The stuff that goes on in our  continent.  Uh! Uh! Uh!

Chi Jaama

Joe Sambou


>From: Malamin Johnson <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Gambia and related-issues mailing list
><[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Mauritania's 'wife-fattening' farm
>Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 16:19:06 +0000
>
>Mauritania's 'wife-fattening' farm
>By Pascale Harter
>BBC, Mauritania
>
>
>Obesity is so revered among Mauritania's white Moor Arab population that
>the
>young girls are sometimes force-fed to obtain a weight the government has
>described as "life-threatening".
>A generation ago, over a third of women in the country were force-fed as
>children - Mauritania is one of the few African countries where, on
>average,
>girls receive more food than boys.
>Now only around one in 10 girls are treated this way. The treatment has its
>roots in fat being seen as a sign of wealth - if a girl was thin she was
>considered poor, and would not be respected.
>But in rural Mauritania you still see the rotund women that the country is
>famous for. They walk slowly, dainty hands on the end of dimpled arms,
>pinching multicoloured swathes of fabric together to keep the biting sand
>from their faces.
>"I make them eat lots of dates, lots and lots of couscous and other
>fattening food," Fatematou, a voluminous woman in her sixties who runs a
>kind of "fat farm" in the northern desert town of Atar, told BBC World
>Service's The World Today programme.
>had no clients when I met her, she said she was soon expecting to take
>charge of some seven-year-olds.
>"I make them eat and eat and eat. And then drink lots and lots of water,"
>she explained.
>"I make them do this all morning. Then they have a rest. In the afternoon
>we
>start again. We do this three times a day - the morning, the afternoon and
>the evening."
>Punishment
>She said the girls could end up weighing between 60 to 100 kilograms, "with
>lots of layers of fat."
>Fatematou said that it was rare for a girl to refuse to eat, and that if
>they did, she was helped by the child's parents.
>"They punish the girls and in the end the girls eat," she said.
>"If a girl refuses we start nicely, saying 'come on, come on' sweetly,
>until
>she agrees to eat."
>Fatematou admitted that sometimes the girls cried at the treatment.
>"Of course they cry - they scream," she said.
>"We grab them and we force them to eat. If they cry a lot we leave them
>sometimes for a day or two and then we come back to start again.
>"They get used to it in the end."
>She argued that in the end the girls were grateful.
>"When they are small they don't understand, but when they grow up they are
>fat and beautiful," she said.
>"They are proud and show off their good size to make men dribble. Don't you
>think that's good?"
>Change
>However, the view that a fat girl is more desirable is now becoming seen as
>old-fashioned.
>A study by the Mauritanian ministry of health has found that force-feeding
>is dying out. Now only 11% of young girls are force fed.
>"That's not how people think now," Leila - a woman in the ancient desert
>town of Chinguetti, who herself was fattened as a child - told The World
>Today.
>"Traditionally a fat wife was a symbol of wealth. Now we've got another
>vision, another criteria for beauty.
>"Young people in Mauritania today, we're not interested in being fat as a
>symbol of beauty. Today to be beautiful is to be natural, just to eat
>normally."
>Some men are also much less keen on having a fat wife - a reflection of
>changes in Mauritanian society.
>"We're fed up of fat women here," said 19-year-old shop owner Yusuf.
>"Always fat women! Now we want thin women.
>"In Mauritania if a woman really wants to get married I think she should
>stay thin. If she gets fat it's not good.
>"Some girls have asked me whether they should get fat or stay thin. I tell
>them if you want to find a man, a European or a Mauritanian, stay thin,
>it's
>better for you. But some blokes still like them fat."
>And while there still men who like their women big, Fatematou is on hand to
>fatten them up with her years of experience.
>I asked her if she ever felt cruel, beating and force feeding children?
>"No! It's not cruel to make girls fat!" she said.
>"Me, I've seen 10-year old girls give birth. I tell you, 10 years old!
>"Once they are fat and beautiful they can serve their men well, once they
>are fat they can be married."
>
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