A camel lovin’ story …
21st December 2010
This morning we jumped onto a bus in Abu Dhabi and hopped off an hour-and-a-half later in Dubai. Dan has organised a private camel farm visit for us. Asem, Dan’s friend and police administrative officer, picks us up in a large white 4×4, not unlike every other huge white 4×4 that zooms through the new black roads hugged by voluptuous mounds of sand. We climb in, go for food, to pray, and finally to the Sharjah farm. The small, low-key camel farm is made up of metal gates on sand dunes with food troughs inside, rows of cages like a dog pound, each one containing one mother and her calf.
As we walk around the compound Asem lets us in on his thoughts about camels. “They are not like other animals” he tells us, “They are more like humans, in fact” he says, “they are ghosts”…….
After the physic twins stories of Aswan we are ready to listen to anything. Asem’s English isn’t perfect so we start troubleshooting what exactly the word ghosts could mean to him – Souls? no. Dead humans? not quite. Humans before they are born? sounds better. A different species in another dimension? ….This is the closest we get to Asem’s proud, awed description of camels.
Abu Dhabi and Dubai – these guys love their camels.
The discussion is interrupted by two camels mating in a cage. Want to know how this love story goes?
Breathe deep….
The male first sniffs the female’s behind, groaning and frothing at the mouth. His engorged, tongue hangs out of the side of his mouth, swinging as a bubbling, gurgling noise emanates from some deep part of his huge body. The sniffing tells the male if she wants him, and if granted access she makes a special sound and sits on the ground. Camels are unique in the animal world for this fact of mating whilst sitting.
Mounting her, the male continues his grunting and bubbling, swinging his head around, spraying foamy saliva onto his mate. She does not move, only nodding her head slightly and occasionally groaning. The camel has a foot-and-a-half long schlong. He thrusts a-rhythmically and powerfully. I’m grateful we can’t see much more than that. It is a lengthy, noisy, saliva splattered event.
When over and both stand up they are separated immediately. In 15 days
she will be checked over and if the pregnancy has not taken they will try again. The male is muzzled and forced out of the enclosure for some exercise. “Males never want to leave their cage” Asem translates for us, “they have to be tied to a car and pulled 500 metres. After that they will walk on their own”. The camel, to be entered in a beauty contest next month, walks six kilometres each day. Every two days his face is washed with a special shampoo.
The circle of life continues as we see a female in the first week of pregnancy, her tail curled up like a scorpion, signalling her pregnancy. Another she-camel has just a week to go before giving birth, her belly huge and round, the fur on her body soft and shiny as though blossoming into her motherhood. A calf totters around, just a month old, vying every few minutes for his mother’s teat and her tasty milk. A bowl of it is passed to us; light, fresh, warm, delicious.
