Did you know that camel’s milk can work wonders for those with HIV? If I hadn’t gotten that flat tire in Edmonton, I probably never would have discovered this little-known medical fact. Thanks for the tip, Mohammed. Mohammed was the taxi driver who drove me from Canadian Tire to my hotel room in downtown Edmonton. He was short and thin, with a bright smile, quick laugh and a colorful taqiyah on his head. He was the sort of person you could take one glance at and immediately realize he was someone you could approach for friendly conversation. Soon after crawling into the back of the cab, I asked where he was from. “I come from Kenya. You can see some people, they don’t have clothes, they don’t have anything.” I mentioned that there were Kenyans living in Anchorage and that several were on the University of Alaska Anchorage’s track and cross-country teams. “They are very good long-distance runners,” I told him. “Oh yes. Always. We live in the bush, and everybody, the people, they come and go on the land, and there are lots of animals over there—giraffe, elephant, tiger, lion. The people who live jungle always, like, you know, they too much running, too much walking, too much exercise. The people in the Masai—they are the natives like you have here—the Masai they live in the bush. They don’t have the clothe, very tall, skinny. Like, different. Like, some are very skinny and muscle is huge, and, like, he jumping, like, the two meters.” He made a jumping motion from his driver’s seat, and we both laughed. Mohammed moved to Edmonton fifteen years ago from London, Ontario in search of work. He asked if I was born and raised in Canada. I told him I was originally from Alabama. “Twenty years ago I lived in Dallas, Texas, in urban area,” he said. “Have you ever been to New Orleans?” I asked. “Oh, it’s beautiful! Before the tsunami come—unbelievable! A lot of musician over there. I have family over there, you know, in New Orleans, in Dallas, in Minnesota, Chicago, San Diego area.” I explained that I lived in Anchorage, that I had driven all the way to Edmonton from Alaska. I told him I was thankful I got a flat tire in the city instead of in a remote area on the Alaska Highway. He had noticed my tires while helping me unload my bags from the 4Runner at Canadian Tire. “It’s like you are driving in the Sahara Desert, with the big huge tires and everything. One day you will go Middle East. You know the Sahara Desert? Sub-Sahara? East Africa is there. Lot of nations. In the Sahara you don’t have plants. You don’t have anything like trees. But it’s beautiful. It’s a compromise. Every area compromise. You don’t have trees. Somebody else have trees. “The Sahara really is good. The weather is fresh weather. You don’t have pollution. The food is fresh. Ethiopian, Nigerian and Kenyan is very good food too. In Ethiopia the injera is very good. A lot of really hot and spicy food. That’s nature. Everything’s nature. It come from the sun and grass. When you eat the food you can feel different taste. The animals eat the grass, and the grass is the nature’s come from. The water is clean water, the sun is good and the weather is good. When you eat, like, that meat, you can feel different meat here ‘cuz this—everything is processing. But over there, oh you can see different. Everything is organic. Even for, like, you know the camel? The millik camel? Is unbelievable.” At first I thought he was talking about a type of camel. I had only heard of dromedaries (one hump) and bactrians (two humps). “The people here don’t know the camel millik is healthy. Deeply healthy.” Ah, so he was talking about camel milk. All it took was for him to switch the positions of the two words, and suddenly I understood. I liked his two-syllable pronunciation of the word “milk.” “The best millik over the world is the camel millik, but people here don’t know. Even some people they have HVI. They drink the millik. Some people have diabetic, drinking the millik. You couldn’t believe how it help. The kids here have, like, asthma. The kids here have, like—this is the hotel here. I’m going to drive over there because you have a lot of stuff.” We were pulling up to the hotel. He continued his speech as we parked. “The kids here have, ah, asthma or something like that, if you drinking the millik, it’s unbelievable, so healthy you couldn’t believe. A lot of doctors, right now he research in the millik for the camel, and he say the best millik over the world is the unbelievable millik of the camel. They eat the plant in the bush—different plant, different plant he eat—and you can feel the millik is, like, medical.” “You can’t find it in the States, can you? Or in Canada?” I asked. “No. Our country is the major for the animals. You can see someone there have thousand camel. Thousand camel! But he don’t have, like, the water, he don’t have grass, he don’t have anything, like, like, this one here have, the farm here. But that is the bush and the only jungle. Big huge bush. And a lot of people here have the cow and the grass and the water and, like, the farm. They have so many things.” I didn’t always follow the points Mohammed was trying to make, but I greatly enjoyed our conversation. After he helped me unload my bags, I paid him, we shook hands over smiles and I checked into the Sutton Place Hotel, by far the cheapest hotel I’d stayed in on my trip, but by far the nicest.
Posted on: Sun, 28 Dec 2014 14:13:05 +0000
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