Camels

A happy camel, supplied by the Heifer Project, at a boma near Ketumbeine

I was doing some reading online today about the Naapok Bead Project, and ended up stumbling into a blog post about the camel project that we visited on our second Sunday in Tanzania.  Here is an excerpt from a blog post called "The Camel Project" from the blog Asante's Alaskan in Tanzania:

A couple of years ago, women from a boma in the Ketumbeine area wanted to join with NAAPOK bead group. Since the group already had 56 women, they had to be turned down. Bethany's husband, Steve (the missionary doctor) knew something of Project Heifer's camels, so he investigated that project. The result was that the women were selected to participate in an experimental camel project. They received 30 camels, which had been walked down from Kenya. The Maasai community was, at first, reluctant to embrace the idea. Then came the terrible drought of 2009. During that drought, many of the goats and cows died; children had nothing to eat except for thin corn based gruel -- no goats meant no milk. The camels, however, not only thrived, but calved healthy calfs. A total of 16 calves have been born. During the drought, the camels continued to produce milk for the children of that boma, and provided milk for the women to sell.

After that drought, the camels were embraced as a good project! Bethany is hoping to see more bomas and Maasai communities participate in camel projects. One of the provisions of Project Heifer is that 1/2 the calves must be given away when they are old enough -- so many new women will receive camels and training. Camels make such good sense -- they are well adapted to the arid, scrubby conditions; they continue to give milk in droughts; and they are more environmentally responsible. And if you have never been up close and personal with a camel, they are huge! I wasn't prepared for them to be so big; and their eyelashes are so long; and the calves are adorable!