to my summer world: what I want you to know

This is some of what is under the surface of the me you’ll be seeing again in a few weeks, the parts that may be different from people making the transition within the US. 

This place I’ll be for the summer is possibly my favorite in the world, both for its natural beauty and that people there who are making a conscious effort to support each other, work hard, and have fun creatively. No matter how beloved, it is worlds away from where I am right now and it will take a certain amount of adjustment to settle in again. I want to think I can just shrug it all off, leave my Doha-self in Doha, but I know from experience that I can’t and probably shouldn't anyway.  I’ve come back to this place from many different countries and adventures over the years and it's in these transition times that I am the most challenged and learn the most (when I will start learning from staying in one place for a number of years remains to be seen…). 

I am coming from the desert. Right now, and until I leave, it’s over 100ºF every day and the horizon is always a hazy dusty yellow every direction. I haven’t seen a forest since last August. I haven’t climbed a hill that you would call a hill since last August either.

Most of my interactions here are with people who are not from my home culture, and with whom I don’t share a first language.  One thing I like about living abroad is being able to tune out conversations around me because I can’t understand them. It is so exciting to be around people with whom I share fluency in the same language, but also awkward and exhausting.

I know there will be discussions this summer about privilege and race and class. I know people where I’m going are concerned about long-term structural inequalities in the US.  I remember from last summer that it was hard to take part in these conversations at first. For the past two years my framework for that has been built in a very different place and from a different point of view than I would have had in the US.

I’ve been working on understanding privilege over the past few years and living here has helped me think about it from the less-privileged point of view –as a woman and a non-Qatari, though there are many further down the privilege scale than me here, including workers from South Asia, Africa, and East Asia. The anger expressed in my own home country, where having more relative privilege somehow made it harder to see the problem, is making more sense.

I get frustrated here by having to behave according to cultural expectations of a people who seem to have an overwhelming sense of entitlement.  Since I have lived here the respect I’ve gained for the generosity and kindness of some Qataris has been vastly outmatched by my experiences with the reckless and rude behavior of some others.  Most of this I experience on the road but some also in how I have witnessed Qataris treating shop clerks and from reports of abuse of domestic workers in Qatari households (http://dohanews.co/after-assault-in-qatar-indonesian-domestic-worker-returns-home/). This country often does not seem to be a healthy place, for Qataris or foreigners.

From this other-side-of-the-world point of view I’m proud of my country, proud of the work and dialogues taking place there.  I miss those here, especially within the upper-class international expat community where we almost never talk about race or privilege and only rarely about class, even though all those things affect our lives every day.

So give me a couple of weeks to get used to hills and native-English-speaking community and courteous drivers again.  Let me let my soul catch up with me so I can be present for important discussions, and be patient while I try to make my point of view more locally relevant. 

I know we’re all coming from very different places, both our environments and what’s inside our heads.  I’m so looking forward to seeing old friends, meeting new ones, and hearing about where you’re coming from, too!

into the glare

Spring in Doha is bringing out the worst in me, and I mostly blame the heat. It's so hot here these days that I wish there were another word for it that conveys more about the flesh-searing, sweat-soaking oppression of it all. Air conditioning is our life support again. An open door can heat a house in seconds. Forget the sunshade on the windshield and your steering wheel will raise blisters on your fingertips. 

Last week the temperatures rose to 100ºF and higher every day and I vowed that it wouldn't keep me inside. "Take that, deadly weather!" I thought as I found a hat to wear, bought a spray bottle, filled my backpack with water bottles, and set out into the glare. I've written here and here about how it's walking that keeps me feeling human in the ways I want to be human- finding beauty, both accidental and by design, and staying aware of and connected to the cycles of people and plants and animals around me. Covering ground by driving, as I've written here, makes me feel human in all the worst ways: furious and terrified.

I took four great, if sweaty, walks and felt triumphant. I started this post and included some friendly suggestions about how to survive a walk in the extreme heat, and how very rewarding it is to be outside regardless of weather.

And then yesterday I had 90 minutes to kill before an art class. It was 7:40am when I set out, only 95ºF. I headed south along a route I'd walked before but kept coming across new alleys I could not resist. By the time I decided to start looping back, an hour later, it was over 100º. I bought water and a spray bottle at a store and kept on hustling back to my art class where I collapsed in the air conditioning. Really unpleasant symptoms of heat exhaustion set in as the class went on and I spent the rest of the day just wrecked. I had taken little of my own advice above- no water, no spray bottle, no hat, few places to stop to buy refreshments and cool off, and most of the taps on the outsides of mansion walls had run dry. The sun humbled me and I'm grateful it wasn't worse. Starting tonight, my walks will take place after dark.

Here are some photos from what may be my final daytime walk until fall. You'll notice that there are no humans in them, as most sensible people were not out.

one of the alleys that led me astray, so shady and inviting

The African Village

The first time I went to the waterpark here I noticed that the area for the smaller kids is called the African Village.  It has a shallow pool and slides and sprayers with a wild animal theme: elephants, snakes, giraffes, a frog. One of the elephants has on a blond wig and a blue bikini.  Another wears a fez. Another, the one with the biggest smile, doesn’t wear anything at all. It’s a mythical version of Africa that has friendly wild animals and bright colors, but no humans apart from the lifeguards.

If this was at an American waterpark someone would sooner or later take a picture and name and shame to point out, and rightly so, that Africa is a huge continent with numerous complex and diverse human societies, and that making this corner of the park a jungle-themed  "African Village" was just another in a long line of ways in which Africa is marginalized, minimized, and generally disrespected on a global level. There would be an active campaign to put it out of business or at least rename and redesign it. There are so many layers to be offended about if you feel like causing a ruckus.

I've also noticed that most of the lifeguards at the water park are African, though I don’t know their nationality. A few days ago I went back with my kids and made a point of asking the lifeguard by the African Village one of the most common questions in Doha: “what is your country?” She said Kenya. I asked her how she felt about the African village, if it resembled her home at all, whether she lived in a city or a more rural place. I expected her to be offended by the Aqua park’s representation of an entire continent as a few wild animals. She said no, she didn’t mind that it bore no relation to her home- she was happy to see something that mentioned Africa at all. 

I agreed with her that it must be nice to have a pleasant reference to one’s home, as an American bomber roared overhead after taking off from the nearby air base.