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Welcome to the Camel Page! Greetings from Saudi Arabia where it's the 4th day of the month of Rajab in the lunar year 1421. All is well here in this sun baked land where the daytime temperatures are hovering just above a chilly 105F / 40C every day. The summer highs of 120F-140F / 50C - 60C are now well behind us and I'm thoroughly enjoying this fall weather! :-) |
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As you've probably pieced together already, this page is about camels and the Saudi men who rear them. In particular, it's a little story I have from last weekend when I swung by a little camel lot with a student of mine on our way over to his house to hang out for the afternoon. So sit back, kick your feet up, relax and enjoy a Day in the Life of Daniel Schereck in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
So one day last week a student of mine came to my classroom after school and he asked me if I wouldn't be interested in coming over to his home the following Thursday afternoon (the weekend here). Of course, I thought that was a great offer and promptly accepted! Since I don't yet have my Saudi driver's license he offered to come to the American compound and pick me up, so that worked out really well. (To tell you the truth, I'm still a wee bit freaked out about driving here since the roadways are TOTAL CHAOS. . . so I was more than happy to have him drive!) (Oh yeah, one more thing before I continue: on this webpage I won't be using my student's real name since he's part of the Saudi Military, an organization which is quite 'secretive' all things considered. . . so I shall just call him "Hasan" (Hah-sahn).)
So Hasan swung by the compound at 4 p.m. on Thursday, rung me up at the security gate and we were soon on our way over to his place. Now, I'm not one to usually drop the names of car makes whenever I tell a story, as I generally find it to be sign of tacky materialism, BUT I must admit that as Hasan and I were driving through the desert out toward his house, I couldn't help but taking a step back mentally and thinking, "Alright, I'm rolling through the Saudi Arabian desert in a brand-spanking-new LEXUS LS 400 chatting up a storm in English with my Saudi military student staring out the window flying by caravans of camels on the side of the road. IS MY LIFE OUT OF CONTROL, OR WHAT?!?!?" ;-} Apparently I wasn't doing a very good job hiding my fixation on the hordes of one-humped beasts of burden lazing around in the desert along the roadside because Hasan leaned over and suddenly says, "Would you like me to pull over so you can get out and check out the camels and take some pictures?" Me: "SURE!!!" So, as per Saudi driving tradition, just as we were on the INSIDE driving lane of the 3 laned roadway and entering an intersection, Hasan cranked a hard right and swung the car suddenly into the lane of traffic TOTALLY PERPENDICULAR to our own (can anyone say KNIGHTRIDER?!?), hit the gas for a few seconds, drove straight into the four-lane dirt center divider, flipped a U-Turn, spun up dirt everywhere, zipped across another three lanes of traffic, drove off the highway into yet another patch of dirt, and slammed on the brakes. "Here we are!" he exclaimed! And yes, there we really were! Surrounded by more camels than you could shake a stick at! "But Hasan, isn't it rude for me to go around photographing all these guys' camels if I'm not buying anything from them?" "Don't worry about it. It'll be fine!" So we get out of the car and Hasan asks me, "Hey Daniel, would you also like to try some camel milk fresh from the camel's udder while we're out here?" Me: [without fully processing the question] "SURE!" Next thing I know Hasan says something in Arabic to the guys who spend their lives traveling around the countryside with these camels and suddenly everyone goes searching for the perfect camel udder to satisfy my curiosity for FRESH, HOT camel milk! Once I noticed that they guys were *really* going to get me some straight-from-the-camel camel juice I started thinking, "Oh God. . . I've never drunk fresh animal's milk before in my life! I know I'm gonna gag! It's gonna be hot and slimy and totally make me nauseous! What if they guys feed me their choicest camel's milk and I barf all over Hasan's ritzy new Lexus?!? Would they consider that rude???" But the request had been made for camel's milk and udders were suddenly being felt up left and right so there was no going back now. All I did was just remind myself, "Daniel, if you can eat boiled octopus skulls and raw fish every day in Japan and survive that "black fishy pudding" incident in Beijing, you can certainly drink a little fresh and wholesome camel's milk without spewing!" So, to reassure myself I looked at Hasan and said, "So, do you like camel's milk?" assuming that he drinks it everyday for breakfast, lunch and dinner and totally loves it. "Well, actually I only drank it once when I was a child and I hated it," he quipped. Me: "Hmmm. . . not exactly the answer I was looking for. . ."
And before I knew it the men had found a camel who didn't mind having her udders milked and before me appeared a giant metal bowl FULL of hot, frothy camel's milk. "My, what a BIG metal bowl of hot and frothy camel's milk they've got there!" I thought. "God. . . what have I gotten myself into THIS time???" Fortunately for me, they poured a much smaller amount of the milk into a much smaller metal bowl which I considered to be MUCH more reasonable than that half-gallon pot I thought I was gonna have to drink! But even the smaller metal bowl was warm and frothy and as I held it in my fumbling hands I was still a bit concerned what my reaction would be as the milk washed over my pallet. "Through the teeth and over the gums, look out stomach 'cause here she comes!!!" I proclaimed in my mind and down it went! Gurgle gurgle gurgle. . . camel milk foam all over my face. . . mouth flooded with the taste of a fluid that was just moments before in the body of another animal. Guzzle guzzle guzzle. . . and swallow! "So, how is it?" Hasan inquired. Me: "Shockingly enough, this stuff is really tasty!" Gulp gulp gulp! I had survived and I was proud. :-) And, to tell you the truth, the milk *really* was delicious - this coming from a guy who is generally repulsed by the concept of humans drinking other animals' lactate juice. The taste was warm, a little bit sweet, smooth, and very creamy. What are the odds that it wasn't low-fat, I wonder??? So all things considered, it was really nice! Sure, I probably have some microscopic camel disease floating around my body now since the milk wasn't sterilized, pasteurized, or any other -ized verb for that matter, but you know, you can't live your life being affraid of every little thing. And if it hasn't killed off all the camel drivers yet, I'm pretty sure their camels' milk won't kill me either! Knock on wood!
Now, here's a little 411 on the camels and the guys who watch over them: In Arabic, the type of camel they are is "jamal 'arabee" or "Camel Arabic" which refers to dromedary camels, or those with one hump. As you can see from the picture above, the camels have personalities of their own and are not always very cooperative. The small beige one to the right is trying to run away out of the picture while one sitting down in front of me has his head lifted straight up grumbling about just having been sat on by his master in the picture at the top of this page. :-) But the camels were really cool nevertheless and let you get up close to them and pet 'em, and fortunately none of them kicked me or spat on me, which I've heard is not all that uncommon, so I was happy!
I think this is my favorite picture of the bunch. It's a great shot of two men who are part of a culture known as Bedouin and/or Bedu. They travel all over the deserts of Saudi Arabia and the Middle East looking for food for their camels and therefore live very simple, nomadic lives. The Bedu live in tents that you see sprung up wherever there's a herd of camels. On occasion you can see a satellite dish or TV tuner popping out the side of their tents, but for the most part these are Arabs who have maintained a traditional lifestyle of living off the land * and their livestock * and can trace their heritage to the very beginnings of Islam. From what I have heard - and have only just begun to experience myself - the Bedu are renowned for their hospitality and it is part of their creed that no traveller is turned away as this is a part of the desert code of survival. The thinking is that today you are passing through and they have something to offer, but tomorrow they may be passing through YOUR camp and you may have food and water to offer them in their time of need. Do unto others. . . This, of course, has made it possible for the Bedu to cross the magnificently harsh deserts of the region for millennia and to still flourish to this day. And in my experience, the Bedu men who offered me their camel's milk for free and pose with me in these pictures here were AMAZINGLY friendly and kind! They were also EXTREMELY curious about me, especially considering that Saudi Arabia does not allow foreign tourism, so seeing tall white guys is quite a rarity for them! Their reaction to my digital camera was really neat/funny: for those of you who received the picture of me I sent the day I departed to Saudi Arabia, you saw that I have a compact Fuji FinePix 4700 digital camera capable of 4.3 megapixle resolution (brag brag brag!). The thing is small enough to fit in my pocket - providing I stuff it in - and it's got a small color LCD screen on the back side of the camera so you can look at the pictures immediately after taking them. Well, after having all the pictures taken by Hasan, I motioned to the Bedu men to gather around and look at the pictures for themselves - and they were just TOTALLY AMAZED!!! They had never seen such wild and crazy technology before! That you can take a whole series of pictures and flip through them back and forth on a little TV screen?!? They all got totally excited and through Hasan they said, "Please return one day and give us copies of the pictures!!! We would love that!!!" And that's exactly what I plan on doing. The men were also funny as Hasan and I got back into the car and they walked up and said in Arabic, "So, how much does a camera like that cost?" I told Hasan, "around US$800" and he translated that into Saudi currency and said, "3,000 Saudi Reeyal" and you wouldn't believe how shocked the men were! "GOOD GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" they all exclaimed and started laughing! It was funny. :-) So once the guys quit chuckling about the price of my little camera we all said our good-byes, Hasan hit the gas and we were outta there, off to his place for a taste of the day to day life of a 25 year old Saudi bachelor! A webpage for another day, I promise! Until then. . .
Ma' as-Salaama! Good-bye! |
It
all started before I even arrived in Saudi Arabia and was thinking
about my goals in spending two years in the middle of a giant desert
in some totally unknown city in the Middle East living on an American quasi-military
compound and teaching English to the Saudi Arabian National Guard.
Aside from my job, one of the main things I wanted to do while living
in Saudi was to meet some of the locals and get a feel for the
culture, the society and the day to day life of the people here. So
after starting my new position at the National Guard Language School
on the outskirts of Riyadh, I was happy to find that I had hit it off
really well with my students (ages 22 to 30) and that they were all
really friendly to me. I don't really know why, but for some random
reason I really love teaching and especially enjoy the non-academic
connections you can make with students. When I'm in class we are
quite busy trying to get through the text book and preparing the
students for the tests they will need to pass in order to qualify for
participating in a the study/work-in-America program set up by Saudi
and American militaries, so there's not a whole lot of time to chit
chat in class, but after class I always find myself chumming around
with my students and asking them all sort of questions about life in
Saudi Arabia, the Arabic Language and about what they plan to do once
they get to America at the completion of their 8 month program here.
