Undercover anthropology at the gym

I have been writing this post for months.

I am not an exercise freak. I don't like working out, and if I were naturally skinny I would not go to the gym. No way, why should I? But I'm not, so, for the past 20 years (YIKES) I have been "going to the gym". Aha. "Going to the gym" applies to short-lived periods of almost obsessively working out as well as to buying a 20 day pass for the UMD gym and having 10 days left unused at the end of the semester.

The first year in Congo I didn't do much to stay in shape except walking during fieldwork and getting malaria. I don't think I had ever been as sick as I was during my first malaria, and I certainly don't ever, EVER, want to come back from the field feeling like hell to find three +++ next to the malaria test results. Malaria sucks, but boy did I my butt look great afterwards!! The day I could finally get up from bed was the first and last day I could fit into the little Chinese dress Didier brought me from Beijing. My malaria skinniness lasted about 10 days.

The second year in Congo I started walking with a friend from work. I stuck to it for a couple of months, but I soon got bored and quit. Later last year we joined the swimming pool place and began aqua-gym. I still try to go, but schedules, transportation and other excuses keep me from sticking to it in a regular basis. Then they opened a gym around the corner. Literally, around the corner.

Our office building sits in a large plot that holds other buildings: a warehouse, the (former) headquarters of the demilitarization unit, a small apartment building, a doctor's office, a duty-free shop, and a couple un-marked businesses that come and go. Last year a young woman opened a gym next to the warehouse. No more excuses mamacita. I joined the gym in September and was very good at going until we left Kin in November.

Soon after starting the gym I realized that it was a great place to do some undercover anthropology. The gym was a micro-cosmos, a sub-set of the ex-pat community, a window into the lesser known world of the Lebanese colony in Kin.

The first lesson I learned was that ladies here took exercising seriously. Step aerobics were not simply a matter of jumping on and off the step and trying a few kicks in different directions. The step class at the Kin gym resembled more the auditions for a Bollywood musical than a humble workout session.

Mambo 1,2,3, step and knee and turn and kick.
Semi-jump, salsa step, pony, stomp and turn.
Arabesque, basketball, two hamstrings, V step, front kick.
Cartwheel, somersault, split and triple pirouette (almost, I swear)

I thought I could get by just kinda following but that was not the case. I was supposed to follow and KNOW what "pony" meant. Mastering one sequence was not enough, you had to do it starting with the right leg and then with the left one, "mirroring" all the fre@king series. THEN, you had to remember every sequence as we build up sequence over sequence until looking like honest to G*d professional dancers.

I can't dance and I'm not gracious even standing still, so you can imagine how I looked trying to do all those pony-mambo sequences. I chose to skip the step class and concentrate on the easier ones like "kick boxing" and did ok for a bit. Then the original owner left and the new instructor arrived. She explained she wouldn't be able to teach back to back classes, so I was left with no choice but trying the step class again.

Thankfully the new instructor didn't have as much experience with step-aerobics because her sequences aren't as complicated as the old ones and this has allowed me to catch on. I realize now how I have lost the ability to memorize. These sequences are about memory, mostly. It is true that I'll never look pretty doing the arabesque but the hardest part is not jumping without tripping, but remembering that skip-skip comes after hamstring after V-step after backwards pony.

Seems like in this age of artificial memories our brains are becoming lazy. At least mine is. I don't memorize phone numbers because they're all saved in my phone. Nor email addresses, nor names and last names. Everything is saved somewhere and I can find it. Perhaps my butt muscles will never see the light of day behind those pounds of prime quality bacon I carry around, but at least my brain will benefit from the mambo-double kick deal.

On a final slightly unrelated note I want to say that at least here my fellow gym goers don't know where Guatemala is. They may not even know about the myth of Latin Americans and dancing, so thankfully here I don't need to explain myself and say "no, not all Latinos can dance."