Ten-and-a-half years ago I came to Mamshit Camel Ranch, a Bedouin Village, close to Demona in the Negev desert in Israel. I was a participant on USY Israel Pilgrimage (Group 3) and celebrated my 18th birthday in the Bedouin tent. To my young eyes it appeared to be a fairly realistic Bedouin experience complete with Bedouin food, sleeping in a tent, and camel rides. I wasn’t naive — of course I knew that the Bedouins who worked at Mamshit lived in the nice homes nearby and didn’t live as the Bedouins of ages past.
Now, as a staff member on a birthright israel trip with University of Michigan and Harvard students, I am sitting in the main office of Mamshit (Israeli owned) checking my e-mail and posting to my Blog on a high-speed DSL connection.
I’d write more but there’s a camel-riding Bedouin waiting to check his stock portfolio online!