Merchants at Cairo's iconic camel market are struggling to make ends meet
With a glance, Sheikh Mohamed Abdel Aal can tell whether a camel will make for a good steak or whether its meat will be tough and gamey. It's a skill he has mastered during five decades of selling the animals at Cairo's sprawling Souq el-Gamel (Camel Market), located in the northern suburb of Birqash.
The camel trade in Egypt is largely hereditary, and Abdel Aal's lineage runs the longest of the roughly 15 families that occupy the market. That puts him at the top of the bazaar's hierarchy; his peers call him the "king of kings". But even for royalty, business has been tough during the last month. Demand for camel meat is down, prices are up and many merchants are concerned about the long-term future of one of Cairo's oldest businesses.
"I do suffer losses at times and it wouldn't be called a trade if it didn't have its ups and downs. However, I hope that it lives on so my son Ahmed can take over the business one day," says Abdel Aal.
While camels are entwined with local culture, almost all of the 300,000 animals that pass through the market annually come from Somalia or Sudan, which boasts the world's largest camel population. That puts Egyptian merchants at the mercy of foreign camel traders who have raised prices even more than normal during the high-demand period of Eid Al-Adha. The increases are starting to scare away buyers, and several local merchants say they are concerned the trend will continue after the holiday.
"The recent period has been rough on the trade," says trader Adel Mubarak, who lost around LE 300-500 last month.
The Birqash camel market, located 35km outside of Cairo along the Cairo-Alexandria Desert Road, is one of the biggest in North Africa. In the past, it was a chaotic hub of camels, merchants and buyers, with thousands of deals going on at the same time. However, the market's struggles were obvious during a recent trip to Birqash. Nearly 100 merchants and more than 1,000 camels spent most of the day standing around during what is usually the peak season for camel meat.
"It's a slow day, as you can see," says Ashraf, a trader who has worked at the market for over seven years and declined to give his family name.
The retail price for a camel varies between LE 3,000 and LE 10,000, depending on the quality and breed of the animal. Sudanese merchants increased their prices between LE 100 and LE 500 this year, says Ashraf, making the meat too expensive for many buyers, most of whom are butchers.
Sellers like Adel Mubarak, who has been at the market for 23 years, are forced to wait for holidays like Ramadan or Eid when prices almost double.
"Before Eid or Ramadan, the demand increases and we're able to sell them for the higher prices, but after the seasons end, the market empties out and business goes down," says Mubarak.
It makes for a tricky balancing act. Camel merchants only have a small window to make money; the animals' voracious appetites mean that if one stays with a trader for more than 48 hours, the merchants say they lose money. Another risk of the camel trade is that some camels fall ill and die before being sold; the road to Birqash is littered with decaying corpses.
With the increase in prices, Abdel Aal not only finds it difficult to sell his camels, but also says that even when he does, he makes little or no profit.
"It is not in my best interest for the prices to increase, despite what many people might think. The cheaper the camel is, the more profit I make," he says.
There is no consensus among merchants over why more camels are not locally bred. Abdel Aal believes that Egyptian camel meat is tastier and therefore a more expensive commodity, while Mubarak says that Sudanese camels are of better quality and therefore more popular. Meanwhile, local camel merchants have little choice but to wait out the cross-border price increase.
By Passant Rabie
© Business Today Egypt 2009
