It has not been easy for Morgan Carver Richards to settle back in the United States after four years of living in Dubai. When the mother of three moved back to Phoenix, Arizona, in January with her husband and young daughters, she didn’t expect the reverse culture shock to hit her so badly.
Instead of succumbing to despair, she has used it as the inspiration for some short, “repatriation” videos on all the things she misses about Dubai.
The 13 segments released so far are hilarious and self-deprecating, on topics such as: the lack of valet parking; the absence of attendants to pump petrol for you; an inability to find halloumi cheese in shops; and the overwhelming variety of breakfast cereals.
“I’ve always had kind of a comedic outlook on things, so it was just an easy thing for me to say, how about I make fun of how I’ve been feeling – just laugh at myself and learn to accept it,” says Richards.
Her short-and-sweet videos, which run for 90 seconds or less, feature Richards in the car, on the phone or in her home, talking to someone off-screen.
“What do you mean you cut your own grass?” she says in one. In another, she says to her kids: “No, you cannot walk to the grocery store by yourself, this is NOT Dubai – do you want mummy to go to jail?”
Richards says it was a lot easier moving to Dubai than moving to Phoenix.
“Everyone in Dubai was in the same situation – we were all going through the same thing,” she says. “Everyone was of a different nationality but we were a community where everyone was out in the street, with kids playing and lots of swimming and parks right there in the neighbourhood.”
In contrast, moving back home has failed to live up to expectations.
“It’s really hard work being home,” says Richards. “Everybody gets caught up in the hype: ‘You’re going home, you’re going home where you’re supposed to be.’ But the reality is you’ve been gone for years and Dubai had become home.”
The former flight attendant, married to a pilot, has self-published four books and is studying anthropology. When she decided to start making notes of all the things she missed about life in Dubai, it turned into a long list.
“I was having a rough time with the move and with meeting people and adjusting, not necessarily with new stuff, but adjusting back into life in the US,” she says. “So I think when I made that first video, it was kind of an outlet. It was a way to cope.
“I think I did it because I was explaining to a lot of my friends who are still in Dubai, and who aren’t American, and trying to explain to them the struggles – but they didn’t really understand what I meant. At the same time, people who haven’t been through it and haven’t been expats don’t understand at all.
“Even the halloumi cheese thing, as stupid as it sounded, it was really a thing – I really wanted halloumi cheese, my children really wanted it, it was something we ate so often in our home and we no longer have it. Just a small thing that changed in our lives – but it’s still change.”
Her first video, which she posted on her Facebook page about a month ago, has been viewed almost 300,000 times, shared more than 1,500 times, received more 1.6k likes and attracted hundreds of comments. The second video was viewed more than half a million times and shared more than 5,000 times.
“Waking up one morning after posting a video at night, I was just shocked,” she says. “All of a sudden, it was a thing. It was everywhere and people were sharing it – and best of all, they were relating, they were commenting and saying they totally understand.”
That kind of validation, says Richards, lifted her spirits like nothing else could. Suddenly, she was no longer strange for missing her life in Dubai so acutely, nor alone in how she was feeling.
Expats who had lived in countries such as the UAE, Kuwait or Saudi Arabia and then moved back home leave a variety of comments.
“It was nice to find so many people who are supportive and find others in the same boat,” she says.
Richards is now working on her fifth book – about what it is like moving back home after living as an expat in the UAE.
“I’m feeling a lot better now, and the videos and the response to them have everything to do with it,” she says. “I I know that I’m not the only person going through this now, which is a big thing for me.
“My faults and things that I was struggling with that made me sound crazy for those who have never been an expat, aren’t so crazy because there is a certain group of people who understand – expats.”
That’s not to say she is completely over her former life in Dubai. “I miss it a lot,” she says. “Every day, I miss it.”
Watch the videos www.youtube.com/user/morganrichards1985
artslife@thenational.ae
