Dubai is not Kenya

I flew Emirates this time to get to Kenya, and for some reason I was super excited to try out this fancy airline and also to see Dubai, or at least a bit of the airport. I realized why I have such a super fascination with Dubai and that is that when I was in Cairo I watched a lot of tv and all of the ads were for Dubai. Even on the plane they had some ads for dubai and they play the same kind of do do do arab inspired music which I guess is the dubai jingle. Also all the advertising that Emirates does is pretty convincing because that was extremely exciting as well. “Fly emirates” is a great campaign. I almost want to buy a t-shirt that says Fly Emirates because I am so convinced. And after my 12 hour flight from NY I was perfectly willing to advertise for them because it is a super airline to fly on. I felt totally good and refreshed after my first flight, on which there was a large selection of tv & movies etc, and the seats recline in such a way that the bottoms slide forward when the back tilts back so it’s much more comfortable and natural. Also the flight wasn’t that full so we spread out and I shared a three seater with a nice older man who asked me a couple of questions and mentioned what his children study and is from Bangladesh but studied at BU but then at the end of the flight he gave me his card and guess what it turns out he has two masters degrees (econ and political economy) and a PhD in Econ and he is also a MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT in Bangladesh. The flight on to Nairobi was fine, on time and okay, but not as comfortable as the plane for the long haul flight although the food was still good, mostly it was shocking to me that the food must have been microwaved because it all seemed so fresh and tasty. The breakfast even included mushrooms that I thought were good, and if an airline can make mushrooms taste good, then why can’t everybody else?

Flying into Dubai was crazy, there was a beautiful sunrise which I managed to capture the color of in a picture, and we flew over a few different sites of what was clearly island building going on. They are sort of shipping sand out onto the water and smoothing it out into a nice island shape. I have no idea what the ecosystem of this coast was originally but artificial islands are so ridiculous. From the plane the smoothing out of the sand piles looked like someone playing with a zen garden or something.

I guess the thing about emirates and dubai in general is this question of where the money is coming from and development into a super capitalistic commercial society. So maybe the money doesn’t all come directly from oil but indirectly through the airline and airport which seems to employ probably almost everyone in the city, since now tourism is one of the primary sources of income. So is that a feasible way to develop an area? Bring in lots of international travel and money and have your city be mostly just a hub plus some tourism? I guess you need the oil capital to get started on it and then you can be continually expanding your airport and building new islands all the time. It seems like such a city of the future in that it is all modern and expanding fast and they are doing everything they can to be at the forefront of urban-ness. But in some ways it seems too good to be true from a development standpoint and at some point their investments won’t pay off anymore. But probably not for a long time – emirates only flies to 4 cities in the US but they really get around in Europe, Asia, and Africa, and it seems like basically anyone traveling anywhere really does need to go through Dubai, and the US is really not important in that scheme.

The transition to Kenya from the over-funded Dubai airport is pretty shocking, although Kisumu is a fairly big city where you can get basically anything you need, and Nairobi is even bigger, they haven’t figured out a way to prevent the dirt/dust from getting in everywhere and it’s clear that most things are built out of concrete blocks which gives everything a particular kind of look which I now associate with Kenya. More on Kenya coming soon!