Dancing with Daggers

On Garrick's last full evening we went to Souk Waqif, the main souq (market) in Doha. There are all kinds of other, smaller, more specialised souqs here; a fabric souq, a vegetable souq, a meat souq, a carpet souq, an electronics souq, a gold souq and many others. Souq Waqif has been rebuilt traditionally and has always been the main souq here. It used to be the weekend market for the Bedouin who would get their staple goods in return for trading meat, wool, milk and weaving materials. Now it is a maze of little shops selling spice, incense, clothing, hardware. camping gear and kitchenware. There are coffee shops and even a little section where men work out of broom cupboard-sized offices with typwriters or computers, translating documents or writing letters for people. We were looking for Christmas presents and some souvenirs for Garrick before he left.

Now that winter is approaching the daytime temperatures range through the 20s, and the evening temperatures are around 20 degrees. It is very pleasant to walk around now. Souq Waqif was bustling. The Qatari men are starting to wear their winter thoubs, which are grey or black and of thicker fabric. Some of them also wear a red and white checked gutra in winter. I've even seen a few woolly hats and long scarves around people's necks to keep them warm in the freezing temperatures. The women, of course look just the same, elegantly covered in their black abayas and hijab headscarves.

We pottered about and found some new parts of the souq that we hadn't seen before and came across some traditional dancers, wielding khanja daggers, outside an Omani restaurant. Here's part of their dance which Leo captured on his state-of-the-art mobile.

We went into an antique sword shop and looked through lots of fearsome weapons. The shop owner told us when we were leaving that lots of Kiwis came through his shop and asked us to teach him some greetings from New Zealand. In a weird cross-cultural moment we were able to write down in arabic for him, "kia ora" and "haere ra". Our Arabic lessons are really starting to pay off.

Garrick and the Blending of Us All

Garrick left last night after a too-short and precious time living in one house together and coming together as a blended family. We waved good-bye to him at Doha Airport which was heaving with Eid holiday people. The second Eid of the Muslim calendar, coinciding with the Hajj, is occurring at the moment and this year happens very close to our Christmas.

Garrick is currently serving in the New Zealand Army, based at Linton with the field engineers, probably to resume his officers training next year. He arrived ten days ago looking utterly jetlagged and did the usual falling asleep at 9pm, waking at 3am for a couple of days. Due to rigorous army training in the sleep deprivation department he seemed to recover from his jetlag quicker than anyone else we've come across. His room was set out with military precision, and he soon started hounding Leo and Robbie about their bedmaking, willingness to carry out household chores, and general life habits. All this while tipping them upside down and rough housing with them before nipping outside for a fag and a quick bourbon periodically. The boys LOVED it. As did Ian and I.

Ian and he spent a lot of time together reconnecting, chewing the fat and, towards the end of his time with us, goal-setting and working out some good options for his life next year. Because we are such a new family we made sure that we just had lots of simple time together, making memories together while we have the opportunity. Leo and Robbie each were allowed a day off school to have some individual time with him. We did lots of activities together. Here are some photos:

The house feels very empty now that he is not with us.

Almost Dick Whittington

This week we have been in dual mode. We have been loving having Garrick here with us and have been doing lots of activities together (more on that in later posts). We have also been recovering from the onslaught of Robbie's activities which culminated last week with pantomime performances, an interschool soccer tournament, an interschool cross-country and a choir performance. Did I leave anything off the list?

Here's some panto pics from "Almost Dick Whittington" by the Doha Players. I hadn't really had too much to do with pantomimes before - they are a Christmas show based on a fairy story with music and dance, an English tradition with lots of audience participation, "bombs" exploding, villains, and of course one or two cross-dressing dames. Garrick arrived that morning from his long-distance flight and we dragged him off to see the show. It was great fun. We deafened ourselves with our audience participation, laughed, sang and then had to talk in post-party voices on the way home. Here's some pics of the budding star.

Make up call.

Whistle while you work.

Scrub scrub scrub.

The whole cast.

Post panto, by midweek, as I was dragging him out of bed to run in his cross-country, Robbie confided in me that he wondered if he had taken on too much, and he didn't want to get out of bed because he felt "bloody tired". I told him I felt a bit that way myself and nevermind, it was nearly all over and he would feel proud of what he had achieved once everything settled down. And he does. He has the certificates from school to prove it. He also got a certificate from Mr Gribble, his teacher, for best all-round improvement in the class. Now that's a real achievement.

The Walk of Shame

With a working life fast approaching, my days of running around scooping up all the stray household chores are numbered. I am trying to finish off all the outstanding jobs before I start. One of those jobs is to finally get the scratches on Priscilla Queen of the Desert fixed up and I have to say, Ian's car also. Ian has also made a corresponding scratch on the side of the Skateboard of Happiness. I got the police reports for his car as well as mine last week and after some asking around, worked out that I needed to visit the Qatar Insurance Company and go through a lengthy process in order to get authorisation to get the scratches fixed by a painting and denting shop. I heard horror stories about the lack of parking, the vast queues of naughty drivers and the scale of beaurocracy I would have to endure there.

Yesterday Priscilla and I went along bright and early to QIC to endure the bureaucracy and get the authorisation to get her tiny wee scratch fixed. To my surprise, although I had to park a distance away in a small patch of desert, I walked into a nearly empty room and was instantly attended to by a courteous young man. He attended to both cars' paperwork in one go, but told me that I needed to have a photograph taken of the damage by their assessor, and my husband would need to bring his car back another day to have the same thing done. A group of us trooped out together with the assessor, all to have our respective cars assessed, but very courteously the assessor insisted on going to my car first and took a photo while all the others looked on, do doubt marvelling why I would bother going through all that trouble for such a small amount of damage.

Today I went back again with Ian's car. The same young man hooked me into another hapless group of people needing their car's photographs taken and I was back outside very quickly with the same assessor as the previous day. Unfortunately we went out of the building by a different door. My poor sense of direction kicked in. I had no idea where I was.

"Where is your car?", the assessor asked me.
"I have no idea", I said brightly.

He turned away from me and we started walking around the cars "parked" outside the building. It was like the Walk of Shame. Each member of the group led him to their dented car. We all stood around and looked at the dent while he took a photograph of each one in turn. The dents were marvellous in their variety. We all talked about the incidents that had led to the dents. As we walked around I could feel my mirth increasing with each car we went to. I felt quite disappointed I had missed out on the fun yesterday.

We went around a corner of the building and I suddenly recognised where I was. By now there were just three of us. We photographed a young Qatari's black BMW door, while cars roared past the assessor a hairbreadth away.

"You have a dangerous job", I said conversationally.

We reached my little patch of desert and he looked at Ian's dent. Luckily by then I only had one teammate left, a small Indian man who had chain-smoked his way through the process.

"No need for photo", the assessor said, "only small damage. Excess 5,000 riyals. This dent cost only 1,000 riyals to be fixed. Just go to National Car Company with police report".

Thinking of Priscilla's photograph the day before, and the fact that this information hadn't been conveyed to me then I asked, "But don't I need authorisation from QIC to get car fixed anyway"?

"Sorry, my English no good," he said. I apologised for my rudimentary Arabic. My teammate started translating. In the end I was given the police report back and assured it was sufficient to get the car fixed.

As I drove away, far from feeling frustrated at the waste of two mornings getting the cars unnecessarily photographed by the QIC assessor, for some reason I felt unfeasibly cheerful. Doha sometimes has this effect on me.

I passed the assessor on the way out taking his last photograph and cheerily waved. He was talking to another man. He waved me down. I double parked. As cars roared past him with millimetres to spare he introduced me to the man he was talking to.

"This manager. His English good".

I valiantly asked my question about QIC authorisation again.

"You bring car January, Eid coming soon. It will only take four days to fix".

I tried not to look too puzzled at this. "National Car Company manager", said the assessor, beaming.

"Yes, bring car to National Car Company, Industrial Area. We will do a good job for you".

It dawned on me. This was not his own manager. Of all the car companies here, he had happened upon the manager of the one that I had to go to to get the cars fixed. He had taken the trouble to introduce me to him on the way out so that he could explain to me what needed to happen next. The Doha Phenomenon again.

Sidra

After several weeks of whisking around prospective workplaces I am pleased to report that I will soon be gainfully employed. The other day I signed an employment agreement with Sidra Medical and Research Center, a plush teaching hospital which is soon to be built and is partnered with Weill Cornell University in Qatar .

Sidra will be high-tech, offering clinical care, medical training and biomedical research in Qatar. Sidra will focus mostly on women's and children's health, as well as other issues affecting Qatar's general population such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease and obesity. Research will be carried out in the research centre part of the comples and will include genetic research.

Sidra is being built under the umbrella of Qatar Foundation, a private, nonprofit organisation, founded by the Emir of Qatar and chaired by Her Highness Sheikha Mozah Bint Nasser Al-Missned, the Emir's third wife and a driving force behind social and educational development in the country. Qatar Foundation is essentially a capacity-building organisation which aims to develop the potential of Qataris through education and improved quality of life.

Qatar Foundation has built a network of centres devoted to education, research and community welfare, mostly on the site of a remarkable part of Doha called Education City, which is a 2,500 acre building site housing outposts of many of the major learning institutions of the USA. They are being built as fast as you can imagine - no Resource Management Act hoops to jump through here. The institutions include Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts, Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar, Texas A&M University at Qatar, the RAND-Qatar Policy Institute, Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar and Georgetown University. Social services, such as Qatar Diabetes Association and the Social Development Center are also run under the Qatar Foundation, as are volunteer and charitable services.

I was sent along for an interview at short notice by a recruitment agency and met a marvellous bunch of women who comprise the fledgling Clinical Planning Directorate. In typical Qatar fashion the process has been convoluted. I was offered a position coordinating maternity planning for the new Sidra hospital, which I accepted. While I was waiting for the contract to arrive, I was contacted again and told that they had relooked at the position and the project structure and, subject to executive approval, would I like to accept a more senior position heading up a team of six to plan maternity services. Needless to say I've accepted and will have the very grand title of Senior Consultant, Clinical Planning for Obstetrical Services, Sidra Hospital.

So I've had an interview for an unspecified position, been offered one they think I have suitable skills for, and have been given a promotion before I've even started! I hope I live up to their expectations, I've no idea yet what they expect a senior consultant to do.

I can start as soon as the police clearance arrives from New Zealand and I go through further CID checks in Qatar, and Department of Labour checks to ensure my husband has no objection to me working outside the home and that there isn't a suitable local person to fill the position......It will probably be early next year that I start.

Luckily, as Garrick arrives in a week for a holiday with us, closely followed by my sister Margie who will spend Christmas with us.

Here's a picture of Ian with me. He's clearly delighted to be in the company of such an august person.

The everlasting birthday

Leo's thirteenth birthday has been such a milestone that we seem to have been celebrating it for weeks. We have a "family birthday" and a "friends birthday" tradition. Usually the family birthday is on the actual birthday with just family present, followed sometime later by a hooley for friends. We have ended up having three celebrations over several weeks. First we had Leo's family birthday a bit early while Geoff was here, which was very special. We then had another birthday celebration on his actual birthday. The other day we had his friends around for yet another birthday party. The friends he invited come from Australia, Italy, UK, South Africa and Lebanon.

It can be a bit of a dilemma here, the form that a birthday party takes. It would be possible to get into keeping up with the Joneses. For instance, the most recent birthday party that Leo went to involved going down to a resort, staying overnight in a villa by the sea, and included activities such as quadbike riding around the dunes. We settled on an "at home" celebration, using the perfectly wonderful facilities we have at our compound. The programme for the day was 3.00 start then games by the pool (Blondes vs Brunettes - kids divided randomly no matter what their actual hair colour), swimming, dinner by the pool, DVD in the compound cinema, back to our house for birthday cake then pick-up at 9pm.



The Skittles were duly transferred between cups. The Blondes won by a long shot.


Robbie's chocolate eating prowess was frightening to behold. You roll a six with a dice, put on a hat and eat as much chocolate as you can with a knife and fork before someone else throws the next six.

Here's the birthday boy, starting to look very grown up all of a sudden.

I got carried away with the birthday cake - it was nearly as big as our table (slight exaggeration) - Leo's favourite "puffy-up cake" (sponge cake) with strawberries. I ordered it from a bakery and it weighed four kilograms. We sang Happy Birthday, cut the cake and I raced some huge chunks of it off to neighbours to share.

It went well. Three friends stayed over. They are all lovely kids. Leo got given lots of money. He thinks he will buy a new mobile. I think the teenage years have started.

Princess for a night

Ian and I went to a ball last night at the Four Seasons; my first ball. I have had such fun getting organised for it. Dina stayed the night, and a Filipina friend who was babysitting in the compound for someone else stayed the night with her. She told me I looked like a princess!

We had a great night. We danced together for the first time! And loved the whole deal.

The Other Half's Children

During the weekend, we went to a beach resort at Dukhan, which is available for Qatar Petroleum senior employees and to which they can take guests for the day. It was great, not stuffy or formal at all, the kind of place where you can wander around in shorts and bare feet and just hang out with friends. We went with Leila and Ossama and met some of their friends including quite a bunch of South Africans.

Jenny, one of the new people we met, is a lovely person; a teacher who teaches 3-4 year olds at Gulf English School. The kids who go to the school are Qatari locals. She was telling me about the particular challenges teaching in this country - not funding or staffing or resources as we would have, but teaching the children how to look after themselves during the school day, something that they have not had to do before.

When the kids start school for the year, generally they are very scared because they have come from a very sheltered environment, and are coming to a place with strange people speaking a strange language. Most of them have a nanny who does everything for them - there is only one family in the whole school that does not have a nanny for the children. Most of the kids each have their own nanny. There is one family with nine children at the school who each have their own nanny and their own driver. Each morning nine cars arrive at the school, each with their own little passenger to be dropped off. Some of the families also have private tutors at home and nannies specially to play with the children, as well as household staff and maids for the adults of course.

The nannies do everything for the children at home, but are not allowed to attend school with the children, so when the children start going to school they have to learn to do things for themselves that they have never had to do before. Such as feeding themselves. Jenny says that at the beginning of the year, the children do not have the concept of opening their own bags, getting their lunchbox out, opening it and holding their food themselves, and eating a mouthful at a time. They simply sit there like little sparrows with their mouths open, waiting for her to put food in.

An Unexpectedly Huge Halloween

Several weeks ago in the compound, a notice went up on the noticeboard in the clubhouse wanting people for a Halloween committee. Eventually a notice came around to all 210 houses on the compound, asking people to register their kids to attend a Halloween party for a nominal fee. About the same time, decorations started going up outside some people's villas - witches, broomsticks, pumpkins, tombstones and the like.

Leo had a Very Important Halloween Function to attend at his girlfriend Nicol's compound (she is gorgeous and Italian) but Robbie was dead keen to go, as was his friend Jared. Robbie dressed up in black with a gruesome mask and Jared turned up completely wrapped up in bandages, as a mummy.

Here's little Jesse Otimi dressed up in his giraffe costume. Their family are the other Kiwis on the compound.

When we arrived at the clubhouse, there was a huge big thang going on. The Halloween committee had done a fantastic job. There were spider and bat decorations, a registration desk, the restaurant had turned into a children's fast-food outlet, there was a disco going outside and there were 96 children of all sizes and persuasions running around in full costume. There were kids bobbing for apples, and eating donuts on strings. I helped with one of the games - throw the quoit onto the witches hats. When there was an announcement that there would be a prize for the best Halloween costume, ALL the kids stampeded to be part of it, even the boy wearing a Riyadh soccer shirt.

After the games, the manager of our compound turned off all the streetlights and the kids went trick and treating in the dark. I gave out 60 lots of lollies before I had to turn kids away. Robbie arrived back wild-eyed from sugar just as I left to pick up Leo.

When I got to Alfardan Compound, I drove past Leo at first. He was sitting on the footpath with three girls, and I didn't recognise him because he was wearing a long black wig. He hefted a supermarket bag into the car, three-quarters full of sweets and declared it was the best Halloween he had ever had.

Fishing at Wakra

Last Friday we all set off to Al Wakra, a small fishing village south of Doha. We went with Tarek and Racha, who we shared so much of Ramadan with.

Of all the things I have seen here, I have decided that fishing is a true leveller. So much of life in Qatar seems to be parallel existences, everyone living in their own particular communities, with not much mixing. At Wakra we saw people of all description enjoying the water and trying to catch something. We saw a few wee fish being caught.

Leo caught a jandal fish.

Dahl al Misfir and the Singing Dunes

When you look across the desert in Qatar, some parts look like they have been strewn with light-coloured rubble. The rubble is limestone from the middle Eocene period and is 48 - 45 million years old. Depressions have formed over time in some places in the limestone areas. The most spectacular of these is a big cave called Dahl al Misfir (the Cave of Brightness) which is south-west of Doha.

Yesterday we set off in Priscilla to join the South African social group to a trip to Dahl al Misfir and then onto a place called the "Singing Dunes" for a braai (that's barbeque in Kiwi) and desert sunset. Our South African friend Sharlene von Berg came along too, as well as a friend of the boys', Alex. There were 31 4WDs in the convoy. Lots of families; and I listened to Afrikaans being spoken all around me all day. Ian had that wonderful feeling yesterday that you have when all of a sudden you are not a foreigner any more; you are amongst your own kind and you understand the language nuances and humour, and they understand you.

Note the Arabic grafitti! The first I have ever seen.

As we left the cave we drove past the camp of a camel herder over the desert to the Singing Dunes. If you look closely at the photo, you might be able to see the two baby camels that were being cared for in a little enclosure.

The Singing Dunes are really special. They are gigantic crescent-shaped barchan sand dunes of fine sand that have formed on the limestone desert. The "singing" is a low-pitched hum that happens when friction occurs from a thin layer of sand flowing down the leeward side of the sand dune. According to my trusty Qatar guidebook, the "Marhaba", there are very few areas in the world where the sand produces such a sound. Musical sand needs exactly the right abrasive qualities, together with rather precise wind and moisture conditions, which luckily for us is present very close to where we currently live.

We climbed all over the dunes, and the boys raced down them and also had a go at sandboarding.

You can hear a distorted version of the sand singing in this little video clip:

Ian and I made our way down the face of the dune rather more sedately and less elegantly. If you shuffle down on your bottom, you set the sand off and are surrounded by what I can only describe as a primordial humming; a humming that vibrates through your whole body and that echoes around the crescent of the dune. It is the oddest and most ancient sound, like the earth singing to you.

We had a barbeque of boerewors and chicken kebabs, potato salad and Greek salad, chocolate brownie and arabic sweets. As we drank some wine, the boys played on the dunes and explored the desert around us. As you can see, they had a wonderful time:

It's sports Trev, but not as we know it

Robbie was selected for his school team for an interschool sports team. Puffed up with pride, Leo and I went to support him and his team. They were competing at a school called Qatar Academy, a most beautiful school with wonderful facilities in Education City, where the universities and research programmes are located in Doha.

The sports were very different to what we would have in NZ. Indoors, with a circuit set up and each individual school moving around the circuit doing an activity at each station. The points from each activity were given to the judges who added up the total from each school, and decided the winning school from the total points. So there was no actual competing between children from different schools in races. Leo and I were the only family support for the team - I don't think there is much of a culture of parents on the sports sideline here.

The "sports" included balancing skills, tossing little beanbags into a hoop, foam rubber "javelins", hop-skip-jump, dashing between two lines, and balancing on the spot. But it was active and the kids all gave it their best shots. So, different as it was, it was fun to see. Here are some photos of Robbie in action and of his school team:

The Inland Sea and Messaid Punturey

The last big adventure before Geoff goes back happened today - a trip through the desert to Khor al Adaid, otherwise known as the Inland Sea. The Inland Sea is the southernmost point of Qatar and borders Saudi Arabia. It is a shallow tidal lake joined to the sea by a narrow channel and surrounded by dramatic crescent-shaped sand dunes. We booked through a company called Gulf Adventures and had the best fun all day.

We met our tour guide, Abdul, at a local shopping mall where he picked us up in a Toyota Landcruiser. He's a most interesting character, born and raised in San Diego, USA. His father is Palestinian and his mother, Filipina. He is working here with his uncle, who manages Gulf Adventures. He has a shaved head, a long goatee, an infectious laugh and a completely laid-back approach to life.

He drove us down to Messaid where we had been quad bike riding only a couple of days ago. We met up with another group on the trip and as Abdul let some air out of the tyres in preparation for driving in the sand dunes, managed to grab a quick camel ride. There were hundreds of other 4WDs there, driving with abandon.

The ride through the dunes was simultaneously beautiful and adrenaline-filled; a roller coaster ride through a stark sculptured landscape. There were tyre marks on every part of every dune initially, but as we moved further south we moved out of the traffic. At one point we got stuck and the vehicle had to be dug out. Some guys turned up to help. When the vehicle was finally free and we were on our way again we asked who they were. "Oh, that's the manager of the company", said Abdul, "and also my uncle. I'm going to be singing the blues tomorrow!"

We arrived at the Khor al Adaid at sunset. The sun looked like a tangerine. As it sank towards the sea it turned pastel through the dust haze and slid imperceptibly past the horizon. We looked towards the Saudi border as darkness crept up on us.

We went back for dinner to a camp they have permanently set up. We sat on bedouin cushions in carpeted tents, then ate arabic food outside while a sea breeze cooled us and made the flares that lit the table flicker.

As we drove back to Doha, we stopped at Messaid to put some air back in the tyres. I noticed a most interesting kind of shop I had never seen before called Messaid Punturey. A tyre shop. "What's that?" I asked Abdul. "They will fix your flat tyres", he told me. I wish I'd known about Punturey shops last week. It would have saved me a lot of trouble when I needed my tyre repaired.

Geoff's Visit

We have had a breathless few days with Geoff's visit; very busy with lots of activities but with lots of time to catch up and talk about some important issues. The boys are so happy to see Geoff. Dina, who is Filipina and who does our cleaning and ironing, thinks it is hilarious: "Now you hab two husbands!" It has been good for all of us in the house; bittersweet for me because it reminds me that my time together being fulltime hands-on mummy for the boys will come to an end soon, bittersweet for Geoff because he has been missing the boys so much and his time with them this holiday is limited. We have not quite yet decided the date next year for the boys to return to New Zealand to live with Geoff. But our discussions have been open, honest and supportive of each other and, most importantly, centred around what is good for the boys. So I have full confidence that we can come up with some decisions that we can all live with and work with.

Here are some photos of what we have been getting up to:







Quad-biking in the desert near Messaid




























Ice skating in City Centre













A ride in a dhow around Doha Harbour

























































A trip to Souq Waqif. Here I am standing next to some of the biggest cooking pots in the universe.

We met a very interesting man who owned one of the shops in the souq. He was the first body builder in Qatar. He also used to be a pearl diver. Pearling was the main industry here before oil and gas was discovered. He was a most charming and dignified man, courteous and old-fashioned. We observed a succession of locals greeting him with great respect as they walked past his shop; clearly he is a well-known and loved identity.