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In Honour of Obesity Farmsby lute wa lutengano In my early days in this world I used to love sweet things. These included things like sugar cane, sugar, candies, orange squash juices, mangoes, paw paws, and naturally Fanta, the universal soft drink for kids. I remember when I was in class two or three; I visited my grandfather, who coincidentally was also a Lutheran church pastor and an avid orchard pundit. My grandfather, Pastor Merere, had acquired the love for orchards from the German missionaries who had taught him. His house, at Uhambule in Njombe district, was therefore in the midst of an extensive forest of peaches, grapes, avocados, guavas and paw paws. On arrival at the house I was astounded by this abundance of sweet products. But it was the paw paws which I loved most. No wonder on the very first day at my grandfather’s house, I sneaked into the orchard and ate, and ate, and ate, paw paws like there was no paw paws eating thereafter. But then, the paw paws struck back. Soon I was wriggling on the ground vomiting paw paws and more paw paws. It took me more than ten years before I could taste a morsel of paw paws. Notwithstanding this initial experience, I have to admit that my grandfather and grandmother spoilt me during the short stay at their home. In the six months or so there, I gained a total of ten kilograms. When I returned home, to my father and mother, they were so shocked by my newly acquired generous shape that they told everyone who could listen that I had just come from an "Obesity Farm." I had almost forgotten about this incident until, a few days ago, when I came across a BBC news item about; Guess what? -‘Obesity Farms.’ It so happens that obesity is revered among Mauritania’s white Moor Arab Population that young girls there are sometimes force fed to obtain a weight, which the Government has now described as "life threatening." The treatment has its roots in fat being seen as a sign of wealth if a girl is thin she is considered poor, and would not be respected. Therefore in rural Mauritania you will see the rotund women that the country is famous for. They walk slowly, dainty hands on the end of dimpled arms, pinching multi-coloured swathes of fabric together to keep the biting sand from their face. " I make them eat lots of dates, lots and lots of couscous and the fattening foods," Fatoumatou, a voluminous woman in her sixties who runs a kind of ‘fat farm’ in the northern desert of Atar, told BBC World Service. "I make them eat and eat and eat. And then drink 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." Fatoumatou told the BBC that the girls could end up weighing between 60 and 100 kilograms, "with lots of layers of fat." She admitted that some of girls cry at the treatment. "Of course they cry they scream. (But) 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 said. She further 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, adding, "They are proud and show off their good size
to make men dribble. Don’t you think that is good?" she asked. I do not know! Do
You!
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