My first safari was in the late 80’s. I think 88. I vividly remember driving 50 miles one way to use a party line to call home . I used to go straight to the drugstore to have my pictures developed .

Now most camps have WiFi. Some even have Star Link. Communication is a breeze . One can even sent photos quickly.

If someone had told me in 1988 that all of this would happen , I would have thought they escaped from the psyche ward. Times have changed.

Agree. I first figured that when I saw solar chargers hanging out of mud brick huts…

And cell phones one can use to take very good photos in the field, and GPS apps like Gaia that can do a multitude of things.

Well, I can still escape here in the west the Omni present cell phone coverage but how long?
I suppose it is just matter of time when there will be no escape
Still love my phone though…

Call me crazy, but I actually MISS those days!

Being disconnected from the rat race is a wonderful thing.

But with a satellite phone, there is no place on the face of the earth where it's even possible.

And in many, many places, all it takes is a cell phone.

More's the pity.

I remember I had to book a call to call home.

Get it a few hours later.

It was 1982 first safari.

Had a camera and two films, I think.

After that I used to take 60 rolls of film on safari.

One tries not to miss an opportunity, but not use all the films before the end.

Used to ship my rifles, shotguns and ammo ahead.

No one asked how many or how much ammo.

Shipped cases of shotgun and thousands of 22 ammo.

Things got better, in some ways.

Much worse in others.

Later in the 90’s when computers came, I forgot my laptop.

No problem, Walter had his, which I gave to him.

At camp I asked to borrow it to store pictures on.

And as usual, Walter and Roy were in their element!

Me “Walter, may I borrow your laptop please?”

“No. But I will RENT it to you. Per hour! Hahaha! You have no choice!”

“Please Walter, I need it to store pictures on”

“Told you. I will rent it to you!”

This was going on at the dinner table.

I said to Roy “Roy, I am not paying for Walter’s safari”

Roy “Walter, come on pay up!”

“I will send you the money when I get home”

“No credit for safari. All daily rates paid in advance! Come to think of it, stop eating! You have paid for this meal!”

Walter, Getting up from the table “Of shit! Yiu side with that nasty Arab again! I will got get the laptop before you two throw me off the cliff into Lake Kariba!”

We lost Walter last year.

He is up there waiting for us in the Happy Hunting Grounds!

Hilarious story, Saeed. It reminds me of my own film camera days.

We were rushing around packing and otherwise preparing for our safari.

My wife realized we had no film for our cameras so she sent me out to the drug store to buy some.

I bought all they had and threw it in the suitcase.

When we unpacked it in camp, my wife exclaimed, “Mike, this is all black and white film!”

Well, we took some of the best photos ever with that B&W film. Not sure why, but they were all fantastic.

We asked our PH if the pilot of the next flight into camp could bring some color film for us.

He did.

What were the first animals I shot after we had color film?

Two zebras, of course!

We have all seen amazing advances in our lifetimes. Imagine if you were in your teens now. What changes are they going to experience?

AI and Robotics are going to change the world.

I went on my first safari in '94. I thought the bucket shower, reed hut and your only connection to the outside being the radio at 7 PM to be absolutely charming. Fast forward to WiFi in camp, solar charged lights, on demand hot and cold water plus AC in some camps. I like that too. The WiFi for me is particularly useful as I can monitor my client's safari on WhatsApp as it unfolds.

Mark

Connectivity still varies incredibly depending on where you are. Like some have said, I miss the good old days when all you got was short wave news from the outside world.

However, that does have its downsides. In 2008, I was in the Selous when Hurricane Ike was bearing down on Houston. While I knew the storm was coming, I couldn't get in touch with my wife, who was born and raised in the mid-west and had never been through a hurricane. Got back on one of the last flights into Houston before the storm hit. The vehicles were on the last quarter tank and no gas was available. No bottled water and none on the store shelves. No canned food in the pantry, etc.

On the other extreme, I was in Masailand in 2017 and had cell service and wifi in camp. My team worked me to death every night and morning while we were in camp.

In Western Tanzania, you have wifi in camp and whatsapp, but not general cell service. That's a better balance, but I still miss not getting away totally.

I am sure non of you have gone through the changes we have during your lifetimes!

I am 74, and have lived through what probably amounts to 200 years of your time.

No electricity.

No running water.

I remember the first motor car here.

Now Dubai is one of the most modern cities around.

When I was a little kid in the early 50s. Saw two guys sitting in a car talking to someone at a house across town on short wave radio. At the same time we had to ask the operator to connect the wires to make a phone call.

I recall thinking then: "someday I want to have such a thing". Then in the early 70's trucking over the road for a living CB's came out. First one was a Radio Shack walkie talky, then a boosted up Cobra 29 5 times as powerful as the law allowed. I talked to a guy in Florida and a friend in Portland, Oregon from my truck on the beach at South Beach, Texas like we were in the same room together. A couple other drivers had a 2ft square electronic contraption replacing
the R seat that was a mobile phone costing several thousand dollars.

Now I talk with and watch my daughter on our cell phones while sitting in the car.
Me in the SE Colorado and she's in Canberra.

Wonder what's coming in the next ten years. At 81 in a few days it's doubtful I will see those days and such new things.

Amazing to see Saeeds pictures of the natives in Africa talking on their cell phones.

George

Michael, that color film/Zebra story is hilarious!

Saeed, I had no idea of your upbringing. Thanks for sharing. I thought you were born into some kind of rich Royalty living in a castle. Being born into a time such as those you described, makes one grateful for what they have today.

I will be 74 in a few months. Growing up happy to be able to hunt rabbits and squirrels with a .22 LR, I never would have thought that I’d be hunting Africa for Dangerous Game (and PG) some day! Life is good. I am grateful.

quote:

Originally posted by surefire7:
Michael, that color film/Zebra story is hilarious!

Saeed, I had no idea of your upbringing. Thanks for sharing. I thought you were born into some kind of rich Royalty living in a castle. Being born into a time such as those you described, makes one grateful for what they have today.

I will be 74 in a few months. Growing up happy to be able to hunt rabbits and squirrels with a .22 LR, I never would have thought that I’d be hunting Africa for Dangerous Game (and PG) some day! Life is good. I am grateful.

We actually had relatively little to live on.

I remember times when us kids get dinner, and our parents didn’t!

We had two changes of clothes a year!!

Makes Red Necks seem like our next of kin!

But we had a very happy childhood.

Everyone around made us feel like family.

And we still follow that tradition now too.

I’m amazed at your life story Saeed. Once again, thank you for sharing! My family was not wealthy growing up, but I did have more than two changes of clothes per year! May I ask what age you were when life changed for you, similar to how you live now?

I know how much Saeed hates lawyers, but technology has changed the practice of law dramatically, and not for the better. When I first started practicing law, I had a dictaphone in my office. No computer. I dictated letters, pleadings and briefs; my secretary typed them up, I marked them up with a red pen and she corrected them. Then a runner filed them at the courthouse. One 10 am run and one 3 pm run.

Every day you got a foot high stack of certified mail to read. When a client had a new case, they called you on the phone and you either went to lunch to discuss if they were local, or they sent the file by FedEx if they weren't. Everything was pretty slow.

Today, there are no dictaphones. I don't what we did for evidence before emails and everything has sped up dramatically. New cases/files arrive by email. All filings are electronic.
My secretary made filings for me in South Carolina last Friday. Discovery is more complicated. Not just documents, but metadata. I'm glad I'm at the end of my career and not the start. It's going to keep speeding up exponentially.

quote:

Originally posted by surefire7:
I’m amazed at your life story Saeed. Once again, thank you for sharing! My family was not wealthy growing up, but I did have more than two changes of clothes per year! May I ask what age you were when life changed for you, similar to how you live now?

Changes started in the 70's, gradually, as Dubai basically became a free zone for import and export.

Then the in the 80's and 90's this got accelerated as Dubai became a hub in the Middle East.

Lots of companies that had their headquarters in places like Beirut and Cyprus moved here.

Then things just got better and better as Europe basically became embroiled in all sorts of silly politics.

main reason of this success is tolerance.

We have every nationality of the world working here.

Last week I was at the optician getting a new pair of glasses.

The optician was a young Indian lady.

Never met her before, and I asked how long she has been here.

She said 8 years, and loves it.

Because it is safe, and people actually treat each other with respect.

We don't have any of the cliques found elsewhere about different nationalities.

We have very strict labor laws, which I think contributes to the law crime.

This is Dubai in 1950"s

We used to live on the right, cut off by the picture.

Look at this fishing boat, towards the rear you can see two wooden sticks sticking out of it, our house just beyond that with the wind tower - building with two black spots.

quote:

Originally posted by Saeed:
Look at this fishing boat, towards the rear you can see two wooden sticks sticking out of it, our house just beyond that with the wind tower - building with two black spots.

Quite a change…you’ve done well.

Saeed, your stories from before the big development boom remind me of when I worked on a project in Riyadh in 1983, right before my very first hunt with Roy. I was 24 years old and Riyadh was in early stages of the same explosion of development. There were parts of the city that were very modern, but also some very old areas, Battha and Manfuha (sp?) in particular. Those old areas were much as they’d been for many decades. There were no birds at all in the sky, but tower cranes everywhere. We called those cranes ‘Saudi Birds’.

The city was a great example of what had always been and what was coming, all wrapped into one big jumble. I can remember dining in wonderful modern restaurants and also of working in old areas where they lived in adobe houses with dirt floors, but had an air conditioner stuck through a hole in the mud wall and a Mercedes SEL sedan parked outside. For a 24 year old kid working in a foreign land, it was exciting and interesting, especially on Saturday nights when we’d all wander to the King Khalid Hospital expat nurses compound to party with the nurses who came from many countries, just down the road from our company’s compound. As a single young man, I found those parties to be a lot of fun.

I had no idea the UAE even existed then. I was standing at a bank of phones next to a Saudi National fellow and overheard him telling the operator, in English, that he wanted to place a call to Abu Dhabi. I asked him where that was and he said UAE. I had no idea where it was at all.

Warming up water for bath once a week on top of kitchen cook wood stove
No fridge so everything was canned and smoked and dried
No TV, no phone
And we were inside only when sleeping no matter what kinda weather was there outside
Food was simple and just enough that nobody was fat
All veggies and meat was from our own place, fish from river
My kids think I grew up in Stone Age…

Saeed, thank you for sharing the info and the pics. Wow, Dubai has certainly changed since you grew up!!!