Life in the Arabian Gulf

In response to this, Ms K***** inquired:

I can only imagine the level of despair you must have felt only a few days after your arrival in Al Ain---sandstorms are not fun. (Anyone who thinks the veil was invented to oppress women has never experienced a sandstorm.) Were there seasonal chamsins there?

I'm not even familiar with the term [chamsin]. The sandstorms we had were infrequent and short. I don't think we had more than a handful in the 2 years I was there, and they all lasted less than a day.

The worst natural phenomenon we had to worry about was flash-flooding in the wadis. (So-called "wadi-bashing" was another popular pastime there.) Every spring you'd read about a group of young people who drowned in a flash-flood while picnicing in a wadi. They generally had walls 25 or more feet high, and even though there might not be a cloud in the sky, if it rained in the mountains dozens of miles away, a wall of water 10 or 15 feet high would come rushing down, innundating everything in its path.

Rainfall in general was problematic. The total annual precipitation amounted to about 2 inches, but little is not the same as none, and they made no plans for any rain. That means no storm sewers, and flat roofs with no drainage that also had electrical conduits open to the sky. When it did rain, the water would collect on the roof until it ran down the open counduits and came out the outlets in your wall.

Also, the water would run down the streets to the lowest part and collect there, sometimes up to 6 inches or more deep. They would have to send out tanker trucks with big hoses to suck up the water and then go dump it out in the desert. Many vehicles also didn't have working windshield wipers.

The Emiratis would treat rainfall like people here treat snow. One time it rained during class, and my students asked if they could get out early. I said "But it's raining!" and they replied, "Yes Teacher, we want to go play out in the rain." These were college students, too.

Duning in the Desert 

As I mentioned previously, the UAE is about 98% sand. The sand there varied in color from white to black but in the Al Ain area it was predominantly rust red. It was also very fine, almost to the point of being a fluid. It would get into everything. My second or third day in the country there was a sandstorm. Fortunately, they didn't turn out to be as frequent as that initially might have indicated (See my response at right.)

When there is that much sand, that fine, and nothing to interfere with it blowing around, it forms dunes. Some of them would get pretty massive. There were some a bit north of town that were over 100 feet high. Those are too big for decent duning. 20 feet is just about right.

Does anyone remember a TV show from the 60's called The Rat Patrol? It was about 4 guys with a couple of Jeeps doing battle with Rommel in North Africa during WWII. In the opening credits there's a scene where they come flying over a dune in their Jeeps. That's what duning is like. It was one of our favorite activites not involving alcoholic beverages. Of course it required an SUV with 4WD. I had a 1982 Nissan Patrol.


1982 Nissan Patrol
1982 Nissan Patrol

I don't believe that particular model is marketed in the States, but they were very popular over there. The early 80's models resembled a Ford Bronco, although not quite as big (larger than a Bronco II though.) Patrols were probably second in popularity only to the Toyota Land Cruiser. There were also a handful of Land Rovers.

This was 1994-95, before there was such a thing as a "luxury SUV" like the Cadillac Escalade, Lincoln Navigator, or Lexus, BMW, and Mercedes SUVs. I don't think I'd want to take one of those out duning, anyway. It was dangerous! Not the actual duning, mind you, but the whole concept of being out in the desert, away from civilization. If you broke down or got stuck (a common occurance) you could die of the heat or dehydration before anyone found you, or you could walk out (if you didn't get lost). It's probably a lot safer now, with affordable GPS and the like.

As an aside, the Emiratis had much newer SUV's, that were more like the typical ones you see today. They tended to have large families (they got a stipend from the government for every child), and needed the room to carry everyone. I saw one of those "first baby of the New Year" articles about an Emirati woman who had her 10th child, and she was only 29! The younger guys supposedly had 2 cell phones in their SUVs and would call from the front seat to the back seat.

We always followed a number of safety guidelines:

  1. Never go out alone. Always have at least 2 vehicles, and always let someone know where you're going.
  2. Bring tow-ropes.
  3. Bring a shovel.
  4. Carry lots of water. I kept a case of bottled water in the back at all times.
  5. Don't drive over the top of a dune unless you know what's on the other side.
  6. Stay reasonably close to a road.

Once you got the hang of it, duning was a blast though. There was core group of about 4 of us who would go out all the time during the season. During the summer, it was too hot. The sand didn't have the right consistency for decent traction, and A/C put too much of a load on the engine to make it up the steeper dunes. Prime duning season was about mid-November through April or so. The Gulf News, the "Leading English-language Newspaper" of the Gulf region (http://www.gulfnews.com) sponsored an annual "desert drive" around mid-December with hundreds of vehicles. I hadn't got my car yet the first year, and something else came up the second year, but I desperately wanted to go. It's a 2-day affair, and at the end of the first day, they bring in tanker trucks and set up a portable gas station out in the middle of the desert for all the participants to fill up. There's also a banquet with linen tablecloths and ice sculptures!

So the core group consisted of me, Dana Johnson, who had a Patrol identical to mine, Kevin (the English teacher from a couple of installments back), who had another Patrol, only a year older, and Jim & Suzy (from the last installment) who had a diesel Mitsubishi Montero. Before I got my car, I used to ride along with them.

Driving in deep sand is a little like driving in snow. There are 2 important differences though. One, the sand doesn't pack itself into the tire tread like snow does; and two, no matter how long you spin your tires, you'll never dig your way down to pavement. True "sand tires" have practically no tread on them at all, sort of like racing slicks. SUV's usually have big knobby "Mud+Snow Tires," so to get maximum traction, we had to drop the air pressure down to almost as low as it could safely go without losing the bead (about 15 psi). We usually had inner tubes too.

My most memorable trip was in May 1995. The season was really over, but I knew I was going to be leaving by then, and I wanted to get in one more time. Kevin and I set out late one afternoon, when the temperatures wouldn't be so high. Kevin lived on the edge of town, so it was only 5 minutes or so to the uninhabited desert. (It was all of about 20 minutes from the center of town.) We knew the sand wasn't going to be all that good, so we took it a little easy. Normally, a duning excursion is like a roller coaster. (When my mother came to visit I took her out, and after the first segment she looked at me and said "This is like a roller coaster!" I said "Yeah, isn't it great?" She said "NO! I hate roller coasters!")

Kevin and I proceeded cautiously this time though. Then the sun started going down, and even with our headlights on, it was getting hard to see. Especially when you go over a dune. All you see is sky then anyway. I was informed that the physics of sand doesn't allow it to pile up steeper than what you can drive down, but it's still a scary experience. That's probably the hardest part of learning to dune. You have a natural tendency to take your foot off the gas when you can't see where you're going. This is the biggest mistake you can make. Without all that power to the wheels in slippery sand, you come to a halt almost immediately, before you clear the crest of the dune. You then have the opportunity to rotate your tires and change your oil without a jack. (This is what the shovel is for.)

Things were going pretty well for Kevin and me, so we started getting a little more adventurous. Then it happened. I came over the top of a dune, and couldn't see what was below me. At the bottom someone had discarded a big coil of rebar (the iron lattice they use to reinforce concrete.) I hit it, and it got tangled up between my bumper and fender. I had to stop to extricate myself. You do NOT want to stop at the bottom of a dune either. You need the momentum from coming down the back side to help you get over the top of the next one. I was stuck. I seesawed back and forth, but couldn't get up enough speed to clear the next dune. (I found out later I also lost my rear license tag, but that's really a DMV story.)

There was a gentler slope off the right, so Kevin brought his car over that way, and we tied our tow-ropes together, but I still couldn't get out. It was totally dark by this time, so we decided there was nothing to do but leave it there for the night.

The next morning I called Jim. Their diesel had a lot more low-end torque, and besides, he lived in my building and also had an afternoon teaching schedule. So we went out in his Mitsubishi. As luck would have it, the place we left my Patrol was only about 50 feet from a road. Jim examined the situation and declared he could come down from one side, go past my truck, and up onto the gentle slope where he could then hook up a tow rope. Well guess what? We had chewed up the sand so much the night before, that he wound up getting stuck himself! There was no alternative but to hike out. Luckily, there was a construction project going on about a mile down the road. We hoofed it to their construction shack. It being May, the temperature rose quickly. It was probably well over 100°. By the time we got to their shack, I was about ready to pass out. They gave us some water and promised to send someone over in one of their 4x4's at lunchtime, which was only about an hour away.

Come lunch, two Arabs in a Toyota 4Runner drove us back out. They took one look, and said "We'll be back." Then they drove off and left us there. 15 minutes later they showed up again with a front-end loader with 5-foot high tires, and a big chain. That pulled us out in no time.

I never went duning again. (I left the country a few months later.)

Next Installment: Half-a-World-Away for the Holidays.