From early in the morning until midday, the streets of southern Hargeisa, Somaliland periodically shut down as hundreds of camels trundle along the narrow city streets. Taxi drivers give way, milling on the side of the road, wiping their cars clean of the dust and mud kicked up by the procession. Ultimately, the beasts file through the gates of the Hargeisa Camel Market.

No one really runs the market. It's just one of dozens of sites across the country where nomads, locals, and traders converge daily to buy and sell thousands of live animals, some for the neighborhood butcher's block, others for export. And to most folks in Hargeisa, it's just a fact of life - a reflection that, despite the boom in the city's population and the development of modern, multistory office buildings, Somaliland is still a largely pastoral economy.

Somalia houses more than 6 million camels, the largest population in the world. (Somalis have some 46 words for camels; nomads have composed and handed down hundreds of poems that extol the animal's role in Somali culture.) Mainly beasts of burden, vehicles for war, and sources of milk, they also served until very recently as the only acceptable unit of payment for blood money in clan disputes. Yet Somalis typically do not raise more camels (or other livestock) than they need. The size of herds has rarely exceeded demand.