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while you drink. Accompanying the tea is a big piece of homemade chimondimwii, corn bread with a bottom layer of margarine and another layer of peanut butter on top of the margarine. The bread is so big and filling. I could not finish my piece so I took the rest home for lunch. Only for a dollar!
At lunch, Piri goes into the market where they sell dry foods like fish, soyabeans or sengenyama, nuts, millet, sorghum and all kinds of traditional foods. Along the wall fence next to dry foods they sell bolts, nuts, hammers, axes, pirated music and traditional herbs to enhance all kinds of performances. It is here where you will find a whole kitchen with big pots full of sadza nenyama. You can buy a big mountain of sadza with fish, chicken or beef with vegetables and onion with tomatoes. Fresh chilli is free. Again, all this for a dollar. If you want a change from sadza for lunch, you can get a packet of fresh hot chips for only five rand or 50 cents. 
At night, you can buy the same amount of food for another dollar. Then enjoy Chibuku or bottled beer in Vito tavern. One pint of beer is one dollar. One scud is one dollar.  
“Sis, how can I not get fat?” Piri asked me, admiring herself. “In the bar, men turn their heads to look at me these days.”
That is true. I went in the bar to get her the other day.  Piri was wearing a tight jean blue skirt, a brown wig, a tight yellow T-shirt and high-heeled yellow shoes to match. Men whistled. One of them said, “Yaa, paita chimoko apa. Akabatana. That’s a woman. She is all together. ”
They were certainly not referring to me. Piri is fat. If she keeps on eating the way she does without exercising, Piri will soon be obese. In the old days, fat used to be beautiful. We did not talk about healthy risks then.
Back in the village the number of fat people could be counted on the fingers of one hand. Even if all the villages in 10 kraal heads between the rivers Save and Chinyika were put together, you would not get more than five fat people.
Among the grandmothers, the only fat one was VaChidhuruvazi vekwa Jemwa. She was wide, short and round. VaChidhuruvazi was not her real name. It was a nickname. Her pendulous breasts preceded her while her bottom extended so far backwards like it was not part of her. 
When she walked, her round bottom danced to its own tune while her breasts and the stomach danced to another. A baby could sit and balance well on her bottom. During the days she breast fed, people who saw her said she threw one breast over her shoulder and the baby simply latched onto it as VaChidhuruvazi walked. That is how long her breasts were. And when she got on the dance floor during ceremonies, people did not dance too close to her because her bottom could easily knock anyone over.
VaChidhuruvazi was always fat and strong. She worked hard and grew the biggest yams, tsenza and rice along Chinyika river. Her fatness was not in any way an obstacle to work. She died very old, long after independence.
There were no fat men in all the villages. Not even one single one I can remember. The men were either big and strong or they were short and strong. The biggest among the men was Mupetabere, the boxer, and of course Chidhoma, the giant with hairy arms. Chidhoma could get up at dawn when there was full moon, and then he smoked something potent and digs out the whole anthill all by himself before sunrise. Then he went home, ate sadza with dried meat, chimukuyu, or dry fish from the Save River. Later on he went fishing, hunting or worked in his garden before he went off to join other men and women for the village seven days home brew.
Nobody just woke up and went out to drink. That was not done. You worked hard before you could eat. Take my uncle Sekuru Six One. He called himself Six One because when he was living in Mbare long before independence, six guys tried to fight him in Vito bar. He fought them with his bare hands, leaving them all flat on the ground.  He said they were urban fat boys. He compared them to broilers, fat chickens, fed on tea and bread. Such men did not have the strength of a village boy like Sekuru Six One who grew up on millet sadza, peanut butter and mutakura, beans mixed with corn. “Handirwi nehuku. I do not fight with chickens,” he would say, laughing and patting his strong chest.
The only fat girl near our village was Primrose Muzorori of Muzorori & Sons Store. We were of the same age. But you never saw Primrose anywhere near us. She spent most of her time behind the store counter eating lollies, sweets, biscuits and anything else she liked. During the school term, she went to boarding school. She was the youngest and the most spoilt of Muzorori’s 10 children. Primrose was fat and pretty. She had everything. 
I avoided seeing her in the store. My jealous and envy of her consumed me. One time my mother and I got off the bus at Muzorori & Sons on our way from Enkeldoorn to collect my birth certificate required by the Rhodesian education system in order for me write Grade Seven examinations. No birth certificate, no exam. It was that simple. My mother took me into Muzorori & Sons Store for a Fanta and buns. I really did not want to go in there but I could not have said no to Fanta and buns. Such a special treat was rare.
I wore my school uniform because that was my best dress. Here I was, enjoying my Fanta and buns, savouring every moment, mixing them well in my mouth and taking time to swallow it. Then Primrose appeared into the counter from the back door. She was this fat girl wearing a tight pretty pink dress with a white collar and buttons at the front. Her chest was already quite well developed, unlike mine.
She was sucking a big orange sweet. Primrose looked at me, from bottom to top and down again at oversize Mariposa shoes I had borrowed from my older sister. Mai Muzorori, Primrose’s mother, then pulled me by the shoulder and made me stand next to Primrose. She addressed my mother by her totem and said, “Look at these two, Nyati. They were born the same year with Primrose but look at how skinny your daughter is. She is not growing. Check if she does not have bilharzia or ringworms.” I wanted to sink into the floor and never come out again.
Primrose frowned at me and said, “What grade are you in?” I told her I was in Grade Seven. She said I should go back to Grade Six until I grow a bit more. Then she disappeared behind the counter, probably to grab another sweet or biscuit. 
I saw Primrose once after independence, just before she got married to a businessman’s son from Hwedza.   Then I did not see her again until last week in a supermarket in Harare. As I wheeled my trolley down the aisle, I saw this big woman coming towards me, smiling and shouting, “Irene!” Irene was my name before my Diaspora experience. It still is, but only on the birth certificate and to those who knew me during my skinny and poverty-stricken village days.
I recognised her at once. Primrose Muzorori of Muzorori & Sons Store, the fat girl who lived, played and slept behind the store counter surrounded by sweets and Choice Assorted biscuits. 
The happy fat girl and source of my childhood jealous and envy. Here she was, cheerful, pretty and very fat, pushing a trolley full of groceries. “Hesi mhani Sha! Haa,  Irene, my brother tells me you are back from the Diaspora and you are writing stories in the paper. Chimbondinyorawo kani. Write about me,” Primrose said, hugging me and laughing. I hugged her big body, too. I could feel the old jealousies leaving me.
She said I looked well and I complimented her, too, as you do when you have not seen each other for many years. “You are still beautiful. You have changed little,” I said. But she said, “Ah, iwe you lie. I am too fat. The doctor said if I keep eating like this without exercising, I will have heart disease and high blood pressure. I already have diabetes. In fact, he says I am not just fat, I am obese. I have to lose weight. It’s not a joke, I tell you,” she said. “What about the gym?” I asked.
She said she hated the gym because people stare at her. Besides, her husband said she was all right as she was because he married her for her fatness. “Fat was beautiful,  in the past. But, Shaa, with the lazy lives we live now in the city, it is not good to be like this.” She pointed to her tummy and her arms. “Ndozviita sei zvese izvi?” she asked. “Do you know of any slimming tablets?” I still said she should exercise but she laughed. We exchanged phone numbers so we can talk more about how to conquer weight. 
Later that day I asked Piri if she remembered Primrose. Piri said, “How can I forget her. Ah, that one, kuzvida! She was so proud of herself.” Then Piri asked if Primrose was still fat and I said she was fatter that VaChidhuruvazi. Piri made this funny hissing sound, pulled in her bottom lip and said, “And zvinobhowa. It’s boring. That girl had fat from the time she was born and up to now, she still beats us in fat. What does she eat that some of us do not eat? I want to know.” Telling Piri that Primrose was struggling with weight was a waste of time.
Primrose is not alone. For those of us who can afford to buy what we want to eat, kune vamwe vanowana, we are becoming fat. Really fat. And so are our children.
Our children spend time in front of the television or playing video games. They are on the internet all day. They take breaks to eat. They hardly walk anywhere. In the past we walked to school and played a lot in the school grounds. But these days, children are driven to school and get picked up. Unless the school forces them to exercise, they do not. 
When we moved to the city, we stopped growing our own food the way VaChidhuruvazi, Chidhoma and all those people in the village did. They worked hard and ate good organic food. Most of us no longer go to the fields to work. We do not cook because the maids do it for us. We do not garden because that is the work of the garden boys. Everyday after work we watch television. For hours. And we eat. When do we exercise?
Urbanisation, increasing lack of activity and easy access to cheap and affordable foods, especially deep-fried foods, breads, soft drinks and foods high in salt, sugar and fat is making us too fat. Such kind of fat is causing a significant risk to our health. 
There was a time when fat on a hard-working village woman was normal. Because we no longer work as hard, fat has stopped being beautiful and normal. It is called obesity and a danger to our health.
Takada chikafu chechirungu nemagariro acho. Zvine mubairo. There is a price to be paid for our love of Western-type junk food and sedentary lifestyles. We must exercise. Getting up early to get to the gym or to walk or run requires change of mindset discipline. But it can be done the same way we used to get up early to work in the fields.

Dr Sekai Nzenza is a writer and cultural critic. She holds a PhD in International Relations and works as a development consultant.