15 Nov, 2011
gulfnews : Witness to an age of transformation
“I’m from the second generation of people who settled in the Arabian Gulf Coast… my age could be 88 years or more,” he said.
“At the time of my youth, the Trucial Coast was poor and undeveloped, with economy largely based upon fishing and pearl diving along the coast,” he said.
“Our life was going on well and there was no poverty. Some people used to earn around Rs300 in every diving trip for pearl.
“It those days my family and many others here used to live in the area called ‘Al Hiour’ in the mountains. In early 1930s the economic recession in Europe affected the pearl market, turned our life to poverty and misery until the Second World War,” he said.
Al Shaiba remembered that in 1941 the coast used to get support from the United Nations which used to offer people wheat and flour to survive. “Poverty turned courageous and powerful men into beggars to feed their families. People died because of starvation,” he said.
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