The headline from a few days ago is chilling: Almost half of Mauritian teenagers are pre-diabetic. According to a senior official at the Ministry of Health, this could be a world record.
These statistics, resulting from a 2022 survey of young Mauritians between the ages of 12 and 19 years old, are simultaneously alarming and expected. "Alarming" because they show that what was once considered as a disease of the elderly may now be threatening young people even before they hit puberty. "Expected" because diabetes has been woven into Mauritian family trees and quotidian landscapes for so long that in the face of everincreasing sedentariness, it was only a matter of time before this public health crisis further spread its tentacles.
Most of the rhetoric around the disease today focuses on diabetes as a lifestyle disease: in order to reduce one's chances of falling into its clutches, one's best allies are exercise and healthy eating patterns. This is necessary and important - after all, the most important thing people should know about diabetes is how to combat it. In this piece, I do not seek to repeat what has been so well-said before. Rather, I seek to supplement the existing conversation around diabetes in Mauritius by illuminating some of its additional facets.
Firstly, I wonder about the predominant rhetoric of individual responsibility in order to address a public health situation, without a corresponding call for accountability from the state. After all, fitness is political. To frame it in another way: it is true that all Mauritians should face their individual responsibility to move more. But how does one make this happen when the cost of living doesn't stop rising and gym memberships are priced as luxury items? How does one go on a simple walk in a country where pavements are intermittent, street-lighting is capricious, and (in the case of women) harassment on the streets is a constant reality? How does one replace restaurant dates with hiking outings if the latter involves risk of assault?
Secondly, it is crucial to pay attention to the gendered dimensions of the phenomenon. In the aforementioned article, young boys and girls were described as being equally affected by pre-diabetes. But, pre-diabetes is correlated with other health challenges for young girls, such as Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS), an endocrine and metabolic disorder that affects around 10% of women of reproductive age. The potential health implications of PCOS are wide-ranging, from excess hirsutism to infertility and an increased risk for certain cancers. Beyond the devastating impacts on health, social repercussions can be brutal in a society where girls and women of all ages continue to be defined by their physical appearances. As a recent case of body-shaming illuminates, a woman suffering from PCOS could occupy a seat in Parliament and still be defined by her weight.
Finally, I often wonder about tracing the historical dimensions of the disease - not as a way of relinquishing agency ("Diabetes is not my fault and I can't control whether I get it or not"), but rather as a way of reframing narratives of shame and guilt, and contextualising today's struggle. For Guyanese-American poet Rajiv Mohabir, who writes from the afterlives of indentured labour in the Caribbean, diabetes is a colonial scar on our genes. Indeed, recent epigenetic studies have underscored that populations of South Asian descent have a genetic predisposition to diabetes.
For those of us in Mauritius who can trace our ancestry (either in whole or in part) back to India, this means that our ancestors had to live through colonial-era famines and food deprivation so harrowing that over generations, their bodies got more efficient at storing fat and sugar as a survival technique. These "thrifty genes" increased their chances of making it through times of duress; today, however, their influence means that South Asian descent may work out more and eat better than other groups - and stillbe considered pre-diabetic. Once our ancestors came to Mauritius as indentured labourers, they had to rely on carbohydrateheavy diets in order to sustain back-breaking days of work in the fields. The necessary sustenance of days past - the piping hot faratas for breakfast, the plate full of rice for dinner - is today the comfort food that, heartbreakingly, both links us to a heritage of resilience and literally poisons our future.
Of course, these dynamics are by no means restricted to those of South Asian descent. While comparable studies linking diabetes to "sugar island" histories of slave- ry are scarce (a fact that is in and of itself problematic), the United States offers an interesting case study: The calorie-rich diets that used to nourish enslaved populations through the horrors of field labour have today translated to the beloved "soul food" of African-American households, which delights taste buds while - in this era of desk jobs and sedentary social-media scrolling - increasing diabetes risk. When taking into account additional social factors such as poverty and limited access to healthcare, the resulting picture is stark: In 2022, AfricanAmerican adults were "60% more likely than white adults to be diagnosed with diabetes."
Many of us thinking about these issues today have never lived through colonialism. But, we still carry its legacies in the shape of our bodies, in the visceral fat around our organs, in the ways our cells express themselves. In a way, perhaps, today's fight against diabetes is a continuation of a generation-long struggle to reclaim our bodies from the colonial imprint.