Mullingar couple talk life in lockdown in Dubai

'Everyday life completely changed – we didn’t leave our house'

Niamh Moore was pregnant with her first child when the most populated city in the UAE went into lockdown earlier this year.

The night she went into labour, she and husband Gavin had to apply for a permit before leaving for the hospital as Dubai was under strict lockdown curfew orders.

The two Mullingar natives moved to Dubai in 2017 where they found life very different to here – not only is it hot, but the weekend is Friday and Saturday, and the price of a glass of wine is “crazy”.

The working day is also much longer for the two primary school teachers.

They are now the proud parents of baby Lily, and Niamh says that everyday life completely changed during lockdown.

“Life here is different! The weather for one is very hot. Every weekend feels like a little holiday, there are so many fabulous hotels and restaurants and things to see.

“The pace of life is different. We’re up at 6.30am and not back until after 4 on a usual day, which is quite different to a primary teacher back home, but we have great jobs at really good schools, so work is enjoyable.

“We miss having family and friends close by, obviously.

“We miss sausages! Pork is not as freely available here and quite expensive as it’s a Muslim country. Also, the price of a glass of wine is crazy!

“When Covid-19 first hit Wuhan, we were hearing a lot about it here because our school is affiliated with a lot of international schools in China.

“Generally kids from year six go on a sports trip to Beijing to play netball and rugby.

“Then the schools here in Dubai decided they were going to move the Easter holidays forward, and then two weeks of distance learning.

“Getting set up for that wasn’t a big job because a lot of the kids over here use iPads as a part of their day-to-day school routine anyway.

“The first two weeks of the Easter holidays were fine, and life continued as normal.

“We couldn’t fly anyway because I was pregnant and I’d gone past the 35 weeks, so it wasn’t safe, but lots of people moved their holidays forward or went home for those two weeks.

“But on the last Thursday of that second week, Dubai decided they were closing the borders from midnight on Thursday, and a lot of people got stranded at home or were in the air when the borders were closed.

“And as the borders didn’t reopen for quite a few months, a lot of my colleagues actually ended up getting stuck abroad, working from home in a different time zone,” said Niamh.

Once the borders were closed, lockdown commenced and a curfew was introduced between the hours of 6pm and 6am

“You could not leave your house unless you had a ‘move permit’. You had to apply online, enter your details such as your vehicle registration and your Emirates ID – which is like your national identification number – in order to get a permit to go wherever you needed to go.

“You could literally only get a permit to go to a pharmacy, a hospital, or the supermarket. And if you had been to a supermarket in the previous 24 hours, you couldn’t get a permit to go again because the traffic cameras were changed so that your vehicle registration plate was monitored if you were out and about.

“If you didn’t have a permit, you’d get a hefty fine.

“I was pregnant at the time, so Gavin wasn’t able to attend lots of hospital appointments near the end, but it was a better set up here for the actual birth than back home though.

“He was able to come and stay with me in the hospital for the whole time I was there, as opposed to dropping me at the door. And I suppose in one sense, having a baby during lockdown, gave us loads of time to get used to life with a newborn.

“But the night that I was going into labour and we had to go to the hospital, that was during the time of the curfew so before we could leave our house, mid-contractions we had to apply for a move permit so our vehicle was chased up on the road to see if we were adhering to restrictions.

“Gavin was entitled to paternity leave and then he could still work from home, so that was great especially as we didn’t have any family around – we had no visitors, we couldn’t introduce our little baby to anybody. It was just literally the two of us and Lily in our house until July.

Restrictions

“Everyday life completely changed because we didn’t leave our house and we haven’t been able to come home to Ireland.

“We had hoped to get back in July with Lily, so that she could meet everyone at home. We had our flights booked and thought we could have six or seven weeks in Ireland over the summer, but it just wasn’t going to happen.

“Maybe if it had just been the two of us we might have chanced it, I don’t know.

“You can’t board a flight over here anyway without having a Covid test first so that offers peace of mind.

“So we think, well we hope, at Christmas that we’ll get home and get to introduce Lily to everybody.

“Instead of coming home with an eight-week old baby, we’ll be coming home with a seven-month old baby, so it’s kind of sad the fact that none of her family have got to meet her apart from seeing her on a Zoom call or seeing her in pictures.”

Niamh thinks that while Ireland responded to Covid-19 well in the beginning, and people need to take more responsibility.

“I do think that because there are hefty fines in place here, people are more willing to adhere to the rules and that means life has somewhat returned to normal.

“Having the fines, having the curfew – I mean we had an alarm sent to our phone from government telling us lockdown curfew is beginning now, you cannot leave your home until such and such a time without a permit...

“And while the curfew is over, there are still massive fines in place for not wearing a mask, not maintaining social distancing, or for holding social gatherings.

“I think it’s something like 3,000 dirham for not wearing a mask, which is like €750, and for hosting a gathering, it’s maybe 10,000 dirham, which is about €2,500.

“Not only does the person who hosts the gathering get fined, but so does anyone in attendance, so there’s definitely nobody calling around to your house for tea!

“But we can go out to lunch now, and we are back in school. There’s random drop-in inspections once a week to ensure schools are complying with the rules.

“There’s thermal imaging cameras on entry so if you have the slightest temperature, it’s back to distancing learning. The smaller classes have been split into bubbles of eight – some have decided to continue distance learning.

“I think at the beginning Ireland did a really good job when Covid hit first, but since the numbers have gone back up since and there seems to be too many people who think they know better than the experts.

“It will only be when someone close to them gets Covid, or worse, dies from it, I think that’s only when they’ll cop on.

“Personally, I think that wearing a mask will shield my face from someone who happens to sneeze in my vicinity. I don’t think it’s a big deal. Even if you don’t agree with the rules, just do it because there are other people who are out and about who are more vulnerable than you.

“I know everyone is sick of the situation at this stage but it’s obviously not going to change any time soon and if numbers keep rising, everywhere is going to have to go back to stricter restrictions.

“I just think that people should listen to NPHET and the governments.

“Maybe they don’t have all the answers, but they’ve never had to deal with this before either, so we should listen to experts – the scientists and the health professionals who know what they’re talking about, so that we can all get back to some sense of normality.”