Stranger than virtual

In Oman, TV channel hopping, we land on the Qatar channel. Camels are racing in one long straight course. Alongside them, on either side of the roped-off course, are 2-3 wide columns of cars, 4×4s. The camels are galloping, with an occassional one or two trotting – very fast. For a moment I’m confused. It looks like they have no riders. Then our eyes catch the strange-looking contraptions tied on the camels back. Believe it or not, the contraptions are little robots. The one function we see them perform is occassionally whipping the behind of the camel, as a camel jockey would. We’re transported into a futuristic world – I could imagine seeing this in Second Life, but instead these are the sands of Qatar, a hop skip and jump from our physical location in Muscat.

But the robots feel doubly strange, like something somewhat familiar, with a twist that throws one completely off. And then it sinks in. The robots are short and squat. In fact they look like children. The robots are in fact a replacement of the terrible practice of roping in children, sometimes forcibly, as camel jockeys.

Here’s a piece in the National Geographic about the shift in Qatari camel-racing practices. They also have a clean shot of the robot.