The Prophet's Camel Bell

Seventy years ago Margaret Laurence and her engineer husband worked in Somaliland which was then a British protectorate. Most of the population were still nomadic and their wealth was calculated in camels. So it's appropriate that Laurence took the title of this book from a poem by James Elroy Flecker that is quoted in the front of the book.

Jack Laurence was commissioned by the British government to build a series of dugouts (called Ballehs) along the border with Ethiopia. The area was desert but did receive periodic rains that ran off the land through river courses that were dry for the majority of the year. The thought was that if the dugouts could be filled with water it would stay for up to 3 months. The Laurences lived in camp with show more the Somali workers until near the end of the contract when Margaret became pregnant. Margaret busied herself learning the Somali language and collecting Somali poems and stories. The English translation of these which she did was published after she had left the country. Margaret was quite taken with the poetry of the people. She said Somaliland was a nation of poets and bards.

The conditions for the Somali people who lived out on the desert were horrendous. Their lives revolved around finding water for themselves and their livestock. It was very common for people, especially children, to die while on the move and be buried beside the trail. Female genital mutilation was also the norm. Margaret mentions this but didn't seem concerned by it. As devout Muslims, the Somalis had a fatalistic view of life. If Allah determined it was time for them to die then they accepted that; similarly, if Allah felt it wasn't their time then they would live. It was out of their hands.

Despite the harsh conditions, it seems that the Laurences enjoyed their time in Somaliland and found their time there one of the best times of their marriage. I wonder what happened to Jack Laurence's Ballehs. show less

I had previously entered this book on LT under the title "New Wind in a Dry Land," under which it was published in the US. Only two other people have it under that name! Either way, this is a sensitively written description of Somalia -- British Somaliland, as it then was -- just after WWII, where the author lived with her husband, an engineer who was constructing reservoirs intended to help the Somalis survive the recurring droughts which regularly decimated the population. When I found this book in a thrift shop, I had never heard of Margaret Laurence, but she went on to be a distinguished Canadian poet and short story writer.