The camel and society

The camel, since its domestication, 6000 years ago [4] has mainly had a utilitarian role, and man has always maintained emotional and symbolic links with him, the importance of which might be proportional to the dimensions of the animal and to the services he provides to the men of the desert. This attraction has lasted until present times in the Southern as well as in the Northern countries, obviously for different reasons. Mauritanian Moors describe the desert as a huge dromedary herd in which each dune represents a lying animal. This way of describing landscape allows nomads to memorise a route and to explain it to others. Dromedary fulfils the dreams of some of us, helps others to describe their environment, and has been inspiring poets from the pre-Islamic times to the present. But it also recalls cliched imagery based on ignorance and prejudice, which con-fine it to the past or even obsolete positioning. This ambiguous relationship is reflected in social behaviours, in popular symbols and in the ways some development policies are being implemented. Nowadays, relationships with the camel in both Northern and Southern societies respond to two diverging trends: on the one hand marginalisation, on the other hand idealisation. (Résumé d'auteur