Travel

Yallah

 

 

 

The soul invariably travels at the speed of a camel

– Arabic saying

 

Our move to the UAE was not exactly planned. But after nearly 4 years in Liverpool, the travel bug bit again. We attended a recruitment fair in London over a weekend, simply to ‘test the water’ and find out about jobs in international schools. By the Sunday afternoon we had met with a school director for the second time. Contracts were signed and sealed. We were off.

We met my parents for lunch on our way back to Liverpool and announced “we have news”. I will always remember my mum saying to me “Congratulations. You need to go. You are stagnating here”. She recognised our wanderlust and our appetite for a better life.

We resigned from our jobs, did numerous farewells and quickly made plans to pack up our lives and move away again.

The Emirates was an unexpected move and an unexpected surprise. The image of U.A.E that is marketed is very different to the reality. What do you picture when you think of Dubai?

In many ways, it’s a very misunderstood place. For a start, Dubai is not a country. It is one of seven emirates, each with its own ruler which make up the country, The United Arab Emirates.

I think it gets a bit of an unfair rap, and in the eight years since we left, I have found myself defending the emirate on many occasions. Western media in particular, enjoys a good bit of Dubai bashing. The British press is always down on the expats who dare to go off in search of a better life; those who dream big and take the opportunity to change things for themselves. That’s rarely applauded.

Of course it’s hot! When I first stopped in transit, that whoosh of big, desert heat hits you the moment that you step onto the tarmac. It’s something that I love and I never tired of that intense heat.

Living and working in the emirate, you see a completely different side to the city. We didn’t spend our lives in the mall or in 5 * hotels. We went to work. And after a working day from 7-4 or sometimes later, we went back to our apartment, had dinner, collected dry cleaning, prepared packed lunches and many other boring, domestic things that most, ordinary people do. Sound familiar?

Our weekends were not spend guzzling gallons of imported champagne. Sure, we enjoyed a midweek buffet or a brunch with friends every couple of weeks. But we also spent time in the desert, often running expeditions and camping trips for our students. Some weekends, we would drive out to another emirate, Ras Al Khaimah, where we would relax in natural hot springs. We enjoyed going to many art galleries and events. By the end of our first three years in Dubai, over 20 art galleries had opened across the city. One year, I was lucky enough to get a place on ‘the art bus’. At specific times in the year, we could attend film festivals, classical recitals and WOMAD on the beautiful Corniche in Abu Dhabi. Sometimes friends would host dinner parties. Most weeks we would go to a Lebanese bakery for fresh manakeesh, which we would eat, picnic style, in the big central park.

But it was not the perfect place for us. If it was, we would still be there. There were definite downsides to living there. The pace of work was frenetic.

Yallah! (a common, Arabic expression meaning “let’s go” “come on”, or “hurry up”.

We constantly said to each other “you earn every dirham”. You worked super hard and that was super stressful. But we recognised the opportunity to save for our future, so we took on extra work too, on top of full time teaching; private tuitions and lecturing at a university. At one point, my husband and I were working close to 60 hour weeks.

We never realised the toll that those years took on our health until we moved on to Kenya, five years on. In our shipment there were two shoe boxes. This was a bit of a mystery to me, as I knew that I hadn’t sent shoes in the shipping container. We opened it up, to find numerous packs of medicines, all prescribed for minor infections; flu meds, antibiotics for respiratory tract infections and little pink pills for hypertension.I found pain gel given to me for RSI in my lower arms, a result of thumping out e mails in the one or two hours a day that I was not teaching. Most international school teachers had a demanding workload.

There was a degree of office politics everywhere that you worked, and that was not unique to the education sector. Many expats achieved promotions and leadership roles because their faces fit, rather than through actual competence. You had to kow-tow to many muppets in management.

I missed blue skies and clean air almost every day. Instead the Dubai skyline was typically a mixture of smog, sand and construction dust. Fortunately there would also be some clear days and stunning sunsets.

Over five years, we learned many sides to this city.

It’s easy to be down on a place, especially if you don’t get the full picture. I wonder what we would have thought of Dubai if we had only sat in a resort hotel, visited a few shopping malls and watched the illuminated fountains? 

And that raises a question, how much do we really see of any country or city, when we just go on holiday?

Looking back, I feel a kind of gratitude to the place now. I’m glad that we had the opportunity to go, to make a plan for our future and to work hard to make that happen. I’m pleased that we worked like we did, when we did. I would not want to be doing that now. I value the lifelong friendships made and the travel that we got to experience in the region.

Dubai is a a dynamic city for dynamic people. It runs on ambition, enterprise and opportunity. In 47 years, The UAE has evolved from a desert landscape to a multi-cultural, face paced country, with a constantly developing infrastructure. In all our years of living in former colonies and developing countries, we never saw progress on that scale.

It’s a can do place. Anything is possible. And that’s a positive place to be.

Happy National Day U.A.E.

National Day is celebrated on 2 nd December.

Have you lived in or travelled to a place, where the image of the place is very different to the reality?

 

© Maggie M/Mother City Time