know the roots of my over-eating are emotional. When I’m happy, I celebrate with a posh dinner with a friend. When I’m down, I take refuge in a large bar of chocolate. I recognise that I should drink water, eat almonds instead of chocolate, drink less wine. I start diets all the time and I’m sick of them. Why can’t I be one of the metabolically blessed who can indulge as much as they want without picking up weight? I watch my skinny friends when we go out for meals. The break off half a roll from the bread basket; I keep dipping into it. They order baked fish with a side of veggies; I choose the rich grouper provençal (fish in creamy sauce). I know I should but I just can’t seem to imitate them.

Surely I’m not the only woman who feels this way; who hates being called fat; who worries, perhaps unnecessarily, about what the scale tells her. I’m not the only woman who gets quizzed about her weight as if her body is public property. My friends tell me that in Freetown, Sierra Leone, you could be chilling at Lumley Beach only for a passing driver to stick his head out of his car and yell, “You bomp!” You could be in a boardroom in Lagos and be called “orobo“. Stroll down Electric Avenue in Nairobi and you may overhear someone say, “Eno ne momo.”

What’s this obsession with fat shaming?

Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah works as a communications specialist at the African Women’s Development Fund, is co-owner of MAKSI Clothing and curates Adventures from the Bedrooms of African Women, a highly acclaimed and widely read blog on African women and sexuality. 

Tradition and beauty: Mozambican women’s mussiro masks

In the northern coastal region and islands of Mozambique, it’s common to come across women with faces covered with a natural white mask, called mussiro or n’siro. The purpose of the mask seems to have evolved over time. Nowadays it tends to be considered more as a means of beautifying the skin but, according to oral accounts, mussiro masks used to carry other subliminal messages related to the civil status of women.

Matope Jose, writing for the local Mozambican blog Mozmaníacos, sheds some light on its historical tradition: “The Nampula province is traditionally known as the land of muthiana orera (simply beautiful ladies). The women from that region of the country have a technique that is particular to them: they treat the skin from an early age, using a sought-after forest species called mussiro, a plant that by law must be preserved and multiplied, and that is used more generally by communities to cure various diseases, as well as for decorative purposes.”

A woman from Ibo Island, Mozambique, with a mussiro mask on. (Flickr/Rosino)

In a video by Julio Silva, women from Angoche explain how the tradition has been passed down to today’s generation from their grandparents, and they show how the cream is extracted from the Olax dissitiflora plant using a stone and some water:

“This is the plant that we, as mussiros, use on our faces. It is what you can see on my face, that’s the plant.

I am Fátima, from Angoche. This mussiro, our grandparents first used it to show when a girl was a virgin. Then she would enter a house. They painted themselves with this mussiro to become white, until a boy came along who they fell in love with and married; only afterwards did they stop using the mussiro. Only afterwards, they use the mussiro like this, when someone is outside, in order to be white, to make their faces beautiful. This is mussiro. The plant is in the forest. While we usually go and meet our husbands, the great grandparents go and cut it and start selling it.”

According to Baia magazine, although mussiro was traditionally used by virgins or by women whose husbands were away, its usage has changed over time: “Nowadays, this paste is widely used and has been “liberalised” for all women, from the north to south of the country, so that it can be used not only by the Makwa or Makonde women, but also by the Manhungue, Machuabo, Maronga, Machope, Matswa, etc. It is already considered to be a beauty treatment used by all women especially concerned with African feminine beauty. Some designers are expecting their models to use this “Afro paste” on major catwalks, as they do at Mozambique Fashion Week.”

 This post by Sara Moreira was originally published on Global Voices Online.

Egypt: Paradise with plenty of problems

Almost any horseman in the world harbours a fantasy of galloping across sand dunes in the shadows of the pyramids. It’s a no-brainer. Most of us watched Lawrence of Arabia and drooled, or daydreamed about mummy movies where the heroes make their escape across the desert on horseback. And then there are some of us who are lucky to be able to do this almost any time they want … like me. I’m living a horseman’s wet dream and have no wish at all to disturb it.

When I first visited Egypt from Canada in the late 70s with my Egyptian husband-to-be, I was struck by the astounding number of working horses in the streets of the cities and villages, some of them in dire Black Beauty straits, but many in wonderful condition. When we moved to Egypt with our children in the late 80s, my husband encouraged me to begin riding again, but learning to live in Egypt with two youngsters was challenge enough for me – until the day he arrived home with the news that a friend of ours whose wife had just died had given me a four-year-old Arab mare. I wasn’t sure if I was delighted or horrified but it started me on my life of crime.

Twenty-three years later, this mare and I are still partners although I lost my husband almost thirteen years ago and the children are currently working and studying in the US. Dory, my mare, and I now live on a small farm in the villages near the pyramids of Abu Sir, between Giza and Sakkara, where I have established an informal animal sanctuary/goat breeding enterprise/educational center/equestrian tourism center. We share the farm with 18 horses, three donkeys, a mule, a varying number of goats, a water buffalo, an aviary full of various types of poultry and birds, and a pack of 16 dogs varying in size from just over Chihuahua to just under Small Cow (a very large Great Dane).

Maryanne with her horse, Dory.

Most of the animals here have been rescued from situations that would have involved unpleasant outcomes, but in order to keep both my health and sanity and theirs, we don’t take in lots of newcomers. Also, as we do a lot of educational work with schools, scouts, families and farmers, not every rescue is well-adapted to the demands of the work. They have to be patient and kind above all and willing to learn a sort of animal professionalism that dictates that they tolerate a lot of attention and loving. Oddly enough, this can be difficult for animals that have been abused.

Just like people who are given a chance to live a healthy, fulfilling life that demands the right amount from them and gives back enough reward, animals in a good environment can live surprisingly long lives. Our oldest terrier is 17 and showing few signs of ageing, while visitors are astonished that we have two horses over 30. A good quarter of our working horses are over 20. They thrive on a considerate working regime that engages their minds and bodies, and offer a wonderful example to our human visitors of how to age gracefully. We don’t just teach riding, grooming and such, but also life lessons.

When the protests began in Tahrir two years ago, my children, quite naturally, called to see if I wanted to “take a small holiday” with them in the US. I declined quite vehemently. First, I felt very safe living in a rural community where everyone knows me. The protests were quite localised in downtown cores and out here people had cows to milk and crops to tend. Second, I employ members of eight local families on the farm and I had to point out that I could hardly leave them without my support. Finally, as I told my son, I was as astonished at the events as everyone else in the world and I had no intention of missing this for all the tea in China.

I saw those 18 days through with two other women friends. We would sit and watch Al-Jazeera with the staff who only had access to the government channels on their TVs and were thus somewhat in the dark as to what was going on downtown. Lively political discussions ensued and I’ve been delighted to see the growing knowledge and interest in people who had been long left to feel utterly powerless.

Unfortunately the political awakening of Egypt wasn’t such a terrific thing for tourism. Every protest has been accompanied by media reports that intimated that all of Egypt was at risk of chaos or destruction, although that couldn’t be further from the truth. Our riding tour business has been slow for the past year or so although the people who came immediately after Hosni Mubarak stepped down were amazing guests who so enjoyed seeing the changes in our country. They also really enjoyed visiting the villages and farming communities that we ride through, and one experienced traveler told me that although the Egypt he’d visited on a bus tour a few years earlier seemed in no way ready for democracy, the Egypt that he saw riding with me was a totally different story. But that is the difference between the tourist as an object viewing a population that is an object – as so often happens when visitors are isolated in buses – and someone who is on horseback interacting with people as we are passing by.

For a Canadian who doesn’t want to shovel any more snow and who thrives on sunshine and good vegetables year round, Egypt is paradise, albeit paradise with plenty of problems, not the least of which is the traffic – it’s almost paralysing Cairo these days. But name a country that is without problems … I don’t think you can.  And I can gallop by a pyramid any day I want.

Maryanne Gabbani is a 63-year-old Canadian mother of two. She started life in southern California, met her Egyptian husband in Canada and now calls a farm in Egypt her home.