Mind your vetkoek, ifindo
SOME of my best friends are obese. With that out of the way, I feel entitled to spew whatever mean, halfbaked bile I want against the much, much larger members of our society. In high school one of my closest friends was a fellow who despised fat people for some reason I never understood. Let’s call him Dennis. After high school we both went to Howard College where his disdain for fat people spiralled out of control. We were members of the Catholic Society and one of our fellow faithfuls was a woman of rather extreme dimensions. Dennis would follow her around, counting the number of burgers, sandwiches and Simba chips she consumed in a day just so he could be appropriately disgusted by her.
He would stare out at her from his Townley Williams residence window as she hobbled back to her room with her canteen loot and, with disgust in his voice, mutter, “Look her! She’s off to stuff her face again.” Much later I discovered that the word for people with a hatred/fear of fat people is cacomorphobia. And Dennis was quite an advanced cacomorphobe.
It’s no secret that we are becoming a nation of porky piglets. This prompted our well-meaning health minister to mutter about targeting fast-food marketing aimed at children. Of course, a glance at the dietary habits of the majority of South Africans will tell you that the major culprit is our favourite staple; the mountainous dollops of pap dished up with no thought given to portion control. And, of course, the township favourite, the kota (quarter loaf of bread stuffed with slap chips, polony, atchar, cheese and all manner of grease). Never mind the trending gwinya (vetkoek) culture.
I recently found myself wondering what my ancestors thought of obesity. King Shaka, for instance, is reputed to have been a cacomorphobe who may have expedited the separation of many souls from their large frames. In fact, the Zulu language has an impressive array of less than flattering terms for the kingdom’s rotund members. The language is quite scientific in how it distinguishes between types of fat people. Isidudla is a generic term for all fat people. Indilinga is an individual who has a roundish shape, and ingangamela is someone who is more wide than round. Inkuxa is someone who carries their weight around the midrib, and inkilibexe or imbexembexe is a generally kept for those who jiggle as they wobble from point A to point B. Isigaxa is a person of broad proportions including limbs, and ifindo is a short, round person with concentrated weight. Imbensula speaks to someone who hauls their weight from the back like a caravan.
Believe it or not, this is just the tip of the iceberg where Zulu terms for obesity are concerned. Did we not have evidence of the Mfecane, you would be forgiven for believing that ancient Zulus had nothing better to do than come up with words for fat people.
As I slip into my fifth decade and my jeans start fraying from the increased friction between my thighs, I have thought more about people who struggle with the bulge. The popular approach seems to be to assign all culpability to the corpulent among us, but scientific studies keep revealing an inconvenient truth: that many obese people just can’t help being large.
A study I recently read maintains that obese individuals do not react to the body’s secretion of glucagon, the hungersuppressing hormone. In English, when thin people eat, this hormone suppresses their hunger. The same hormone has no effect on obese people. I don’t know about you, but when I am hungry, I eat. So before calling someone imbexembexe or isigaxa, please walk a mile in their hormonal glands.
I now invite your outrage for daring to carve up this sacred cow. But, like I said, I have immunity. After all, some of my best friends are large.