From henceforth, September 4th shall ever be International Camel Day.

A male camel in Arabic is jamil (a derivation of the arabic word for beautiful, jameel) and a female camel is a naqqa (or nagga as they say here.) Ibil is the generic name for the camel, as bovine for the cow.

At least for me it will be camel day: camel souq, camel milk and camel tajine. In the morning I attended the camel souq on the outskirts of Guelmim. Although I had expected a camel-filled field as far as the eye could see, I was happy with the thirty or so camel that were present. I had an in-depth discussion with one of the came herders – is that what they’re called, maybe shepherds?– on the topic of taking camels global. Camel are very intelligent, loyal and loving creatures who are just down-right cute. After playing with the camels for a bit, I went to a café near my house and had camel milk.

Camel milk is pure white and taste very light and earthy. It has very little fat, and I learned that in order to make 150g of camel butter, you need 30 liters of milk! It’s also tremendously nutritious. This is why the Taureg (Bedouin or nomadic herders) can live for up to two weeks just on camel milk. Here’s some interesting facts from allcamels.com:

In drought countries, camel milk is often the only regular food source for its owners. Unlike other animals, camels can continue to produce milk even under extreme drought conditions, and have been found to be the most efficient domestic animal for converting vegetable matter into work, milk, and meat in hot, arid regions. Camel milk is as high or higher in most of the vitamins and minerals as cow’s or goat’s milk. It is three times higher in vitamin C - the highest ever found in research. Camel milk is also very low in lactose, making it easy to digest. Camel milk in fact shares more characteristics with human milk than other animals.

In the evening I had yet another yummy camel tajine. In recent weeks I’ve surprised friends when telling them that camel is eaten here. Yes, folks, like beef, mutton, goat and poultry, camel is an edible and tasty meat. In this area of Morocco, camel is cheaper than beef. It tastes kind of like beefy lamb and I’ve read that it’s less fatty than beef and has the same amount protein.

Oh yeah, the camels in Morocco are one-humped and are called dromedary. The two-humped camels are called bactrian and they live mainly in Asia. Three+ humped camels are called Sally and are only found in Barney the Dinosaur’s world.

Camels don’t story water in their hump or their stomach. The hump is fat (didawa) that will shrink as the camel gets thirstier, but the water is stored throughout the body using a high-tech water recycling system.

Here’s a GREAT camel resource link: camelcamelcamel

Okay, enough camel for today. Maybe more tomorrow.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 6th, 2004 at 14:22 and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Edit this entry.