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Backpacking with a Belly in Indonesia
by Lara McKinley
      

Excerpts:

I am fat. I have a belly that wobbles when I walk and a bum that echoes my movements. Don’t get me wrong. This is not some life-altering confession à la Alcoholics Anonymous: “Hello, my name is Lara and I am fat.” Rather, it’s an easy way for you to picture me, climbing up a rope, ass over end into the back of a rocking Indonesian fishing boat, desperately trying not to bounce into the propeller and to retain, well, at least a crumb of dignity. . .

. . .

. . . Preparing to leave an island on a local boat, I chartered a taxi to the wharf. We’d gone only a few hundred yards when the car stopped, picking up a host of “cousins” who piled in to chat up the Westerner. Sitting between two boys who claimed 25 years and whose legs were half mine in length and width, I wondered what I’d gotten myself into.

“Do you have a boyfriend?” one asked.

“Yes, I do. He is very tall,” my hands stretch above my head, “and very strong,” hands stretched wide, extending my shoulders.

“Well, you could get an Indonesian boyfriend.”

“Why?”

“Well, we might be small, but we are strong and hot like chili . . .

 

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