Our Day in Dubai

Arrived in Dubai this morning just after 6am. Dubai is 12 hours ahead of Seattle time, and 3 hours later than Amsterdam, so I think my body clock is a bit confused now. It could also be that when you log onto the google blogger in Dubai, all the characters come up in Arabic. After clicking everything on the screen, I finally found the right button to get logged in to do this. Someone will have to tell me how to make this thing come up in English right away. I was able to figure out the Dutch words in Amsterdam, but Arabic was a bit beyond me. And wait until the next stop where everything will likely be in Swahili!

Dubai is amazing. The first thing that grabs you is the sheer size of the airport. As soon as you depart the airport, the next thing is the amount of construction going on here. One of our group had read that 40% of the world’s cranes for use in building skyscrapers were located here. Now that we’ve had a chance to drive around a bit, I believe it. I’ve never seen so many buildings under construction at one time!

We asked about the level of construction, and our taxi driver told us that 5 years ago there were no tall towers. Today, I stopped counting at 50 skyscrapers. One of the buildings is already 175 stories tall (we’re told it’s the tallest building in the world), and there is a crane at the top of it because they are going to add to the tower. As I looked up at the crane, I think it’s already as high in the air as we were when we jumped out of the airplanes at Army airborne school!

We also asked about the people here. We’re told that only 20 to 25% of the population is from UAE. The other 80% are foreign nationals. We met probably 40 people today, and not one of them was actually from here.

It’s odd going from a city where the new buildings were built in the 1800’s, to a city where nearly everything is less than 3 years old. It does appear that they have a plan, as there is a highway system and a light rail system under construction. I just can’t figure out who all is going to live and work in all these buildings! On top of building in the desert, they are building islands off the coast. Some of you have probably seen the show about the palm tree island being built (I think it was on the Discovery Channel). We had a chance to drive onto the island today and took some pictures of the buildings. They are all huge! The taxi driver told us that the rent is about $1,000,000 per year!

With all this money, it is interesting that Dubai is also trying to work with a variety of humanitarian agencies. Our meetings today were in an area called “Humanitarian City.” This is an area provided by the government of Dubai where several non-profit agencies have offices. The area is very nice, but it’s hard to reconcile all the building of huge opulent buildings, and the creation of a small humanitarian city.

Last thing about Dubai for today. We were asking about all the construction around the Humanitarian City area. Turns out, it is now in the middle of what they called, “the new city center”. The city has apparently decided to move the city center, so that is driving significant construction. They are also working on a new airport that is supposed to be five times more capacity than the current airport. The current airport looks brand new, and most of the buildings in the “old city” were built in the last 5 years. Can you imagine if we just decided that Seattle needed a new city center, so we just started building about 50 skyscrapers, highway systems, and light rail all at once? I guess being in the desert helps (the mountains would probably be a limiting factor in starting a new Seattle), but I don’t think we’d even be able to coordinate the permitting processes let alone the dollars to start billions in new construction simultaneously.

This is definitely an amazing place….

Tomorrow morning, back to the airport and off to Nairobi, Kenya. Talk to everyone then!