In most African cultures, women are required to get married when they come of age.
In Mauritania, girls as young as seven are placed on a strict fattening diet in a practice called Leblouh.
The process involves feeding children copious amounts of porridge and couscous among other meals to fatten them so that they can be chosen for marriage. The community views heavier women as pretty and as a sign of wealth and the slim counterparts as a shame to the family.
Leblouh is intimately linked to early marriage and often involves a girl of five, seven or nine being obliged to eat excessively to achieve female roundness and corpulence, so that she can be married off as young as possible.
Girls from rural families are taken for leblouh at special “fattening farms” where older women, or the children’s aunts or grandmothers, will administer pounded millet, camel’s milk and water in quantities that make them ill.
A typical daily diet for a six-year-old will include two kilos of pounded millet, mixed with two cups of butter, as well as 20 litres of camel’s milk.
“The fattening is done during the school holidays or in the rainy season when milk is plentiful,” said M’baye. “The girl is sent away from home without understanding why. She suffers but is told that being fat will bring her happiness. Matrons use sticks which they roll on the girl’s thighs, to break down tissue and hasten the process.”
“In Mauritania, a woman’s size indicates the amount of space she occupies in her husband’s heart,” said Mint Ely, head of the Association of Women Heads of Households. Recently, the practice has come under scrutiny, with rights activists stating that it exposes the girls to heart problems and diabetes, according to Reuters.
