Forrest Galante's Unusual Childhood | Joe Rogan

Yeah, so when you were a kid you were you were doing this like you've been yeah involved So this is like the family business sort of my family business is my mom's business actually was safari businesses So like like you say sit in the Land Rover see the animals kind of thing And they did a little bit of tourists walking safaris But then I grew up on a farm in the outskirts of some of Harare's and Bob we and then whenever I wasn't in school I was on the farm running around barefoot catching snakes fishing yada yada And then when my mom wasn't booked up She had this little bush plane that she used for safaris, and we just adventure all over Africa Wow So it's great childhood that sounds amazing, but fucking terrifying I mean it's like one of those things where it's what you're used to right I found moving to the states at age 14 And like trying to find my like place in the world being this weird little private school kid from Africa way more terrifying than Going to meet a tribe in the middle of the bush really for sure yeah, why? Um Like I'll give you examples like I always carry a pocketknife on me right my first day here in the states I go to school pull my pocket. I'm sitting in my like uniform So I went to a very proper English boarding school pull out my pocket knife start cutting my apple 15 minutes later. I'm in handcuffs. I'm like. What did I do? What did I do? I literally had no idea what I had done wrong, but it's because I had a knife at school Everybody I had ever been to school with had a knife to cut their Apple like it was the standard thing so here I am with like police and you know guns and badges and they're throwing me in handcuffs and taking me out of the school on Day one in America, and I'm like this is the scariest thing I've ever seen and I didn't even learn until later that day that it was cuz I had a pocketknife and at no point did I Think having a pocketknife was a bad thing so they didn't tell you No, they just grabbed me. There was like this whole thing like the knife went flying I was chained up, and I was like what's going on. What's going on, and they're like you're in big trouble, and it's why? You know it was like little culture shock things like that that to me were like something I'd done every day my whole life And now I'm like getting thrown in juvie for it kind of thing when you think back about that Do you think that's just the consequences of being in a large population for sure yeah? Yeah, I mean like we Like I say I went to school every day with a knife. There was no violence issues There was nothing like that, but then you come here where you know the stabbings and stuff like that And it's because you know we had a time I lived in a tiny country with a tiny population Do you think that it's possible that I mean I mean it's stupid, but there's no way you could live like that over here I mean there's no way you can have kids with a bunch of knives. No. I don't know this culture I don't think so at all I think that would be terrible and I get it now as a little nobody talked to you about it before you left the house No, my mom didn't know she's from Africa. You know she's like here are your things Here's a nice cool. I'll put it my body sharpen it before you go to school So you were doing these always doing these walking safaris You started out doing the driving ones and then eventually you started doing the walking ones my family business did walking safaris They didn't do hunting it was all photographic And we were in the Zambezi Valley so Zambezi rivers one of the biggest rivers in the world So we do these walking safaris, and then we did canoe safaris as well Which is why I have so many hippo and croc stories because we'd be canoeing down the Zambezi River And then taking photographs and seeing wildlife that way Wow What a crazy way to grow up man. It was awesome your relationship to wildlife This is so different than the average person in this country for sure. It's very intimate like I I feel like I have Like regardless of being a scientist by trade I feel like I have a very intimate understanding of animals because I grew up completely surrounded by them now What other countries have you explored? I'm over 60 countries now damn yeah, so a lot all for wildlife work whether it's for the show that I do or for biology contracts before I did the show or just because Like for instance when I got done with college I was like I had a little tiny little business starting college sold it was like I'm gonna travel the world and try and photograph These animals and I went to 28 countries looking for wildlife