Fattest man semi-naked contest : Where every youth aspires to be fat

We have heard of all manner of weird competitions. From international grave-digging championship in Slovakia, where dead serious participants compete to see who can come up with the neatest, standard grave in the shortest time possible. To wife-carrying competition where husbands engage in a sprint while carrying their bulky wives!

Would you believe that in Sudan there is a popular ‘fattest man’ competition? So popular is the competition among the Dinka tribe that it has increasingly become the ambition of many young men to grow fat and compete. Each year, the young men of the tribe engage in an approximately four-month eating contest, piling up fat.

The competitors eat as much as possible and avoid exercise and any kind of regular, vigorous movements or activities that can lead to burning of calories, among them, working. At the end of the period of eating, they parade themselves before a huge crowd of spectators in a stadium where a panel of judges award them according to their girth and size.

It’s not unheard of for a contestant’s stomach to rupture while in the boot-camp, following too much eating, resulting in death. Competitors, however, say they don’t fear such an outcome, because it’s an honour to die in such a way.

Afraid that the competition was promoting laziness, especially during planting season, local authorities outlawed it not long ago. So it didn’t come as a surprise the other day when South Sudan authorities arrests 17 men at a boot-camp, putting on weight to take part in ‘fat man contest’.

“We captured 17 and I put them into prison in Liet Nhom now and they are going to be taken to court because they have violated the provisional order,” said the local government.

Abraham Gum, Gogrial’s state governor, said: “It is a problem of youth whom I have given a provisional order that there is no person to make any fattening this year because it is a year for hunger (sic).”

However, the Dinka are not the only tribe with a “fattest man” competition. The Bodi tribe of rural Ethiopia has a similar contest. This, however, is slightly different because unlike the Sudanese one where the winner only gets bragging rights and fated as a hero, in the Ethiopian one, which is held once a year, the winner takes home the most beautiful women in their community.

But if you’ve seen photos of the winners immediately following the competition, you can tell they’re not interested in romance because they clearly don’t look like they can engage in anything remotely romantic or intimate with a woman.

Slim might be in elsewhere but for Ethiopia’s Bodi or Me’en people, bigger is always better. The tribe, which lives in a remote corner of Ethiopia’s Omo Valley, is home to an unusual ritual.

Six months after starting the regime, the men emerge to show off their newly engorged physiques and for a winner to be chosen.