Why camel traders are getting the hump
In Somaliland women are disrupting traditional ways of selling camels
IN 1906 LORENZ HAGENBECK received a request from the German government to supply its colonial army in South-West Africa (modern-day Namibia) with 1,000 camels. The animal trader sought out the main force in the industry: Somalis. But upon seeing how they haggled, Hagenback was confounded, “for I had not mastered the secret finger-language used in that trade”.
This article appeared in the Middle East & Africa section of the print edition under the headline “Cloak-and-finger deals”
From the May 15th 2021 edition
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