Back in the Doha Haze

Our Apartment in Bin Mahmoud

It is hard to believe that we've been back in Doha for two weeks now as the days seem to have merged into the heat haze that is Qatar in summer. With temperatures regularly in the mid 40s during the day and lows of 30C the idea of doing anything really active during the day disappears as one contemplates the comfort of air conditioning in the cocoon that is our apartment.

On top of the heat induced lassitude it is also Ramadan here which means that the day starts with the dawn call to prayer at 4.00 followed by the sunrise call at 5.15. For the locals it means that there can be no eating or drinking after 5.00am until the sunset call at 5.45pm.

It also means that the working day becomes compressed into a 4-5 hour slot between 8.00 or 9.00am and 1.00pm. (For the workers on the building site behind our apartment the day starts with the shriek of an un-oiled pulley at 5.30 and finishes at around 10.30 or 11.00am when the heat is too much for any outside labour.)

There are several advantages to this situation: getting on with some reading both for recreation and professionally, polishing up PD presentations for delivery once schools start, writing up exemplar lesson plans to take into the schools for teachers to follow and for us, as ATs, to demonstrate as effective teaching to the staff, watching the news on TV, having organisation meetings with the ATs with both companies involved with the contract and socialising with our colleagues.

It does mean that we are getting ourselves well organised for the coming school year.

I've been on site at the school the team I'm on is working in for the past three days meeting the staff, sorting out our work space and getting ourselves ready to swing into action this Sunday when we meet the full staff for the first time.
This year the school is an ex-Ministry one that has become an Independent school. The plan is to operate out of the old site for 2009-10 then move to a new site in 2010-11. In the meantime the old rooms are being given a make over with new plant installed ready for the students by the 27th. Consequently the parking area looks like a building site with stacks of student desks, old filing cabinets, broken blackboards, chairs, papers, bottles and hunks of timber and broken masonry on one side and an army of labourers busy painting, reassembling and moving new materials into the classrooms while teachers hunt their way through the movement to find a space to work or talk about the new year in their departments.

It also means that the English Coordinator and I have to sit down and sort out the resources needed to ensure that the Department can deliver both in quantity and quality as there appear to be no text or consumerable resources left from the old MoE school for the staff to use to develop lessons from.

We are, however, impressed by the energy and organisation of the Management team who have been coordinating the changeover for some weeks now. Every discussion we've had with them has shown that they have a solid and well thought-out knowledge of the challenges and requirements of the change from a MoE to an Independent SEC school will mean for the staff and the students. It should also mean that come the 27th the school will be ready to spring into operation.

On the home front Joy and I have settled into our apartment and, following a long exchange of misdirection and misunderstandings, unpacked our final boxes of gear to make the place more homely. Joy has hung her canvases of NZ scenes on the walls in the lounge and lined the walls of the spare bedroom with blank canvases and her paints as a studio and I've set up an alcove in the lounge as a workspace and library. I also picked up a cheap DVD player so we can now enjoy films whenever we want rather than surf our way through the 1050 channels available on the satellite TV to find a programme worth sustained watching.

Joy and Priscilla, as the current surviving "Doha Darlings", are busy plotting and planning their next foray into musical theatre which means they are off most mornings to explore the air conditioned halls of the souqs on the look out for material and items they can put to use. They are waiting on the return of Jan to complete their trio and the "Darlings" will spring into action.

Joy with one of her paintings at the Souq Waqif

Joy and I drove down to the Souq Waqif one evening to check out the "Summer in the City" exhibition Joy had had two paintings exhibited in over the July-September period and were impressed at the range of work and styles the local artists are working in. I think it would be great if Joy could, with other Kiwi artists here in Doha, do a totally NZ art exhibition at sometime. The contrast between the intense colours of the Pacific and the haziness of the Gulf would be interesting to say the least.

On Wednesday we were the guests of the Bloomsbury-Qatar Foundation Publishing House for Iftar, the post fast meal, and a poetry reading by four local poets. The poets read their work in both Arabic and English to a very receptive audience after the meal. The poems revealed the differences in attitude, thought and imagery between male and female in the Middle East as well as the linguistic accomplishment of the poets.

The male poet's work resounded with discords and clashes of images while the women's work focused on the issue or the meaningful moment with intensity and controlled passion which left the audience in earnest discussion after the reading.

This coming week will be interesting especially as I,with my colleagues, will be beginning our work proper and as Ramadan nears its end. Joy and I are also trying to work out what we will do over the Eid break that follows Ramadan - there is a public holiday from the 17th through till the 27th - so we are looking at a trip to Turkey, which would allow us to visit places we didn't get to see when we first went there in 1997, or to Abu Dhabi where we could catch up some of our colleagues from last year as well as drive to Oman and as explore another Gulf State.

Choices!!

Summer is a Comin' In

SUMMER IS A COMIN' IN

Week Ten of a 20 week semester is upon us as the summer heat begins to build up towards the peaks of August when it is, apparently, not uncommon for the thermometers to hit 50c. At the moment we're experiencing a relatively comfortable 35c mid morning falling to 28c by the late afternoon.

The coming of summer seems to have affected some of the boys who seem to have resorted to sleeping under the stairwell after the morning break and who take a bit of friendly persuasion to shake the sleep from their minds and head into classes.
They do claim, as an excuse, that they're tired from the end of unit / cluster tests that often take two hours out of their morning to finish.

We've spent a lot of time as mediators between the boys and their teachers and between the boys' guardians and the teachers as, at Grade 12, the boys are coming up against assessments in skills that require reading and writing skills that they find extremely challenging and demanding. The nett result is loud complaints that the test was too hard and that they haven't been trained to answer the questions.
The problem isn't confined to an isolated school according to a report in The Peninsula newspaper which reported a complaint from a student about the way in which their examinations were conducted.
The experience of acting as a mediator and advisor is what we're in Qatar for so I do feel that I'm earning my keep!!

On the more creative school note the Arabic Department organised a "Poetry Idol" type competition last week at which the boys recited their original poems to a crowded auditorium of students and teachers.
According to our translator the poems are about one of three things - Camels, Land-cruisers in the Desert and hoped for love. Whatever the topic each poem was greeted with loud applause after each aspiring poet left the stage. I recalled the poetry competitions we held at school back home and thought it would be great for some of our N.Z. students to see and hear the power of poetry being declaimed by passionate young poets.

For a group of students for whom schooling is not always that rewarding their keenness and display of poetic skills was a reward to witness.

Joy has been selling her paintings quite regularly now with SOLD signs being added to her website (http://www.joys-gallery.webs.com ) each weekend. She now has a firm commission to complete and another in the offing which will keep her busy for a couple of weeks.

Last week Joy and I explored the Heritage Village along the Corniche. The village is not always open so we counted ourselves lucky to find it was in action and that a North African musical troupe were performing there.

We poked around the site watching the men & women engaged in the traditional handicrafts the had kept Doha in trade before the expansion allowed by the oil & gas industry.

This craftsman was busy demonstrating the art of knotting nets and fishing lines. While this craftsman demonstrated the painstakingly careful craft involved with carving the gypsum used in making wall decorations and lacework windows.

Joy came across some women who were making the traditional masks worn by the more traditional older women to cover their faces under their abayas. They promptly persuaded her to sit with them and to be dressed in the mask and shawl so she could experience the world through their perspectives.

She just escaped having her hands hennaed in the same fashion as this young girl had had done by pleading that we wanted to see and hear the North african dance troupe in performance on the stage.

Their song & dance routines were punctuated with displays of head swinging to twirl the tassles on their caps in ever faster circles around their heads while keeping up the tempo and frentic beat of their songs.

Later in the week we went to a lecture at the Islamic Centre entitled " The Vikings & Islam" which promised to be interesting and a different perspective on the history of the Vikings and their contacts with the Islamic Empire but proved to reveal little except that the speaker's research had established that contact had occured and a trade in furs and silver had happened with no real cultural interaction.

This past week seems to have disappeared all too rapidly with a meeting of the Doha Writers Group as a highlight for both Joy & me as we met some great people from Aljazeera TV and the Bloomsbury-Qatar Foundation Publishing house.

Saturday the ANZ communities in Doha commemorated ANZAC Day with a dawn service on the beach front at the Marriot Doha. Several members of our team attended the ceremony.

John Ellis, the Country Manager for Cognition, represented the NZ contingent at the ceremony.

Now, it's looking forward to quiz night at the Ramada and planning our pre return to NZ visit to Jordan.