From Cape Town to Dubai: How one job application changed her life

Dubai: Sitting in an internet café in Cape Town, South African national Janine Plum hit ‘Send’ on her job application.

It was for a position in learning and development – a role she had no experience in, since she had spent most of her career managing front office operations in hotels. Still, she wrote directly to the company’s director of human resources, boldly explaining why her transferable skills made her perfect for the job.

Plum was 27. She had already lived for two years in London, and now she was ready for a new adventure. So, why not Dubai?

Plum said: “Looking back, that's pretty much how I moved through life in my twenties. My risk appetite was high and my attitude was usually, ‘I've got nothing to lose.’”

She had everything to gain, and gain she did. Plum landed the job, and flew out to Dubai almost immediately. Nineteen years later, she’s still here, and she calls the city home.

A whole new world

The clash of ‘expectations versus reality’ hit Plum the minute she arrived in the UAE. She said: “Growing up in South Africa, most of what we heard about the Middle East came through the lens of conflict... It was a region that felt distant and unfamiliar. Arriving in Dubai completely challenged that perception.”

From her very first day, she said she felt welcomed: “I quickly developed a huge respect for the local culture, traditions and generosity of the Emirati people.”

The fact that the country was so safe, as well, was a big adjustment for Plum, who said “being vigilant was simply second nature” for women in South Africa. She said: “I remember how strange it felt to leave my handbag or phone on a café table while I went to the bathroom, only to return and find everything exactly where I'd left it. It sounds like such a small thing, but it completely changed how I experienced everyday life.”

Even professionally, Plum’s horizons broadened in ways she never expected: “I'd never before worked in an environment where there wasn't one dominant culture. It completely changed the way I saw people, leadership and communication. I think that experience shaped me just as much as any promotion ever did.”

But perhaps the biggest way the city changed her life was by introducing her to her husband, a German national who works as a hospitality consultant. Plum said: “For the first time, I wasn't thinking about my next move. I was thinking about building a life. We got engaged and married within two years, welcomed our daughters soon afterwards and spent almost ten years in our first family home. Somewhere along the way, Dubai quietly stopped feeling like somewhere I lived and started feeling like home.”

Evolving with the city

At the same time, the city itself was changing. Plum has watched the skyline evolve, new communities emerge and the infrastructure grow over nearly two decades. She said: “It feels like we've grown alongside each other.”

She has fond memories of places around Dubai. Golden Sands in Bur Dubai, her first apartment. BurJuman Centre, the shopping centre “where I’d spend my entire pay cheque”. Dubai Mall, where she bought her wedding dress just a few months after it newly opened. City Hospital, where she gave birth to her two daughters, Yara (now 15) and Maya (14), and gave them Arabic names in honour of the city they were born in.

For Plum, Dubai isn’t just a place that helped her grow and build a family; it also gave her everything she needed to reinvent herself – more than once.

After she became a mother, Plum left her career in learning and development and started her first business in 2013: Desert Roses specialised in handcrafted girls’ accessories and clothing, and was a roaring success, with products stocked in stores at Dubai Mall and various outlets across the UAE, and featured in international magazines.

Three years later, she launched her second business, 2505, a straw hat accessory brand specialising in bespoke hat customisation. She collaborated with several well-known brands and businesses within Dubai's lifestyle industry.

Today, Plum runs RETURNready, a career coaching platform for women who are returning to work after a career break. She organises and runs workshops and speaker events, coaches women, and manages a supportive community.

Lessons from her grandmother

Building from scratch and dreaming big are as much a part of Plum’s heritage as they are her Dubai-it philosophy. Plum said her entrepreneurial spirit is a legacy she carries forward, from her mother and grandmother: “I grew up in South Africa during apartheid, raised by a hardworking single mum who, at times, struggled to put food on the table. I think watching my mum work so hard instilled something in me very early on. I learnt not to expect opportunities to arrive neatly wrapped. If one appeared, you took it. You figured it out later. My grandmother was much the same. Reinvention wasn't something she spoke about, it was simply how she lived. Over the years, I watched her adapt to every season life threw at her with resilience and quiet determination.”

When Plum became the first person in her family to leave South Africa and move abroad, at age 24, she said her grandmother spoke about it for weeks. “More than anything, she celebrated my willingness to try. Even the smallest milestones were met with such pride that, without realising it, she made the bigger dreams feel possible... looking back now, I realise how important that was. Without my family's encouragement, I may have dreamt a little smaller.”

Years later, she realises that she comes from a long line of women “who quietly believed that life was meant to be lived with courage”.

Plum’s 27-year-old self was brave, too. She hit ‘Send’ on an email that changed the trajectory of her life.

That decision unlocked a series of milestones for Plum, who says she’s grateful for the way things have turned out: “If there's one thing Dubai has taught me, it's that life rarely unfolds the way you imagine it will. I arrived thinking I was building a career. Somewhere along the way I built a family. I built friendships. I built businesses. I lost parts of myself. I found new ones. And 19 years later, I still feel incredibly grateful that one ordinary afternoon in an internet café led me here. Looking back, I realise I didn't just grow up in South Africa. In many ways… I grew into myself in Dubai.”