From the Collection: For use with camels

Take a look at these items.  Any guesses as to what they are?  Here's a hint: if you had a camel, rather than a subway, train or car, you might need these.  First of all, the round baskets are camel milk baskets!

These baskets, with a leather covering, are useful for milking your camel; before plastic became ubiquitous, leather was great for transporting milk.  We got these when we lived in Oman & they are made by the Bedu, some of whom are still nomadic. (Really the term is transhumance:  they move from the desert in the winter to the seashore in the summer.  When we were living there from 1998 - 2002, we had students, at the university, who had been raised that way until they went away to boarding school; their families back "home" still moved around every 6 months or so.)

And the Tuareg camel bags are for transporting goods--much prettier than our suitcases.  They are also leather & are decorated lavishly. Fringe, colored embroidery, paint & detailed leather work.  We bought these in northern Burkina Faso at a market in Goram Goram.

Check out Tribal Music for more Tuareg items.  I especially like the rings!  Wow.  We didn't see much jewelry for sale in Goram Goram...it's really a market for the locals, not the tourists, so it was mostly farming goods, food, a bit of clothing and camels, of course!

The Roommate & I love markets; we like to see what it's like to go shopping elsewhere.  We are just as amused in a grocery store in the UK or Japan as we are in a market in Bahar Dar, Ethiopia, or northern Burkina Faso.  What are the people buying and selling, what do they wear to the market? (In Oman, certainly, the women really dress up.)  If you only see your friends 3-4 times each month, you'd dress up, too!

We have been trying to get the new house decorated.  Part of that involves treating it like a museum--we have boxes, most labeled in the basement, and we try to switch out our stuff so we can enjoy it all...hope you enjoy seeing all this, too!