Sesame Oil: The Story of the Blindfolded Camel
17 April, 2013
By Ishraga Abbas
With the think white piece of cloth firmly tied to its 
The heavy sesame oil producing unit is tied via a rope, to the camel’s long hairy neck, while the animal keeps on dragging it until the last drop of oil from the sesame seeds is squeezed in this traditional oil mill on the outskirt of urban Khartoum.
Folding the eyes was the secret, according to its owner, Hajj Hassan Hamad al Neel, at Kandahar popular market place in Omdurman; because the camel feels no tear or wear and its head will not turn. The folding prevents imbalance and keeps the camel going around itself for as long as possible in small limited area, imitating a bicycle rider in a Chinese circus.
The room, a tekkle-of-a-sort which is dubbed the factory, in which the camel circles, covers an area of 5X5 meter, five meters in length and five meters in width. It barely could host the massive body of this domesticated desert animal. But built with local dry vegetation, a makeshift thatched hut, the walls are made of local clay and mud, leaving a space of half a foot, between the walls and the roof, it allows for natural air-conditioning.
“Cool air is good for both the animal laboring the mill and the worker attending to it. It is also essential that the camel should start work at the small hours of the day, for an hour and a half, and then its eyes will be unfolded, to allow for a break, a siesta. Then it take up it work for two rounds up to midday when it takes a longer break, as the sun cools down. It resumes the work for yet two rounds before sun set.” Hajj Hassan explains.
Each adult, well fed camel, takes a turn for five sessions a day, for at least four years before it is replaced by another camel, Hassan says, explaining that four years in one place the camel gets fat and put lots of grease because of the rich fodder it consumes, to provide it with the energy needed to carry out this tedious, endless energy-consuming work, diligently.
But the produce is rewarding, according to Hajj, as each camel squeezes around 50 rotls of sesame to which water is added to speed up the mill process. This will by the end of the process produce about 22 rotls of fine sesame oil, yellow in color, and natural and sweet in small. But above all, it is free of any chemicals. In addition the process will give a byproduct of 33 of solid brownish fodder that is sold for animal husbandries as animal feed.
For producing sesame oil, in this traditional mill, only male camels are used in the process, which is described by Hajj Hassan, as hard and tedious. Female camels could not handle it, besides females are left for breeding and reproduction.
For the camel, the male one, there are no specific features that it has to meet so that it could be used in the mill of sesame oil. But it has to be at least four years old. It will then be brought and trained until it can perform its work fairly well, then it will take up the job for at least four years after which it will be sold, as it puts on fats and fleshy belly, and sent to the slaughter house. It is sometimes exported, becoming fully grown and fat, thus up to par with the demands of the consumer- importers.
The process of sesame oil mill starts with securing the sesame seeds from North Kordufan state, Al Obied town in particular, about 7 hours car drive on a highway, west of Khartoum, the national capital. Sesame seeds could also be secured from Um- Rwaba, 750 kms west of the capital. There is found the white and the red sesame. The white is grown in Kordufan while the red arrives from Nyala, Darfur region of western Sudan. This latter contains high quantities of oil, thus is it more economic, but is not available all times, as, Hajj argues, it is exported and sometimes when available is expensive compared with the white type.
The prototype factory-mill is composed of a huge trunk of a mahogany tree, known as the mother. It is a 70cintemeters long and about 60 centimeters in width. The inside fiber is dig out, and a container-cylinder is thus created. Inside the hollow is placed the sesame intended to produce oil. The oil thus produced, using the mahogany trunk, according to Hajj, is in itself a cure for many an ailment.
Vertically, comes the wooden pole which is formed of two pieces, put together, to be used for squeezing the sesame seeds; on the upper part of the pole is tied a huge load of stones to give leverage for the pole, whose lower part is to squeeze the seeds. This pole is dubbed Al-Walad (the boy) as if it were a child of the huge trunk which contains the sesame seeds. The oil thus produced is named the Walad oil.
This oil, the Walad, produced this way, is light and yellow in color. It has no sour taste and can stay intact for over two years without change or alternation nor change in taste.
It differs from the oil produced in factories, as it is lighter and clear of any impurities. The factory oil is usually greenish and contains impurities because of the leaves that are sometimes grinded with the seeds, giving it a soar taste and is quickly perishable. Seeds used in traditional mill are well cleaned and sorted out, manually, to ensure that all leaves and hay is taken out before the seeds is poured into the trunk, then the revolving poles start grinding it, by the mechanical turnarounds of the camel.
Al Walad oil is known for its good quality because v as stated above, the seeds are cleaned and all impurities are removed before the mill process. The oil is used to treat chest infection, coughing, sneezing, joint pains as well as orthopedic pain, and malaria when consumed and anointed on the infected part.
As for Hajj Hassan, he said he started this small business forty five years ago, which, he relates, he has inherited from his older brother.
He said in 1970 he was severely attacked by paludism, malaria, and uninterrupted coughing. Frequent visits to the doctors did not heal him and chemical medications failed to improve his condition. But the last doctor told him a surprising cure. Do you know sesame oil which is used by camel-driven camel mill? He was asked. Go and drink a spoonful, morning and evening and you will be cured in a month's time Allah willing! He was told when he said he knew it verily in fact!
He relates that at first he did not accept the instructions provided by the physician but, forced by the need to get a cure from the disease, he did. Since then, he said, he was never attacked by paludism or malaria or coughing for that matter. He argued this was the main reason he took up the industry as his profession, moving from Um Rwaba and Al Obied from north Kordufan to Khartoum the national capital, his current base.
In some rural area to treat camel sinusitis, sesame oil is used, with the animal, Camel drenched –intranasaly - with sesame oil for treatment of sinusitis.
Al Mahy Omar, the technician, so to speak, who supervises the camel and the traditional mill tools, explains that there are craftsmen who are specialized in cutting the wood and shaping the tools that are used in the industry, knowing well the various shapes and dimensions of the pound-like wood container and the various poles and robes used to set up the unit. He said the mahogany comes from southern areas of the country, the Sudan, and from the current South Sudan state. He stressed the poles and the trunk of the mahogany trees, lasts between 5 to 6 months after which they have to be replaced with new ones.
"It is not an expensive or costly industry, you only need to buy a camel that will cost you between 6 to 10 thousand Sudanese pounds, and the other tools will cost around 5 thousand pound, all in all, and if you add to this a simple location, then you have all that is needed" Hajj Hassan added.
He said in a short time the investment will pay back, regaining the capital and after it comes the sweet revenues.
This industry is particularly spread in sesame production areas in Al Gadarif, eastern Sudan, Al Obied, Al Nuhoud and Um Rwaba, in |Kordufan state of western Sudan. This, he said, is due to the fact that it is cost effective: easy to obtain sesame there, thus reducing the production cost and in the areas customs are secured, for consuming the natural produce.
However despite its various merits and benefits, the owner of the mill says, consumption of sesame oil traditionally produced, are few as more and more people consume oil produced in industrial factories using chemical.
He also wonders may be the low consumption is due to the fact that there are very a few locations where such traditional industry is practiced, on the peripheries of the urban centre, with its requirement of eyes-folded camels.
ends
MO
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