TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The leblouh (forced-fattening) tradition continues to live on in West Africa. The tradition is a process of fattening women so that she is considered attractive by men, and is based on a culture that perceives larger women as a symbol of wealth and prestige in a country that is considerably struggling in getting food supplies.

As reported by the Daily Mail, when women reach the age to marry, they will be sent to "fattening camps", where they will be force-fed with 15,000 calories of food per day. For breakfast, the women will have to consume bread soaked with olive oil and drink camel milk. After that, they will have to eat lamb meat, bread, figs, camel milk, and other food all day long.

A United States reporter, Thomas Morton, has been sent to Mauritania to uncover the problem for a HBO documentary. Morton discovered that not only are the women force-fed, but also tortured by their parents. They will be tortured and their feet will be clamped if they refuse to swallow their food. Morton testified "it feels like, the food has filled all of their chests and made my lungs deflated when I saw them being forced to take the food."

Morton wondered how it feels for the women to have to bow down to the tradition for the rest of their life, especially when considering the health threats it might bring to the them. The leblouh tradition might cause obesity and other diseases, like heart attack. Even after it has been apparent that the tradition links to acute diseases, the Mauritanians refused to stop the tradition. They instead chose other ways to fatten their daughters, for instance by asking their daughters to consume selected pills.

A local woman told Morton, "Medications are a modern form of leblouh tradition. This modern process utilizes women's hormones and pills made from bird meat. Humans do not deserve these pills," she revealed. The Mauritanian women interviewed said that the hormones will make their bodies to grow bigger in a short time. Ironically, the face, body, stomach, and breasts will increase in size, but the arms and legs will not.

Morton stated, "The pills also cause women to be infertile. Other acute problems include heart failure, repeated heart attacks, and insanity."

The leblouh tradition is a torture for life. Mar Jubero Capdeferro, representation of Population Fund for the United Nations Representative for Mauritania says that when entering their 40s or 50s, the majority of them will find it extremely hard to even move.

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