Giant poisoned pigeons are dropping from the sky here. The dead birds are literally falling from the rooftops in the Mirdif suburb of Dubai and there is not even a phenomenal meteorogical event to blame. At one point we counted 22 oversized pigeons hanging out on the ledge over our front door, and our deadbeat landlord actually responded quickly to this pest complaint. He then passed the buck to the Dubai municipality, who hastily dispatched a team, who without our consent, laid poison where the birds were roosting, and indeed, all around the property. Almost as quickly as they packed up their ladders and were on their way, some of the pesky birds started skulking off to die, while others fell over dead, right off the rooftop onto our carport, into the pots of bougainvillaes and into the swimming pool. Unfortunately, though the city pest control will come along and kill the pests, clean up is not part of the deal, and so disposal of the birds falls to my dutiful germophobe husband Billy, and his trowel. That's right, tidy Japanese-born with American-swear-words Billy, grocery store plastic bags and trowel in hand, doing his best not to inhale while scooping up dead fat pigeons, along with unfortunate beautiful non-pest birds, taking himself right to an anti-bacterial bath post-haste.
And yes, it's so easy to say they'd never do it this way in America, but there are many other of our daily experiences that they don't have in America either. Right after a bird-disposal episode last weekend, with my patio door open, I heard music, acoustic guitar and Arabic voice, in such a professional quality that I thought for sure it must be a neighbor's radio. But six-year-old Rosie, unafraid of seeming nosey, checked it out and came back confirm. Yusef's dad from Egypt was sitting on his terrace in full performance mode. And even with my limited Arabic, an expression came to mind which translates literally as 'joy, praise, or thankfulness for an event or person that was just mentioned'. Masha'Allah.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
British Gulf Santa
The Christmas holiday season in the United Arab Emirates is a unique experience that I've now managed three times, though not without some disorientation and a few small emotional setbacks. And since I'm known in some circles to be an 'epic crybaby', the emotional challenges are to be expected.
For my first Arabic Chrismas in 2008, The Sharjah Co-op Supermarket was the site of my distress when the stock assistant could not decode my request for graham crackers. So be damned my holiday cheesecake, bring on the store-bought Lebanese pastry, but only after a bleary wander around with sunglass-covered eyes to regain my composure. Surely the piles of unwrapped gifts and the long days spent working and siteseeing with holiday visitors could be pointed to as triggers for my breakdown.
During my second holiday attempt, Christmas 2009, the fact of my working on Christmas Day put me in such a foul mood that I was in a constant state of budding migraine, while I still managed the holiday 'to do' list and prepared my students for final exams. Why, I thought to myself, did I ever decide to come to the Muslim world to work? Fortunately the kids' holiday pageant, with all its partridges and pear trees got me connected back to my roots, and a rousing round of 'O Christmas Tree' set me right. More or less.
And this year, though I thought I knew what to expect, I still was caught unawares when, as rumour has it, the library staff were asked to remove their Christmas decorations. And OK, I get it, this is a college for locals only, and to have a local passport means you are a Muslim, and well, in a Muslim institution we need to behave culturally appropriately. All fine. Yes. But when you drive down the Palm Jumeira, the palm-shaped island where every last tourist has to plant his foot, and you see giant inflatable Santas dangling from the balconies, and when Abu Dhabi is bragging over their world's-most-expensive Christmas tree, our college restrictions seem simply arcane.
Work environment aside, I still managed to have a lovely Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and I powered on with appropriate cheer. At a festive Christmas Eve party, I witnessed the funniest of characters. I can't explain how unnerving yet totally amusing it was for my American children, when the surprise Santa opened his mouth - and 'talked British'. This was followed by an at-home Christmas day, on which we cooked local goat with my Mom and brother from America, assembled toys and played host to our Muslim neighbor kids, all the while giving thanks for the goodies under the tree, delivered by the funny-talking British Gulf Santa.
For my first Arabic Chrismas in 2008, The Sharjah Co-op Supermarket was the site of my distress when the stock assistant could not decode my request for graham crackers. So be damned my holiday cheesecake, bring on the store-bought Lebanese pastry, but only after a bleary wander around with sunglass-covered eyes to regain my composure. Surely the piles of unwrapped gifts and the long days spent working and siteseeing with holiday visitors could be pointed to as triggers for my breakdown.
During my second holiday attempt, Christmas 2009, the fact of my working on Christmas Day put me in such a foul mood that I was in a constant state of budding migraine, while I still managed the holiday 'to do' list and prepared my students for final exams. Why, I thought to myself, did I ever decide to come to the Muslim world to work? Fortunately the kids' holiday pageant, with all its partridges and pear trees got me connected back to my roots, and a rousing round of 'O Christmas Tree' set me right. More or less.
And this year, though I thought I knew what to expect, I still was caught unawares when, as rumour has it, the library staff were asked to remove their Christmas decorations. And OK, I get it, this is a college for locals only, and to have a local passport means you are a Muslim, and well, in a Muslim institution we need to behave culturally appropriately. All fine. Yes. But when you drive down the Palm Jumeira, the palm-shaped island where every last tourist has to plant his foot, and you see giant inflatable Santas dangling from the balconies, and when Abu Dhabi is bragging over their world's-most-expensive Christmas tree, our college restrictions seem simply arcane.
Work environment aside, I still managed to have a lovely Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and I powered on with appropriate cheer. At a festive Christmas Eve party, I witnessed the funniest of characters. I can't explain how unnerving yet totally amusing it was for my American children, when the surprise Santa opened his mouth - and 'talked British'. This was followed by an at-home Christmas day, on which we cooked local goat with my Mom and brother from America, assembled toys and played host to our Muslim neighbor kids, all the while giving thanks for the goodies under the tree, delivered by the funny-talking British Gulf Santa.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Roughing Up the Muffins
I thought we were in good shape when I woke up this morning, for it's the week before Christmas, there are 9 or 10 gifts wrapped and under the tree, and I am fairly certain that Santa knows what to bring on the 24th. After a look at 8-year-old Liam's breakfast-table head however, on which I rushedly performed a haircut last night, I realized I am just barely faking it. Not wanting him to look like a Dickensian waif in the school pageant this evening, I somehow made him look like a worse and modern version, the neglected private-school child of socialite parents. I wish.
When 6-year-old Rosie, who is perpetually confused about what day it is, comes into my get-ready-for-work zone insisting that she have the Santa hat, I say, the Santa hat has not been purchased yet. That event (starring my other 2 neglected-socialite-kids) is after school, this evening, in fact it's over 12 hours from now, and so Rosie honey, we will get the Santa hat while you are at school, no problem. But no, she says, the show is TO-DAY, tonight is TO-DAY and the Santa hat is for TO-DAY not TO-NIGHT. I say well, look, here is a pair of sunglasses, you were meant to have a santa hat and sunglasses, right? You have half the get-up. This is good, No? But no indeed. Those are boy-colored sunglasses. Dark green. Oh please, Please Rosie, are you serious?
So as I rush through my morning make-up and add 'proper haircut' and 'girl-colored sunglasses' to my mental to-do list, Dickensian (or do you prefer Socialite) Waif number three son Brady, informs me that the lovely home-made muffins and oat-choco cookies I so lovingly baked up long after they all went to sleep, are not healthy enough for the grade five holiday picnic. What?! I mean seriously? So how about a little fruit salad mom? With some roasted sprinkled flax seeds and a drizzle of lemon for freshness. At that point I remember a fairly decent mommy-memoir, though please forgive my not remembering the author's name, where the opening scene is a frantic working mom, unpacking the store bought holiday pie and purposely roughing it up, putting it on her own dish, sprinkling some extra powdered sugar on top, and serving up as her home-made potluck contribution. And so perhaps I'll follow her example, and rough up my perfect and already truly home-made muffins, and tell Brady to explain that these are totally organic, old-fashioned roughed up working-mother muffins. With a sprinkle of flax.
Friday, December 3, 2010
That's Harrassment. H-A-R-R-A-S-S...
Imagine the only blonde in a room full of 17-year-old Arabic boys in a city auditorium in the Middle-East. Imagine the hormones and the stifled cat calls, in a room where the vast majority of pupils, 250 or so, do not have female high school teachers, have not personally met an American or any native-English speaker, and are not permitted by the culture or their families to co-mingle with girls. Then imagine that it's your job, that you have been specially elected, or selected, rather drafted, to sell the government college to these boys, with a microphone and a very big stage and snazzy projected video, not because you have a knack with youngsters, or because you are an exceptional educator, but because you are blonde, you wear the right make up and are perceived to have what it takes to 'attract'. Imagine all this and there you have it, a day in the life on the faculty of a government college in the United Arab Emirates.
A couple of months ago, my male supervisor, a tall and well-tanned Arizona Phd, stopped by my cubicle to tell me with a chuckle, that I'd made 'the list'. So right away I'm thinking, what ridiculous overtime course, or lesson committee, or chaperoning duty is being slung my way. But he went on to explain that it was far more fun and much less labor-intensive that what I had imagined. Or so he thought.
His visit to my cube was followed by this emailed missive from our Dean of English, a short, brusk, 50-something-deep-voiced make-you-cry Scottish woman who truly runs the show. It reads:
"You have been identified as the people most likely to attract new students to join the college system. The key to the ‘why me?’ answer is the word “attract”
We need the male teachers to visit the girls presentations and the female teachers to visit the boys ( getting the picture now ? ) We have a ready prepared script for you to read. All we ask is that you come along looking happy, confident, and just super thrilled to be there.
If the whole idea of this just scares you to death....talk to me. But really, for you, it will be nothing more than a ten minute guest appearance on stage."
I seriously took the whole thing as a compliment at first. That is, until I heard that a lovely college librarian, also on 'the list', was refusing to participate, on principle. Gee, I thought, am I completely without principles? A mere sucker for a smile and casual smarmy quip? Or was this a well-intentioned college marketing scheme gone just a little sideways?
A couple of months ago, my male supervisor, a tall and well-tanned Arizona Phd, stopped by my cubicle to tell me with a chuckle, that I'd made 'the list'. So right away I'm thinking, what ridiculous overtime course, or lesson committee, or chaperoning duty is being slung my way. But he went on to explain that it was far more fun and much less labor-intensive that what I had imagined. Or so he thought.
His visit to my cube was followed by this emailed missive from our Dean of English, a short, brusk, 50-something-deep-voiced make-you-cry Scottish woman who truly runs the show. It reads:
"You have been identified as the people most likely to attract new students to join the college system. The key to the ‘why me?’ answer is the word “attract”
We need the male teachers to visit the girls presentations and the female teachers to visit the boys ( getting the picture now ? ) We have a ready prepared script for you to read. All we ask is that you come along looking happy, confident, and just super thrilled to be there.
If the whole idea of this just scares you to death....talk to me. But really, for you, it will be nothing more than a ten minute guest appearance on stage."
I seriously took the whole thing as a compliment at first. That is, until I heard that a lovely college librarian, also on 'the list', was refusing to participate, on principle. Gee, I thought, am I completely without principles? A mere sucker for a smile and casual smarmy quip? Or was this a well-intentioned college marketing scheme gone just a little sideways?
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Long Summer's Gone
Been getting mini-bum saunas since returning to Dubai two weeks ago, at the ladies room at work. Water from the rooftop tank is so hot from the desert sun that as you sit your dainty derriere onto the commode, it's like trying to get into a bath that's still too hot. To be away from Dubai for two months, and then to come back during the holy month of Ramadan, when it's 115 degrees and humid, where you can't drink water in public during fasting hours until the holy month is over, can be a little shocking, if not draining.
We've lived here 2 years now and to certain things we've become accustomed, some of them shamefully so. Inexpensive help at home, for one. Having a smiley live-in nanny / cook / housekeeper (especially one that irons) is something I will never recover from once back on the normal part of the planet. Thank you Chamri! British English vernacular for another, as I sit here on a holiday recovering from 'the dreaded lurgy' I caught in Turkey, while my kids 'natter on' about the new neighbors. And then there are the gorgeous hotel bars on the Gulf, with their impeccably coiffed east-Asian staff, and cocktails stirred to perfection.
But despite soaking it up as expats in the Gulf, there is a nagging guilt sometimes that I might be helping to sustain a largely immigrant culture where the workers are often subtly oppressed and in many cases outright neglected and abused. A story in the paper this week revealed 75 stranded Pakistani and Indian laborers whose company closed up shop and left them on the un-airconditioned premises during desert summer, with no passports, money or food. The local mosque and Indian embassy came forward with aid, but only after these guys suffered several miserable days without safe drinking water or a cool place to rest.
And then there is the delicate issue of other nannies we know in the community, some of them working for families who delay and withhold their pay, keep their passports, work them night and day, and provide merely a cot in the pantry as accommodation. Is living in a country where these things are commonplace a tacit approval of the prevailing cultural norms? The shameful thing about it is that when these issues are right in front of my face, I have the mind to say to myself "What on Earth am I doing here?" But then my own reality takes over, and my gaze shifts over to my kids, their expensive school shoes, our next holiday plans, the working conditions at the women's college where I work, and all of the abuse, neglect and human rights issues recede into near non-existence.
We've lived here 2 years now and to certain things we've become accustomed, some of them shamefully so. Inexpensive help at home, for one. Having a smiley live-in nanny / cook / housekeeper (especially one that irons) is something I will never recover from once back on the normal part of the planet. Thank you Chamri! British English vernacular for another, as I sit here on a holiday recovering from 'the dreaded lurgy' I caught in Turkey, while my kids 'natter on' about the new neighbors. And then there are the gorgeous hotel bars on the Gulf, with their impeccably coiffed east-Asian staff, and cocktails stirred to perfection.
But despite soaking it up as expats in the Gulf, there is a nagging guilt sometimes that I might be helping to sustain a largely immigrant culture where the workers are often subtly oppressed and in many cases outright neglected and abused. A story in the paper this week revealed 75 stranded Pakistani and Indian laborers whose company closed up shop and left them on the un-airconditioned premises during desert summer, with no passports, money or food. The local mosque and Indian embassy came forward with aid, but only after these guys suffered several miserable days without safe drinking water or a cool place to rest.
And then there is the delicate issue of other nannies we know in the community, some of them working for families who delay and withhold their pay, keep their passports, work them night and day, and provide merely a cot in the pantry as accommodation. Is living in a country where these things are commonplace a tacit approval of the prevailing cultural norms? The shameful thing about it is that when these issues are right in front of my face, I have the mind to say to myself "What on Earth am I doing here?" But then my own reality takes over, and my gaze shifts over to my kids, their expensive school shoes, our next holiday plans, the working conditions at the women's college where I work, and all of the abuse, neglect and human rights issues recede into near non-existence.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
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.
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.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
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.
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.
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