October 15th, 2009- Kampala- Gain Hips and Bum

Ads plastered all over Kampala say:

“Gain hips and bum!”

“Get FAT (no side effect)”

Standards of beauty here are just different. Women are supposed to have curves.

This morning, I jump on the back of a boda boda (motorcycle used for public transport), too late for my morning meeting to take my usual walk. I greet the driver, and we zip down the bumpy, dust-red path, past the men and boys endlessly crushing rocks in the sun, past the row of market stalls and creeping cars along the trafficked road, and with a wave past the nice man selling drinkable yogurt on the corner, up the hill to the office.

I jump off the boda boda, and the driver smiles as I reach into my purse.

“You come this way every, every day?”

“Yes,” I say, “but usually I come walking.”

“Oh, I see,” he says. “Sorry—you don’t have money . . . I could take you for free sometimes.”

“Thanks—that is very kind! But I like the exercise.”

“Eh!” he says, surprised—tilting his head dramatically to look with slightly intrigued disgust at my skinny bum. “Madam, you do NOT need exercise.”

I tell my coworkers, and they laugh the whole morning. My little bum SO lives on the wrong continent.