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.”
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The flights
Emirates flies direct from Dubai to Rio de Janeiro from Dh7,000 return including taxes. Avianca fliles from Rio to Cusco via Lima from $399 (Dhxx) return including taxes.
The trip
From US$1,830 per deluxe cabin, twin share, for the one-night Spirit of the Water itinerary and US$4,630 per deluxe cabin for the Peruvian Highlands itinerary, inclusive of meals, and beverages. Surcharges apply for some excursions.
if you go
Getting there
Etihad (Etihad.com), Emirates (emirates.com) and Air France (www.airfrance.com) fly to Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport, from Abu Dhabi and Dubai respectively. Return flights cost from around Dh3,785. It takes about 40 minutes to get from Paris to Compiègne by train, with return tickets costing €19. The Glade of the Armistice is 6.6km east of the railway station.
Staying there
On a handsome, tree-lined street near the Chateau’s park, La Parenthèse du Rond Royal (laparenthesedurondroyal.com) offers spacious b&b accommodation with thoughtful design touches. Lots of natural woods, old fashioned travelling trunks as decoration and multi-nozzle showers are part of the look, while there are free bikes for those who want to cycle to the glade. Prices start at €120 a night.
More information: musee-armistice-14-18.fr ; compiegne-tourisme.fr; uk.france.fr
When is VAR used?
• Goals
• Penalty decisions
• Direct red-card incidents
• Mistaken identity
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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
