COUNTRY BOYS AND GIRLS GETTIN' DOWN ON THE "WIFE-FATTENING" FARM

Muslim badonkadonk...

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.

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.

"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."

She said the girls could end up weighing between 60 to 100 kilograms, "with lots of layers of fat."

"If a girl refuses we start nicely, saying 'come on, come on' sweetly, until she agrees to eat."

"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.

Fat farms? They must be growing a lot of ugly down there too.
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