The cultural band-aid

Firstly - a disclosure up front. I'm an expat brat. What this basically means is, I grew up in Saudi Aramco, in a camp that looked eerily like the Truman Show village, where most people were American, and the ones that weren't, wanted to be. Yes, it was in Saudi Arabia, yes, we learnt Arabic at school - did we assimilate? Did we hell. The company nationalized in '85 (I was 9) and suddenly moved all of the Saudis off camp, giving them free loans to build their own houses. Our daily use of Arabic dwindled, and we trotted out stock phrases to chat in local shops on weekend excusions to Khobar, and then headed off to boarding school at the age of 11. So, I'm wide open to the accusation of hypocrite here, but I'm going to stick my flag in the sand anyway.

In my time here, one of the things that has irritated me the most is a phenomenon that (for the sake of argument) we'll call the cultural band-aid. Intelligent people, who are here to embrace new experiences and cultures, occasionally have a lapse in to the old "us & them" mentality. And it really annoys me.

I was reminded of this recently when I watched a video posted on a news site, demonstrating the appaling standards of driving in the UAE. It wasn't the driving that put my teeth on edge. It was the dialogue - where the "GASP"s should have been in speech bubbles, as well as the fact that they were out there to judge, but the verdict was in long before they got in the car.

In my opinion - if you don't like being flashed, get out of the outside lane. Simple. Whether or not you're doing 10k over the speed limit. But that's not the point.

The point is, I think that expats have a tendency to believe, in the very hidden core of their psyche, that the locals are fortunate to have us around. I include all expats in this generalization, so yes, everyone who isn't an Emirati.

So, as much as many of us "embrace" local culture, practice our stumbling arabic, observe local customs and try and befriend Emiratis, we have a tendency to revert back to our cultural groups for comfort, familiarity and reassurance, and gloss over the cracks with a handy cultural band-aid - the patronising us&them comments that many or most of us have made at some point.

Driving standards, maids, labour in general, queues, government officials/offices, the police, gender equality... the list is long. Don't like it, don't get it, don't want to think about it, stick a band-aid on it ... "they're dreadful, they don't understand, it's so 3rd world, tchah, tsk, grumble.." Magic. You feel better having "explained" the behaviour, and thus the blemish is covered, and we can continue "assimilating" the bits we like and approve of.

It's a dangerous game, and seems to be leading to a backlash, with Emiratis forming groups on networking sites such as Facebook hitting back at the expat hoardes.

Our time here is limited kids, make the bloody most of it.