Coronavirus, a Setback to Fitness Businesses in Juba
Exercise helps prevent excess weight gain or help maintain weight loss, improves moods, boosts energy, promotes better sleep and helps prevent or manage many health problems and concerns, including: stroke, metabolic syndrome, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, depression, anxiety, falls and many types of cancer, according to health and fitness experts.
Proprietors and operators of gyms and fitness centers in Juba say business is down as compared to the time before the outbreak of Covid-19. They say business has even slowed down further in the past between December 2020 and January 2021 after many of their clients travelled out of Juba to celebrate the festive season.
Diing Biar Deng, managing director of the Juba-based Doctor Biar Sports Complex says the fitness business is no longer booming as it was before the COVID-19 lockdown when they were shut down for close to six months.
“After the lockdown it slowed down and now opens up again and now, we are going for holidays, it’s a normal thing every year.”
“It slows down between December and January. People are usually in a holiday mood. They’re not exercising, a lot of them travel sometimes with their families to the village, Nairobi, (and) Khartoum, you know South Sudanese, they have big families and they are always split up.” Deng told The Insider.
Despite the challenges, the Doctor Biar Sports Complex has about 400 members who subscribe on a monthly basis in different sports categories. they had to introduce a morning session to reduce overcrowding in the evening hours, although it meant they had to cut the prices on morning sessions to attract customers.
“In the gym we have two membership; there’s 23,000 ssp a month, you can pay and have access anytime you want and then we have another membership that you can pay 18,000 that you are allowed to only come in the morning hours.” Deng said, noting the charges are bound to change in the course of the year.
“Evening hours are very crowded so we encourage people to come in the morning so we made the morning (sessions) a little bit cheaper than the evening.” Director Deng explains.
Deng says he is surprised at how much South Sudanese love exercising and sports in general. He says their enthusiasm gives the Doctor Biar Sports Complex the desire to even offer more and better services to its clients.
Another successful and popular fitness centre in Juba is the Tarawa Breeze Gym and Spa in the Hai Tarawa residential area. Francis Ayiga Okayo, the managing director at Tarawa Breeze Gym and Spa, says the outbreak of Coronavirus in South Sudan was a setback to the business because even after the lockdown was lifted, he had to work remotely from Uganda since the government there had not yet opened its borders at the time. He said it was difficult to sustain his Kenyan Trainer who had nowhere to go after the lockdown.
“The clients who knew him were able to come and support him, even give him food and all those kinds of things to encourage him. But then we had to look for money from elsewhere to keep him because he also has a family in Kenya. So, we paid his pay, we did not even reduce it, we did not even give him an excuse that it’s COVID.” Okayo adds.
The Tarawa Breeze Gym offers services ranging from weight lifting and general workout equipment, aerobics, sauna and steam bath. Sauna is a dry hit room mainly meant for sweating due to the high temperatures, while a Steam Bath is a water vapor as a result of heating water which steams the body.
Okayo says when the government lifted the Covid-19 lockdown and gyms reopened in July this year, he was relieved as over 200 former clients started to come back to work-out at the gym. He had to also split the sessions into two; morning and evening sessions, to reduce overcrowding in the evening hours.
Tarawa Breeze Gym charges an attraction fee of 18,000 South Sudanese Pounds per month as the gym picks up from scratch due to the impact of COVID-19. But Okayo says in 2021 the prices will increase because he plans to introduce new services such as massage, physiotherapy, beauty pallor or unisex salon for making ups and shavings, and an organic restaurant with local South Sudanese dishes.
Okayo says people should take exercise seriously and not necessarily go to gyms but also jogging or merely doing pushups at home to keep the body healthy.
“As much as we promote exercise, it’s also good to blend it with the kind of food we eat to ensure we leave longer, you know. After you finish studies and you are now giving service to your country then simple things, just because of what you eat and your lifestyle, takes your life before your time.” Okayo added.
The cover photo features the Soccer Lives Forever team during one of their exercise sessions at the Dr. Biar Sports Centre. December 2020 (Photo: David Mono Danga)
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