The Abu Dhabi Experience Arrival January 2009

This next section of my memoirs deals with an attempt to earn petrodollars as a consultant for the Centre for British Teachers (CFBT) in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates in 2009....

Arrival in the Desert.

Yes it was… It was bloody freezing in the desert in the mornings in Madinat Zayed. (referred to as ‘MZ’ for brevity thenceforth) - with ‘peasoup’ fogs most days!

Can you believe it? In the middle of the desert.

Most mornings I was woken woke up at 5.30 am by the Imam in the mosque ‘calling’ everyone to prayer.

‘Calling’? More like ‘bellowing’ like a cow demanding to be milked.

“Allahu Akbar” he wailed. Although the mosque was a hundred metres away-his voice was actually relayed through a loudspeaker to within about ten metres of every house in the block –including the one where I was staying. There was no escaping it.

This was the signal to pull myself out of bed, put my feet on the freezing bare stone floor and skip to the emersion heater like a wallaby in the pitch dark. This heated up the water in the shower by about six. The bedroom of the home of 'Eddie the horse' (my boss)  was matless, rugless, carpetless, lightless and tabless. In fact it was curtainless and almost entirely furnitureless apart from the bed itself.

As it turned out the room had all been rather hastily arranged – but more of that later. I mustn’t get ahead of myself, but yes, there was a thick dense fog on those freezing early mornings in the dark.


It was the fourth of January 2009 and the journey from Adelaide was marked by the first panic attack about fifteen minutes into the air.

Because of family commitments in Adelaide I had not yet really started to think about where I was going.

On reflection, I think it was probably more than just the family commitments in Adelaide. I was really apprehensive about the whole project. That was another reason I hadn’t thought about my destination –Madinat Zayed.

‘Madinat Zayed’ I mused to myself - was it a little town or a village? Perhaps two hours into the desert into the empty quarter of Arabia. Close to the Saudi border. One supermarket. Google Earth didn’t show much else.

Hmmm…I thought to myself perhaps naturally following my train of thought ‘What will my apartment be like?” At interview they had said it would be a two or three - bedroomed apartment-and furnished of course I assumed. Sounded nice….

Thinking about it a bit more I thought “How and when will I be able to get out of this place?‘ Will I buy a car or rent one?’

Then it struck me - where is my international driving license?’

HQ Abu Dhabi had told me to bring one-and I had gone to some trouble to get one in Brunei as I knew the UAE would not accept a Bruneian license.

‘Ah yes, I reassured myself, it must be in my hand luggage with all my other important papers. It must be there.’ I tried to remember when I had last seen it. I was pretty sure I had seen it in Adelaide.

So I spent the next seven hours to Kuala Lumpur worrying about it. But when I came to think of it, I really couldn’t remember when I had last seen the damn thing. Was it in Brunei or in Adelaide?

Disembarking in transit at KL I frantically emptied out the contents of my hand luggage on to a table in the airport lounge-to a bemused audience of other passengers. I searched in vain- the license was nowhere to be found..

That was going to be a problem….

I arrived into Dubai in the middle of the night feeling slightly nostalgic about it all –I could remember vividly my arrival twenty years ago. The Dubai of the late eighties was a fine place to live –a mixture of the old and the new. Dubai was expanding-but still manageable in size.

I joined the queue for a visitors visa –as instructed in my ‘mobilisation pack’ sent electronically from HQ Abu Dhabi months ago to me when I was still  in Brunei. I hadn’t heard much from HQ since I’d received the mobilization pack. Come to think of it I hadn’t heard anything from HQ in months.

I thought to myself ‘Am I really in the right queue here?’

I soon found out.

‘You come UAE worok or jus vist?’

drawled the dashing, but unsmiling Arab slavemaster who seemed little older than a schoolboy to me This immigration official seemed weary after processing fifty or sixty Africans in front of me in the queue. I felt sorry for him having to process all these slaves.

The scene was like a set from the Pirates of the Caribbean with the sound on mute. There were queues everywhere with people of every shape, colour and size imaginable-but-and this was remarkable under the circumstances- they were quiet and orderly.

No-on reflection-maybe it was more like the train platform at Auschwitz with Mengele making the selections.

I didn’t like the atmosphere at all.

‘ Emm? I said. ‘I come here work but company tell me first enter visit visa’

He scrutinized me more closely.

‘You come worok or visit?’

‘I doing both.. I…...’

‘You go that one’ he interrupted and waved me away with his hand to the ‘worok’ visa counter.

Amazingly, this was the only part of the airport where there was no queue. And even more amazingly there was indeed a 'worok' visa waiting for me!

Well done HQ! Credit where credit is due. But they might have told me to pick up the visa at the airport so I didn’t have to face the Mengele selections.

First stuff-up from HQ.


Outside, I was met by an Indian taxi driver with a placard with my name mispelt on it as usual ‘Mr Dixon’.

“Hello’ he said shaking his head as if he was unhappy..

“Mr Dixon.You go Abu Dhabi?”

“Yes” , I said, ‘I going Abu Dhabi’ and hoping to please him ‘You play cricket?’

“No’ he said

“Oh! India good cricket’ I insisted.

I was deflated. He was not interested in cricket. I foresaw a boring drive ahead to Abu Dhabi.

Why arrive in Dubai and not Abu Dhabi? Good question!

MZ was on the other side of Abu Dhabi and nowhere near Dubai-in fact you had to go through Abu Dhabi –a three hour journey from Dubai airport to get to MZ.

This was probably because it suited HQ for some reason, or more likely, for no reason at all.

Second stuff-up by HQ.

It certainly didn’t suit me. Because my taxi driver wasn’t interested in cricket we didn’t have much to say. He did point out various landmarks dimly visible on the night drive to Abu Dhabi.

‘Dis one bigges’ in dee world!’ –he pointed enthusiastically at a slim black pinnacle above us as if he had designed it personally and been the guest of honour cutting the tape at the opening ceremony.

The night time urban landscape of Dubai passed by and somehow reminded me of that place where the orks lived in Mordor in ‘Lord of the Rings’

But my taxi driver liked it.

‘Oh yes, Thank you, very big one.’ We smiled happily together–pretending to be happy.

We were easily pleased in the dark night.

I thought to myself ‘Size really does matter! He was so excited he could have been talking about his penis.Why are human beings always so impressed by size?'

We continued on in silence mostly because he wasn’t interested in cricket. The journey became duller as we left Mordor and headed in to open desert.

I returned to my thoughts about my driving license-where the hell could it be?

At one point we turned into a petrol station and stopped –but not at the petrol pump for some reason. It was surprising for a taxi to go to a petrol station in the first place.

I was puzzled. The driver leaned over and said

‘Only five minute–private thing’

‘Oh no problem’ I lied. I was puzzled-even alarmed..

What could he mean? He didn’t go into the petrol station –he went around it and disappeared behind it into the desert. Was he taking a pee? –Why didn’t he go inside like everyone else then? Was he meeting someone? A girlfriend? If so, for him or for me?

Maybe he had picked up the wrong person? Maybe there was a ‘Mr Dixon’

A drug deal perhaps? A robbery? kidnapping? A people smuggling racket?.

I got out of the car and peered round the corner of the petrol station. Everything else seemed normal-people were coming in and out of the petrol station. I felt reassured.

Fifteen minutes passed- but where the hell was he? My taxi driver. It was bloody cold and I got back into the car. I didn’t want to spend the first week of my new experience sniffling and snorting with a cold.

Eventually, he appeared beside me shaking his head waving from side to side in apology..

‘Sully, sully sir, said the smiling driver I eat bad restaurant last night. Vely sully!’

For the remainder of the journey we didn’t say much.

Jet-lagged, I was in somber mood. And he didn’t like cricket.

I checked in to the hotel in the middle of the night and immediately broke my new years resolution not to fight with petty officials and bureaucrats.

A brief altercation with a stroppy East European receptionist ensued who tried to make me pay four hundred dollars for the night.

She deserved it.

‘Now, you pay now one thousand dirham’ She said with the inappropriate falling intonation which made her sound like an SS guard.

Jet-lagged as I was , and licenseless, I was not going to be intimidated.


‘No way’, I retorted “company already pay-la’ with my Malay colloquial use of ‘la’. (I was confused –and was still mentally in Borneo, but not confused enough to give in to this rude little hussy half my age. She should have shown me some respect. I was a consultant now-not a bloody teacher.)

There then followed a discussion behind the reception area and the boss came out and booked me in. They claimed they hadn’t been expecting me.

Third stuff up by HQ.

The room was lovely and I immediately searched through all my things for my international driving license. The more I looked the more I realised there were other things missing too–mostly papers of no use to anyone but me-such as the original of my medical examination and my police clearance certificate. Where the hell were they?

It was a mystery that I was never to solve.

Next morning I had breakfast –really good – obseqious slave workers from India, Sri Lanka and the Philipines attended to my every whim and they were all scared shitless of me. I began to feel comfortable again. Yes.. after all, this was the life –and I deserved it .

I was an educational consultant.

After breakfast I tried to catch a taxi to HQ for my nine o’clock ‘induction’ meeting. Surprisingly, this turned out to be a problem - it was damn nigh impossible to get a taxi in Abu Dhabi even from this lovely hotel! There were limousines available –but they were very expensive.

Anyway, I eventually made it to HQ in a regular taxi after managing to get all the security and ancillary staff at the hotel on to the case.

I was a few minutes late and introduced myself in a rush at reception to a very pleasant, but as it turned out totally inefficient Egyptian girl called R.

HQ were not quite ready for me, so I had to wait for ten minutes during which time I somehow managed to crack my head on a slanting wall in the seating area. Unfortunate maybe-and definitely unusual to do it twice within two minutes! .

After the first knock R didn’t know whether to laugh or send me to hospital. She was both amused and concerned and asked me to sit down again whereupon I proceeded to do exactly the same thing –the second time breaking the skin on my skull and causing quite a bruise to rise on my head. Blood was flowing!

I was spotted by people entering and leaving the building.I was clutching my head.

By now I seemed to be well known at HQ- the rumour had spread quickly that there was a semi- concussed Irishman holding his head in the reception area.

Things were not going to plan.

I made light of it all. What else could I do? But my head hurt like hell. Most of the Anglo Saxon mandarins ignored me. But one Indian driver noticed I was in pain and soon all the Indian drivers poured out of the kitchen in sympathy , and urged me, after careful inspection of my head to go to the hospital.

But I wasn’t going to do that –at least not before I had met the head of HR for my orientation. By the time she arrived the whole office seemed to be talking about the dramatic circumstances surrounding my arrival in the building.

J W from HR (just over half my age) woffled on about policies and procedures. I wasn’t paying too much attention. I was fingering my bruise. After a polite pause I proceeded to announce to her that I had lost my international license and my original medical certificate and my police clearance certificate etc on the journey.

To my surprise, I was a little non-plused – she seemed completely unconcerned about any of these things. I asked myself if they weren’t so important then why had I busted my ass trying to get them all in Brunei in the first place? Anyway, I suppose she had her own driving license so what did she care?.

J droned on reading out what was obviously a powerpoint presentation without the projector. She seemed interested in talking to me about the various ways the company could sack me in the next few months or ‘performance management’ as she euphemistically referred to it.

Curiously, ‘Performance management’ seemed to involve traffic lights.

It took me sometime to work out the connection between traffic lights and performance management – but in the end I got it. ‘Probation’ lasted six months and you could be sacked without any reason during this period. After ‘probation’, you were assessed every six months : ‘Green’ was ok , ‘Amber’ was a warning and ‘Red’ was danger.

I was fascinated by it all because J was, like everyone else, half my age, and like most of them at HQ straight out of UK with little or no experience of living overseas.

She was a bloody Homelander!

I was also fascinated because I knew there was no need for the traffic lights. Everyone knows that overseas the contract means nothing. Are you going to sue your employer? Well, if the Sheik or one of his down- line lackeys –including J –wanted to get rid of me all they had to do was say the word. She knew it and so did I.

Or maybe J didn’t know it yet. So who was inducting who?

Anyway as she finished her speal on traffic lights I scratched my head again wondering if I had some mild concussion from the second knock on the head. I continued to make self deprecating jokes to J and anyone else who would listen to my misfortunes. I tried to be funny so people would forget me at HQ-or at least remember me for the right reasons.

I learned this at school when I was a teenager in the sixth form, and unable to compete with the Rugby players or Oxbridge candidates for kudos. I could avoid criticism-and get kudos - by making people laugh.

I’ve been doing it ever since. But it is so exhausting sometimes.

Seeing my eyes glaze over with jetlag and concussion, I think Jackie eventually lost interest and told me to go and have a coffee before I met the next person in the orientation team –S!



S

S was one of those straight up English blokes who was the salt of the earth. He talked straight to you in a heavy northern accent that reassured those who needed reassuring. He was the sort of bloke who you would like to read a bedtime story to your grandchild or who would have done well convincing people to take off their clothes to have a shower before they went into the gas chamber.

S was personable, appallingly incompetent , but above all else, plausible.

‘Ullo’; he said.

‘Am S the assets and fucilities manejuh. O course, you do knaw that we ‘ave a problem with comodation in MZ? daunt yuh?

‘Eh…well, no actually, I don’t’ , said I ‘but I suppose it is not the worst thing that could happen” I lied desperately... (Why did I lie –why did I say that?).

What’s the problem? I enquired politely feigning disinterest and concealing sheer panic.

Steve paused and bowed his head. In retrospect , I often wondered whether it was in shame , or just to gather himself for what was to come. Probably both.

“Who interviewed you, Donald?” I felt a pang of dislike rise in me. I didn’t like being called ‘Donald’. I much preferred the less formal ‘Don’

“Eh, R and yourself, actually I think, S.” ( to be fair it was six months ago on the phone form Brunei)

Silence….

‘Ok, Donald, ere’s what were goin’ to ask you to do’.

‘Were goin to ask you to share an apartment in MZ with a compatriot of yours called Ea’

The fact that Ea was also Irish was apparently supposed to reassure me. S, being English probably didn’t realize that E probably kicked with the other foot.

I gulped and smiled and said

Yes?

‘And uh yes’ , said S, shuffling some papers in a rudimentary displacement activity,

‘R is in there at the moment as well.’

I thought I was beginning to get the picture now..-a three–bedroomed apartment for three grown men over fifty years of age who had never met each other. Hmmm...

‘Dawnt’t wurry’ , said S –It’s all kitted out with what you need-beds etc..

For some reason, I wasn’t entirely reassured. But before I could ask anything S went on..

“ Now Donald , S said, ‘I ‘af to tell yuh that if summit goes wrong with the apartment don’t put an ‘ole in the bloody wall or you’ll have to pay for it-you af to get approval to do things like that.”

‘Oh! yes of course’ I said.

S seemed satisfied. The induction was over.

‘Now, all you need to do now is get your AIDS blood test in central hospital so you can get your residency visa. And then you can go to MZ tomorrow.

‘Oh good’ I said without much conviction.

Then J came in and said – there’s a list of hospitals to go to have the AIDS test.

Grabbing the moment I said, “Eh Jackie, I’m a bit concerned about my driving license?

‘Oh’ she said, ‘The international license is no good anyway after you get your residency visa’

I was stunned.

This was surely not true. My mobilsation instructions had said nothing about this.

I started to feel apprehensive-but before I could reply she was talking about the AIDS test again..

‘They’re changing the rules I think. Now only government hospitals can do the Aids test –not private hospitals”

‘OK Don , said S – best you go off to the central hospital then immediately.

I knew the central hospital was a government hospital but I didn’t say anything.

When I arrived there it was like the MCG on the final day of an Ashes test. One o’clock and they had stopped serving tickets. Because of the new regulations all new arrivals to the UAE had to go to the government hospitals as the private hospitals were deemed to be too corrupt to issue certificates.

I came back to HQ and told S.

S hung his head and thought for a moment…

“Well” , he said, ‘what you can do is get up early to marraw-about 5 am, and then go to the hospital and wait till it opens at 8 am. That way you will only have to queue for three hours’

At that moment I think I gawped at S like one of those deep sea fish.

Someone interrupted the conversation.

I had managed to pick up from someone else in the three hours I’d been at HQ that there was indeed a government hospital in MZ.

I decided S was a bullshitter.

“Maybe I could do the AIDS test in MZ Steve?

‘Naw-there’s no guvernment hospital in MZ.

‘Oh!’ I said.

Ten minutes later S had been persuaded by someone other than myself that there was indeed a Government hospital in MZ.

‘ OK, Saw, noon tomorraw Don sumone’ll pick you up at ‘otel and take you to MZ. You can do blud test here!’

‘Ok , fine!’ , I said I was desperate to get away from S and HQ to the hotel in order to watch the cricket.

I needed something familiar to reassure me.

But I’d forgotten about orientation by the Admin. dept…

I needn’t have worried. When I got back from the hospital there was a pamphlet entitled ‘Handbook of policies and procedures for new arrivals to CFBT employees’.

It had been left sitting on top of my laptop. The trip to the hospital had meant I’d missed this particular part of my orientation.

It was one o’clock and time for my IT Induction session.

I was starving and hadn’t eaten since eight in the morning.

Setting aside my hunger pangs, I entered the IT room to see L rise and cut me off with..

‘Very pleased to meet you. Mr. Don, please don’t worry about your laptop, I will send it to you tomorrow in MZ.’

Something about him made me think that I wouldn’t see my laptop for two weeks.

I didn’t see my work laptop for two weeks.

‘No worries, Thanks’ I said, as he sauntered off for his lunch. I wore my Aussie hat and was determined to be like an Aussie- unruffled by anything.

I understood my orientation by CfBT now to be complete, and went back to watch the cricket.

The Aussies were losing, but it didn’t matter matter-I was happy.

The next day my adventures really began.