13 Oct 2015

Leading healthy lifestyles include the kind of food that people eat , says councillor for Mahalapye West, Mr Nametso Koma. Mr Koma said this during Madiba Senior Secondary School PTA and Cresta-Mahalapye cultural evening in Mahalapye recently.

He said there was no denying the fact that innumerable health complications and diseases such as obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, among others, were caused by what people ate.

He noted that traditional food such as bogobe, dikgobe and kabu had profound benefits, adding that their benefits could best be realised when they were prepared the traditional way.

Mr Koma said a good number of Setswana food items had high fibre content and fibre was vital to the health of a person as it aided digestion.

He explained that the nation stood to benefit immensely if Batswana could return to their roots being consumption of traditional food.

He said the government had competing priorities hence if the number of people suffering from these diseases could be significantly reduced, funds could be diverted to other pressing needs such as power generation and water reticulation.

He said what people ate, should also determine who they were, their culture and what they ate also contributed to the extension of their Setswana culture.

Mr Koma said what was on the menu was a true reflection of diversity as a nation, adding that various dishes that they were to indulge on should serve as reminder that their nation was made up of diverse ethnicities.

He said the food that they shall be enjoying, should not only excite their culinary tastes but also entrench the social cohesion they have enjoyed since the birth of this country.

He said the cohesiveness of this nation was indeed envied by many, and therefore, they have the obligation of preserving this aspect of their culture for it has long shown the outside world that indeed there was unity in diversity.

Further, Mr Koma said that cultural events like this one could be turned into tourist attraction events whereby the modern tourists could not only be interested in seeing wildlife and fauna but also learning about the Botswana culture.

He said Mahalapye had a very rich cultural heritage, and various ethnic groups in it could bear testimony to this.

He noted that through culture tourism, their village could raise money which be invested in community projects they wished to undertake, adding that a step in the right direction also has the effect of generating self-employment opportunities especially for the youth.

He said this could be realized through the formation of cultural groups, and they could generate income through participation in both local and international events and this would certainly reduce unemployment.

Mr Koma also said event such as this was a reminder that government institutions such as schools need to forge partnerships with the private businesses.

He said partnerships of this nature are critical to the development of this nation. He said there were shortages of resources in schools such as computers, scanners, printers and photocopiers among others.

He said the government’s intention of turning Batswana into an IT community is thus disturbed by this state of affairs and it was through partnerships of this kind that the PTA could raise funds to bridge the resource shortfalls that some schools experience Ends