excuse me, just a tiny glass of repat whine

I’m not an expat anymore.  For the first time I’m experiencing the peace that comes with moving to a once-familiar place I actually want to live in, rather than choosing a job and making the best of the new destination that goes with it. I’ve been longing to live all four seasons in these hills for years now. I thought repatriation would be a cinch. 

Doha was a challenge, to which I had to rise or let it crush me. I did, with plenty of hard work and good company, and it didn’t. I miss it hard. Not in that freshly wrenched way of the first couple of months, all raw and halfway still there in my head, but with an ache that knows I’m probably never going back and probably never going to see most of those people ever again in real life. Social media keeps us connected but nothing replaces random encounters and regular adventures around the city, tea and world-problem-solving in each other’s kitchens, shared hilarity and despair. 

I dress like anyone else and drive an old Subaru Forester. I can pass for a Vermonter at first glance and probably even second, but locals know I’m new to town and ask where did I move from? They expect me to say Tinmouth or Pittsford or maybe something more exotic like Massachusetts or even Virginia but then I say Qatar and the conversation has been efficiently and effectively killed.  I stopped offering it up, but word has probably gotten around the village by now anyway. I know my way around, but I’ve been too long gone to quite remember how I’m supposed to behave and where I’m welcome.

I love where we’ve landed. It’s the green and hills I’ve been missing for years. I love seeing the clear light of New England fall and eating fresh macs for the first time in ten years. It’s just tricky to work on feeling at home and making it home at the same time and I’m lonely for easygoing company.  Cold dark weather looms. I’m envious of my youngest who started at her new school last week and is already planning who will be at her birthday party at the end of the month. I wish we could all be thrown into first grade again upon arrival in a new home. By the second day on the playground who cares where we’ve lived for the past three years, we just need to figure out how to do the most scary trick together on the big swing without getting hurt. 

beyond belonging

This bird in the cafeteria at the kids’ school made me start thinking about belonging:

My first thought was oh no she must be miserable inside a man-made space without any other birds, she is so out of her element! Then... maybe she likes it- she’s out of the heat, has access to food and safe places to perch, maybe there are more birds living in there than I thought- who are we to say she doesn’t belong?   

The next day I went for a walk (early before the streets got too hot) and saw this: 

It was about a week after I’d returned to Doha after the summer break and it made a lot of sense. Of course I don’t belong there, obviously I belong in a place with green and hills and rain. Humans only survive in Doha thanks to air conditioning, desalinization plants, imported workers and imported food, though I’m pretty sure that’s not what they meant.

I never expected to belong in Qatar, and ultimately Qatar decides whether you belong or not anyway. There was an article this summer in the Doha News about a man who put together a film of Doha, where he was born and raised, and it described him as an expat (Qatar expat produces 'mega' time-lapse marking nations development), which was shocking to my American self. Several days later there was another article about the performance of a Qatari athlete, who will almost surely be stripped of his Qatari citizenship and sent back home to Sudan when his contract is over (Qatari athlete becomes first national to reach IAAF World Athletics Finals).

The news is full of people deciding for others whether or not they belong, for example this story about a boy with Down Syndrome who was asked to leave his school, and this story about a boy in Texas whose teacher decided he was a threat because of a science project he brought in. 

And clearly any concern I have about belonging is completely insignificant alongside the apparently never-ending crisis of refugees fleeing impossible situations around the world to seek haven in places they cannot be sure of welcome (here's an article about mixed receptions in a town in Germany). They are trading belonging for safety.  It’s completely different to be my kind of expat, because we chose this, have the resources to work with it, and know we’re welcome.

It would be such a relief to stop thinking about belonging, which implies requirements and approval by a group, and replace that with working on welcoming and including. I’d like to think we’ve moved beyond the primary and secondary school social scenes, where the popular kids decide who’s in or out, but replace "popular kids" with "rich countries" and it just keeps continuing (read Who Qualifies for Asylum, from the New York Times)  On a personal level, it’s taken longer to stop caring whether people will accept me or not than I thought it would, especially with this moving every few years and having to start new in a neighborhood, at school, and in jobs over and over again.  Here especially the heat and traffic can be so isolating. We “non-working” expat spouses in Doha have to be deliberate about connecting with other people and so it feels like there’s much more at stake in making a positive first impression.  I don’t want to worry about how people are going to react to me as long as I'm interested and respectful, and I don’t want my kids to worry either.  I want them to care about making connections with people but not if they feel that would require presenting a fake version of themselves.  I want us all to think about how to work to make everyone feel welcome.

between worlds: remembering and forgetting

At the beginning of the summer, not long after I arrived in VT, I wrote this:

I’d forgotten what it’s like to be cold, how green the plants are, how soft grass can be on my bare feet, the beauty of sun streaming across the green hills and fields and lighting up a dark thunderhead. So much color.

I’m remembering what it feels like to walk on the street in shorts and tank top, skin exposed to sun and breeze. Seeing my arms from shoulder to fingertip, my legs from mid-thigh down to my toes reminds me how strong they are, how much they can lift and how far they can carry me.

I’m feeling between worlds: the joy of being in the US when they make marriage legal for everyone, the horror that someone would go blow people up while they are praying in Kuwait, shoot people while they’re on vacation in Tunisia, while here I am taking advantage of a few hours of childcare to organize shelves of food and get stuff done. In Doha I can stop, read the news, have time to think about it and I have a very international community- Tunisian neighbors, friends who have lived in Kuwait. Here I am in my happiest place surrounded by green and hills but I miss my people of Doha. I just admitted for the first time that I would be sad if I heard that we weren’t returning after the summer, no matter how much I hate the traffic and the construction and the social system there, no matter that the sadness would come with relief.

And at the same time I wrote this, which I now realize applies to both Vermont home and Doha home,  especially these first days after returning:

It is so strange every time to be somewhere utterly familiar and totally foreign at the same time. These first days back in a previous home are so hard and so illuminating.

And then today, a week after arriving back in Doha to start our third and final year here, I wrote this:

I’m remembering again how it feels to be shut up inside on our life support of AC because outside the sun is trying to kill us. I’m remembering how covering up isn’t simply out of respect for my hosts, it’s also just good sense in this climate. I’m remembering that there are other colors for the sky than blue- dimmer, dustier colors.  Soon enough I’ll forget that clouds and hills can be normal too and how you have to think ahead about dew if you don’t want your shoes and cuffs all soggy for the rest of the morning. I’m already forgetting about what it feels like to have a constant stream of company in my kitchen, people who thank me for my work and offer to wash dishes. I’m remembering the peace and quiet of my house, cooking for five instead of forty, with the view out the window of my daughter in capris and a t-shirt sitting on the curb with girls in abaya and hijab.

I've realized that there is more about Doha that I liked than I realized.  I worked so hard at Doha this year. The summer before this one I went to Vermont with such relief to be away for a couple of months- I needed a full-on Doha-detox and I got it, so much so that I had a very difficult time returning. This past summer I missed it. The places that are the most challenging become important to us in their own way. Two years ago, after I’d only been there a month or so I posted this on Facebook: 

I still hate malls, traffic,  and indoor life in Qatar but there are also, surprisingly, plenty of things that I like, projects I’ve started and to which I looked forward to returning.

They’re impossible to compare, my Doha life and my Vermont life, but each one makes me appreciate aspects of the other, especially at these points when I haven't quite shed the one I was just in or fully rejoined the one to which I've returned.  

when stuff matters: worthwhile materialism

Moving, especially internationally, has always been a time that we shed many of our belongings, whether because we have a limited shipping allowance, are moving to a furnished residence, or because I am so sick of all the clutter and take advantage of the opportunity to simplify.  This last move all three of those reasons forced drastic cuts to our accumulated family stuff- all the furniture went, as did ¾ of the books, many of the clothes, toys and bedding. 

We donated some to good causes, sold some at a yard sale, sent some to the dump. The hardest to give up were my kitchen tools, the main instruments of my creative expression for the past four and a half years. My favorite ones I gave to good friends who are using them still. Friends and their children are also sleeping in beds that we passed on to them at that move and the one before it, beds that we had acquired from friends in Bangladesh and Vietnam.  I love to think about this chain of things that are more than just inanimate objects, that help us stay connected and in each other’s consciousness, even when we are far apart and rarely in touch.

The emptier our house became, the more I felt liberated, freed from material possessions.  I started fantasizing about tiny minimalist houses or how nice it would be to have no house at all, just live out of the car and camp. At some point I realized that it had become a kind of destructive rampage and I should consult some friends before I threw away all my old journals and photos.  In the end the camping equipment, photo albums, art, bicycles, and a sewing machine stayed in a storage locker in San Francisco, 500 lbs of clothes, instruments, art supplies and books were crated up and loaded onto a ship bound for the Middle East, and what was left was loaded into our minivan for our drive across the country.

I know the whole point of them coming and packing it up was so I could have it again later, but I also had a friend once whose husband worked for Maersk and heard about how many of those containers are swept off the ships each year. Ever since then I have let go of my attachment to everything in that shipment the instant it’s wrapped and boxed, and don’t truly believe that I will see it again until the truck pulls up outside my new home.  And, despite that complete letting go, there are not many moments that match seeing your possessions again after months away from them.  No matter that I had felt so relieved to have them gone- having them again always had me blessing the foresight that I had known these particular things would help my new house really feel like home.

to my friends who want to live abroad

I have wonderful friends who have expressed their desire to live abroad for a spell with their kids, immerse in other cultures, try new foods, learn new languages, make new friends. 

First, I think this plan of yours is awesome. And so much more welcome to hear than “you are so brave to be doing that with your kids,” which really means, “I would never subject my kids to the stress and trauma of having to adapt to a new culture.”

Second, I thought I’d tell you about how I don’t think any of us fully realized how many of our social values we’d have to shelve or re-work in order to function day-to-day in a different country or culture. I don’t mean “reconsider your decision.” I mean keep this in mind and think about the limits of how much you are willing to change your own behavior and how much conflict between you and your host culture you are willing to live with.  Of course all this varies from country to country, culture to culture.

Depending on where you go, you may have to deal with being part of a class system that will feel uncomfortable at times, possibly all the time. Friends who are concerned with issues of equity and privilege may find them much less subtle than they did in the US.  It can be hard acknowledging that you will have privileges that you wouldn’t in your home country. Here, and in many places I have lived, the color of your skin, gender, national origin, and size/make of your car make a huge difference in how you are treated. This is certainly the case in the US as well, but can be much more obvious and socially acceptable in some other countries, with less opportunity to speak out about inequality due to dominant culture or your desire to keep your visa and stay out of jail.  More about this here and here and most recently, here.

There’s also unfamiliar and unwelcome etiquette: The other day I walked up to a door in the kids’ school, opened it, and attempted to wave the man behind me through. I have no idea where he is from but it obviously would have been a mortal wound to his ego to have walked through that door that I was holding. So I went first. Then there is “ma’am.” I know some people are quite offended by ma’am, but in some countries (and much of the Southern USA, thank you, ma’am) you would have to get used to it.  Ma’am is the mildest version.  The manager of our compound here inserts “madam” into every sentence he says to me.  Our driver in Dhaka also used madam, and paired it with a slight bow.  There’s no one way to deal with it- you can live with it and go ahead and call them by their first names like most everyone else does, you can try to insist they use your first name also, you can call them sir and madam as well.

I have found that one of the most challenging parts of being in a new place is adjusting my sense of my own freedom of expression and freedom of movement, with both of those seeming more limited by social influences than anything else. Of course there are so many other things to take into account –so much that you need to learn as you go along, because no one person’s advice or even a whole shelf of travel books can replace just stepping out, paying attention, and starting conversations with the people around you.

part of the solution, somehow

 This is my first time living in a country where there is no culture of protest (see the link I attached at the bottom for more explanation of that) and I’m still working on finding non-confrontational and flexible ways of holding onto my values while I make Qatar my home. This post is not intended to bash Qatar or any of the people who make their homes here for the long or short-terms. It is intended to be about how the context of my host country and culture influences and challenges how I try to live by my values. 

These two phrases haunt me. They almost always get used in a pointed way, alongside an issue that I should at all costs be supporting, according to the person who shares one quote or the other.  On one hand I want to say “Oh please.  Big world, lotta people, lotta ways to make a difference, stop bossing me around, stop telling me what to care about!” I’m only one person and who does it help if I spend too much of my time obsessed about taking a stand on the dozens of issues I follow on a week to week basis?  I can’t believe my rigidity and anxiety in this short life will make the world a better place. On the other hand, I carry guilt for not having the wherewithal to support everything I believe in, even in the US where I’m freer to take part in demonstrations, petitions, marches and challenge authority, and where I am more comfortable with the culture. In some ways being abroad takes the pressure off, in some it layers it on thicker and heavier.  It takes time in a new country before I feel that I understand enough of what’s going on around me to hold a valid opinion about it, anyway.

In my last post I talked about how living in Qatar  “represents so much of what I distrust about modern humanity- the total manipulation of environment, the dependence on fossil fuels, the lack of local resources for so much of what we eat and use every day, the highly divided class/employment system.”  Before we even landed here I had great concerns about moving to a place that only exists by virtue of an abundance of fossil fuels and a massive expat workforce.

I put the blame for a lot of our human problems and many environmental ones too down to greed and lack of empathy. There are surely multitudes of ways of making change, and I have great admiration for my friends whose work in education, food security, environmental activism, and social justice is making the world a better and fairer place.  They humble me.

Living with myself and my choices here in Doha is partly a matter of shelving some priorities altogether and partly about making some work in a new context.  An early challenge for any move to a new country is learning what expectations are for women’s behavior and deciding how thoroughly I choose to comply. Some are easy because it’s just plain good sense in a hot place: my shoulders and knees have not been visible in public, except at the pool, since I left the United States last August.  Others are easy, if less pleasant, because I have no choice: whether I liked it or not, I needed my husband’s permission to be able to apply for a driver’s license. Some I ignore, like going to the camel market with my daughter even though there is never a woman in sight. Still others are more confusing: the advice I got when I needed to get a driver’s license but didn’t have free time to take the test due to homeschooling, was to go to the traffic department to plead my case, to be persistent, but pitiful.  Even more effective, I should bring along my youngest child and make a point of carrying her. It grated to be seeking their pity for my weakness rather than their respect for me and empathy for my situation. Once the kids started school I was relieved to give up begging and just took the test (which was an unexpectedly positive experience as I wrote here) and vowed not to grovel ever again, no matter what the circumstances.

I have a friend who, in Dhaka, waded into a crowd of men beating on a suspected thief and shamed them into stopping.  I’d like to think I would do the same but I am afraid I wouldn’t.  I witnessed a man beating someone inside a stopped land cruiser here a few months ago but it was nighttime, I was on foot, and the only people nearby were oblivious in the honking rushing traffic next to us.  I made a big show of using my phone to take a picture of the number plate and then pretending to make a phone call, even though my hand had been too shaky to capture the digits. They immediately pulled away into the crush of cars on Al Waab St, and I walked on to my choir rehearsal. I’m still not satisfied with how I reacted.

Is passive action enough? Is it enough to share articles on FB?  To tip everyone who helps me, on the assumption that the more I pay, the sooner they can go home to their families in their home country?  To leave the car behind and walk as much as I can, though the hotter it gets the more I find myself driving ridiculously short distances? To buy as local as possible? How important is it to buy local vegetables and eggs when it must require a ridiculous amount of the resources to raise the plants and chickens in the desert? Is it enough to debrief with my kids and share with my network abroad when we witness injustice, rather than acting on it in the moment?

In the taxi the other night I asked the driver where he’s from.  He said Kenya and we fell into a discussion about President Obama and what he means to Kenyans, about how hard it is to visit the US as a Muslim, about our kids and eventually about wives not working and staying with the kids.  He commended me for not working outside my home. As I got out of the taxi he blessed me and my family over and over. Should I have spoken up and said hey man, not giving your wife a choice to work is so oppressive?  I chose not.  After all, staying with my kids is what I do, and he was affirming that.  We were enjoying each other’s company and we’ll probably never see each other again.

I love how time spent living abroad and moving every few years has expanded my exposure so many people and nurtured my empathy.  I have met so many different people who care passionately about so many different issues, some passionately on opposite sides of the same issue.  I will nearly always put ground-level connection over confrontation and criticism. I hold myself responsible to behaving in a way I can live with, showing respect and listening to everyone –especially people I disagree with.  My ideals/values/position on world events are influenced by a more personal connection to people and places. I hope this helps me resist the media spin that manipulates who we should care about, and how much, and that my connection with people I meet broadens their view of their world as well. 

If I stood firmly by my values I could not remain here.   I admit to being part of the problem.  I don’t think the earth is a healthy place, due in large part to humans taking it over. There are so many of us. I get so overwhelmed. Where is the best place for me within it all? For now, I choose my family, raising thoughtful kids, making connections with people from all over.  Qatar is certainly fertile ground for that, with only 12% of the population being Qatari citizens and the rest of us expats from around the world. For now I am compromising, living a lifestyle that does not entirely reflect my values and beliefs in favor of deepening my understanding of my world and sharing this process with my kids.  

The following links are mostly connected to issues I follow that affect Qatar and the people who live here,  plus two for context on Qatar, and one to a book with gorgeous illustrations and a message that works for me.

Criticism for the sponsorship system:

http://dohanews.co/ahead-expected-changes-un-official-hits-kafala-supporters/

All my garbage, including items that are potentially recyclable, go into one garbage can. This article tells about how it gets taken to a spot in the desert not far from Doha where it is burned, and the toxic smoke drifts on the winds. 

http://dohaburning.wordpress.com

The experience of a Swedish flight attendant with Qatar Airways: http://www.expressen.se/nyheter/the-truth-about-the-luxury-of-qatar-airways/

Letter written by a Nepali teacher who was briefly jailed in Qatar last year, explaining how he actually had it relatively easy compared to some of the other inmates he met http://dohanews.co/guest-post-in-qatar-jailed-asian-expats-guilty-until/

Some statistics:

http://www.hrw.org/world-report/2013/country-chapters/qatar

Protest in Qatar: http://www.opendemocracy.net/michael-stephens/qatar-and-protest-difficult-combination

And this last one is not about Qatar but is a beautiful book that helps pull me back to right here and now whenever I read it aloud to my kids: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/21/books/children-s-books-501972.html