National Day and other celebrations 2009-10.

Celebrations of Different Kinds

It has been some time since our last entry. Since our trip to Abu Dhabi and Oman Joy and I have celebrated Qatar’s National Day - both at school and in town, been hosted to a tribal gathering, celebrated Christmas and New Year and been to the Doha Book Fair.

The Qatar National Day celebrations were enthusiastically celebrated at school, on the Wednesday, with an open day at which the boys, staff and visitors danced,sang, recited poetry, listened to speeches and paraded around the streets surrounding the school carrying a huge banner praising the country and the Emir and the Heir Apparent amid decorated cars, much hooting of horns and dancing, sword waving boys as you can see in the video I posted soon after the event.

In 40 years in the classroom I’ve never before handled swords, a falcon and a Baretta shot gun, shared in a traditional dance waving a sword over my head or driven around the streets in a highly decorated SUV with the driver deliberately dropping it out of gear in order to make the gear box scream and the vehicle back-fire or witnessed the staff, just as enthusiastically as the students, dance with their swords and canes in a ever growing circle of chanting men, in the course of a teaching day.

The Emir declared a State holiday on the Thursday so that the public could share in the events that celebrate the foundation of the State of Qatar under the Al Thani dynasty. We, along with several thousand others, headed to the Corniche to watch the National Day parade.

This was a two hour long parade of Qatar’s armed forces and civil defence groups combined with a sail past of dhows with the sailors singing traditional sea shanties as they hauled the lateen sails into the breeze to keep themselves in the long line along the waterfront.

The parade was led off, amid great cheers from the crowd, with groups of young school children, waving flags, in traditional dress as symbols of the future of Qatar. Behind them came troops of armed horsemen and camel-riders also in traditional dress. Each of the horse troops were mounted on pure-bred Arabian horses with each troop on identically coloured horses while the camel force were also in troops of similarly coloured animals.

The crowd greeted these displays with admiring applause and cheers especially as the displays provided the sense of tradition and history that the National Day emphasises in all the publicity.

Behind the horses and camels came the machinery of Qatar’s armed forces from being a British Protectorate to the present. The display of armaments and supporting materiels would have made equivalent the Australian and New Zealand displays look considerably under-equipped. The parade culminated in a fly past of the Qatari Air Force and a demonstration by the helicopter squadron as they bowed their machines to the Emir.

In the Friday evening Joy and I were invited, by Mohammed Al-Shawi and his brother, Dr.Ali, to a tribal gathering held to celebrate the National Day. This was held in a huge tent on one of the large sites around Doha that are reserved for weddings and other celebrations. Here there were 2000 men who claimed a common family connection to the 60,000 strong Al-Shawi tribal group gathered,as were many other tribal groups around the city, to talk, dance and celebrate being Qatari.

As invited western guests Joy was able to attend so that for sometime she was the only woman present until a woman professor from the University of Qatar arrived as part of a group from the Sociology Department along with representatives from the American Embassy.
We sat in ornate seats along the walls of the tent with different members of the tribe who all made us welcome and quizzed us about New Zealand and its geographic location in the world. Our use of English confuses many who immediately assume that we are part of the E.U. or a part of the U.K. because they associate English as a European language.

The evening could have been easily translated to a Maori marae situation as when a visiting group from Saudi came onto the area the immediate reaction was to welcome the new comers with a challenge, in this context a sword dance, followed by a song of welcome and a mass embrace of the newcomers who were then ushered into the tent to mix and mingle with those who had been there for sometime.

Inside the tent the dancing went on to be interrupted by the entry of two young men on horseback who rode their mounts through the crowd to the centre space where they urged them to rear and paw the air with their hooves in a display of horsemanship and daring.

From these displays the evening merged into a contest of passionate poetry recitations as the tribal poets challenged each other to recitations of poetry in praise of the tribe, of Qatar and of the Emir. We were told that this part of the evening could easily go till much, much later in the night before either a winner was declared or the guest poet provided a suitably rousing finale so decided to take our leave at the same time as those from the American Embassy and the University left.

Our Cognition celebrations for Christmas were on the Thursday evening where the “Doha Darlings”, accompanied by their newly recruited “Dudes” launched the night with a song and dance routine based on the ABBA musical -”Mamma Mia”. The high lights of this light relief are in the video posted the day after. As you can see and hear the arrival of the “Dudes” in all our finery was greeted with much laughter by our colleagues. Unfortunately, one of the “Darlings” managed to tear a muscle in her hip in her enthusiasm and ended up in hospital that evening for treatment and then was off work for five days to recuperate.

On the 22nd Joy came along to school to see what we do as consultants in the school. She arrived and, on being introduced to the Art teacher, was ushered into the art room where she was shown some of his sculptures and then given a large coffee table sized canvas and a box of oil paints and asked if she could paint a picture.

Nonplussed, she said OK and began work. Over the next three to four hours she became the centre of attention as both boys and staff dropped by to watch her paint. By the end of the day the Academic Vice Principal had become the proud possessor of a New Zealand coastal scene which is now the centre piece on his office wall.

On Christmas day we did manage to share along telephone conversation with the family who had all gathered in Wanganui to celebrate both the day and as a last farewell to Dad and the memories that we all share of similar celebrations at number 67. The distance between us made the day and the conversations even more poignant than that which had felt on our first Christmas in the Middle East.

Christmas Day was celebrated, noisily and happily, with 17 of our friends a pot-luck lunch in the Graffha apartments. We ate well, drank moderately and talked loudly till late in the afternoon before Joy and I headed home. The Graffha and Khalifa residents ended up at a barbeque on the roof of the apartment block which, apparently, didn’t finish till well into the early hours of the morning.

We celebrated two New Year’s Eves with the Islamic New Year falling on Boxing Day and the Gregorian New Year on the 31st of December. If last year is anything to go by we have a couple more New Years to celebrate before July which will make for some great entertainment. I doubt that we will get to another Kurdish New Year picnic and celebration as we did last year as we don’t have such a large number of Kurds on our staff.

In the meantime Joy and I are planning our Semester end travels - at the moment it looks like an eight day trip to Turkey and a weekend in Dubai in late February.

The Return of the Doha Darlings - with mates!

The Return of the Doha Darlings ............... with Dudes.
Cognition Christmas celebations.
Doha

The Return of the Doha Darlings - Abba Revivalists!!

The Return of the Doha Darlings part 2

National Day Celebrations at Ahmed bin Hanbal School

National Day at School how to celebrate in style

Check out the celebrations on: http://www.ndqatar.com/english/index.php
http://www.ndqatar.net
http://www.youtube.com/user/NDQATAR

OMAN & National Day

OMAN.

Driving into Oman was a pleasant change after driving on the flat of Qatar as we wound our was through the mountains down to the coast. Apart from the lack of snow on the mountains we could have been driving down through the Desert Road towards Wellington at the height of summer.

We stopped at Al Khaburah partly because we saw a signpost pointing to a Fort which looked interesting and the prospect of lunch in the township was high on the agenda. The Fort was a 19th century mud-brick one that is, as we came to appreciate, a common feature of Oman overlooking the seafront with line of sight to forts along the coast. I left Joy in the car and walked around the fort to take photographs when I was called over by an Omani family who were standing outside their beachfront home talking. They invited Joy & me to join them for lunch. Apparently this invitation is a basic tenent of Ibadism, the Omani sect of Islam.

I initially deferred but they insisted so I got Joy and returned to meet them. Joy was ushered into the house where she was introduced to the women of the family, including the blind 107 year old Great-great grandmother who, our host’s son said, had told them all about Hitler and W.W.II.

I was entertained in the entrance room until our host returned with a plastic cloth which he laid on the floor along with a coffee pot and cups. Soon after bowls of food arrived - rice, baked goat, foul, onions and fruit and the invitation to eat. Our hosts supplied two plates saying the Joy would be eating with me and, after I was introduced to his wife,mother and the sons, Joy was ushered into the room and encouraged to eat.

Our hosts left us as other family members arrived from Muscat and were to be welcomed in other parts of the household. Joy & I finished eating and took our leave to resume our drive to Muscat another two hours down the road.

Arriving in Muscat we drove past the Grand Mosque the Sultan had built and donated to the people of Oman.The mosque is a huge complex that can host over 20,000 worshippers and which has the largest chandelier in the world - 8 tonnes of crystal and light - we booked into Naseem’s Hotel on the waterfront at Mutrah - the old commercial centre of Muscat. The area was a bustle of activity with the souq, cruise ships and the Al-Lawatiyah mosque all close at hand. The area is picturesque with the Mutrah Fort perched high above the town on a hilltop that jutted into the park below giving a strategic coverage of the port entrance and offering protection to the township.

We prowled the souq that evening looking for bargains and watching the stall holders persuading the passing tourists to buy Omani caps, perfumes, carvings from India, local handicrafts and other nic-nacs in the time-honoured way we have gotten used to here in Doha.

The next day we walked along the corniche watching the locals fishing for the colourful fish that darted amongst the rocks of the area. We gazed up at the fort and the huge incense burner that sits on another headland opposite the fort as we walked to Riyam park. From there we ambled back to the souq,had another pry around the place before driving around the headland to old Muscat where the Sultan has his palace nestled between the two forts - Al Jazirah and AlJalali -that guard the town. We had planned on visiting the museums in the area but found them closed for Eid - inshalla!.

From there we drove along the coast, past small villages huddling in hill sheltered coves, to Al Bustan, a fishing village and the site of the Al Bustan Palace Intercontinental Hotel and the offices of the Governate of Muscat.

That night we were treated to the sight of a woman totally shrouded in her abaya selling products on a TV channel while a gecko crawled its way up the wall of our hotel room.


The next day we drove inland back to UAE. The road twisted through the mountains and desert until we turned off to the old capital of Oman, the silversmithing town of Nizwa. This proved to be a fascinating place with a goat market, silversmithing souq, pottery and handicrafts souq all huddling around the walls of the Nizwa fort and mosque.

We prowled around the stalls for a good two hours and explored the fort which had a very informative museum inside that gave us a great insight into the history of the area and the different industries that had evolved over the centuries in the township.

Leaving the town around 3.00pm we drove on through the wind eroded, twisted rocks of the interior toward the border. As we got higher into the mountains the wind became more obvious and, at times, forcing us to slow to a crawl and, at one point, stop, as the sand swirled up out of the desert and across the road obscuring the road and traffic from sight for minutes at a time.

We crossed the border and headed back to Al Ain for the evening. The next day we dropped in on Bruce and Louise Devene before heading onto Abu Dhabi for the day prior to flying back to Doha the next afternoon.

On arrival in Abu Dhabi we discovered that it was UAE National Day celebrations which meant that the streets were filled with SUVs covered in transfers of the Emirs, red, green and black hearts and slogans declaring the owner’s love and pride of being an Emirati while the skies were filled with a huge flag hauled by a giant helicopter and the corniche was awash with people draped in UAE flags, coloured clothes and caps as they walked to the accompaniment of the sound of numerous SUV horns blurting support for the UAE.

A far far different atmosphere to that which we are used to back home when Waitangi Day becomes a dark and somewhat depressing exercise in protestation rather an a celebration of nationhood and identity.

Back in Doha the State too is gearing up for its celebration of Nationhood on the 18th of December.

National Day Poster on bridge in Al Ain

It is hard to believe that it is a month since our last posting but according to the up date note on blogger it has been.

Since the last blog we’ve been busy with deadlines, deliverables and drifts of drafts of paperwork that all needed to be completed before the Eid break. For some reason there seems to be more to complete than ever.... maybe it’s a result of having an enthusiastic staff combined with the start-up quality of the school which means that the needs are more obvious. Any way the days seem to disappear in a haze of business so the gap between blogs has grown.

Before Eid we hosted Dave & Shirley Parry for eight days as they passed through Doha on their way back to NZ after their six month contract here and an extended sojourn in the UK visiting family.
While they were with us we took the opportunity to visit the exhibition of Islam the Fanar Centre for information on Islam was running at the Doha Exhibition Centre. This was an informative exhibition that showed us the history and development of Islam across the generations and provided us with insights into the cultural practises that Islam brings to the Arab States.

The overall message from the exhibition was that,as with the basic tenents of Christianity, the underlying drive of Islam is one of peaceful co-existence and of acceptance of others' beliefs and practises which explained many of the comments and offers of generousity Joy and I have experienced here in Qatar.

My name in Arabic.

As well as playing host Joy & I were invited to visit the home of one of the Qatari staff in Al Wakra. This was an interesting experience for us as this was our first opportunity to experience Qatari hospitality. We took a box of chocolates as a visit to a home here should, apparently, be with a gift and were ushered into the entrance room where we shared coffee until Joy was ushered into the house to meet our host’s wife, daughters and young sons.

I sat in the entry room talking to our host’s eldest son who was preparing himself for his first Haj to Mecca and contemplating his upcoming marriage. On our host’s return, from introducing Joy to his wife, he and I drove off to meet his brothers and other family members at the family majilis where we sat and discussed politics, the differences between Qatar and N.Z - geographically and socially and attempted to settle all the world’s problems in a combination of English, translations and signing along with inspired guessing of intention until the evening meal was served in the next door room.

There the food, several chickens and lamb slices, was served on a huge tray heaped with rice and sliced vegetables on the floor with all the men who had gathered in the majilis seated around it.

We then went back to our host’s home to pick up Joy who emerged from inside the house clutching a bag which her hostess insisted contained only chocolates (needless to say it contained a lot more than that- much to our confusion) and a box containing marigold plants and small tree. These we now have growing in a couple of pots in our apartment.

The Eid break came at the end of November and allowed us to fly to Abu Dhabi to catch up with Peter Rocha, ex Otahuhu College, who is now working for Cognition in Al Ain and several of our friends from Doha who are now on contracts in the UAE.

Peter Rocha & Alison Bowden in Al Ain

We hired a car and drove the 160 kms to Al Ain and then got confused trying to find Peter’s apartment block ending up driving around the city centre several times until we stumbled on the Hilton Hotel landmark Peter had given more by shear luck than good management.

Al Ain is a pleasant oasis city to the north of Abu Dhabi.The area has been the cultivated for several hundred years and, according to the tourist pamphlets, is the site of over 147,000 date palms with mango, orange,banana, fig and jujube trees scattered among them. It certainly made a change for us to go for a walk among the trees instead of the dust of the city streets we experience in Doha.

We took the opportunity to explore the city and toured the Sheikh Zayed Palace museum - a complex that preserves the atmosphere of the royal residence the museum once was. The whole complex is a series of courts with different majilis where the Sheikh could entertain visiting dignitaries in a mix of traditional and western styles, depending on the nationality of the guest. Within each courtyard there was a room set up for continuous brewing of coffee and supply of dates and food so that no guest would ever go hungry while staying in the palace.

Joy was fascinated by the portraits of the royal family that were on display in the entry passage ways. The portraits were brilliantly executed by a Lebanese portraitist and could have kept Joy fascinated for hours.

Joy & me in the Sheikh Zayed Palace coffee room- Al Ain

We were given an introductory tour by two very fluent English speaking guides who used the opportunity to practice their English on us as they described the Al Nahyan family and its influence on the UAE.

From the palace we drove to the Hili Archeological Park where evidence of Bronze age settlement in the area was being unearthed. The 3rd millennium BC remains of tombs, water channels and houses indicate that at one time the area was a lot more hospitable than the present arid land would offer.

The 4000 year old Grand Tomb was an impressive monument to the dead which once stood 12 meters in diameter and over 4 metres high in the centre of the complex. It had several rooms with a well in its centre and was designed to house over 800 bodies which would have accumulated over several hundred years according to the archeologists exploring the site.

The village itself must have once been a fairly large and important centre for the Bronze & Iron Age tribes that lived in the area if the number of tombs and clay brick huts are any indication of settlement.

On top of Jebel Hafit Mountain - Al Ain

From there we drove the 7.3 miles up Jebel Hafit mountain to its summit where Peter and I enjoyed the view of the city and its surrounding plain amid the chaos of Eid holidaying locals who had driven to the top to celebrate Eid and the upcoming UAE’s national day. The drive up what is described as one of the world’s best driving roads was a test of patience and driving skill as we wound our was up in the midst of a 2-3 km continuous traffic jam of walking Afghanis (in the UAE as labourers ), mini-buses, SUVs with passengers waving through the sun roof and utes with trays packed with local Indian labourers singing and shouting greetings to the cars climbing slowly to the top car park as they began the descent to the lights of the city.Jebel Hafit traffic jam.

On the Sunday we left the apartment for a walk through the oasis and discovered that the day of the Eid sacrifice had arrived and the street had become a line of sacrificial slaughterhouses as nearly every house had a lamb or goat being gutted, skinned and prepared for the division into thirds according to Islamic tradition. A little further into our walk and we heard the drawn out bleat of a goat and came across a family grouped around a leg roped animal while two expert slaughter-men prepared to cut its throat and bleed it according to halal ritual.

Eid sacrifice - Al Ain

Later, as we walked through the oasis we came upon three men busy washing and rubbing curry into the flesh of their sacrificed animal in the water course or falajas that run through the area. They had the carcass divided into thirds and placed in large bowls so the distribution of the pieces of meat could be easily made and were busy washing out the heads of the animals they had sacrificed readying them for the evening barbeque they would share in.

We planned to drive into Oman and spend several days exploring the neighbouring Sultanate only to discover that we needed permission to take our car out of the UAE as well as buying special Oman car insurance to cover us for the days we would be in the state. This delayed our drive until the Car Rental agency opened its doors for post Eid customers.

Once we had the necessary permissions we headed across the border through the UAE border control posts, across the no mans land between the posts and, after showing the required permits, through the Omani post and into the mountains of Oman.

Films, DVDs, Family and paintings

Forgive me if this blog is a little maudlin but there are times when one heads of in that direction.

Doha life has been busy for us both since our last blog. As I said we took in the Doha Tribeca Film Festival - at least two of the films - Bright Star (Jane Campion) and Harry Brown, starring Michael Caine in his "last"movie.
The latter was one of the toughest films Joy and I have seen for a long time. It was one of the blackest pieces of social commentary to come out of the UK for years, a cross between Ken Loach (of the Cathy Come Home genre) and Don Seigel's Dirty Harry which left us despairing of the present self centred, selfish society that we seem to have allowed to develop and which, in its end, will spawn the vigilante who, desperate and wrathful, acts as the purgative that society seeks to recreate order and decency.

Even though the film ended with a high - the aged vigilante surveying a peaceful and clean housing estate - the over whelming sense of depression and hopelessness of the scenes left us feeling uncomfortable for our support of Michael Caine's Harry Brown in his battle to purge the community of the corruption that was destroying people's lives.

Some days later I was sitting at the traffic lights,giving all those drivers who needed to turn across my lane time to avoid an accident, when I found myself thinking of Dad and the pleasure we had in our Friday phone calls and the many jokes and stories we had shared over 6o years and the tears came making it even harder, than the traffic allowed, to drive across the intersection and head for home. Then, a week later, the DVD of the funeral arrived so Joy and I played it through to end up comforting each other as we watched the send off we gave Dad. The laughter that farewelled the Old Man was an endorsement of the life he lived and the pleasure he'd shared with others.

It was a reminder that we should and can get on with living and enjoy fun and laughter with an item we're rehearsing for the Cognition Christmas Dinner scheduled for the 17th of December.

Joy has created and hand-sewn the costumes and choreographed the item which we're rehearsing two times a week in our apartment. A tight fit for six of us!! All I can say is that if the hall doesn't collapse in laughter then our collective sense of humour will have disappeared.

Joy has also found an outlet for her Doha paintings in a dusty handmade furniture, handicraft and carpets antique shop,The Green Door, in a street just off Al Jazira. The shop is owned by a friendly Jordanian, Ghassan who agreed to exhibit her paintings to the tourists and businesses that deal there. While she was negotiating the commission and procedures a tall Qatari came into the room. Ghassan introduced us,although, I learned later,Joy missed the name until I asked her if she had realised that the man she'd been talking to was Sheik Abdulla Al-Thani, a member of the ruling family of Qatar.

Sheik Abdulla is a local artist in his own right as well as having an interest in the Green Door as he appeared to go on Ghassan's buying expeditions to India. Anyway, he liked Joy's work, which was great, and suggested some other places and things she could look to painting in the future.

Later in the week we hosted one of the Qatari teachers who wanted to practice his conversational English with us. He stayed for a couple of hours chatting about politics - national and international - families and travel before he went to pick his wife up from a workshop at one of the local hotels. We are now looking forward to going to Al Wakra to meet him and his family. This will no doubt be the focus of our next blog.

On the work scene we are busier than ever with reports and paperwork to be completed in what seems to be ever tighter time-frames. It certainly makes the experience worthwhile and professionally rewarding. Our work has been reported on in the local papers with the publication of a complimentary report from the RAND group who have reviewed the effectiveness of the SSO teams and the reforms and found that our work has made significant impact on Qatari education so I feel that my decision to take up the contract with Cognition has been vindicated.

On Monday night we had the choice of The Doha Debates or a Literary Evening. We chose the Literary Evening and went to the Doha Writers Group literary reading to hear a British Muslim writer, Shelina Zahara Janmohamed, read and discuss her novel - "Love in a Headscarf - a Muslim woman seeks the One." An amusing evening as she regaled us with stories of buxom aunties, mosque Inmans, romantic comedies, arranged marriages and being British. A rewarding evening with Joy taking home a novel that she is enjoying.

We are now hosting Dave and Shirley Parry on their return trip to NZ after their contract in Doha and holiday in the UK . Dave is keen to see the friendly match between England and Brazil here in Doha this weekend and to catch the sun and sights before heading back to the Pacific.

With the Eid break (26 Nov -6 Dec) we're heading over to Abu Dhabi to catch up with Peter Rocha, ex Otahuhu, and perhaps head over to Oman to catch a glimpse of different Gulf States and climates. That will, no doubt, be the centre of our next blog.

Catching Up

October has proven to be a busy month for us in Doha so keeping the blog as regularly as we've done to date has been difficult.

Steve O'Neill - Joy's portrait

Joy has been busy with her preparations for the return of The Doha Darlings and painting a portrait of Steve O'Neill, our "Mr. Organisation" for Cognition while I've had my head down keeping up with the demands of the job at school.

Raymond auctioning Joy's painting

Joy was pleased to find, on the web, a picture of Raymond Huo auctioning one of her paintings at a Chinese community fundraiser for victims of the Samoan tsunami recently. It was good to see her work being used to support a good cause.

Our new school is a MoE one that has been designated an Independent School this year. For this year we're based in the old school site rather than in a new design school building which makes for a more interesting place to work especially as the rooms sprawl over the site rather being concentrated inside a block as we had at MBAW last year.

The staff are all concerned with making the school "the best Independent school in Doha" and, as a consequence, are determined to come to grips with the demands of the Curriculum Standards and reforms as soon as possible. This means that I'm constantly engaged in purposeful discussions and workshops on aspects of implementation and planning most days of the week. It certainly makes for enjoyable and positive work.

Marty delivering PD at ABHSS

Keeping up with the consequent paperwork then consumes a couple of hours each night which means that Joy & I try to cram things into the weekend.

We're off to the Doha Tribeca Film Festival to see Jane Campion's film -Bright Star tonight and then check out the programme to try a fit in another film on Saturday. The idea of leaving a film at 2.00am then heading to work on Sunday at 6.00am doesn't appeal so it will have to be a judicious choice for Saturday night.

Bright Star was Jane Campion back in her favourite period - the 19th century - and her favourite theme - Woman trapped in a situation that doesn't allow her to realise the fullness of her passion. The film was beautifully made, with a meticulous eye for detail throughout, and, in the exploration of the relationship between Keats and Fanny, a slow, relentless revelation of the frustrations, fascinations and passions that the two lovers, trapped in a society that conspired to keep them apart, experienced.

We couldn't help but think that there was a thematic unity that reached back to the rain soaked bush and mud caked film The Piano in Bright Star. The film did keep us fascinated and focused on the couple's doomed relationship.

With luck Joy and I might try to grab another film this Saturday afternoon.