Wadi Rum desert is since long time the land of beduin \nfamilies, living there with their goats and sheep, a few camels, dogs \nand donkeys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Until a recent past, goat hair brown tents were so many, moving according to seasons and graze.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But, since the eighties, growing tourism (a tourist costs \nmore to feed than a goat, but brings also more money !), children going \nto school and the new taste for a all-furnished home (a just married \nbride refusing to live under the tent) slowly brought most families back\n to the village, which developped meantime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A noticeable rarefaction of the volume of rainfalls, with a\n lowering of the spring time graze as a consequence (2012 is a specially\n dry winter, without grass and crops in desertic areas) made life still\n harder for breeding beduins (who receive very little help from \ngovernment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Last, the concrete permanent camps, bigger and bigger \nalthough perfectly illegal, are eating the space always deeper inside \ndesert, pushing back beduin families always further from the village, \nwhere their children go to school, while being a true nuisance to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Presently, there are no more than a few beduin families living permanently in Wadi Rum desert.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But they are still there, these families, because they like\n this desert life, and it belongs also to us to help them, by all means,\n to preserve their way of life as long as possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How ? By a tourism respecting desert and beduin traditions,\n by meeting each other, you, westerners, curious of this life so far \nfrom yours, of this beduin culture still alive, and them, equally \ncurious of your customs and habits, and so proud when showing you their \nworld !<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The tent at first, hand made by the mother, the new born \nbaby goats and camels, the milk, freshly brought from goats and sheeps \nand kept cold in the skin bag, to be shaken afterwards during more than \none hour until it turns into butter, plus this famous \u201cleban\u201d, basic in \nthe beduin food !<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Traditional coffee will be done on fire, at men\u2019s side, while, at women\u2019s, \u201carboud\u201d (bread) will be cooked under ashes..<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And we will drink tea, all together, beside the fireplace, at this quiet moment when shadows get longer..<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When visiting these families for tea, or to spend the \nevening or why not the whole night, it will be for them an \nacknowledgment of their way of life, of its value, and of course a \nfinancial help, for feeding the animals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Your pleasure to share a moment with them will also give \nthem a little more energy to resist to the growing pressure of the \n\u201cbuilders\u201d, these cousins who apparently forgot their origins, getting \ntheir money by selling to tourists concrete blocks called bedouin camp !<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Next: Eco-tourism<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"