A Socialist in Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan’s Court

First, the obligatory information:

I made it to Abu Dhabi just fine, I don’t know where I will be teaching yet, I will be living in the city, it is hot, people are nice, things are clean, food is good, and sand is endless. Overall, it seems to be a very livable country and surprisingly Western. It is cheap and easy to get around. The taxi drivers are polite, and (just like in the rest of the world) smell like death. The stores have everything you could need in terms of food, furnishings, and entertainment.  This has contributed to what has been a fairly smooth transition for me thus far. I am sure it is no surprise to anyone that I am fast making friends. In a banquet hall full of uncertain and frightened individuals, the man believes he is God’s/Allah’s gift to the world is king. As expected, there is a wide range of teachers here. Some, I can learn from and will be privileged to call my colleagues. Others make me wonder how they manage to feed and cloth themselves with any sort of semi-regular success. This is to be expected though. There is a core group of four of us that hang out pretty regularly. We quickly realized that since taxis will not take more than four passengers, we would cap our group at that, much to a couple of people’s chagrin. The people I hang out with regularly (in order of appearance) are: Betsy, a first-year teacher from Michigan who will be teaching cycle 1 (1^st-4^th grade); Kristina, a veteran teacher from Northern California who will also be teaching cycle 1; and Bijhan (“Beej”), a fellow Midwesterner (from Iowa), who will be teaching cycle 3 (9^th-12^th grades).

How about a little background info? As always, I am going to try to sneak a little learning in. Deal with it or skip ahead. If your knowledge of this area dates back to 1950 or so, then you would be under the impression that the area I now reside in is rather barren and inhabited by only sparse groups of nomads and pearl divers. This used to be correct. However in the last 50 years, it has become a boomtown (more accurately boom metropolis). Each day, Abu Dhabi (the city, not the emirate [think New York City, New York]) grows. Construction is constant, but done at a pace that results in quality buildings, not the rushed, patchwork structures I have seen in other cities with almost unrestrained growth (not in the U.S., because we don’t have growth, unrestrained or otherwise, so this concept may be both literally and metaphorically foreign to some of you). Imagine if you had a blank canvass of land, as much money as you could possibly imagine, and an interest in planning a sustainable city that would be the leader in basically every social and economic aspect. That is what they are hoping to achieve in Abu Dhabi (for additional info, just google Abu Dhabi 2030 or click here).

The first week that I was here was largely filled with paperwork, visits to the hospital for medical screenings, visits to the police station for fingerprints, and other such tasks. During the second week, we finally started with what is essentially any teacher’s least favorite part of the year: in-service. I shan’t bore you with too many details about what went on there besides covertly completing crossword puzzles and listening to borderline paranoid schizophrenic speakers. Needless to say, there was much discussion about how we will each teach our students, interact with faculty members, and conduct our classrooms.

What is of marginally more paramount importance (and oft overlooked) is how we will conduct ourselves when we are not in the classroom. If you have never moved a great distance, you may be unfamiliar with what exactly I am referring to. If, for example, you were taken away from all the people and places that you knew and placed in a strange land among relative strangers, you would be, in effect, offered the chance to create a new you. No longer would you be saddled with the baggage of preconceived notions. Those embarrassing stories that you seemingly could not escape from would be forgotten (and we all know that I have a disproportionately large amount of those). The bad choices you have made (a slightly more disproportional amount) would be unknown to all. It would be in your hands to expose such anecdotes. Just think, if you could wipe everything terrible you have ever done from memory, wouldn’t you?

Alas, this is but a double-edged sword. Along with being unaware of all the regrettable elements of your past, your new co-workers and friends would lack knowledge of the great achievements in your life (although, certainly you would be willing to share these triumphs). Goals accomplished, degrees attained, children birthed, mountains climbed, adversaries conquered, and other such accomplishments are eagerly touted, but the most astute among us do so only in small doses. Nobody wants to hear endless accounts of how great any person is (unless, of course, that person is themselves).

So here we all are, everyone filtering their self-images through the most discriminating of lenses. Those who share all are either condemned for their poor judgment or praised for their honesty. Everyone else is hiding something, good or bad. As Abu Dhabi creates itself out of a relatively unknown past, so do all the expatriates who arrive here. Everyday, Abu Dhabi takes another step forward in development and necessarily leaves behind a portion of its history. Everyone that comes here becomes a microcosm of that macrocosm. Re-creation happens every day. Will Abu Dhabi be successful in its efforts? Will each of us be successful in ours? Only time will tell, but you can be sure that I will be highlighting the triumphs, failures, and everything in between right here on what I hope to be a weekly basis. Check back, leave some comments, and pass it along to your less literate friends.