Instant Diabetes

I can’t believe how much sugar the people here eat!

I remember during my first week here, I made someone a cup of tea. Having seen that people like their tea sweet, I put in two teaspoonful of sugar. He took a sip, looked at me, and said, “Oh, there’s no sugar in it.” And he proceeded to add another three spoons of sugar. At the time, I thought maybe it was just him that preferred his tea sickly sweet. But as time went on, I realized that everyone wanted to get that sugar high. A few weeks back, there was a multi-day workshop at the hospital with people from other clinics attending. Some of them stayed at the guesthouse. At breakfast, each table had a heaping bowl of sugar and it was always empty when everyone finished.

Now when I make someone a cup of tea, I serve it with a bowl of sugar on the side and just watch as they put spoonful after spoonful of sugar into it, until it goes well past the saturation point. There is always a sludge of semi-dissolved sugar at the bottom of the cup, which is slurped up at the end. And that’s how they enjoy their tea-flavored sugar water; it’s instant diabetes – just add water.

Ironically, poverty is probably the reason that people here haven’t all developed type II diabetes despite the incredible intake of refined sugar. Obesity is virtually unknown here. Almost everyone engages in physical activities on a daily basis, from tending the fields to fishing to walking or cycling long distances to go places. If Zambia ever reaches the level of affluence of the West, this collective sweet tooth would surely send the whole country into a sustained hyperglycemic state.