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.