The Year that will be 2011
In preparation for the new year, I’ve been using up as many products as possible that were bought in 2010. This has been an interesting exercise because from deodorant to perfume, to facial masks, I remember when I bought many of these products — last December. I hope that a year later they find their purchaser a better person. I would like to think that in 2011 I’ll be more mindful of what I buy and where I spend the fruits of my labor. This may be necessitated by a major life change. But I’ll keep you posted on that.
You could make a fortune if you could bottle the rampant optimism that fuels the last few days of a year as the Western calendar turns a page. Nothing is as exciting as the turn of a decade, or like looking back on the first ten years of the millennium.
The 20s are a huge growth period in a lifespan; mine began more or less in 2000. After all when else can you graduate from college, get a few jobs, settle down, and give life to someone else and all in half the time you’ve been on the planet?
I’ve been pondering what 2010 was for me and mine and from the looks of this blog it had a lot to do with relationships and learning how to be more conscious of where I spend my time and energy. Email was a huge taker this past year and it is probably responsible for many of the hours of exercise that didn’t happen.
Otherwise, on balance it was a good year and has been an incredible 10 years in personal development as I went from undergrad to PhD holder, single woman to wife, consultant to permanent employee, and the most engrossing title yet: mother.
2011 will find me firmly in that decade some refer to as old — the 30s – inching closer to the midway point of the decade and possibly life overall. After all, only God knows how long we’ll actually be here. As a friend said on the phone last night while we listed our entertainment options for New Year’s: “Aren’t you all fat and old for those parties?”
Indeed.
If hard work was the theme of 2010 for me, as I contemplated giving up time from the hectic schedule to make time for spirituality and wellness, goals that had been accommodated into my everyday life by the end of this year, then innovation will be the goal for 2011.
In writing and child rearing and spousing; all the roles that are available to me, may they find me trying new and dynamic ways of being.
And you as well.
The Year that was 2010
I love the count downs that occur during the last week of December. There are the top music videos and most embarrassing moments; celebrity shockers and sports highlights. It’s the one week every year that my inner pop culture junkie can get her fill of the year that was. Even grander are those moments which observe the passing of a decade which we find ourselves in as 2010 draws to a close.
Before New Year’s Eve comes to Doha, however, is another event of equal resonance, if only locally in Qatar: National Day. Observed on December 18, a year ago this week, a blog post about National Day ignited a firestorm of controversy. A woman blogging on Qatar Living.com posted a piece about the antics of youth on the cornice, ending with the conclusion that the boys (for they were mostly) were symptomatic of the country and both needed to grow up. Spray painted cars, wheelies, people hanging out of windows – all of this, plus someone accosting her with a facemask on, led the blogger to call out her host country and also its people.
The response – over 600 replies to her posting – covered the range of emotions: defending, decrying, and debasing her claims. Whatever people were saying, the outpouring was something few people could have predicted. Hate pages for the blogger and the website sprang up on Facebook and gathered several hundred members. The post and the responses exposed feelings not just about a group of boys out on the town to have fun, but on a range of topics, some as innocuous as driving, to differences in compensation, polices such as Qatarization, and lack of respect for culture. Whatever the topic and rebuttal, people were arguing ferociously for “their” side.
A year later, what I’m ruminating about is not the incident itself, but what it revealed about those of us who share this tiny peninsula on the larger land of Arabia. The post and the subsequent reaction revealed the deep rooted tensions between ex-pats and locals in our small city state.
As someone who often has to code switch and defend expats to locals and locals to expats, I was saddened by how large the rift still seemed last year and can’t say that things are really drastically changing. The gulf in Qatar (pun intended) is not merely between the haves and the have-nots though that is evident when I sit in traffic next to the buses full of laborers. It’s also between us as people. The expats are not a homogenous group as they seem. There are distinctions between where people come from – Europe, America, and South Asia – as well as their occupations; oil, educational, sports. And locals have an intricate ranking system based on tribal ancestry, how long their families have been on the Arabian Peninsula, and who they are connected to by marriage or otherwise.
When one population is constant – the Qataries, and one population lasts only 1-3 years – the expats, there is no real window to confront these myths and stereotypes. A year later, coming upon National Day, I’m reminded that while we may all live next to each other, stand in line together, driving the same roads, we don’t actually see each other or engage.
New Year’s resolutions are known for triteness and being doomed to failure. Instead of waiting until January 1, I’ve started implementing “life changes” earlier so that by the time the New Year comes; it will find me already practicing my desired habit.
December 2010 is about daily exercise and the practice of being present with people. No messaging, or mobile, or internet. Just being present and really hearing what they have to say.
It is only by really hearing someone that we can stop seeing them as the “other.” And we know that the boundary between us and them is not as firm as we once thought.
Hotels, DJs, clothing manufacturers, want me to buy into the buildup of that other dread holiday – New Year’s Eve. I’ve had the rare opportunity to spend the most talked about night of the year in a different country over the past five years. This isn’t as glamorous as it sounds since often my companions for the evening go to bed before the witching hour, leaving me watching fireworks around the world via satellite.
Despite the hype and commerciality, the end of the year is good to evaluation and introspection, both of what’s happened and what’s to come.
For the sake of all the people living in Qatar, I hope 2011 finds us turning a new page together.
Twelve Years from Now…
For the first time in the three years of his blog, I went a whole month without posting. I’ve firmed my resolve to make sure that doesn’t happen again. If I was away from the blog, it was because I developed a computer fatigue and loathed to turn it on after I returned from work. Stepping away from the computer and toward meaningful interaction with people who were actually present was a new habit for me. I’m not trying to learn the balance of having both.
Nearly a week ago the Fifa authorities electrified a country and stunned the world with the announcement that Qatar would host the World Cup in 2022. The passionate presentation by Qatar’s bid committee, which included Her Highness Sheikha Moza Bint Nasser al Misned, was eclipsed by her son’s fevered acceptance remarks immediately following the announcement. In three sentences he summed up the feelings of residents and citizens in Qatar: “You’ll see a new Middle East. And we will not let you down.”
For the past five years that I’ve lived in Doha, we have been slowly inching our way on the global stage with a mixture of sports, education, and entertainment projects like the Asian Games, Education City, and Tribeca Film Festival.
But people still ask me where Qatar actually is. NPR even did a segment on how to pronounce Qatar. On Twitter immediately after the announcement, people were tweeting:
“Dude, where’s Dubai?”
“Dude, it’s next to Qatar.”
The optimism and pride in the country don’t gloss over the reality that hosting 2022 will mean an unprecedented level of work. The preparation many of us lived through for the Asian Games in 2006 will seem like a children’s outing in comparison to the stadiums, roads, transport systems — in short a complete systems overall.
2022 has had us all thinking about the future.
The immediate reaction is to think in terms of age: newborn children, like our son, will be 12 years old. Teenagers will be approaching their late 20′s. Those of us in our thirties will be firmly middle aged.
Then the sobering thought comes to you: A lot can happen in twelve years. In the life of a country and her citizens.
When I look back on the last twelve years, the person I am now would be almost unrecognizable to my 22 year old self. Working for a publisher, a mother, a wife, preserving learner of Arabic, living in the Middle East: all more than I could have ever hoped for.
As you know, I’m a huge believer in goals and goal setting. Planning in five year spurts is my specialty. But the period from graduating from university to turning 30 may be the easiest part of your life to plan.
The decisions are like those on an easy multiple choice test: graduate school, work, or combination? This company or that one? Where to spend New Year’s?
Then the stakes get harder: this man or that one? A child now or later? A new career or the old one?
The next decade in the life of Qatar and my own will be filled with the biggest challenges yet. For the moment excitement and jubilation are part of a well earned pause as everyone regroups.
For those younger than me in my office — about half the staff — they hope to be married with children of their own in twelve years.
For expats who are generally hired on three year contracts, the question: will be here? looms on the horizon.
My Qatari friends will for sure be here, bursting with pride, at their country being the first in the Middle East to host the world’s favorite sport.
President Obama’s comments that the Fifa committee made the wrong decision showed the extent to which the traditional superpowers amongst the other bidding nations couldn’t grapple with the shift in the world order. Australia, England, and the US were passed up for both 2018 and 2022.
Whatever happens in the next 12 years, it is clear that the centuries of domination by the West are coming to an end.
We may very well look back and see that it was an audacious hope, given voice by an impassioned handsome (then) young prince, that was the moment the tide began to turn.
Founts of Creativity
It’s been a year since the launching of the Doha Tribeca Film festival in Qatar and as was the case last year, it has coincided with the WTA women’s tennis tournament. Add to this the launching of a TedxDoha, and you have one of the most frenetic weekends of the year with people dashing this way and that to squeeze in as much entertainment as possible.
This is the weekend my husband invited his brother and wife to visit us. Needless to say while we have been entertained, there has not been a dull moment.
What all the activity has made me realize, however, is that it really isn’t where you are but who you are with that matters. Any event is made more special by the people attending it. And so often we are in such a rush to see this star or that celebrity that we forget it’s the people next to us, everyday, who really matter.
Having lived amongst the glitterati for five years, I think this lesson is now firmly on my heart. Seeing Amy Tan, Madeline Albright, the Queen of England, and others, was certainly fun. Talking to them, even better. But when I woke up the next day, I really needed help changing my son’s diaper or borrowing a car because mine was in the shop.
During these times did any of the rice and famous assist? No. It was my brother-in-law, or the editor of one of the magazines I write for.
Famous people are good entertainment. But I’m glad that when I need them, my friends and family were there.
I vow to spend more time with them, being present, and enjoying their company. Without their help, I wouldn’t be able to create.
Who is your inspiration? What is the support you need to get things done? Be thankful for them and let them know it.
Life is Too Short…
Strangely having a baby has not brought more chaos into our lives but peace and stability. Sure he wakes up at 3:30 a.m. after three week of sleeping through to 5:00 a.m. Kid is on a growth spurt. But now we are home for dinner and I schedule time to be at home to spend with our gurgling bundle. My husband and I don’t pass each other as ships in the day, pausing to gnaw a heel of bread for dinner anymore. There are two people, our baby and the nanny, who anchor us now to home. But there are still only so many hours in a day; now I add exercise, playtime, and nursing to the list of things that measure the success of a given 24 hour period. And when I find myself working out with the video on mute at 12:00 a.m. because this the only time available, I know something has changed in me. Only two months old, I don’t want him to already be a latchkey kid — a term used in the US for kids who let themselves into their homes after school without any adults around). Some days I feel a twinge of horror but more sympathy for Madonna whose children apparently need an appointment to see their mother — scheduled in 15 minute increments.
Okay, okay, so a long way to say I haven’t been blogging as much. But it’s not because I haven’t been thinking about things. It’s been a long time, almost a month the blog reminds me, since I’ve sat down to post. It’s not that I haven’t been pondering. I have. Sometimes I feel that in my new state as a mother of a young one, I ponder all the time. Like the Bible records Mary’s reaction to being visiting the angel Gabriel — I just haven’t been recording them or sharing them with others.
The restriction of time has been a blessing in disguise. When you have a majorly draining project, like trying to squeeze out 40,000 words in a specific period of time, say a week, you suddenly don’t care about that friend who didn’t call you back. You’re grateful that the notorious canceler has yet again – you guessed it – canceled. Or the neighbor who you thought you were close to, hasn’t invited you over again. You luxuriate in your own sofa. Reducing the amount of available time has caused me to focus inward on me and mine. Which hasn’t always been the case.
When I was a child and then rambunctious teenager, my father used to ask me why I spent to so much time with my friends.
“Emotional support,” I blurted, partly in reaction to the austere environment of my family.
Now decades later, I realize what he was doing (as he said I would at the time). He was calling attention to where I spent my best energies and asking me why I didn’t reserve more for myself. There was no discernible boundary between myself and others around me when a teenager and this didn’t change as I got to university or even graduate school. An attitude like this may sound really positive and sweet. In reality it was a dangerous way to live life. To be so giving that you could be taken advantage of or, sometimes worse, disappointed by others.
Time, talent, treasure: these are the three resources everyone has at their disposal in varying amounts. For me I’ve got a generosity problem. I can say no, but I rarely want to. I love to give even the smallest of gifts; there’s a cupboard in our house for this specific purpose. At the last minute while going out the door to a birthday party, house warming, or visiting someone in the hospital, I can have something to hand to share love.
Such open love has mostly served me well: friends near and far to surprise, spoil, delight. There are times when this kind of fun loving, freewheeling sharing isn’t reciprocated and that can lead to resentment which then is a downward spiral of recrimination. Just after college this was true: an entire circle of friends I spent four intense years with evaporated. Because I had invested so much in them, emotionally as well as otherwise, it took me a long time to let them and the memories go.
Now I have to choose how to spend nearly every minute of my day. And I have in the back of my mind those people who are depending on me — foremost someone who can’t yet speak for himself. I order the day by deliberate choice because there are consequences if I don’t. People in the office are startled when I say I’m leaving in ten minutes and actually do. Gone are the days of ten minutes turning into an hour where I am still at my desk. I’m not a doctor. I don’t save lives. I may make some a bit better by what I do during my day job; but if I didn’t get to it today, I will tomorrow.
I’m grateful for this phase of my life because I find the lesson coming back again. Letting go of the drainers makes room for more. And this time that more is apologetically for myself, my baby, my family. They get the first fruits of energy, creativity, and time.
It’s a major shift for me, seismic enough to be almost a reversal of how I used to order my universe.
Apparently the next step in growing up .
Have you had any such shifts recently or otherwise?
These epiphanic moments should not be ignored. Rather take them in, contemplate, ponder. And when you are ready, share them.
Firsts
When you have a new baby in the house, there are lots of firsts people expect you to record. I’m finding that the most interesting firsts aren’t his (yet: he’s only 6 weeks old after all) but ours.
We went on vacation last week to Paris, France for the first time as a family. That wasn’t so significant since we travel quite regularly. In the rush to get out the door – since I waited until the last minute to take a shower before climbing onto a plane for 6 hours – I left new smart phone at home. In the previous week I had my teenage neighbor over to show me its mysteries in a way that reminded me of setting up the voicemail for my faculty while I was in university. I never thought I would be so out of touch with technology or so oblivious to the ‘real world’ as an academic. I now know that though those two things may have been some of it, its also that technology behaves like fashion. You are cemented in the decade you grew up in. For me this means just slightly past the gray car phones that came in bags and were the size of your head.
I didn’t realize I had left the phone at home until check in. My husband asked if I wanted him to go back for it. I said no. We did live close to the airport but it seemed silly looking at the departure lines for immigration. The irony was I had brought my old phone, hoping to take advantage of some down time to finish transferring the numbers that hadn’t fit on the SIM card.
We went away for five nights and had a wonderful time. And I reveled in the sunlight, the ancient sites of Versailles and the gardens, the last drenched days of summer in Paris. Would I have been able to if I had my phone with me?
I’d like to think so, but am not entirely sure.
In the hotel, there was no wireless but only an ethernet cord in the room which my husband used most of the time because he is completing an online course.
Again: I wasn’t on email for nearly six days. And I didn’t actually mind.
Instead of the daily irritations staying on my mind, I was completely unplugged for the first time I could ever remember. Instead of the guilt I normally might feel, I felt relief. Partly because I was thankful for the concept of vacations and relishing being with my baby without the objectives of the office hanging over my head. Also because I needed the rest after a three weeks of being back at work.
But mostly because it reconnected me to what I know to be true about myself: I am a writer at heart. Though I may be good at other things, like organizing conferences and throwing parties or introducing people, these things crowd out the discipline of writing.
Every word put into an email is one less word that goes into my book.
And every piece of sugar I put in my month is one less gram of the 10 kilos (20 pounds) I need to lose from our baby’s birth.
These are my goals going forward. To unplug from email and to stay plugged into myself, my life, and my talents.
Join in me in this pursuit for meaning. And let’s share our struggles and successes along the way.
Effortless Perfection.. or the One Tiny Thing
I was talking to a young woman today and heard something I’ve been hearing a lot from those who are a generation younger than me.
“Yes, but I don’t like…”
This was in direct reference to a conversation we were having about her job prospects and my advice to her in how to expand her options. I was a bit taken aback because she was clearly in need of the ‘any means necessary’ attitude but had more of the ‘that doesn’t sound fun’ mindset.
Don’t get me wrong (as my husband often says) I’m all for fun: after all this is the person who has had two sets of passport page addendum because of all the places she’s been. I love fun; it’s what makes all the hard work worthwhile.
But when did we get the idea that fun was all there is? That if at work or at home there is something we don’t like to do, we can just avoid doing it because we want to?
I’m puzzled by this phenomena because there have been lots of things in my life that I’ve had to do in order to get where/what I want. We’re not talking about anything illegal of course, or even morally compromising.
We’re talking about spending hours on emergency residence life call to get free housing to pay for graduate school. Or doing the mind numbing administrative drudgery of a startup so that the company gets off the ground.
“I can’t do finance, my brain doesn’t work that way,” another young person told me a few weeks back.
Okay, we all have strengths and weaknesses. And granted, knowing which is which is a huge asset. But to back away from helping when you are able, but it may come with a bit of personal discomfort, is a bit alien.
Paying your dues is what we often call it. And I’ve been caught in the middle of defending people standing up for themselves – I don’t want to do that or be treated in this manner because anyone is deserving of respect – and now seeing that humility means being willing to do any simple task.
I’m not sure if it’s the leadership in question: that these young people aren’t inspired to find dignity in humble tasks as a means of getting to their desired short and long term ends. I certainly had inspiring and servant leadership models who were practicing what they were asking their participants to do.
What I do know is that I’m glad I had the school of hard knocks (though surely others have had it harder) and if it comes to staying an hour later or planning a week earlier, these are the dues I’m still willing to pay. There is no substitute for passion. But few can be found for hard work either.
A Short History of Two across Four Houses in Five Years and now: Nanny Makes Three
We’ve lived in the Middle East for five years and not really ever cleaned our own house. Now that we have our first live-in nanny/domestic, it doesn’t seem like we ever will.
First there was no need to clean much when I was single because I only used two of the five rooms in my three bedroom, two bathroom apartment. Same for my then fiancé, who lived in a two-storey villa with as many bedrooms as bathrooms (four of each). He essentially lived in front of the T.V., always ate out, and only ever slept upstairs. He wasn’t allowed to hire a female housemaid as a single man – a good rule in a country where men outnumber women in both the expat and local populations.
Compound life takes some adjustment, especially if you are part of the first wave of your company overseas as we were. Despite the best efforts of the company to ensure a work life balance for employees by spreading them out across housing complexes, for security and practicality reasons, they really can’t go very far. So you can get stuck living next to your boss or underneath those you supervise, around the corner from your nemesis. There is very little chance for privacy particularly in the early days of our start up when we were all driven together in a bus to work until people were received their residence permits and then driver’s licenses.
While a car and license could give you mobility, there was still no chance of anonymity. After all in a team of ten, word spread quickly if someone had a car and was bold enough to take on the roundabouts of Doha. If you brought your car over for a party, left it outside for a weekend while traveling, or even worse, were spotted while driving away in the morning from a house that wasn’t yours – tongues were sure to wag and rumors fly.
This fish bowl of scrutiny was not fertile ground for a romance but survive nonetheless we did and I was convinced after that first year, we could survive anything.
Then when got married, we moved to a townhouse that wasn’t ideal for either of us but the only thing available because the return from our nuptials overlapped with one of the largest spikes in Qatar’s housing market: the ramp up for the 2006 Asian Games.
Even more frustratingly for anyone who has done a move within the same city was the location of our first home together — literally across the main street from my bachelorette apartment. These tiny moves can be terrors because what begins as a few planned shuttle car loads grows and grows until you wish someone would come and repossess all your belongings just to absolve you of the responsibility of owning so much junk.
People who came over to our first domicile commented on how “small” our living room was. And by Doha standards it was rather like sitting in a bread box with the T.V. five feet in front of the sofa. It was brand new, never been lived in, but not a great place for a woman who had just made two of life’s major transitions – marriage and switching jobs – to struggle with ambivalent feelings towards her new life. There was nothing inherently wrong with either: my husband was attentive when he was home and my job at the national university presented new challenges.
The problem was that even after I added both together, I still had about four spare hours a day on my own. Having just stepped off the literal fast track of working for an American university, I had no idea what to do with twenty hours of free time a week. My mostly single expat friends, also caught up in the workaholic tendencies of moving to a country for work, had no suggestions either. I spent at least six months of that year asleep: literally, coming home from work by 2:00 p.m., walking upstairs, changing, and getting into bed, only rubbing my eyes open when he strolled in at six or seven o’clock. I have very few memories of that townhouse other than the one Thanksgiving potluck we hosted there. Most of the other celebrations we had at the home’s of friends because of concerns about the limited space.
My continuously optimistic, non-grumbling husband, who grew up just outside of D.C. would never openly acknowledge the flaws with our first space: he thought the complaints were a form of space relativism – the place was fine for us (though other people were moving out like lemmings) and big enough with three bedrooms and three bathrooms that we needed help keeping the dust to a minimum. Enter our first house help: a really nice guy from Kerala who wasn’t much of a conversationalist but had an eye for detail. He started out twice a month.
Then, the Asian games were over and more housing became available: as a newlywed my complaints about not having a decent size dryer finally gained me a stackable unit with yet an even bigger house with now five bedrooms and bathrooms. We still had just the two of us and no kids or visitors to really justify this amount of space but we were now on more equal footing with our other expat colleagues.
(I understand why Qataries often complain that expats come to their country and live in a style better than they would at home. It’s something about being in keeping with the standards of their own expectations.)
The maintenance on this new dwelling soon began to show its shoddiness: We had 8 leaks in no less than a few months. And we aren’t talking about slow drips that keep you up at night. Once we came upstairs after a huge birthday to find water pouring from the rooftop water container through the light fixtures on the landing. Another time I was sitting on the sofa in the living room, wondering what the noise coming from the kitchen was since I was the only one in the house. By the time I got up to investigate, a fast moving plume of water had descended from the ceiling and proceeded towards the front door.
The parade of construction men that came through the house on these occasions to “fix” the problem was as tiresome as they were ineffective. With no contract for maintenance work, the landlord’s solution was to replace faulty wiring/plumbing/etc. with spare parts from other units in the compound. Of course, it was no surprise when these ‘replacements’ also broke while we were home or away.
The crowning moment came towards the end of the first summer when the transformer plug for our electricity began giving out. The wiring was not in our house, but in the box on the street. From calling the compound manager once every day to have him reset it, we were speed dialing him every fifteen minutes over the course of night as the fuse got shorter and shorter. Our neighbors fared no better: a mix of families from two employers, we wanted to stay together as a community for the move for better management. This was not to bed. Our group was deemed “a bad influence” on the others because we were highly demanding and spoiled.
Yet another undesirable move: again not across town but only a few streets away and this time into one of the most congested parts of the city. Ironically this compound had gone up across from the nursery I ran to our second Thanksgiving in order to buy some plants for our sparse townhouse backyard. We lived with two oil burning generators for about eight months, conveniently outside our front door as we were near the front of the compound. The constant loud thrumming could not really be heard once the door was closed; but upstairs in our bedroom, the sounds of progress from the hypermarket (sort of like a neighborhood Wal-mart) accompanied us from 4 a.m. until we left for work – sometimes still present when we came home. Luckily our double plated glass was reflective – at least during the day – and they were denied the free entertainment they would have otherwise had (but got glimpses of when we were in the backyard from the higher levels of their scaffolding).
I often caught the construction workers, who were mostly South Asian, elbowing each other and staring as I climbed into my car for the morning drive. At first I would shrug my shoulders; then I would put my hands out, palms out, and mouth “What are you looking at?” On those instances they didn’t look away, I gave them the finger. Away from their families be damned. I’m never in the mood to be gawked at merely because I’m brown and not wearing hijab. And no, the staring is NOT a compliment unless you also think standing at the gorilla’s cage at the zoo is a form of admiration.
The early days in the fourth and latest compound showed signs of promise. The hanging rods in all of the closets were placed for adult size Amazonians. We asked for them to be lowered and they were – in all four bedrooms.
The landlord’s responsive bounty continued: he bought and installed the larger washing machine and separate dryer residents requested: soon there were carport covers as well to shield our vehicles from the heat. There was no water damage in the first six months; soon after Christmas the generators were moved out and construction on the clubhouse and pool started (along with a cacophony of sound now coming from the front of the house as well as the back). If we wanted to pull up bricks from our backyard and plant trees, or paint every room a different color, we were welcome to do with help even from the compound labor crew (so at our leisure and expense.)
Now a year on, we have a clubhouse, pool, small playground in the back of the compound for the twenty or so children who live there, a handle on the garage door (with key to open and close) plants out front maintained by the gardener and the construction completed on the glassy storefront of the hypermarket next door.
Traffic in the neighborhood hasn’t improved enormously – there are still some times of day to avoid going out if possible – but the opening of Doha’s first super highway “D ring road” has made getting across town a pleasure. Instead of thirty minutes to reach work or the cornice, it now takes about fifteen or twenty. The pileups to enter and exit the highway can be snarled but in most instances the euphoria of driving 100 km an hour to get there make up for it.
A year on into the fourth house, we are okay. We have immediate neighbors who are lovely: their three children keep me sane on days when I’m fed up with the computer, work, or looking for a preview of what life as a family will be like. The morning after I found out we were having a boy, I saw their youngest on his tricycle, smiling at me as though I were the only person in the world, and lessened the shock of the unexpected news.
Two nights ago our first full time employee moved in: a nanny who will double as house help us in our transition as parents. Finding her was an adventure. Moving her in made becoming parents in the Middle East a reality. As I type our cleaner of four years and four houses is showing her around the house and how he’s been taking care of us once or twice a month for the last four years. He now has his own thriving business and can barely squeeze our two storeys, five and five in – though he seems slightly sad that we are giving him up – so the transition is likely well timed for us all.
It feels like a changing of the guard: One for the nanny as well who has been with a family of five, three boys and two adults for nearly five years. She has come from the organized chaos of a house teeming with activity to ours: a house on pause, waiting for the expected unexpected upheaval of a new born.
I’m so grateful to have the help that new mothers and indeed women everyone could benefit from. Doubtless there will be adventures and stories to tell. There are rumors of human rights violations and exploitation of domestics– by expats and locals alike; the domestics themselves trying to steal the ‘sir’ from the madam; worries of child abuse leading to the installations of baby cams or voice recordings; theft, sexual promiscuity, and dozens of other stereotypes. Stay tuned as this may become a thread in the ongoing saga of a day in Doha.
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Pinteresting
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Nutella Mug Cake
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what a great idea for baby shower. every guest brings a letter the new mom uses the letters to decorate the nursery!
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Mommy But Still Me blog Tour and Giveaway... enter for a chance to win a free copy for yourself or a newbie mommie...
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A video of children in Gaza I took during the Palestine Festival of Literature 2012.
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Fettuccine Fine Herbes
Ebook Review
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