"There is a problem with the vehicle. We have to move the camels to the other truck," the driver replied annoyed. He must have had other plans when he left the market with his small truck and eight camels on board. Now he stops just a few hundred metres from the entrance. An empty pickup truck drives up in reverse. Several men are discussing how to transfer the camels from one truck to another. At no point is there any mention of using a loading ramp.
We are at the camel market in Daraw in the south of Egypt for the Camel Week. We are gathering information and new insights for our report on camel markets. Shortly after the Eid al-Adha, the Muslim festival of sacrifice, the market is not very busy. Normally, between 1,000 and 2,000 camels are traded here every week, as the traders proudly tell us. The camels come from Sudan and are traded here for fattening and resale to slaughterhouses in Cairo. Everyone wants to make a little money.
The sun is blazing, it's about 43 degrees. We were sweating just waiting. There is no shade for the camels in the market or those on the broken-down truck. They sit close together, tied up like parcels. Many of them also have a parcel string tied around their mouths - 'so they don't bite', the workers say. Khaled also has a parcel string around his mouth.
We can only imagine how they were loaded onto the first lorry - with blows and violence. Now the camels have to go through the same brutal procedure again. The animals are dragged and beaten from the first lorry onto the second, some still tied by their front legs, and have to crawl onto the other lorry with the heavy blows of a worker's cane on their necks while a second worker pulls on the front. "Clap, clap, clap" - the sound of the blows as the sticks hit the camels' bodies is something you never forget, it is etched in your memory. By the time it's Khaled's turn, the truck is so full he doesn't know where to stand. A worker loosens the string around his mouth and pulls it through a hole in his nose to use as a 'nose ring'. With a strong tug, he pulls Khaled forward. Again and again the "clap, clap, clap" can be heard on the back of Khaled's body.
Khaled is now tied to the side of the truck with the rope through his nose. We try to persuade the driver to at least loosen the rope during the journey - no chance, he insists that Khaled is aggressive and must remain tied up like this. What madness - all this. It takes just under 1.5 hours to reload the eight camels. Then it's on to Suhag for slaughter, a 6-7 hour journey according to the driver.
This brutal treatment of the animals during loading is sadly not an exception in Egypt, but a cruel and bitter reality for the thousands of camels that are transported from Sudan to slaughter every week. The handling of the camels in Egypt breaks our hearts every time and a solution for the animals there seems almost impossible. But we refuse to give up hope and continue to work, step by step, to ensure that animal welfare for camels will finally become a reality.
