Philip Carr, a documentary filmmaker and Toby Fenwick-Wilson, a safari guide, set off on a 320 mile march with eleven camels and three Somali herders from the Ethiopian border town of Moyale and journeyed through "the badlands" to Rumurutti in the south. Moyale is a tense place. Kenyan troops shot dead several of the town's Ethiopian residents two weeks before the party's arrival, claiming they were linked to the Oromo counter-insurgency campaign to the north. However, Moyale also functions as one of the largest camel trading centres in east Africa. If Philip and Toby could succeed in bringing the camels to Rumurutti and in so doing avoid the bandits, manoeuver the tribal lands, survive the climate and cope with the wildlife and insects they would be able to sell their camels for a small profit to farmers and breeders in the south.

Walking up to 25 miles a day the journey takes 17 days. They follow a route which was last covered ten years previously by a heavily armed expedition of ten scouts and 70 camels. In the meantime bandits were known to have reentered the area in force. Philip and Toby's party have no weapons but they do have the remarkable Ahmed Neokundu. A Somali from the Ajuran clan, and member of the previous expedition, Ahmed is a tireless and cheerful leader who is an inspiration to all.

Romantic illusions drop away for Toby and Philip as they experience Africa in the raw. This begins with their initial arrest at Moyale airstrip and the momentum is maintained by the ever-present discomforts of life on the trip. Hiding from the sun in the killing midday heat and forced by water shortages to move quickly through this extreme environment they learn the true value of shade and water. At gunpoint, by the wells of Koiya, they learn the power of human communication on a level that has to supercede language itself if they are to obtain the water they need to survive from local tribesmen. This trip demonstrates the remarkable resilience of the camels, whose physical appearance noticeably deteriorates whilst they march on for nine days without a drink.

Ultimately this is a story about interdependence and trust between Somalis, Englishmen and camels as they face numerous challenges together in one of the most arid, remote, tribal and spectacular parts of the world. This film is about universal humanity and the over-riding lesson is that if we are prepared to take a chance outside of our own personal comfort zones, and in so doing leave our social conditioning behind, we will become wiser...and thinner.

Cloudburst Diary: Camels Through the Badlands
"They've got 3 large guns...and bombs", he had said, the latter almost as an afterthought. The words came confidently from his dark, now serious face. The sun beat down on the back of our exposed necks. Curious tribesmen examined us from a distance, the rifles of the young warriors slung casually over the shoulder whilst the herders marshaled their livestock. I felt surprisingly strong considering that I had eaten only one meal in the last two days whilst walking a distance of more than 40 miles. But then I was in the company of the inspiring Ahmed. A Somali from the Ajuran Clan he stood a lean five foot ten inches tall and exuded personal warmth and strength in equal measure. Thank God he spoke a bit of Rendille, for without prompting he had started to create a protective cocoon of bluff around our team of 2 Englishmen, 2 other Somalis and 11 camels at the timeless wells of Koiya. "We saw a military helicopter fly over some days ago", one of the tribesmen stated. The words hovered in the late morning heat. "We were inside", Ahmed had paused before pouncing, salvaging the news for our own benefit. He hadn't survived this and other such trips before on strength alone, his agile mind used all available information and resources to create an impression of strength in an environment where bad judgement could quickly result in death. The reality of course was very different, we had been inside no helicopter and our only protection against all the G3 and AK47 rifles of the Rendille tribesmen watering their livestock was a knife, some mini flares and several sets of pretty sharp teeth that were being slowly blunted by our nightly meal of Posho.

©2002 Cloudburst Media Limited