Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

For what it's worth, a conversation with my neighbour Morad gained me 
some interesting information:

His main groom, Essam, was a jockey in Dubai from the time he was about 
5 years old until he was too big to work anymore in the field about the 
age of 17.  Then he returned to Egypt.  Many of the boys who were with 
him stayed on to work as grooms, or gardeners or houseboys or drivers.  
I don't know how it was arranged that he go there, but the reason that 
he went was that his family couldn't afford to feed him.  Since he is 
now in his mid-20's that would have been about the late 80's, roughly 
the time that I moved to Egypt.  The late 80's were a tough time in 
Egypt with private industry just starting after about 30 years of 
socialism. Farming was a tough life and there were no markets for small 
farmers other than the government cooperatives who often didn't pay 
enough to cover the costs.

Essam's a small young man, whether by genetics or by diet or both. But 
Morad has spoken with Essam a number of times about his experience and 
according to Essam it wasn't terrible. He's the only one of Morad's 
grooms who knows how to drive and Morad turns green with envy at the 
catalogue of 4X4's that Essam has driven and he hasn't . He's a good 
worker and can read and write. As Morad said, if he could get more of 
these boys to work with him, he would be delighted.

I picked up a copy of Seabiscuit while I was traveling the last time 
and I loaned it to Morad to read. He pointed out that the living 
conditions as described by this one boy were a great deal better than 
anything outlined in the book for the race jockeys.  He would grant the 
point that there are likely situations that are also worse, but the 
situations that these children come from are often so horrifying that 
even the life of a jockey might look good.

It's very difficult  for anyone in the US to comprehend the levels of 
poverty that exist in many parts of the world. People often 
characterise Egypt as poor, but as anyone who has traveled in 
Bangladesh or India can testify...this place is almost posh. There are 
very unscrupulous individuals who take advantage of others, no 
question, but they exist anywhere. When my son's girlfriend was 
applying for jobs here, she was asked to teach at a respectable English 
language school just outside of Cairo, but she refused to sign the 
contract when she was told that she would have to surrender her 
passport for the duration of the contract. Why? To be sure that she 
didn't skip the country if the working conditions turned out to be 
unreasonable. The management, by the way, was not Egyptian.

None of these sorts of issues are ever simple. And as I noted before, 
the camel jockey issue is far from being a new one. It has been 
floating around the NGO's, the internet, and interest groups for a long 
time.  That being the case, I would again ask...and I think that you 
should too... why is it suddenly considered newsworthy if it wasn't for 
the past ten years?

Someone decided before that it wasn't worth their notice, but now all 
of a sudden it is.  Who? And why?

Maryanne Stroud Gabbani
Cairo, Egypt
www.alsorat.com
http://miloflamingo.blogspot.com


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