The Camel Market at Birquash

We went to the camel market in Birqash, a town about 20 miles NW of Cairo. It is a major camel market for the country. Camels come in from all over, are bought and sold, and then trucked all over the country.

Camels are an interesting animal. They have the most ungainly look. At the market all the camel were hobbled in some way, so they couldn't go very far, very fast. They have the longest, lucious, thick eyelashes, and the sweetest doe-eyes--the only sweet looking part of the animal. I took an up close picture of them. They also have the ugliest teeth you can possible imagine.

Camel eyelashes

Smiling camel? Look at those teeth.

Prospective buyers would come by a group of camels and start to look them over. They would pull down the camels lips and look at those ugly teeth to see how sound they were and if the gums were healthy. I have no idea what healthy camel gums look like, but their teeth are huge, mostly stained brown, and rather buck-tooth looking. The back ones are flat for grinding and the front ones are sharper for cutting up the grass they eat.

Youngster whose father was an owner with camels for sale.

Buyers would run their hands all over the animal, especially the hump. When camels are healthy and not malnourished the hump is firm and large, almost engorged. Then buyers would have the owners get the animals up and have them run around as best the hobbled beasties could. The owner had wranglers that kept the animals in check and didn't let them get mingle with other herds. If there was such mingling, the wranglers easily cut out the camels because they were all branded and painted with distinctive markings for the market.

There was much haggling over animals and arguments over prices. Mind you we only surmised all of this because we could not understand any of the conversations. However body language is fairly easy to read, and handshakes are unmistakeable. We knew when a deal was consumated.

Loading the camels into trucks was a hoot to watch. Camels can be notoriously uncooperative. We saw one small truck pull up to a loading area. The truck was just a bit short so the camels had to step down about two feet into the truck. For the most part most camels did not have a problem with this. They stepped down into the truck then settled themselves down. They sit down awkwardly, from my point of view, but once settled they are fine. The getting up and down is interesting to watch because it seems so awkward, but the camels seem to do it with ease. Well, this one large camel stepped down into the truck, and settled his front parts down, leaving his back parts up in the air on the loading dock. No amount of cajoling, on the part of the wranglers, could persuade that camel to move his back parts. He was stuck, or so it seemed. Finally the camel settled his back parts down on the loading dock and couldn't move. The wranglers folded up his legs and tried to push him into the truck. This was a big camel and was resisting the pushing. So finally the wranglers go a stout rope and put it around the camel's rump and pulled it into the truck. The next camel walked in just as nice as you please, settled himself down nicely and the wranglers finished their job ad were off. It was a strange sight to see the truck going out of the compound with the camels heads sticking up over the cab of the truck.

This is the camel that had a bit of trouble loading into the truck. Camels all loaded and ready for transport. The market was a facinating excursion. We were very glad we went. Never again will I ever see so many camels in one place at one time. The sounds and smells were ---undescribable. It reminded me of a n enormous corral full of sweaty horses. Camels make a braying sound, not unlike a donkey. They brayed and bawled when moved about, when getting up and down--they grunted then too. They brayed when they were made to do something they didn't want to do, like get into a truck. I am told they spit, but we didn't see any spitting camels. It was one of the most interesting days I have had in Egypt so far.