Before you start cursing 2011 for not turning out as well as you had planned, you need to figure out one thing straight -life changes.  It’s interesting how we all like progress but are so stuck in reverse gear that we fear to put in effect anything that alters your comfortable sleepy and sometimes shady plan of life. One plain example is the matter of weight, not any woman’s weight; I am reliably informed that any discussion in that direction is the easiest way to be lynched. 

Apparently this weight thing is so radioactive that the best way to let someone know you would like to declare a third world war on their door step is to hint about the recent appearance of those love handles. I wonder why it matters so much. Whether a lady is a plus size (is that what they call it) or on the narrow scale, perhaps it should not matter so much as long as the curves appear in the right places – or should it? Before you groan, remember one man’s meat is another man’s poison. 

Talking of curves, yours truly has a boringly mishy-mashy experience with weight, first short fat chubby toddler; second, long lanky ever back bending shy teenager. So you begin to think, "me and weight issues are like men and women, we come from different planets. That’s until sometime around the Christmas period when you begin to notice that some uncharacteristic pieces of flesh have begun to creep up on you, of all places, around your waist. So what does someone do? Begin to look more carefully at the level of oily stuff in the buffet that should not end on your plate or the amount of malt that should not be going down your throat, which are both not very easy to check except, of course, exercise. Bingo! 

That is how yours truly found out that early Sunday mornings in Kigali are not just a preoccupation of people who just want to be at peace with their God, but a hell lot more who are worried about the mechanical state of their bodies. From sports men, to couples safely in their mid-life perhaps battling this or the other crisis, one of which is body weight. At the beginning, I was worried sick that I would never last a mile, the encouragement came in generously from clearly overweight competition doing a hell lot of some good running. 

For a few weeks it was so nice so that I dared go up Mt. Kigali and these small nondescript signs written on "Fazenda Senga” led me to a serene, cold neighbourhood on which some enterprising chap has put up a horse stable – believe me – a place where men can play with horses, right on the top of a mountain! Talk about genius! Anyway, the results of that unplanned mountain climb were not so palatable, a horrible body ache, a bad fever, and bad bout of re-energized malaria, one after the other. 

The bad news is that after a few weeks of weekend jogging there are no results, which is what I should expect. Losing weight, am told is like climbing a mountain, yet climbing a mountain apparently sometimes does nothing to one’s weight. The good news is now I have a reason to wake up very early on weekends and at least look forward to a relaxing view of horse riders at "Fazenda Sengha”, whatever that means. But if I can’t run up the mountain, I promise not to treat myself to that beautiful spectacle and that of Kigali spread out down right at my feet. Enough said. 

This Sunday, try exercising. 
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