"You're too fat!"

Shopping here is not a leisurely Saturday afternoon outing where you can walk around in a nice air-conditioned mall browsing at clothes nicely hung on their designated racks (this applies to most stores in America except maybe Old Navy :) and then stop at the food court for a quick lunch from Chick-Fil-A. 

The only shopping we have here in Mbarara consists of going to the used clothing market where you have to walk past raw goat's meat and step through muddy sewage only to dig through piles of used clothes that are often dirty and stained. Sometimes though if you look hard you can find pretty nice clothes from places like GAP and Abercrombie. Well one Saturday I went to the clothes market here with my teammates. I was looking for some skirts (of course...what else would I wear here!) and found one that I thought would be good for going out to visit patients. As I was holding it up to see if I thought it might fit (because there are no dressing rooms here) the woman who ran this particular 'stall' said, "You are too fat for that one"! As if I don't have enough of a complex already about my weight being a woman! 

Here in Uganda it is supposed to be a compliment to tell someone they are 'fat' or 'big' because it means you eat well and have money. Well, I don't care how long I live here being told that I am 'fat' will never be a compliment to me! First of all I thought, this woman is dumb....why would she tell me I am 'too fat' she should want to make a sell regardless, right?! Secondly by her telling me that I was 'fat' she totally ruined her chance of making a sell from me at all! And thirdly, this lady was huge compared to me...how could she even call me 'fat'!!! She tried to show me another skirt and I told her as politely as I could (even though I was furious inside) that, no I did not care to buy from her. I tried to explain to her that telling an American that they are fat is very rude in our culture, but I don't think she understood. Can you imagine...being at the mall in a store in America and a salesperson walking up to you as you look at something to buy and them saying, "You are too fat to wear that"? Some things I will never understand about the culture here!