The crazy sporting schedule continues this month. I feel as if I am chasing my tail most of the time and the littlest is dragged to what, at times, seems like every school in Dubai, for the various sports tournaments. But it is fantastic seeing the eldest of the Tribe doing so incredibly well and with the other children all cheering on the school teams, the atmosphere is always great fun and I am very proud – she has now officially broken the record for the British schools in Dubai for the Year 5 hurdles! However to assuage my guilt (for dragging the littlest everywhere!), I decide to take her to the beach for a walk after dropping off the Tribe at school and Father of the Tribe at the metro.
The beach at this time of day is pristine – our footprints are the first at the shoreline. The littlest runs away from the sea as the tide ebbs and flows but is more interested in her shell collecting. She is quite
particular about which shells she picks up but soon her tiny, deliciously chubby hands are bulging with a varied collection. We walk to the end where the rocks jut out and then turn back – she manages to walk almost all the way, but I pick her up as she stops and thrusts her body against my legs, her arms held up to me. She still has her shells. It is a wonderful start to the day and I vow to keep doing it until the weather gets too hot. It is also very therapeutic for me and a million miles away from the hectic daily schedule. We now recognize the other people out walking and enjoying the tranquility of the beach – it is almost impossible to believe that the Sheikh Zayed Road with its six lane highway (in each direction!) is so close.
There are a couple of local ladies walking in their abayas and one lady stops to talk to me and the littlest. She is also wearing a shila – the black veil that covers all her face but her eyes. It seems incongruous having a conversation with her – she is completely covered (her feet are even in stockings) while we have bare legs, feet and arms – but at the same time, it feels completely normal. I realise that our eyes really can tell us so much about another person. She tells me that the littlest’s name means ‘sky’ in Arabic. There is so much sky out here that it seems rather appropriate.
With the great weather, the school’s sports days are held this term. It feels rather odd not having them at the end of the school year. We have two as the seven year old is obviously still in infants – the junior’s day starts at 8am and finishes at 1.30pm!! Sport is taken pretty seriously here! The days are both blue skied with the Burj Khalifa our magnificent backdrop to the racing and the music teacher turns DJ for both days with non stop music to keep everyone happy. It is very different but great fun and
I’m surprised that there is no one dancing – except for our littlest who becomes the music teacher’s number one fan! I would join her I but I have a feeling that the Tribe would be mortified! The Tribe all do well and all come away with a bundle of ‘medals’. You might be surprised that we are lucky with the weather – a couple of weeks later we have a huge sandstorm when all outside events everywhere, are cancelled.
During the mid term break we venture out for another camping trip again trying somewhere new. This time we head across to Fujairah on the East coast where we have heard of a beach opposite a small island called Snoopy Island (named because it looks just like Snoopy lying on his back!), where there is some of the best snorkeling in the UAE. We take another new road across the desert and mountains and get to Fujairah in under an hour. It then takes us a lot longer to reach our final destination as the road hugs the coast and has a ridiculous number of roundabouts, traffic lights and speed bumps. As we come out of the town we come to Fujairah Port and notice a huge amount of building of ginormous above ground tanks. A little research confirms that Fujairah is one of the world’s leading oil centers and the biggest shipping fuel terminal in the Middle East. It is about to become even more critical to the world’s oil supply when a 375km, 64 inch pipeline running from Abu Dhabi to Fujairah becomes operational later this year. This pipeline will bypass the strategic and increasingly controversial bottleneck of the Strait of Hormuz. 17 million barrels of oil a day went through the Strait last year, so with Iran’s current threat to close it, the pipeline (1.5 million barrels will go through this a day) is extremely important globally. We continue along the road and suddenly come upon the village of Bidiyah climbing up the rocks at the side of the road. It is one of the oldest settlements of the East coast having been inhabited since 3000BC. It is also home to the oldest mosque in the UAE, thought to date back to the 15th century. The Tribe (and Father of the Tribe) are not as keen as me to stop and visit (it’s taken longer than we thought!) so I must wait to visit another time. We can see the outside of the mosque from the car though (and that is all that we are allowed to see anyway, as non-Muslims are not allowed in) and it is tiny, sandstone colored, made from gypsum, stone and mud-bricks.
Ten minutes later we arrive at the beach where we plan to camp. The following brief conversation takes place as Father of the Tribe starts to drive onto the beach, me: “shouldn’t we let out some air from the tyres?”, Father of the
Tribe: “no, no. This sand is much more compact than at Dibba Beach.”, me: “are you sure??”, Father of the Tribe: “ummm, I think so. But, well … Maybe not …”, me: “ok everyone, let’s go and explore the beach and decide where to camp. Daddy’s going to work out how to get the car unstuck.”. For some reason, I find the whole situation highly amusing. We have a 6 ton truck loaded up with camping gear, stuck on the beach – it is funny and it’s not raining. Suddenly however, a jeep appears and stops behind us. Two locals get out, dressed in their long robes. They don’t say anything to Father of the Tribe who has now decided to let the tyres down, but get a length of rope out of their jeep and tie the two vehicles together.
The Tribe think that this is marvelous viewing and the boy of the Tribe videos the whole thing. I take photos. Within 5 minutes the whole thing is over and we are ‘saved’! The two young men accept our thanks and disappear from the beach – it is bizarre and I wonder if they have cameras on the beach so that they can ‘rescue’ the expats as they get stuck. Apparently everyone who goes camping on the beach has to get stuck a least once – with the tyre pressure down, the truck now ambles easily across the sand.
Unfortunately, despite the beauty of the place, there is a huge amount of litter and we spend a good 15 minutes picking up rubbish so that we have a clean spot. There are a few walkers on the beach but we are the only campers. Tents up and the tribe are off beach combing again. They find a few big hunks of coral that they use to ‘peg’ down our camping rugs (this camping lark has got terribly civilized!), but otherwise there are few shells on the beach – we decide that the tide must be in.
As the sun goes down, we become the only people left on the beach. We can see the silhouettes of flocks of birds swooping around the island just offshore as they find their roosting spots for the night.
The campfire is lit and the Tribe, still in their swim gear, are making a home movie – the sound of their hysterical giggling is catching, but soon they exhaust themselves and collapse into their tent leaving the beach to just the two of us. At moments like these we realise how terribly lucky we are to be here.
The following morning, (we again watch the sunrise!), we walk down the beach where a couple of 5 star resort hotels are situated. The beach here is lined with sun beds and shade and all manner of water sports on offer. Despite the fact that there are few people around, I rather prefer the peace and isolation of our little ‘campsite’.
We watch some 21st century local fishermen pulling their nets in by big 4×4 trucks. They are still pulling them in as we return back along the beach, so I have no idea what their catch is.
The Tribe find plenty of rockpools as the tide is now right out and they find some big crabs lurking in the shadows. Once we’ve packed up (and taken more rubbish away with us than we made), we decide to do a bit of ‘wadi bashing’ on the way back from Dubai.
Wadi bashing is an extremely popular activity over here as it takes you out of the city. Wadis are dry riverbeds, that obviously still become rivers after rain, so you have to watch the weather. Bashing – basically because of what the driving can do to your vehicle as you go across the rocky ground!
We leave the main road and find a dirt track that takes us up, quite steeply, to an amazing big plateau at the top where we stop for a picnic lunch. The views across to the sea are spectacular and the silence just awesome. Even the Tribe comment on it and remain quiet (albeit briefly) to enjoy the peace. There are the remains of some stone buildings – shelter for animals perhaps?
There are lots of short, scrubby looking trees on the plateau and I’m pretty sure that they are Christ’s Thorn Trees. They are commonly found in wadis and plantations and wherever the underground water is close to the surface. It is a sacred tree in Israel (for obvious reasons). Apparently their fruit is edible and can be found in local markets.
We see some large animal droppings and wonder if they could possibly belong to the rare Arabian Leopard. After photographing the droppings, we discover later that they have been left by donkeys!! Not quite such an exciting find! We continue the drive back down and pass some increasingly large villas surrounded by high walls. Turning a bend in the road a small farm built into the slope on terraces comes into view. It all looks remarkably fertile. As we get to the bottom of the valley, past the farm, the boy of the Tribe suddenly shouts “look, a dead camel!”. We all look, and yes, there’s the large mass of a camel lying on the ground beside the track. As we pass it, it looks at us and sits up. I guess it’s not dead after all. The track soon becomes a new road. It has been made for the construction of the electricity pylons and bizarrely, it has lighting all the way along it – we are quite remote and we have found street lighting. By now the Tribe are pretty tired so we make our way back to the main road and head back to the city
The end of the month sees the arrival of our first big sandstorm since we’ve been in Dubai. It is an experience. The sky goes black, the wind becomes vicious and every time you venture outside any exposed part of your body is whipped by the stinging sand. Visibility is almost zero.
For us newbies, it is all quite exciting. Some roads are even closed due to the amount of sand accumulating on the road. At home there are piles of sand blown in every time any door is opened. All the furniture is covered in a fine layer. Any car left outside has a thick covering – I guess that it’s the equivalent of the sudden arrival of snow back home.
Mother of the ‘very sandy’ Tribe
