Malian leaders have replaced a camel they gifted to French President Francois Hollande, as the original one accidentally became a part of a tagine stew.
The nation of Mali presented Hollande with the camel as a thank you for his sending French troops to aid them in fighting Islamist rebels, Rachel Maddow reported on her show Thursday night.
Hollande wanted to bring it back to France, joking that he would be able to ride it around Paris and use it as a means for transportation.
Amidst guttural, loud hollers from the animal, Hollande shook hands with Malian leaders, thanked them for the generous and meaningful contribution, and made his way back to his motorcade.
But transporting the camel back to France presented itself as a problem: Hollande did not have enough time to fill out the necessary paperwork and jump through the logistical hoops needed to escort the animal into Europe.
He and his constituency subsequently left the camel in safe keeping with a family in Timbuktu, according to Reuters.
But due to some kind of misunderstanding, French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told the Telegraph that the family had, instead, slaughtered the camel for a tagine-a dish from North Africa that is named after the heavy, clay pot in which it is stewed.
"As soon as we heard of this, we quickly replaced it with a bigger and better-looking camel," an official said in the Reuters article. "The new camel will be sent to Paris. We are ashamed of what happened to the camel. It was a present that did not deserve this fate."
Hollande kept it all in good fun, though, after receiving news from soldiers on the ground that the camel had been consumed.
"Perhaps the family misheard that the camel would be put in the zoo, not in a stew," Maddow joked at the conclusion of her show.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
