Sports? No Thank You

The Last Word

Never have I been gladder to live in Namibia that right now because it’s that time of year again; you’ve spent the last month enjoying the holiday season, ignoring the scales and the fact that you no longer fit into your favourite pants and relishing in the abundance of food and alcohol. Life is comfortable and pleasant and then all of a sudden the first of January rolls around and across the rest of the world, like a whisper on the wind, you hear it; a word so seeped in connotation and mental pain that its enough to make anyone go back to bed and cram their faces with the last of the Christmas Cake.

I refer of course to the word detox, a health freaks holy grail and everyone else’s personal guilt trip. Ok so it’s easy to get caught up in the hype (‘it’s a brand new year, it’s a brand new you’ and all that) and granted the theory behind it, the idea of getting healthy and cleaning up your body a little bit, isn’t actually that bizarre but seriously when it comes down to it the detox period isn’t just about cutting back on beer and ciggs it’s a golden opportunity for the smug healthy types out there to lord it over the rest of us who have maybe eaten a little bit too much and perhaps shouldn’t have taken that last glass of Shiraz. Suddenly a small percentage of the population begins jogging and eating miniscule salads and talking about their carb intake at every available opportunity, making everyone else feel guilty about their wobbly bits and weakness for milk tart (not that we’re getting personal here) and why? Because January is the month of detox, the only time of year when a whole country can justifiably be guilt tripped into drinking hot water with lemon (dis-GUS-ting) instead of regular tea.

But while the rest of the world is frantically trying to lower their calorie count and spending an hour sweating away on the treadmill life in Africa goes on as normal, things are relaxed, food is thankfully still abundant and no one is interested in the benefits of going on a celery based diet thank you very much. Thank goodness for that!