The land of Bedouins: The January climate in Jordan can be quite cold. The early morning rounds always include work on camels, especially racing camels.

The sun was shining and, although January in Jordan can be surprisingly cold, the dry climate always seems to ease the winter bite. We were up bright and early as the desert sun shone brightly over the port of Aqaba, Jordan. The five us were about to have the farm call of our lives.

Our team from Christian Veterinary Mission had been in the country for several days already, and we were warming to the task. Having spent several days in Amman working at a brand-new humane center for animals, we were ready for the primary mission of providing medical care for animals belonging to the indigenous populations of Bedouin herders in the south of Jordan.

A few days earlier in Aqaba, we had met up with our Jordanian counterpart - Dr. Rami, a recent graduate of the Jordanian Veterinary School in the north of Jordan who worked the past year with the Bedouin.

Based in Aqaba and driving north into the desert every weekday, he had diagnosed a variety of diseases and dispensed medications for free (or at cost) among the herders.

These Bedouin nomads have lived for thousands of years in the deserts of North Africa and the Middle East, moving with their admixture of sheep, goats and camels from place to place. Technically they are pastoralists - moving back and forth from favored locations according to the seasons and rainfall.

Although many have established homes in small towns, they still move to seasonally favored grazing areas with tents and family in tow.

Bedouin tents are made from goat hair, rendering them waterproof. As the rain falls, the coarse hair swells and acts as an impervious barrier to moisture. The Bedouin women weave these tents. In a divorce, the wife gets the tents and the husband gets the animals.

Into the desert

In need of veterinary care: Mastitis, camel pox, vesicular disease and abortions plague many of the animals living with Jordan's Bedouin tribes.

Our mission on this Thursday was to head north into the desert to an area just south of the Dead Sea. This is the area that Moses and the Israelites wandered around in for 40 years before finally heading north to the Promised Land.

Traveling in that direction, we could see the wide panorama of Israel's Negev desert on our left and the rising mountains of Petra on our right. If you are imagining us traveling in some sort of Land Rover with four-wheel drive and lots of horsepower, you are dreaming. The five of us, along with drugs, equipment and cargo, were loaded into a tiny 1996 Kia sedan with suspicious brakes and sporting a grand total of 750,000 highway miles (yes, that is correct). It was not impressive, but at least we did not stand out among the Arabs.

The Jordanians euphemistically call the Israelis "the people on the other side of the river." As we looked across the Negev, we were south of the Jordan River valley and south of the Dead Sea. All you could see to mark the division of land were fences and an occasional military-outpost turret, something akin to a stubby cell-phone tower with an enclosed platform.

After more than an hour of endless nothing, we finally happened upon a tiny hamlet with a convenience store. And, let me tell you, by that time that store became very convenient. What qualifies as a convenience store in the Middle East is really a general store. Prices are unbelievably low and the outgoing Arab hospitality is always on display.

Soon after we resumed our journey, we came to a small dirt road and turned northeast toward the mountains. We began seeing trees. The density was only about one tree per five acres, but there were trees.