Egypt - How Many Camels?

One of the safety precautions of this program requires that us vulnerable and defenseless women always be accompanied by a man when going through the markets of Egypt. Because there are more men than women in our particular program, the guys were divided up amongst the group. Our group consisted of John, Elyssa, Abi and myself. Do the math: 1 man- three women. In the current culture this is not uncommon, in fact, it was assumed that we were the wives with the husband in the market. The Merchants and men on the side seemed incredibly curious that day to know just how many camels John had to pay for such a quantity of beautiful women, or so we though. They would call out from the side, “Lucky man! How many camels?” After hesitantly ignoring their calls for a repetitive four or five times, John called back “50 camels” the man grinned and replied, “I’ll take them!” Realizing that he had just made an unwanted deal with this man and gained 50 new camels he corrected himself and pronounced, “each” to which the man dejectedly returned to his post. Whew! That was a close one.