The Friday Photo: HOW Many Camels?
The little town of Daraw is famous for its weekend camel market. It was just an ordinary market day when we visited while sailing a felucca down the Nile, and rather lovely too.
Still, some guys from the Pyramids had come in a pickup truck to collect their purchases and drive them up to Cairo. They bought nine — the going rate, should you be thinking of selling your daughters, or, perhaps your wife, starts at a few thousand Egyptian pounds.
Egypt, like most developing countries, is not big on animal rights. Can you guess how many they crammed into the truck?
That’s all the more impressive considering how temperamental camels can be!
Yes. They weren’t exactly being sensitive to the camels’ needs. Z was quite horrified by the scene, actually. I’m sort of inured to animal cruelty, and, once they were in the truck, they all sat there quite happily in silence. It was the bit where they got them into the truck that wasn’t easy on the eye.
Hard to imagine how uncomfortable these poor camels are.
I’m not sure they were uncomfortable once they were in, because they were in their normal resting posture, albeit close together. But they were protesting a lot on they way into the truck: inside, they were pretty silent.
In a country that killed all it’s pigs afraid of H1N1 – and then appologising when they knew pigs had nothing to do with it – I wouldn’t personally expect much sympathy to the camels. Those camels should be thankful they are alive 😛
We had camel for lunch that day, Mina…
Tbh, having done the spoilt white girl thing of giving a child beggar the leftovers from our dinner and then feeling really good for buying him a can of Coke too and letting him into the restaurant, I don’t have much sympathy to spare for animals in Egypt. Many of your people have enough problems. And, some of your camels at least are better fed than some of your people, unfortunately.
The only thing better than one camel is two. The only thing better than two is a truck filled with them. I think you know how much I love this photo.
I am with Phil on this one. Also his tweet had the answer to your “how many” question – never enough! LOVE camels! 😀