Teh Mauritania Thread

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by joncha
Clearly the ability to mock Tassi is the only objective standard that we have.

Perhaps we should include a subjective how well they mock Tacc standard as well.

[joncha]

Agreed.

[BeBMan]

This thread

[Meticulous Man]

Be a helper for God, and censure what is forbidden,
And turn with the law which, which He wants you to follow,
Hold no one to be useful or harmful, except for Him,
And walk the path of the chosen one, and die while you are on it!
For what was sufficient for the first of us, is sufficient for the last one, too.
And leave those people who do evil things with respect to God.
They misrepresented him by making him similar, and made all kinds of excuses.
They made bold claims, and blackened notebooks.
They let the nomads and the sedentary people, both make bitter experiences,
And the great sins of their [doctrinal] innovations bequeathed small.
And just in case a disputant, calls you to dispute about their claims,
Do not, then, dispute on them, except by way of an external dispute.

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by Aivo½so

Mock not!

[DRoseDARs]

Originally posted by LordShiva
Mock not!

[LordShiva]

[joncha]

So that's what aneeshm looks like...

[Meticulous Man]

Originally posted by LordShiva


Mock not!

I couldn't help bursting out with a laughter of joy at the sight of these sublime words

[monolith94]

Damn, I thought this was going to be a thread about MJ...

[LordShiva]

Mauritania rivals set for run-off
With almost all the votes counted from Mauritania's presidential election, the two favourites seem almost certain to face a 25 March run-off, officials say

Sunday's vote was the first fully democratic poll since independence in 1960 and marks the final transition to civilian rule after a 2005 army coup.

Sidi Ould Sheikh Abdellahi, who served in the ousted government, has just over 20% of the vote.

Opposition figure Ahmed Ould Daddah is said to be running very close.

Power has never changed hands at the ballot box in Mauritania before.

International observers said the poll, in which 19 candidates took part and which drew a turnout of 70% of registered voters, was free and fair.

Junta barred

A candidate would need more than 50% of the vote to avoid the run-off when final results are announced later on Monday or Tuesday.


PRESIDENTIAL POLL
19 candidates
2,400 polling stations
1.1m voters
300 observers

Sheikh Abdellahi is supported by a coalition of 18 groups previously loyal to the regime of President Ahmed Taya.

Mr Taya was deposed by Col Ely Ould Mohamed Vall, whose military council took power in August 2005.

Mr Daddah, an economist, unsuccessfully ran against Mr Taya in 1992 and 2003.

Col Vall barred himself and other members of the junta from running for office.

He said: "We came to power for a specific purpose. We declared we would do specific things. We stayed only so long as it took to accomplish our goals."

Although the voting was largely without incident, international observers said that overnight an unknown gunmen killed a security guard at a building in the southern town of Kaedi where counting was taking place.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6442029.stm

[molly bloom]

Ned has heard that this was a British plot to steal uranium ore (which was on board in a carefully disguised Lancome toiletries bag) and sell it to Saddam Hussein's great aunt who works for Syrian Intelligence.


She's going to fashion it into weapons grade tabbouleh and sell it on to Iran, who will foment World War Three, by killing Angela Merkel's sister's best friend with a precision nuclear mezze burst over Chicago.


He saw this on the Cartoon Network, but the British documents are strangely sealed- or non-existent, which is clearly suspicious, if not plain evidence of guilt.


Fact!

[joncha]

Mauritania

[Spiffor]

It's really good to read that Mauritania finally has fair elections. Here's hoping they'll work well at the runoff, and that the loser will accept his defeat. It could spell a whole new promising future for Mauritania

[LordShiva]

Mauritanians question the 'fat' look
By Pascale Harter
BBC Radio 4's Crossing Continents

As Mauritanian nomads drift to the city, modern life is beginning to challenge one of their most cherished traditions - the force-feeding of young girls.

Under a patchwork tent in Kiffa, on the western edge of the Sahara desert, a nomadic woman called Braika crossed two sticks around my ankles and squeezed the ends together with rope until I yelped in pain.

She was showing me how she forced her daughters to swallow litres of milk and mountains of couscous for days on end until they developed wings of fat hanging from their arms and their skin was traced with silvery stretch-marks - attributes considered the height of feminine beauty in Mauritania.

"They eat and eat, and drink and drink, and when they can't eat anymore we pinch them and sometimes they vomit," Braika said.

"When they vomit on purpose, we make them eat the vomit to teach them not to do it again."

A thin girl will never find a husband
Braika

Braika proudly wobbled her flabby arms and showed off her own stretch-marks.

She did not feel guilty about force-feeding her daughter.

She assured me that once the ordeal was over the girls were grateful, because nicely fattened up they could take their pick of husbands.

"A thin girl could be blown away in the wind, people think she is a stick and she will never find a husband," she said.

Nomads believe a fat girl is a healthy girl.

But in reality, obesity has reached epidemic proportions among Mauritanian women and it is killing them.

Barely into their 40s, fattened women are dying from obesity-related diseases such as diabetes and heart failure.

Government warnings

Mounina Mint Abdalla is a health consultant who worked for years with the government trying to stamp out force-feeding.

But she acknowledged that government radio sketches warning women of the dangers of obesity have had little effect on a society where fatness is revered as a symbol of nobility and good breeding.

Nonetheless, force-feeding and the nomadic way of life is fast disappearing, said Mounina.

"The country has been hit by years of drought and we simply don't have that kind of quantity of milk now, or the time it takes," she added.

Zeid, a nomad in the market town of Aleg, said he was thinking of trading his last remaining goats and camels for a passage to the city.

"We are in deep crisis," he said.

"The price of the food is becoming so high, that we can't afford to feed ourselves, and for this reason we cannot feed the animals.

"The only thing we can do is move to the city."

Quick fix

In the market in the capital Nouakchott, Mounina pointed to all the women working in the stalls selling everything from brightly coloured veils to fake Chanel sunglasses.

"Just 15 years ago, women didn't work at all but now all these women are working because life in the city is very expensive," she said.

But despite this, women are still finding ways of fattening themselves up.

A pill-seller said he could not count the number of women who buy steroids meant for cattle.

"Some come and buy 20 boxes in one go," he said.

But if force-feeding creates problems for women in later life, the cattle steroids can be an instant killer.

Side-effects include renal failure and heart attacks.

Dr Maagouiya, the general surgeon at Nouakchott's main hospital said that without autopsies - which are not permitted in Mauritania - he cannot be sure how many lives the steroids have claimed but he believes the figure is high.

They tell me that if they lose weight their husbands will leave them
Dr Maagouiya, general surgeon

Yet mothers still come to him to request pills for their daughters, believing that thin girls are shameful because they look "sick".

To be "sick" is often a euphemism for having HIV/Aids in Africa.

The message is getting through to some Mauritanian women, like Mounina's nieces who have started exercising around the stadium as the sun goes down.

But they seemed to be doing it reluctantly and said they were trying to lose weight purely for health reasons, not because it would make them more attractive.

Dr Mougiya said he encounters the same attitude when he holds seminars trying to persuade obese women to slim down.

"They tell me that if they lose weight their husbands will leave them because everyone knows that in Mauritania men prefer a fat woman."

Global influences

One thing is finally beginning to shake up popular attitudes to fatness - the explosion of Arab satellite channels obliterating the monopoly held until recently by the state channel.

It was a big moment in Mounina's house when I visited - it was the final of Star Academy, the talent music show by the Lebanese music channel LBC.

Mounina's teenage daughters told me they do not want to be fat like their cousins who are only a few years older then them.

They said they want to be "a normal size" like the Lebanese pop stars.

"Now Mauritanian men are looking at Lebanese singers and starting to compare them with us," said 19-year-old Aicha.

"They look at their wives and say 'why aren't you like those singers?' There are some who've got divorced because of those Lebanese singers.

"The men say to their wives 'why are you fat, why aren't you like Britney Spears?"

The lifestyle in Mauritania is changing fast - donkey carts and fruit stalls in Nouakchott are giving way to fast-food restaurants.

In "Burger Hot" I met a group of men who were not sure that Mauritania's love affair with thin men and fat women is completely over.

"If you're an overweight man, women make jokes about you. They say that you look like a woman.

"But if you tell them to lose weight they don't believe you.

"They say you are out of your mind, that you are trying to trick them because they know men here don't like thin ladies."

But another man said that no matter how many images of slimmer women are beamed into Mauritanian living rooms, former nomads are too set in their ways to ever fully accept a foreign standard of beauty.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/crossing_continents/6591835.stm