How many camels for your friend?

Camel riding sounds a lot more exciting before you are actually on the camel. Actually, almost all things camel related sound more exciting than they really are. Take for example camel milk, which quite literally tastes like licking a camel's hump, or the fact that camel's humps are more or less just fatty lumps on their backs, like creepy backwards breasts and not (contrary to popular belief) used to store water or much of anything for that matter. Plus if you've heard the pterodactyl like noises camels produce you'd realise they'd make horrible pets (if that was your thing).

So you can well imagine how disappointed Adele's family would have been had I agreed to facilitate an agreement between a Moroccan man for their only daughter .

'I don't think the novelty factor of having an entire herd of camels will convinced them', I argued as he generously upped the ante to 20 camels.

But the man was persistent, pressing for Adele's dad's phone number so he could call Vancouver and barter with him directly. If I'm perfectly honest I was slightly tempted to hand over the digits just to hear the conversation but decided aginst it figuring that the call would likely instigate a mild heart attack. In the end with Adele laughing nervously beside me, I managed to firmly decline the offer and guide us safely away. Camels are just not that lucrative a business for Canadians. Should he have been offering an exchange of adorable, fluffy baby penguins I may have reconsidered, but animals that chew cud and spit would hardly be appropriate in the suburbs of Vancouver.

Useless Skills

There comes a time for every traveller when you start priding yourself on a skill recently attained while on the road. Most of these skills don't apply to regular everyday life (like saving friends from being traded for camels) while some are completely and utterly useless (like my ability perfected while in SE Asia to text while on the back of a moving motorcycle). But I never really thought I would be proud of my ability to use a squat, let alone a hole-in-the-ground-outhouse-with-no-light-squat. But when you have little else to do in rural Africa there is ample time to perfect your useless skills. And so it began. Soon I become rather proud of my newly acquired gift to squat without bracing myself against a wall/door/goat/anything within reach, my uncanny ability to aim without peeing on my own feet and of course my ability to then stand unassissted afterwards without falling or stepping in to said hole. Ah yes, I was quite proud of myself, but alas as every childhood story with a good moral will tell you, don't get too cocky and try your new skill in the dark, because you may or may not accidentally poop beside, rather than in, said hole. And well, as you can imagine, that's embarrassing for everyone involved.