The Event of the Summer

I know, most people reading this are thinking that the event of the summer must be my upcoming birthday celebration, but alas, it is not.

It was the baby camel roast we had this weekend here in Dadaab!

I never would have imagined that camel meat would be so tasty until this weekend when it was prepared for us in about 16 different ways. We had yet another classic UNHCR party where something was roasted, people were toasted, and the music was still going with people dancing at 4:00 in the morning.

It was an event that I think everyone needed. There has been a lot of stress here lately, and it has been palpable. A lot of it has to do with the flare up in Somalia, and the general population of staff bracing themselves for the possibility of a huge migration of people over the border to add to the already backlogged case load. So this event was welcome.

We started the evening at Kevin's home chewing Khat, also known as Mirah. If you google Khat you will find much information of the illegality of it in the US and the problem that recently resettled Somali refugees have had with arrests for possessing it, not knowing that it is illegal in the US. Ironically, it is classified (as of 2003) as a schedule 1 narcotic, in the same class as heroine and cocaine, but I speak from expereince that it is really no more than a weed that is relaxing encourages good conversation and a pleasant attitude on life....

It's an interesting tradition in Somalia. Most of the people who chew it are men, but you will find women who chew as well. It's largely social, and men will sit for hours at night chewing and talking. For new comers to Khat it is usual to chew it with gum and sipping soda since the taste is bitter, but once you've chewed for about an hour I find it's better to abandon the gum since it's too much work for the jaw.

Basically, it looks like a soft twig and you eat the leaves off of it that are small adn still soft first, moving onto the skin of the stem. It takes a long time to chew, and the effects are quite mild. After chewing for about an hour you feel a little mellow and just chill in general. It was the perfect way to pass the late afternoon on a saturday, chatting with Kevin and Steph, as well as one of the men who works for IOM and some of the Kenyan Somali staff.

We moved onto the camel roast/party afterwards, where we had fried camel, stewed camel, and camel kabobs. It was suprisingly tasty and quite a nice change from the goat that is normally the protein of choice. I did feel a pang of guilt while I was munching on it, seeing that we had taken the camel (which we did NOT name) for a walk the evening before. It's hard to bond with a camel though, so my pangs of guilt quickly dissipated.

Tomorrow is World Refugee Day. I have to do profiling interviews in the morning so I will miss the celebrations and speeches, but there are some great things happening this week through the sponsorship of Nike and Microsoft that I will tell more about once the release has occurred. It will be interesting to see how the day unfolds tomorrow--but I think it's good that there is a worldwide recognition of the problem that exists in force throughout the world.