RIYADH, 15 October 2006 — This time it was the camel that broke the man’s back — or leg, to be more precise.
It all happened one sultry afternoon when Rajanna, a camel shepherd from Andhra Pradesh in southern India, was riding on his camel in the desert near Riyadh.
Suddenly, he fell of the camel and fractured his leg.
When the news reached his sponsor, the latter sent his emissary to inquire about Rajanna’s condition. Finding that Rajanna had been incapacitated as a result of the bad fall, his sponsor figured out that his employee would be useless for the purpose of looking after his camels.
Through his contact, he banished Rajanna off to Riyadh with SR800 ($213). Rajanna was later found by social workers crawling on the street in the city center. Volunteers from Non-Resident Keralite Forum humanitarian group, Ayub Khan, Ashraf Chirayakizhu, Ajit Sattar and Shihab Kottukad, brought the crippled camel herder to Safa-Makkah Polyclinic, where he is undergoing treatment.
Rajanna is one of the country’s many guest workers who are forced to call it quits after unfortunate circumstances. Sponsors, who are supposed to provide for workers’ health, often ignore the law with impunity.
In another case of an expatriate having an unfortunate run-in with a camel, an Indian got a bad case of camel-phobia after one of the creatures took a bite at the man’s head, removing a bloody chunk of hair. Conclusion: When there is not a blade of grass in the desert, the camel has alternatives, including grazing on the man’s head!
