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It was nice and warm in the city of Dubai today. The temperature reached 99 degrees but it’s dry heat and there are ways to escape it even though the rest of the emirate is mostly desert. Correspondent Jake Warga tells us about the mixed feelings the people of Dubai have for their desert. (Photo: Jake Warga)
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MARCO WERMAN: It was nice and warm in the city of Dubai today. The temperature reached 99 degrees, but it’s a dry heat. And if you can’t take even dry heat, there are ways to escape it, even though the rest of the emirate is mostly desert. Correspondent Jake Warga tells us about the connection the people of Dubai have with their desert.
JAKE WARGA: Entering the Burj Dubai Mall, the largest in the world, under now the largest building in the world, is like walking inside a brand new refrigerator, complete with an ice rink. The only reminder of where I am, in the Middle East, is when the mall music becomes a call to prayer. So what happened to the desert, or the idea of the desert? I went to the Sheik Mohammed Center for Cultural Understanding to, well, understand the culture. This is . . .
FEMALE VOICE 1: I’m – - .
WARGA: She’s an Emirati, a local.
FEMALE VOICE 1: Most people used to live in the desert and they moved inland when development started.
WARGA: The city seems, almost rudely insulated from the desert. And as the city grew to escape the desert, the desert is now where the people go to escape the city.
FEMALE VOICE 1: Today, it’s just the place that you go to on a weekend maybe, or only during the winter season. So the desert has turned into a commercial element, especially when it comes to visitors to the country.
WARGA: There are a variety of desert activities on offer. Most popular is dune bashing.
MUSTAFA: Dune bashing going ups and downs and sidewards, it’s like a roller coaster ride.
WARGA: Mustafa is with Lama Tours. We’ve driven out of the city to see the desert, but we’re not the only ones. I’ve never seen so many ATV’s and land cruisers actually cruising the land. Okay, it was kind of fun until I vomited. But I noticed another tourist doing the same.
MUSTAFA: Once they throw up, the stomach is clean; they are ready to do it again.
WARGa: Sure the desert treats people rough, but people have not treated the desert very well either. Just beyond where we were dune bashing is Al Maha, one of the top resorts in the world. It’s also a desert reserve, no dune bashing allowed.
ARNE SILVIS: Conservation in this country is relatively new.
WARGA: Arne Silvis is the resort’s General Manager.
SILVIS: It’s a foreign concept to most people and we struggle to educate people and to make them aware of the absolute need for conservation.
WARGA: At 225 square kilometers, 4.6% of Dubai’s total land area, Al Maha is the largest reserve in the country and it’s inspiring others. Al Maha is Oryx in Arabic, named after an animal, a kind of antelope that after four wheel trucks were introduced was hunted to extinction. The Oryx became the first successful reintroduction of a species into the wild; first in Oman, then here.
GREG SIMPKINS: The Oryx you can bring back. Some things you can’t.
WARGA: Greg Simpkins is Al Maha’s Conservation Manager. We’re standing on the sand surrounded by the sand, but because of conservation efforts, new grass and foliage dots the land. A hundred years ago this area was tall grass. It’s man that helped create the desert. Bringing back the ecological past also helps bring back the cultural past, rediscovering practices that were lost with time.
SIMPKINS: The culture sits with them as a people, and that’s their responsibility and they’re the only ones that can preserve it in its true sense. We can preserve things about it. I don’t think it’ll ever go back to how it was; we’re talking 100 years ago, the nomadic lifestyle. I don’t see that ever happening.
WARGA: Unless the economy seriously tanks, people are not about to exchange cars for camels or townhomes for tents, but certain traditions are being preserved and modernized. The traditional activity of falconry, for example, almost disappeared in the area along with the birds themselves. Once a traditional hunting practice, it’s now a revived cultural desert sport.
NEVEL: This is Kakoo and this is Heretic.
WARGA: Nevel, one of Al Maha’s guides, is balancing Heretic on his arm, demonstrating how they used to hunt with the birds.
NEVEL: It started in the area about 2,000 years ago with the Bedouin people.
WARGA: Many locals now take great pride in their birds and the history that comes with them, but at modern prices.
NEVEL: Nowadays falconry is purely a status symbol. Prices can range from twenty-three thousand dollars to over a quarter of a million dollars for a falcon.
WARGA: Before leaving Dubai, I went to the top of the world’s tallest building, reaching over 2,700 feet away from the desert. It’s surrounded by artificial lagoons, water displays and completely paved landscape. I realized that the desert is the past and how they treat it, how they choose to preserve it is, in a way, preserving a culture. Come sunset, the lights of Dubai look like a giant fallen chandelier and although we were surrounded by it, stood on it, I can no longer see the desert anywhere. For The World, I’m Jake Warga, Dubai.
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