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Beside her father
Umm Saif is an Emirati mother from Umm Al Quwain who grew up in the desert. She learned tracking from her late father, a hunter who went out on his camel.
As a girl she rode out with her father on his hunting trips, looking for stone curlews (karawan) and houbara. When she found a bird, she would mark the spot and stay there, without moving, until her father arrived. “Since I was small, I have loved this.”
Every day in the desert
The desert is still where she spends her days. “This is my ground. This is where I go out every day from home.” She is not afraid of it, by night or by day.
Out there she listens before she looks. “The sound we look for is the karawan,” she says. It calls mostly at dusk and at night, and falconers come looking for it too. The houbara is the bird she loves most: “I love tracking its prints in the ground, and I love watching it in flight.”
Managing resources in the desert
She knows how earlier generations lived here. The area is far from wells and other resources, so when people saw rain coming they cleared a patch of ground for the water to collect and made a ghadeer, a rain pool.
“When a person wants to learn, they go to the place and give themselves a chance.”
Umm Saif
What she is proudest of
“I was able to look after my children, raise them well and see them through. That is my pride.”
Her message to future generations
“Follow the culture and traditions of your country, don’t be wasteful, and have self-confidence. A person with confidence keeps trying until they master it.”
