Camel Jockeys

Camels are inextricably intertwined with the Bedouin identity. There are plenty of camels here, despite their obsolescence for practical purposes. Great pride is taken in the ownership, breeding, training and racing of camels. Camels range freely throughout Qatar, and most highways have “camel fencing” to keep them from wandering into the roads. Night driving on roads without fencing requires appropriate caution; encounters between cars and camels are usually fatal for both parties.

All of the camels here are dromedaries. Some are indigenous to Qatar, but many are brought in from Oman or the Sudan. Camels from different regions are prized for their varying traits. Camels come in assorted colors… black, white, red, and brown. White camels from the Sudan are especially prized for speed. Brown are the most common.

The camel souq (market) is located just west of town. In it you will find a large number of corrals and enclosures, most with temporary, or sometimes permanent, living quarters attached. The folks here are either Bedouins trying to sell part of their herd, or Sudani trainers and staff whose job it is to train and care for the animals waiting to be sold. The quarters are simple; the guys frequently just throw a mattress out on the ground and sleep under the stars…why not? it almost never rains. There is no electricity or running water out here…too far out of town to run lines. The water problem is solved using large, elevated fiberglass cisterns and a gravity system. Water is trucked in…camels go through a lot of it.

As you walk through the souq, you’ll be invited in to see the animals if you look like a prospective buyer. Camel milk and dates are offered. The milk is rich and thick; the taste is almost the same as cow’s milk. It’s served from a large common bowl and passed around. The animals will be brought over and examined. You’ll pay attention to the teeth, examine the legs and musculature, and see how well the animal follows commands to get down, stand up, move etc.

Camel tack is simple. It’s an assortment of ropes and blankets designed to keep the rider on the camel’s back with a minimum of fuss for all concerned. The “saddle” per se is a folded blanket, with a rolled blanket behind it. The reins are attached to a simple rope bridle, and ropes run along the camel’s flanks for balance and support when mounting, dismounting, or galloping. Another indispensable piece of equipment is the camel stick. This looks very much like a very thin walking cane. The purpose of it is, when mounted, to lightly tap the animal on the neck when you want it to turn right or left, or to hit it in the flanks when you want to speed up.

Mounting a camel isn’t as hard as you would think. The first trick is getting the animal to sit down. This is accomplished by standing in front of the camel and making a loud hissing sound in the back of the throat, with your mouth open. While doing this, hit the ground briskly with your camel stick. A properly trained camel will change posture at this point. To get it to stand back up, do the same thing. My son had great fun doing this over and over. Fortunately we had a patient camel.

When the camel is down, simply climb over the withers, and hold on to the ropes along side of the saddle, your feet balance on the ropes at this point too. Hiss again and the camel stands up…just don’t let go. Once up, balance is easy. Camels have a rolling, rhythmic gait, you get used to it fast. Its actually more comfortable than a horse, and you have a lower possibility for saddle sores. Camels are reasonably amiable animals if well treated. They don’t spit or bite nearly as often as their reputation would indicate. Some are downright friendly. My kids love them.

The primary reasons for owning a camel are for racing, and pleasure riding. They are not terribly expensive to keep, owing to the fact that Qatar is blessed with cheap sources of labor and feed. Camels have a further advantage in that if they become too troublesome they are edible.

Several butchers in town specialize in camel, standard practice is to bring your own though. Camel meat is very lean. It can also be tough, but this is largely because they don’t typically slaughter the young ones (too valuable). The taste is similar to lamb or mutton, but without the fat. Camels are often ritually slaughtered for Eid al-Adha, at the end of the Haj season. The first cut is made just below the neck, and above the heart, through the animal’s sub-clavian vein.

The real value in camels here is not as food, but as entertainment. Camel racing is hugely popular and actually quite exciting. Gambling, as such, violates the tenets of Islam so people rarely bet on the animals. There is an indirect method of “gambling” though in the sense that the value of an animal skyrockets if it performs well at the track. A common hobby is to buy young camels, train them and put them in the races. A young healthy camel with decent prospects may sell for 30,000 rials ( $8000) or so. A winner in a big race may sell for a million rials. On the other hand, older camels can be cheap. A middle-aged, healthy gelding of no particular repute sells for about 3000 rials… less than $1000. Animals that can reproduce sell for more, and older animals sell for less.

Races are held in a town very near the geographical center of Qatar. The town serves virtually no other purpose. Stables are there with similar facilities as the camel souq described above, near town. One difference is that the compounds for the animals are larger and more elaborate here, with some being downright posh. The Qatari government is trying to encourage the preservation of traditional sports (camel racing, falconry, etc), so the facilities out here are leased to Qatari citizens at very reasonable rates, in effect almost anyone can afford a simple camel stable. Many folks build small houses in their compounds, and use them as weekend getaways. The desert vistas here are fabulous, especially at sunset.

The track is 10 kilometers long. Camels are distance runners, not sprinters. The course winds past the stable areas, and the land is flat, so pretty much everyone can see most of the race. This doesn’t suffice for a conscientious owner however. The usual drill is that owners drive alongside the track near the racers, barking orders into a cellphone. The jockey has a headset or some similar arrangement so that he can follow the instructions given. There is frequently more chaos in the sea of Landcruisers and Hummers cutting each other off and trying to get positions near their racers then there is in the race itself.

There is a bit of controversy surrounding the jockeys. They are boys imported from the Sudan and elsewhere. Child labor is illegal in Qatar, but camel jockeys are the sole exception. The kids are brought here without their parents, and live out near the camel stables under the care of their Qatari sponsors and the camel trainers. It’s hard to know how old they are, critics say they are as young as five, supporters claim they are mostly twelve or so. The kids I saw looked about 8-10 for the most part. Critics also say that they are poorly fed, in order to keep their weight down, so that they can perform better in the races. It’s hard to know the truth on this issue. I didn’t see any kids suffering from obvious malnutrition, but they are thin.

The risks to the jockeys mostly involve injuries sustained when falling off a camel. The kids wear helmets and pads, but at up to 30 mph over rocks and gravel this isn’t always enough. No one seems to have hard numbers either way though; it’s too small and remote an industry to really get an accurate survey. Those who want to keep the jockeys say that the risk is small, and that these kids live a better life here than they did where they came from. Many camel trainers started out as jockeys, so it could be said that they are learning a trade.

The government has ended the controversy. In a law that has been announced, but has yet to take effect (next season, they say), there will be no more camel jockeys. They are to be replaced with robots! I can’t even imagine what that will be like, but my Qatari friends have told me that they have worked very well in trials. With the human element gone, I am sure that camel racing strategies will have to change, but perhaps the sport itself will do fine. We’ll see.

My last trip to the races was as follows. The race was to be at sunrise, when it’s not yet hot. We spent the night out on the desert to be certain to catch it. No tent, we just threw an old carpet onto the sand, upwind of the stables. We were awakened by the call to prayer, and soon after, the camels were starting to assemble at the gate. Our camel is beautiful; it’s her first race. We hopped into my host’s Landcruiser, and went off to hire a jockey. Not far from the starting gate, a crowd of bedraggled boys was waiting. As each vehicle pulled through, they mobbed it, each wanting to be chosen to race.

My host chooses one he knows, skillful and small. He hops into the truck and we bring him over to our animal. He is given a helmet, pads, and a cellphone. He also gets a seemingly endless litany of rapid-fire instructions from my host and his Sudani trainer. The boy mounts the animal and we wait.

Not many animals were running that day, perhaps 40 or 50. Important races are much bigger. We had a decent starting position, but like a marathon, it really doesn’t matter where you start; all that matters is where you finish. The crowd in the stands is sparse. The real action is down along the track. We wait in the truck near our boy. A gun is shot. The camels start and so do we. My host is weaving in and out of Landcruisers, watching his camel, screaming instructions into his phone, and barely missing getting creamed by other vehicles. I don’t know how he did it, but he always seemed to know just at what precise instant to look at the road, turn, brake, whatever. In America good driving is usually defined as being accident free. In Qatar good driving means doing dangerous things without suffering any consequences (yet).

There is a large converted schoolbus with us. It contains a radio announcer who is covering the race live for Qatari radio. We tune in. There are more trucks following the racers than there are camels by far, so good spots must be fought for and defended. Our camel is doing well. She’s near the front, maybe fifth or so. We are well past the halfway mark. Our passenger leans out the window to scream something at our boy; our host grabs him and pulls him back into the Landcruiser as a truck whizzes by, narrowly missing us on the right. We keep screaming, but it doesn’t do any good; our camel starts to lag. Soon she’s just one of the crowd, and soon after that she’s really lagging.

Too much steam was burned early on, but all in all she looked good. More training needed, but it’s early in the season and the big races are yet to come. My host is satisfied. At the finish line we collect our duo, the trainer takes the camel, and my host takes the boy. He collects his gear and tells the boy to hop in the truck. We drop him off where we got him, and my host pays his fee… fifty rials. Our young charge risked life and limb for the princely sum of $13.70. The boy stares at the five ten-rial notes. He carefully handles each and every one of them, then lays them out in a row on the seat of the car. He picks them up again and shoves them into his pocket. His eyes are gleaming.