“ALLAHU akbar!” the boys shout gleefully from atop their camels, the reins of others held in their raised fists, their backs to the setting sun. Beside them a metal-fenced racing track cuts through the pancake-flat desert. Every dawn and dusk the camels are trained to run on this plain outside Kassala, a city in eastern Sudan. Their owners hope they will catch the eye of the wealthy Emiratis who visit two to four times a year to buy steeds for multimillion-dollar prize races in Dubai.
The Rashaida, a tribe that migrated to Sudan and Eritrea from Saudi Arabia in the mid-19th century, are infamous for kidnapping and trafficking Eritreans who cross the border, around 20km (12 miles) from Kassala, in the hope of eventually reaching Europe. But they are also renowned for breeding some of the world’s speediest racing camels. Emiratis buy between 100 and 300 young camels a year from the village of Abu Talha, some for as much as $80,000, says Hamed Hamid, a mustachioed patriarch. There are around 800 racing beasts in a settlement of 1,200 people, he estimates, and many more being raised for slaughter. “The camels are everything. They give us milk,...Continue reading
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