Probus members gain insights into United Arab Emirates culture

CLOSE to 100 Hawks Nest and District Probus Club members gained a unique insight into life in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) when guest speaker Rozz Albon took the stage at the group’s 29 August meeting.

Rozz, now a member of the local Probus Club, was based in Dubai for seven years from 2009-2015.

The UAE is a federation of principalities that gained independence from the British Empire in 1971.

Living in the UAE’s largest city, where the main city streets had six lanes limited to 100kph, Rozz drove her Porsche Boxster along desert highways in excess of 130kph to Sharjah, considered the cultural capital of the UAE, for work at the Women’s Higher College of Technology.

She was involved in training local women to be teachers at early education and primary school levels.

The cultural dress known as a ‘shayla’ forced Rozz to learn to read her students’ eyes, with all other parts of the body being covered.

“The perfumes, however, were overpowering,” Rozz recalled.

“Everyone wore Oud, the most expensive available, unless they had a scent custom concocted from various ingredients at one of the elite boutique markets in the city.

“The magnificence and opulence of the shopping centres was astounding,” she said.

Rozz also provided insight into family lives in the UAE, noting that some wealthy families had 10 to 15 children, often the result of multiple wives, which is permitted by law.

Working in the education space was an eye-opening experience too.

“Why do these young women and girls study to become economists, teachers or doctors if they never actually go on to work in the field? The level of a marriageable woman’s education forms part of their dowry these days,” Rozz explained.

Attending a wedding and its resultant ‘walima’ banquet was another major cultural experience.

“200 to 300 women sat in a sea of amazing colours and jewels, with the DJ hidden behind a curtain,” she recalled.

“Weddings are a joyous occasion of two families blending together.

“You also realised that all the mothers of marriageable sons were eyeing off the young women on display, making match-making plans for later on.

“Eventually, the women enacted a sea-change, covering themselves with black outer garments as the groom and his entourage arrived, and they could not be seen.”

Alcohol, forbidden under Islam, was nonetheless an apparently thriving sub-economy in Dubai at the time.

Foreigners seeking to wet their whistle had to drive through the city to an unmarked, foreign-run shop that sold it, load up, then drive as carefully as possible home amongst the trucks.

Being caught with alcohol aboard, even in an accident, could mean immediate jail.

Rozz also recalled several foreign nationals receiving emails instructing them how to wear their clothes (show no elbows or above the knees), to make sure men’s flies were closed at all times, and describing what the ‘correct underwear’ was to wear.

According to Rozz, they never found out who the mystery sender was.
By Thomas O’KEEFE