An American Minority

Dubai holds up a fantastic reputation for its shopping, the outrageous theme-park-style malls, and for having more international brands represented than any other city in the world. But just try and find a simple America-themed t-shirt, and you start to wonder what all the fuss is about.

Over the last couple of weeks, we've been poorly parenting our children by schlepping them all over town to pubs and malls to view the World Cup games, at sometimes less than family-friendly hours of the day. But in our quest to get into the spirit, we've been disappointed in the shops, which offer almost every major and minor footballing country's colors and emblems on jerseys, hats, pins, flags, and even Crocs shoes, except for the United States. We've also been disappointed in our own wardrobes, which are surprisingly thin in patriotic wear, and so we've had to settle for blue OBAMA ball caps to make our American affiliation known, in a world of Brits, Continental Europeans, and large contingent of South Africans.

Our impression that Americans are underrepresented in this part of the world was confirmed last night, when the English and Americans were playing separate matches in the same time slot. We showed up at the Irish Village which promised to be airing both matches, and found that the England game was playing in the stadium tent on two back-to-back jumbo screens, while the American match was showing on a small screen that was basically holding the two jumbo England screens together. What can be said for the sparse group of Americans assembled in front of their modest screen, is that the vibe was far more civilized than the England section, with much less smoke and fewer falling-down fans. In the end, the Americans and Brits all ambled out, satisfied with wins and looking forward to the next round. Luckily, since we're departing tonight for summer break, we'll be in America by then, where we can watch the game, properly attired, in red and white and blue.

Gifts and Goodies of Another Sort

Laundry soap in 20-kilo bags, gallon-cans of milk powder, 10-Kilo bags of rice, 10-packs of Dove soap, chocolates, cookies, shampoo, conditioner, traditional Sri Lankan saris and six-dollar pairs of jeans, a brand new fridge, still-in-the-box IKEA computer desk, lofted bedframe, second hand queen mattress, and various baby supplies. Our nanny Chamri has been with us for almost two years now, and these are the items which, over that period, she has slowly beens stockpiling under her bed and in our various closets, in preparation for a major cargo shipment to support her family back home, in Colombo. By her estimate, she is sending enough milk powder to last her husband's extended family for an entire year. The fridge will be the family's first functional one in over four years, and the lofted bedframe is for a home-health worker she hopes to employ to take care of her aging grandma.


I only came to understand the extent of her project two nights ago, while we were having dinner, when a festival of Sri Lankan friends of Chamri's materialized in our front garden, with tape, giant rolls of plastic and other random salvaged packing materials, to help her get ready for the cargo guys who were due to pick up her shipment the next morning. Since it was still over a hundred degrees out there, it was a hot project, undertaken with the jovial industriousness that Santa in America might possess on Christmas Eve. While we worked through dinner, and offered help that was politely refused, "No, no Madum, we are not needing any help", Chamri went back and forth past the dining room carrying the vast stores of sundry goods out to her friends, who arranged and rearranged it, tied it, taped it and bundled it, into a huge mass of lumpy gray freight, with gifts and goodies of a very special sort.

Gifts and Goodies

The natives are getting restless. Students are emailing me, waiting for their grades to appear, and showing up at my desk with chocolates and picture frames, perfumes and fancy make up, hoping that their generosity (soft bribery) might soften up their serious English teacher. Some might call it grade grubbing. But seriously, I am a rule-following North American teacher who knows how to separate business from nonsense, and although I am a sucker for lovely gift baskets, and some ribbon tied around a bunch of flowers, or a neatly wrapped department-store gift, I do manage (I am pretty sure) to blindly apply the stringent criteria to their projects, papers and presentations. One of my most difficult groups of students, who had such a hard time getting their act together, came around to my desk with a little speech prepared: 'We know we made you very tired Miss, but we are happy for you helping us'. And that about sums it up.