Feature The pregnant men of Sikaman

IT is not readily known whether carrying a pot-belly 24 hours a day is a blessing or a curse. Whatever it is, the distended belly has become fashionable among both the poor and the rich. A poor person may acquire a pot-belly and add it to his curriculum vitae (CV). It is not against the constitution of Ghana. It is perfectly legal.

However, the source of that pot-belly might either be worms or at best malnutrition. At any rate, such a miserable pot-belly is often mistaken for prosperity and the owner is proud of it. It is his only asset is his undignified existence. It is his bonafide property.

The rich man's pot-belly is of an entirely different biography. It has its own life history and matchless credentials. It is normally not inherited from the forebears. It is acquired through painstaking effort at the beer bars; pouring the old stuff down the throat like a mini-waterfall while grinning delightfully at the chilling sensation and the alcoholic diffusion.

There are different sizes ranging from portable to large to custom to jumbo. Some of the portable bellies are in fact only under construction. With time, they get upgraded and 'anointed', where upon they become shiny and require a new status in accordance with their capacity and tenacity. In due course, they can be described as large, christened as such and outdoored with brassband music.

When a belly is custom-designed the temptation is always to blame God for being a trifle inconsiderate of the artistic beauty of the person's mid-section.

But need we blame the Almighty who brought us into this world nice, handsome and comely only for us to protest and say we want .to carry a large pot in front of us or around the waist?

Well, it is not only beer that enlarges the human stomach. There is something called 'food' which can do worse things to the human frame. The problem is that some people religiously worship their stomachs. My old-time friend, Joseph Korkorti used to eat four large balls of kenkey and break-dance for more.

He confided in me that he had the kind of stomach that was more or less automatic. This is quite amazing when you reckon with the fact that Korkorti has never had a pot-belly.

That is not so with others. They eat heavily and the result is the gradual development of a massive pot-belly. They don't take beer. They are only specialists in food, ranging from kokonte to waakye, and a jumbo pot-belly is their final certificate of distinction among fellow mortals .

Before I got very sick I had a pot-belly that I hoped to dispense with in good time.

However, it was getting pretty difficult because my appetite for the good life was increasing, not waning. There was nothing I could do about it. At a point I decided to exercise and got my wife laughing at me. After about three minutes at it, I started panting like a dog, completely out of breath. "Bring me ice water," I gasped.

May be, I would have to refer the matter to God, I thought. So I prayed to God to tune out my appetite and boost my will-power to enable me to forgo my favourite brand of beer. The good old Lord listened to my prayers and I stopped drinking. When I told my wife I was off booze, she didn't believe it. After all, the pot-belly was still hanging on, because I was still eating a lot of mead. I just could not offload the pot. I weighed 115kg at the scales with the potential of bloating even more. That was when my heart probably started failing.

Although some of the doctors suspected poisoning probably because my kidneys were also failing and my liver was grinding gradually to a halt, my enormous weight might have contributed to my predicament. The doctors said I wouldn't survive.

Then God intervened. Today I preach the gospel according to radiant health. Currently I am a slim macho and I dread growing fat again. I don't want to join the fraternity of the pregnant men of Sikaman of which I nearly became the vice-president.

The waistline of every human being is a possible indication of the person's state of health. At least, that is what medical science teaches us. The larger the waistline the higher the possibility of getting heart enlargement, hypertension and Type 2 diabetes mellitus. If you are unlucky and develop a cocktail of these three ailments, you better start writing your obituary.

Exercise is one sure way of avoiding the pot or doing away with it. There are various exercises that burn fat and special ones that reduce the waistline. Any gym that is well resourced and properly manned can help you to get back to what God originally wanted you to be.

However, the most counter-productive thing to do is to exercise and soon after sit down to gulp down large quantities of beer before assaulting a bowl of fufu and fatty meat. It would be better for you if you did not exercise at all.