…we halted to go through a superstitious ceremony…Our guide received from the boy two handfuls of sand, some of which he strewed over his person, some he put into his pockets, some he licked, some he put on the camels, and he finished off by putting the last grains carefully into the bag slung from his riding camel.
-A Walk Across Africa, James A. Grant, 1864, Upon setting off across the Nubian Desert
At our goodbye ceremony, all we did was slaughter a sheep and cook it over a fire, eat our fill then stamp our hand prints dipped in its blood onto the necks of the lead camels.