Podcaster collects UAE taxi driver tales

Mark Fonseca Rendeiro has been recording UAE taxi drivers’ stories for a project funded by a crowdfunding site.

Mark Fonseca Rendeiro, interviews a taxi driver about his life. “You are sitting next to an international treasure” in a cab, he says. Satish Kumar / The National

These days, most people are too busy on their smartphone to talk to their taxi driver. Even if you want to, the cultural differences can sometimes seem insurmountable. But not so for Mark Fonseca Rendeiro, who has been recording UAE taxi drivers’ stories for a project funded by the crowdfunding site kickstarter.com with donations from across the globe.

Mr Rendeiro, who lives in Amsterdam, has spent the last few weeks in taxis around Dubai and Abu Dhabi making 12 episodes of a podcast show as well as a short e-book about what life is like for a UAE taxi driver.

It’s nothing unusual for the American, who has been podcasting shows from different corners of the world for 10 years. “I’m an audiophile, and I spent most of my childhood listening to talk shows from different countries,” he says. “I always loved the recordings of the late American sound archivist Tony Schwartz, who in 1959 recorded New York taxi drivers and their stories.”

Between 2010 and 2011 Mr Rendeiro visited Afghanistan several times to help train election observers, teach audio storytelling and broadcast his podcast shows. Each time he travelled there he passed through Dubai, where he experienced many memorable taxi journeys.

“I was sitting in cabs enthralled in conversations about life in this city-of-the-future; families back in Pakistan and India, dreams of returning to Afghanistan, and the perils of dealing with those crazy travelling westerners,” he says. “I learnt about the world from the front seat of a four-door sedan while stuck in traffic on my way across this Middle Eastern metropolis. What I wished above all in those moments is that the world could hear and learn along with me. That’s when it dawned on me to come back to Dubai and interview these drivers.”

He has taken 40 to 45 rides in the UAE since arriving on January 6, which will be broadcast on his own site citizenreporter.org.

“When you talk to the drivers you realise you have a lot in common – we’re not so different.

“Coming back from Abu Dhabi once, I had a 44-year-old Nepalese driver who had also driven in Saudi Arabia and Singapore. He said ‘I figured out this year that I have wasted my whole life chasing money – and I’m not the only one. We leave everyone behind to come here. What would make a difference is if we helped someone, or grew something. So I’m going to become a farmer.’ He was really a philosopher.”

The Dubai Taxi Driver project is not Mr Rendeiro’s first experience of crowdsourcing. Last year, he collaborated with Christopher Lydon, the first ever podcaster, to fund the project “Arab Artists in a Revolution”, again using kickstarter.com, the world’s largest funding platform for creative projects.

After returning home from Egypt, Tunisia and Lebanon, Mr Rendeiro then went back to the site to seek funding for The Dubai Taxi Driver. His project received the backing of 125 people from many different countries, including the UAE, and raised US$647 above its $5,000 target.

While in Dubai, in between chatting to taxi drivers, Mr Rendeiro also found time to meet up with founders of the first crowdsourcing company dedicated to the Arab world, Aflamnah, to share tips.

“It’s extremely humbling to have people donate to allow me to do these projects,” he says. “But when I see friends and family crowdfunding my projects, I have mixed emotions – I don’t want them to have to support me. So my advice is that it should only be people who love your work who fund you.”

Mr Rendeiro, who also broadcasts a weekly show with German podcasters, newz-of-the-world.com, continues to reflect on his experiences in UAE taxis.

One Pakistani driver told him he was a journalist who had written three books about the Talibanisation of Afghanistan and Islamophobia. Another was a bestseller in Urdu.

“But most drivers are post-politics, they think all politics is bad,” Mr Rendeiro adds.

“A driver from Dhaka shared a personal moment with me. After his third daughter was born, his wife had died of cancer. He showed me a photo of her and started to cry.

“Sometimes, I felt like a psychologist. One guy said that just by talking to him, I had changed the way he felt that day – he felt bad before and now he felt much better. My advice to anyone who takes taxis here is to talk to the drivers - it can be isolating for them and they appreciate being treated as equals. You are sitting next to an international treasure, someone who has done some incredible things in their lives.”