Anna in Africa: A Whole New World

These words of the famous “Aladdin” song kept running through my head this last week as I experienced the Middle East for the first time. Not just because I was reminded of the familiar movie scenes where Aladdin runs through the market or flies on a magic carpet or rides a camel in the desert…but because it truly was a whole new world. Kelly and I were on a break from school and decided to visit the luxurious Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, also known as the center of commercialism and industry in the Middle East. We both dropped our jaws in culture shock as we took in the over-the-top luxury and wealth in this city. The city is filled with skyscrapers of intriguing architecture, mosques outlined in gold and jewels, massive shopping malls with pricey designer stores…quite a stark contrast from our life in Rwanda. Dubai has basically been built in the last 15 years, so everything is brand new and nice. Not to get on a soap box…but it is also somewhat disturbing coming from a place where there are starving children surrounding you. Someone told us that around 2/3 of the population in Dubai has diabetes because of the rich foods they overindulge in and the capabilities of getting literally anything they want at any time. In Rwanda, I’m sure around 2/3 of the population suffers from malnutrition.

Despite the outlandish luxury, this really was an incredible place to visit for vacation. We saw the tallest building in the world and the most expensive hotel ever built. We visited a sheiks palace, an indoor ski resort in a shopping mall, a restaurant made of ice, and manmade islands in the shape of a palm tree and the world. We enjoyed the relative comforts of home, including McDonalds, Chili’s, Starbucks, and a movie theatre (keep in mind all of these are luxuries for us living in remote Africa). We ate Lebonese food, Thai food, Japanese food, Mexican food, Indian food, Arabic food…pretty much a tour of the world. The most authentic experience was the desert safari, where we went sandbashing (quite an adventurous ride in an SUV through the sand dunes in the middle of the desert), rode a camel, decorated ourselves with henna tattoos, and ate a local flavor barbeque while being entertained by belly dancers and other Arabian cultural dancers. Overall it was a great vacation and a new cultural experience!