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.