Staff Photographer
‘Range Rover Range Rover send Mary right over,” my primary school friends would say.
This was a game that consisted of two teams where each one formed two separate lines that were joined by hands. The aim of the game was to have somebody from the opposing team running across to the other team in the hope of ”cutting” through the hand link of any two people.
Even before I started running across, my playmates, both from my team and the opposing side, would start laughing at me.
“She’ll never make it, just look at how thin she is,” one would remark.
“Why did they ask for the weak one,” my teammates would loudly lament.
These words would tear through my heart and even before my first step I knew I would lose anyway. And as soon as I was halfway down the field, the jeers and laughter from both sides would ring through my mind and make me weaker with every step.
Then my children colleagues were merciless. Today my adult friends are no better; the only difference is that they don’t laugh at me when I’m watching.
“Mary if you come to stay with me for just two weeks, your mother will not recognise you,” a friend remarked recently.
I laughed it away but later on that night I lay on my bed just wondering when people will ever stop talking about my thinness.
In my family it’s generally accepted that my appetite for food surpasses all the others (with the exception of my dad). I remember one time I had to stay with my older sister for two months while I was looking for a house.
“Staying with Mary is harmful to my weight. Every time I get home I find that she has prepared a meal. We indulge together, then a little while later, she will get us some snack or another mini meal and we will enjoy it together. But a week later I have added a few kilos and when we go somewhere together, people think I am eating all the food in the house and starving her,” she once told her friend.
There was a time I dared not decline a meal in social settings, even though I may have been satisfied, because of the impression my hosts or other visitors would have of me.
“No wonder you are so thin. Are you on a diet to ensure you maintain your shape?” are remarks I have to take in my stride.
Being a thin person in an African setting where the women take great pleasure in having meat on their bones has been a frustrating experience for me.
It was only when I was 19 that I truly looked at my mirror and took the time to appreciate me for me, my thin body and all. After all, I was meant to be the ugly one according to the “set” standards around me.
But today I am proud to be thin as it is who I am because I have realised that it is not a condition that I brought upon myself, it is who I am. And my persona is not defined by my weight, but by the person I am. My intelligence, compassion and zest for living my life to the fullest are not determined by thinness. And above all I have learned not to label people based on their appearance but on their intrinsic values. My only regret is that I wasted so much time of my life listening to people’s definition of my life based on how I looked and forgot to live my life fully while trying to hide who I was.
Mary Kiio is a freelance journalist and an events organiser. She lives in Nairobi