So, we celebrate the end of our first year of living in the desert this month. It has been an extraordinary year with highs and lows – the move out here was tougher than we had ever imagined and without any local help the first month or so was challenging to say the least. It has also been more difficult to make good friends than we had ever thought – apparently it has some thing to do with the very transitional workforce out here. However, it has become easier, we have spent a very happy long summer holiday here and as a family we have done more together than we could ever have imagined and shared a lifetime of adventures.
We have also spent more time with our families from the UK and New Zealand than we ever thought that we would. When my sister and her family (3 extra children!) came to stay with us during August we obviously talked about Dubai and our lives here and, with that conversation in mind, I thought that I would try and debunk some of the common misconceptions that people have about Dubai, and possibly ones that we had too, before we moved here.
There’s nothing to do except shop – well, we wouldn’t survive long here if that was the case!
We have camped on beaches, camped in the desert and the Tribe have learnt to snow ski while it has been 47 degrees outside. Things we hope to do include watch camel racing and tour the racing and polo stables as well as continue our camping forays. The eldest would like to swim with horses in the sea, our son would like to go on a night safari at the Dubai Aquarium, our ‘Gerald Durrell’ wants to find a live argonaut octopus in its paper nautilus shell and the littlest just wants to do everything, all the time.
It’s too hot to go outside – well, yes, it is a little too hot to go outside from about June to September when temperatures are the wrong side of 40 and the humidity makes things a little sticky, but with a chilled swimming pool and a little bit of shade, it’s quite easy to spend a few hours outside quite comfortably. From October to May however, the weather is pretty close to perfect with clear blue skies and daytime temperatures ranging from 20 to 36 degrees, making it a great place for an outdoor life.
There’s no history – scratch the surface of Dubai and you’ll find a wonderfully diverse, rich and varied history and culture with archeological sites dating back from the 7th to 15th centuries AD. The largest site is in Jumeirah just down the road from where we live. The Dubai Museum by the Creek has become one of our favourite museums (costing about 50p for adults and 15p for children it’s rather cheap!). It is housed in the Al Fahidi Fort built in 1787 and gives a fantastic insight into Dubai’s history.
You can’t buy pork or alcohol – alcohol is available in hotels and as a resident you can apply for a liquor licence that allows you to purchase alcohol in off licences – we have two opposite us. There is however a zero tolerance to drink driving – if you have had even the smallest sip of alcohol and get behind the wheel of a car and are stopped, you will go straight to jail. As such drink driving offences are extremely low. Although pork is prohibited in the Islamic diet, non Muslims can buy pork easily from the various ‘pork rooms’ in supermarkets. Bacon butties for breakfast are still a must when camping!
Women are second class citizens – far from it! Women are highly respected here – when the men once went off for months as pearl divers the women were left to look after the children, home and older generation. Today they are still given
much respect – there are women only queues, taxis and even metro carriages. Emirati women are highly educated and once graduating from university have full time positions before marriage and motherhood. Non Arab women have pretty much the same freedom as back home as long as their clothes don’t reveal too much flesh and they don’t get drunk in public. In fact the older generation is also given far more respect here than in many western cultures and families are seen as terribly important in society. Perhaps we could learn from this.
Dubai is a dangerous city to live – Dubai is one of the safest cities that I have been to and has one of the lowest crime rates in the world. There are 100,000 CCTV cameras in Dubai which I guess helps ensure low crime. The one exception to this is driving which is completely crazy and possibly deserves a column all to itself.
Dubai is only for the rich – we definitely wouldn’t be here if that was the case! The best example of this is world class, so called ‘elitist’ events. In Dubai these events are accessible to all. Tickets to the
Dubai Duty Free Tennis are easily affordable even for a big family! To watch horse racing such as the Dubai World Cup (the world’s richest horse race) you can take a picnic to the free admission area. For the polo you pay entry for the car and again bring your own picnic. We went to a rather smart family eventing day at Desert Palm where the tickets were free and included a rather fabulous barbecue for everyone. We hope to make our way at some point to watch some of the world class cricket at Sports City where tickets to watch the recently played Pakistan v Australia T20 matches started from around £3.25. Elitist sports don’t really exist here.
It’s all desert – yes, Dubai has grown out of the desert but there are wonderful parks throughout the city that are lush and verdant. The roadsides are always in bloom with beautiful flowers even in the height of the summer and date palms can be seen standing tall and erect alongside the roads. Recently, workers have been harvesting all the dates from these palms and they could be seen in huge piles under the trees waiting for collection.
The other thing that my sister was interested in was the food that we bought here, the variety and the price. This has been one of the biggest surprises for me. Fruit and vegetables are terribly cheap as long as you buy the local produce – so, cherry tomatoes from Oman rather than Holland. The fruit and vegetables are dirty and misshapen – just like it is when you grow your own – but are full of flavour. Cucumbers (small, stubby and tasty) are grown in the UAE and work out at about 60p a kilo at the moment. Aubergines, French beans and peppers also come from Oman, potatoes from Saudi Arabia. The most delicious pomegranates come from India as do the red onions that make you cry when you cut them. South Africa provides our oranges at about 70p a kilo and our apples are from either Chile or New Zealand. Fresh coriander, parsley, mint, basil and other herbs cost pennies for huge great bags. Our beef and lamb comes from New Zealand and Australia and again is very cheap – we have eaten more steak in the last year than ever before! Fish and shellfish are also plentiful and well priced – to give you an idea, I buy medium fresh prawns (about 3-4 inches long) for just under £5 a kilo, huge tiger prawns for £6.50 a kilo and Dover sole for about £4.50 a kilo. Breakfast cereals however, are ludicrously expensive, and I have refused to buy some of the 350g boxes of cereal that work out at £4.50! But as you can see we are fortunate in having a varied selection of fresh foodstuff.
There are more races, colours and religions in Dubai then any city I have ever been to. We have met more different nationalities than ever before. The tribe have celebrated many religious festivals with their new friends. It is very tolerant of western ways and cultures. It is an extraordinary place to live – very much a cross roads where east meets west. Father of the tribe is visiting places that we’d only ever heard about on the news – the Tribe have a large world map so that they can track exactly where he is. In reality it’s so that I can discover where these countries actually are on the map! He is currently in Turkmenistan, that I can now tell you borders Iran, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and the Caspian Sea and is only 2 hours flight time from Dubai! My geographical knowledge of the region is definitely improving.
Mother of the (we’ve survived a year!) Tribe
