Girls being force-fed for marriage as fattening farms revived
Campaigners in Mauritania accuse the new military regime of turning a blind eye to a cult of obesity among young girls being groomed for suitors, where a woman’s size indicates the amount of space she occupies in her husband’s heart.
Here is a headline you don’t see everyday, or any day for that matter. Especially here in the oh so ever size conscious USA. I am aching tonight over the articles I have read regarding the status of femininity world wide. Here in America we see that discrimination exists in pulpits, offices, paychecks and some social settings, but no one is making my ten year old grand daughter marry a 3o year old man in a mass wedding, or suffer female genital mutilation to be “sexually controlled” , or strapping bombs to her body,wrapping her in a blanket and sending her in to mine fields to make a path for the “holy” men to follow. I do not have to worry that my propane stove has been rigged to explode because I was seen talking to my male neighbor outside my driveway. But this is a reality for the majority of my sisters. In an Arab report concerning the status of Arab women this quote was made: ( http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/1689.htm)
“It is said that women must be ‘tamed’ like horses and other animals – and this ‘taming’ is carried out by using violence against her, until her independent spirit – including her thoughts, her aspirations, and her dreams – is ‘murdered.”
I have carried in my heart the pain of the female plight since the day I was four years old and took a switch to the neighbor boy who was torturing a stray momma cat for the fun of it. He was twelve and twice my size, but I chased him a block to his house tears streaming down my face and the backs of his legs showing red welts where my switch had hit him. I got in trouble because “girls don’t act that way towards boys, and did I want him to do something bad to me when my mom or some adult wasn’t around to protect me? I should be careful.” I was four and I knew what I had done was justice and right and I also knew there was something “bad” about the fact that I was a girl. Then I found out
who we are.
The journey of discovery in this mystery of our creation has enthralled and challenged me and caused me to fall in love with The God of Creation all over again. By design we are valiant, strong, perceptive nurturers, life givers, first waters, origins of truth-and we have an enemy. More vile and deceptive than we know. He waits to devour every creative birth we labor to bring into the world. Every aspect of beauty he seeks to mar, each piece of wisdom he seeks to twist, every strength he tries to shackle all in the name of order, protocol, tradition, and honor. These men have bought in to these lies because they have cast away from themselves the Ezer-Kenegdo, the help-meet, the one suitable for them, the one whom God designed to guide, protect, soften, nurture and keep them in the ways of the Creator.
Today the burden of my prayers for us has overflowed and I have shed the blood of my eyes…tears. In the ancient Hebrew Picture language that is what tears are called. The blood of the eye. No wonder our
Beloved stores every one we weep in a bottle, they are precious reminders that we are alive. I have pondered why today?
Why is the groan so strong in my soul? Why am I keening an ancient song? My thoughts have turned to this morning, and the four young
girls in service who found their way to my lap and my arms. Looking into their faces so free, and real and knowing there are other faces being forced to eat their own vomit in order to be “beautiful enough to marry.” Mothers, aunts, uncles, fathers and brothers buying in to the deception of the father of all lies, the original murderer of the image bearers, and allowing him to seek and devour the glory of God in this earth.
I held these daughters who don’t belong to me a little closer to my heart today, praying that they will find their
own willow switch. Praying for courage to chase the ugly lies that have already begun to whisper to them, out of their hearts forever. But, what of Mauritania’s daughters? Who will carry them?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/01/mauritania-force-feeding-marriage
