Part 5 ~ The Children of El Muzena

'Lady' Colleen Heller

Finding very young children running with exposed bottoms, barefooted, seriously dirty hands and faces with huge smiles is common in the villages of the Bedouin Tribes. I’ve seen them for years with different thoughts regarding their lack of hygiene as time moves on. At first it was impossible to understand why these children were not deathly ill from the dirt and flies surrounding them. Now I wonder if their environment has made them less available to common illness. Their immunities must be remarkable compared to those of the west at that age. Living in these unhygienic situations is common place and although keeping a dirt floor clean of paper, cigarette ends and the like is practiced, dirt is at hands reach at all times.

The life of the children in the Bedouin tribe is quite unlike what we have experienced in our own lives or that of our children today. Perhaps the very poor in other countries would have their stories to tell of hardship but here there is hardly any choice for the Bedouin to enhance their lives as work, schooling and general health care are extremely limited. The colour green is not found much in the landscape or on the dinner table with vegetables either not available at all or come in horrible condition, so horrible sometimes that I feel they are not fit for the goats. The results of the lack of green in their diets mean their teeth and bones suffer in growth. Most all the children loose teeth which never return and many are very short for their ages. Yet you will find them happy in the only environment that they know.  

During my first visits to a beach called Small Duna Camp in an area called by the same name, a young boy of close to five years approached me asking me, via pointing and speaking every language he knew other than English, if I wanted to ride his camel on the beach. I was shocked! How was a child to master a camel and my safety at five years of age? I did not go with him but then watched him as he moved down the beach to other visitors. They were amazed as well but were more inclined then I was. This young child had a towering camel down in the sitting position in less than 10 seconds by a language I would later learn belonged to the camels and their owners. Soon the visitor, a rather large man, and the camel were up and ready for their hour adventure on the coast of the Gulf of Aqaba. Miraculously safe and secured in the hand made saddle covered with blankets, they were off! What a sight. Here is a small boy guiding a camel 4 times his height with the hefty visitor on top against an amazing blue sky with crystal clear water at their feet. Surreal, truly!   

Many girls are found on the beach alone or in small groups selling their beaded hand made jewelry and crafts created by family members. The girls range in age of 5 to 11 some 12. They have usually two or more languages or learn what they need to for basic conversation from the visitors. Seeing them at first is startling with their long dresses, covered arms and caps or scarves used to keep off the hot sun from their heads. ‘Buy from me one’ is a common phrase that’s used in English for the small children. It is difficult to say no in the beginning to them as they are so obviously poor but after all these years, well, lets just say I could sell my vast collection on the beach! Now I tell them ‘Buy from ME one’ and most laugh, not all think this is very funny at all.

One very hot afternoon I saw the girls running over to a deserted part of the beach. They dropped their makeshift satchels holding ‘to be sold’ items not far from where I was swimming. Looking about strangely they quickly stripped to their underwear and jumped in the gulf! It was not long before the little boys did the same thing a bit away from them. I was relieved that this very normal universal response to heat was shown in a place where nothing was similar to me in any way. Seemed I was relieved on many levels from that moment on. Once the girls first menstruate they are not allowed out on the beaches any longer. They are in the house learning about becoming a wife, veiled when out of the house, only out to visit other families or do the necessities of shopping if allowed. The young men find other things to do with tourism where they can and try to sort how they will help their families survive. Before long they will be more than likely married to one of these girls they swam with long ago.

This will be the last in the series for Oasis Magazine. Thank you for reading this and for all the responses I have received about my writing and the tribe. One last note: Circumcising girls is not performed as it used to be within the tribal people of Mena and the nomadic community I know. More education needs to be done but as the older ones die off so does what’s left of this horrible practice.

The El Muzena Bedouin Tribe is a culture that is mostly misunderstood, misread and mistreated yet by sheer will they endure and hopefully you will experience them one day as I have. They gave me the name ‘Lady’ some 10 years ago. That’s another story to tell another time…

all rights reserved Lady Colleen Heller 2010