Page 232 - UAE Truncal States

Social Aspects of Traditional Economy

might lose their jobs to those who came back armed with experience
in oil-field work.
In the middle of the 1950s the traditional pattern of the life of the
LTwa based on the multiple-skilled tribesman of Abu Dhabi was still
recognisable, but for an increasing number of people the traditional
seasonal routine had changed. According to the information col­
lected by an oil company employee and those who helped him during
interviews in almost every inhabited village of the Llwa in April
1955,15 only about one in ten of the people who used to go pearling
still participated during that year. They were generally only those
who owned pearling boats and their relatives who had a direct in­
terest in them. More people went pearling during the summers of the
early 1950s because of the bad date harvest following locust attacks.
The availability of outside employment influenced the traditional
pattern of life of the multi-skilled tribesman, but at the same time did
not necessitate drastic changes in his lifestyle. Most tribesmen
initially took a job with the oil company, regarding it rather like one
of the traditional seasonal occupations, returning to the dates or
camels or to fishing at any time they saw fit. The traditional routine
arrangements with regard to the rest of the family, the camels and
date palms remained unaltered even though the able-bodied men
now went to work for the company.
By 1955, of the LTwa-based men who went away to seek work with
an oil company the largest number was employed by PD(TC); others
remained in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain. Employment
opportunities for retainers and guards with the oil companies
remained important aspects of the increase in numbers of regularly
paid jobs available for local people. After the establishment in 1951
of the Trucial Oman Levies, some young men from the Llwa enrolled
as soldiers and trainees. Some Llwa-based families were also among
those subjects of the Ruler of Abu Dhabi who went to live and work
in Doha, Dubai or al Hasa in Saudi Arabia.
Abu Dhabi, the Trucial shaikhdom with a large beduin population
among whom the versatile tribesmen were predominant, proved to be
an example of the relative ease with which these people who had a
base in the hinterland fell back on their other resources—dates,
camels, fish—when pearling was no longer as profitable as before.
For the majority of the inhabitants of the other Trucial States ports,
however, the pearling industry and associated trades represented
the only means of earning a livelihood.
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