When I came here three years ago, I had never lived outside of Australia. He had no real idea of Arab culture or Islam and had the naive expectation that a country with incomprehensible wealth would have “bought” all of his problems. Now I realize that contrary to my expectations, money creates its own problems here as elsewhere.
I had already experienced welfare dependency problems among Indigenous Australians who are literally given “sit-down money” so they can sit on their black behinds and do nothing. Why should I have expected it to be any different here?
The truth is, since discovering vast oil wealth a few decades ago, most of the 830,000 Emiratis have been spoiled to the point where they have now largely become moribund. With a surplus of money, they have been able to hire others to do not just the dirty work, but everything else. This has led to a predominantly young population, unmotivated to work, with little education, spoiled by access to large amounts of food (largely high in fat and sugar), high-powered motor vehicles, electronic gadgets. high potency and consequently high death rates due to lifestyle. illness (diabetes has reached epidemic proportions) and traffic incidents.
The UAE government, very much in its favor, is trying to address many of these ills. For example, it has an emiratisation program that aims to find work for Emiratis. This is accompanied by free education at all levels, but it is largely a failure here for the same reason that the Indigenous Recruitment and Development Programs are a failure in Australia: putting people in jobs because they are of one race. or nationality in particular, does not provide a source of capable, motivated and work-ready people. While government and semi-government agencies hire a handful (9%), the private sector (with just 1%) avoids Emiratis like the plague because they are simply a very low return on investment. When you can hire an Indian worker who will work 12 hours a day, six days a week and give his heart and soul to work, why would you want a shy Emirati at work?
Furthermore, some of the Islamic religious and cultural practices affect everything from road safety to the number of women in the workforce. Some drivers have told me here that wearing a seatbelt is an affront to Allah because it is as good as saying that you have no faith that He will protect you. Given the evidence of a road death rate that is among the highest, if not the highest in the world, it is difficult to justify that kind of logic, especially when many of the deceased are Muslims.
Although the lifestyle here is idyllic for well-educated Western expats, there are hundreds of thousands of exploited Asian and Indian workers for whom life must be hell. They are housemaids, drivers, construction workers and laborers who work long hours for very little pay and are often mistreated. With a handful of white Westerners, they make up the vast majority of 90% of the expatriate population.
So we expats keep schools, power plants, water supplies, communications, hospitals, and everything else running. This has the potential to be a big problem, for example, if a militant Islamic group decides to bomb some places where expats gather. Many expats would flee the country and literally stop.
As with most societies that have been overtaken by supposedly more advanced cultures, balancing the worst of the West with the best of Arab / Islamic culture is increasingly difficult. The levels of prostitution, drug use, alcohol and crime in cities as “progressive” as Dubai are slowly eroding the values of Islam and changing the culture, perhaps for the worse.
Dubai’s construction frenzy has turned it into a hostile mass of ever-changing, twisting, and jam-packed roads snaking through the desert dust to this or that mall. One day it may become a destination of choice for the wealthy, but today it is an overcrowded and polluted city with hundreds of thousands of expensive residences being built for who knows who.
I thoroughly enjoyed my stay here and am grateful for the opportunity to experience this interesting society of largely friendly and welcoming people. However, I am very concerned that the country is going in the wrong direction. And every now and then I wonder how much better we would all be if some of this vast wealth was redirected to the millions of hungry people nearby rather than wasted in another mall or the world’s first tall tower.
Copyright 2008 Robin Henry