When I did fieldwork in the late 1960s in backcountry Botswana I hit upon the idea of asking my sister (a dairy farmer) to send me a box of back issues of American cattle magazines. It was unbelievable: I could have made a fortune selling pictures from them, not to mention whole issues, to the local cattle people. At that time people carefully hoarded little scraps of paper to use writing messages.

In the late 1980s I brought some more such magazines with me, and no one was interested at all. The media storm had penetrated and everyone had school textbooks, magazines, radios, etc.