I was supposed to be in Dubai for 8 hours. I ended up there for 83, spending one of the more nonsensical weeks of my life bunking with Ghanaian, Iranian, and Pakistani migrants in a packed, bare-bones room in a glitzy skyscraper.
I was flying from Addis to Lagos, via Dubai, scheduled to hit Nigerian soil on the Monday after federal elections. In my head, the plan was so beautiful- I would arrive decisively, aggressively, right after elections to an engaged city, myself buzzing, feeding off the election energy, ready to get work done.
The plan changed in Dubai. I learned from the powers-that-be that my trip had been cancelled due to continuing instability in Nigeria. From there it was a whirlwind: cajoling airline reps, begging baggage officers, sleeping in a corner of the arrivals hall, hitting the city at dawn, finding that everyone there seemed to be an immigrant, seeing the sights, sleeping in a bush, and arriving early to catch my fight back to Dakar- only to pass out at the gate and sleep through it.
Now my luck was really shot. I was looking at 2 more days in a city I couldn’t afford, with my fighting spirit sapped. I used the last bits of energy I had to take the only actions I could think of: talk my way back through immigration, and sort by “lowest price” on booking.com.
That’s how I ended up in the most enthusiastically Twi-speaking room in all Dubai. The “hostel” was four separate multi-room apartments on the fourth floor of a skyscraper, which no furniture, cookware, or other supplies, except metal bunks with a mattress and sheet each, and a black-and-white printout of an Australian flag taped to the wall.
The first guy I talked to, Jerry, had come only three week earlier from Kumasi to try his luck, on the advice of a friend who had a job in Dubai and was living at the hostel. Jerry had convinced the hostel owner, a recent migrant from Pakistan, to give him a job cleaning up and looking over the guests. He was visibly excited. Life was opening up from him.
Then I met the boss Ghanaian, the one who had brought Jerry and the other guys to Dubai. He had a star-studded US-themed hat, a working laptop, a gym-bro outfit, and a job in IT that rented him a bed in the hostel. We sat on the tiny balcony, our knees pressed up against each other, and had one of those wide-ranging conversations that happen between two people who know their worlds will never intersect again. He told me how he had taught himself about computers in Accra, dropping out of school, finding work in Dubai and busting his ass for 3 years without meeting another Ghanaian. He was happy now to have the chance to speak some Twi, and had set his sights further abroad- on, of course, America, and all it represents. We talked through visas, Trump, Obama, Accra, drinking, and life- and then he got called back inside, and we never talked again.
This world, now, is one of migration, following jobs to the big city or to another country. There’s a lot of vulnerability there, a lot of success, a lot of atrocity. Our migration has been good to us!