Doha Departure - Homeward Bound

This past week has been one of packing, tidying up at work and farewells as the contract draws to its inevitable end.
We are constantly amazed at the way the small souvenirs and gifts have accumulated in the apartment over the past seven months. We started with two large suitcases and our travel cases and are now sending home three large cases and several boxes of paintings, books and souvenirs of our time here in Qatar.
The apartment looks ultilitarian bare now that Joy's remaining paintings have been boxed up ready for shipping and the other items that make a place look like home are packed away.
The MBAW team had a farewell lunch together on Tuesday at The Grand Joud Cafe on Salwa Road.

Dave on the Sheesha

The cafe is a popular sheesha smokers' meeting place as we could smell the sweet aromatic fumes of apple, grape, rose, mint, strawberry and Iranian tobacco as we walked along the street to meet up with our colleagues. The outside seating, always crowded during Winter and on late evenings, was too hot to use so we ate inside where the haze of sheesha was well dispersed by an efficient air conditioner.

Our translator, Mohammed Kasawneh, ordered for the five of us with the result that the table was liberally covered with dishes of hummus, rice, tabbulah, grilled meats, stuffed vine leaves, savoury sausages and kubbah as well as bread to create a lunch that we felt needed assistance to consume.
We discovered, however, that given time and conversation such a spread could easily disappear! However I was still recovering from the meal at 9.00 the next morning.

The Doha Darlings style

Wednesday evening is the end of contract dinner at the Hotel Intercontinental where Joy and the other Doha Darlings will be performing their own unique farewell routine to Doha and where we will, no doubt, commiserate over the lack of firm contract for the next academic year, swap stories about all we've seen and done in our schools and touring of Qatar and other parts of the Middle East and exchange contact addresses at home in New Zealand and for the summer break as we head off on our travels.
The attached video of the performance and activities at the dinner gives a taste of the celebrations on Wednesday night.

Joy with flowers for choreographing the Doha Darlings
Cognition Team Membes learning Arabic Dancing.

Thursday will see us completing packing so that we can deliver our bags and boxes to the transport company to arrange delivery in time for our arrival at Auckland Airport mid July over the weekend.
Then it becomes real count down time from Sunday for the final three days in our schools and the early morning trek to the airport for our next travel adventure - a week in the UK to catch up with Jacqui and her family in Swansea with, we hope, a drive to Tredegar and the Ebbw Vale where I was relief teaching for eight months over 1997 followed by a week in Jordan before being reunited with our baggage in the wet winter of home.

Countdown from Doha

With an outside temperature in the high 40s and the hum of the air conditioners battling to keep the inside temperature in the comfort zone we and the rest of the Mazda group are in varying stages of packing and tidying our apartments ready for the end of the contract.
I've been skip diving to gather together cardboard boxes in which we can pack our extra belongings - the souvenirs, albums and clothing we have picked up in our seven months here!
Our packing goes in fits and starts as we wait to discover whether we have a new contract for the 2009-10 academic year. The rumours fly around amongst the other ATs, are relayed between companies and pepper our conversations and those we have with the teachers at our schools as they seek to find out if they will be able to call on our support next year.
Each day we look towards the office area for a trickle of white smoke that would suggest that we suspend complete packing, at least for a few more days. Unfortunately, the smoke has all been black.
Last night the Mazda group headed off to a local restaurant - Olive - for our own end of contract dinner.

The Mazda crew in high good spirits at Olive

Olive is a recent arrival on the Doha Clinic Road and boasts a mult-ethnic cuisine - Indian, Chinese and Middle Eastern. We were certainly able to cater for the vegetarians and the piscatorians as well as the omnivorians amongst us.

Olive and its "toot & run" takeaway next door neighbour on Doha Clinic Road.

The evening was a great success capped off with Frank suggesting that he would develop a Mazda logos which we could get printed onto T shirts which we could wear to our final Ramada Quiz night, as the Mazda Mafia, on the 29th. We're looking forward to see whatever he comes up with.
Next week is the official end of contract dinner at the Intercontinental Hotel which we are looking forward to. Not only for the chance to get together as the whole team but also in the expectation that John will be able to provide the white smoke from his table before the evening is over.
Shirley, Priscilla,Jan, Louise & Joy - The Doha Darlings
Joy and her friends, known as the Doha Darlings, are especially looking forward to the evening as they have been rehearsing a surprise musical number which will receive its first public performance there.

They have been meeting every Tuesday morning since May to practice the routine which Joy has written and choreographed. Many of the women have never done anything like this before which has added to their performance anticipation.

Layla receiving Joy's Camel Racetrack painting
for the "Summer at Home" exhibition

Joy has handed over her paintings to Layla at the Waqif Galleries ready for the "Summer at Home"exhibition which will be held over July-August. The exhibition is a collection of work from artists living and working in Qatar regardless of nationality and is designed as a focus for the souq over the summer months when people huddle under their air conditioners or head for the malls or the cafes of the souq to enjoy cooler air and conversation.
Our team, at Mohammed Ben Abdul Wahab, are preparing for our presentation of certificates and awards to the staff on Sunday. Our farewell gifts and thanks to the school and the staff in our final complete week there. We've designed a set of certificates that reflect our New Zealand origins - each watermarked with a distinctive New Zealand landscape that the staff can display once we've gone.
I'll finish off the blog with a few sketch notes describing a Doha Friday and plan for a final Doha blog next weekend.

FRIDAYS IN DOHA.
Dust driven sand snakes curlicues across the road
swirls through windows
descends, grainy over books,
coats floors grit gray.
Doha dozes- dormant in prayer
minaret signalled to punctuate the day.

FFC
Koran calls across the aisles
supermarket Fridays reminders
that food and faith intertwine.

Villagio.
Abaya clad women sweep by
gossiping.
children trail behind,
swept up by scurrying maids,
dropped in trolleys,
wheeled through doors
deposited in traffic stopping vans
sale day remainders living still.

Waiting for Godot in Doha

Last weekend we headed for high culture in Doha when a touring French theatre company arrived with a production of Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" ("En attendant Godot") at the National Theatre.

The company was young and chose to play Estragon (Gogo) as an androgynous character played by a woman. Her voice and mannerisms did not give the sense of age that the character needs. In general the youth of the cast failed to carry the weariness of age that Beckett intended.

Again, the stylised comedy of the french failed to carry the slap-stick and rapid fire physical comedy that sustains the play through the meandering talk that keeps the characters frozen in their waiting.

The troupe was a family based one so had made the decision to cast the son of the woman playing Estragon as the messenger boy. He was both stage conscious and vocally weak so that the delivery of Godot's message was inaudible so the audience was not informed of the hopelessness of the wait in a world devoid of stimulus for living.
The dialogue did not appear to carry the same weight as I know from the english text and as my french is minimal I didn't fully follow the actors' presentation. I some how suspect that some of the script had been pruned especially Lucky's long nonsensical monologue about the presence or absence of god.
Despite the absence of publicity the production attracted 200+ people. Mainly ex-pats from the french community and the universities here in Doha.

Frank and I were seated behind the French, German and Japanese ambassadors and members of the Qatari aristocracy.. which gave the production a lot of credibility.

The theatre was a beautiful, well designed venue that would be the envy of any New Zealand Theatre Company in a major city. The sound and visual lines were clear and ideal for that audience.

Contract Countdown

Contract Countdown

Last week we went to the Emir's Cup match, the second soccer match we've ever been to. It still left me wondering what there is in identifying with a team or club or what the fascination is with watching mass sport but, as the clip I posted showed, the entertainment of crowd watching as well as the show put on before the game made the experience worthwhile.

Enjoying the evening at The Emir's Cup Final

May has come to an end with the end of the contract now becoming a reality as June reveals itself with 50c day time temperatures and somewhat lower 30c evenings.

These last weeks of May have been spent developing new course structures for the English Department to meet the decisions that the Grade 10 classes will all be taught using the Advanced Curriculum Standards and the Grade 11 and 12 classes will be either Advanced or Foundation but with different time allocations... Foundation for 3 periods a week and Advanced for 5 periods a week..... which means that the teachers must plan for more extensive programmes at advanced while providing a language rich intensive programme at foundation.

The decisions have also meant that the new course structure needs new material to ensure delivery so a great deal of time has gone into creating a new resource base for the Department that will encourage the students to speak and write in English rather than rote learn words in isolation.

The planning and writing up of the Unit outlines and suggested content, identifying resources and work-shopping the lesson planning has dominated the month and will consume what remains of the contract.

When I look back on my own Head of Department days and how I had to squeeze time between teaching classes, HoD meetings, Staff meetings, book orders and resource maintenance to put time into writing and rewriting Department schemes, manuals and administration systems I cant help but wonder how I managed it.

At least, as an Teacher Advisor, I can devote full days to ensuring that the school and Department are left with a clear idea of what the Curriculum Standards demand and how to get there along with directions on where to find the necessary resources without the added stress of dealing with classes, chasing up lost texts and ensuring the other end of year administration details are completed.

The School Library

Mind you, coming to the end of the contract hasn't just meant that I've been neglecting the Arabic Department and the Library as both of these areas have required time and advice. I was rapt to find that the Library had taken delivery of the books we'd ordered in April and that the Librarian could nowsay that there was a reasonable section of the Resource Centre that were English language texts - fiction and non-fiction - that were the Library's and not class-sets for the English Department.

We're also concentrating our efforts on providing PD on the requirements of the Teachers' Professional Standards Board so that the staff are aware of the processes they have to go through leading up to their registration as qualified teachers by 2011.

So with these programmes to complete by the 30th June we will be kept busy right through until the end of the contract.

We are all waiting to hear about the Cohort VI contract round both here and in Abu Dabai will determine our decsions for 2009-10. We may know sometime in June how many of us will be required in the schools for the next academic year.

Joy's Water Colour Group

Outside of the end of contract preparation we are busy organising ourselves for the return home. Joy has finished her water colour painting group classes with, I think, a lot of happy artists taking home their own paintings of local scenes of camels, beaches and the other places they've enjoyed.

Anna Voisey & horse

She has also completed several commissioned pieces and has her work for the "Summer in Doha" exhibition ready to deliver to the Souq Waqif galleries as well as packing the suitcases ready to take home.

Lesley's Grandchildren on Camels

We've booked our personal flights for travel other than the immediate return home which will see us jetting off to the UK for six days in England and Wales to see Jacqui and her family in the wilds of Swansea and,maybe, a trip to Tredegar where we lived for eight months when we were last in the UK. With luck and time we may manage to catch up with some other relatives and friends as well.

Joy's work chosen for the Souq Waqif Exhibition

From the UK we fly to Jordan for a seven day tour that will take us from Amman to Jerash and the Dead Sea to Madaba, Mount Nebo and Kerak to Petra, Wadi Rumm and back to Amman before heading onto Dubai and the flight home.
If all goes to plan we should stumble off the plane into the wet and chill of a NZ winter on the 16th. ( An experience I can't say I'm looking forward to after being spoilt in the perpetual warmth of the Gulf and the UK summer.)

At least, before we stumble into Winter, there is the prospect of exploring those places we've read about both in history and in fiction as we rode with Lawerence of Arabia, explorers and those fictional others through the deserts to stumble on the ruins of past civilisations carved and hidden in the cliffs of Jordan.

Emirs Cup

Fishing, dust and heat

Fishing, Dust and Heat

Friday night concert at Souq Waqif

It has been two weeks since our last update on our activities in Doha. Either time is speeding up or there have been few events to report on or that work has limited my time to update.
In retrospect it would appear that all of the above are true.
Lately it has felt like that no sooner than I wake up on Sunday morning, go to work and return home it is Thursday evening and the weekend which leads one to presume time is speeding up!! This, of course, makes one feel that there are few events to report on and that work is limiting my time to update.
As our contract nears its end the need to ensure that the school has been left with a reasonably well developed resource base that can be sustained and built on by the staff has meant that we've been working on monitoring, collecting, rewriting and, at times, constructing resources within the Departments we're responsible for and putting them onto the school server and wikispaces so that staff can access material to build their teaching to address the curriculum standards on without having to resort to the old vocabulary-grammar booklets that do little to encourage language development.
So far I've, in consultation with the English Department, created a new course of work at each grade level and, at least for Grade 10, built up a set of eight broad description Unit Plans for them.
The next step is to do the same for Grade 11 with a sketched outline of approach for Grade 12 before the end of June.
With the Grade 12 students out on national exams the chance to do some intensive PD has to be seized on as well. I've managed to do a day with the English staff but, as the policy here is to move teachers to different schools to invigilate the exams, I haven't yet worked with the full department of any subject.
Apart from these demands there are the monthly reports and analysis to complete as well as writing up observations and offering constructive comments to the teachers. All of which make the time appear to speed up as well as giving value to the work here while limiting the events to be reported on.

Aside from the demands of the job we have managed to squeeze in few uniquely Gulf activities.

Last week we went fishing-cruising on a dhow on the Gulf.
Twenty four of the Cognition team hired a dhow for the day to fish and swim in the Gulf. As you can see a dhow is quite a large vessel. The one we went on can accommodate 50 with plenty of room to move around both on the lower deck and the upper sun deck.

We headed out to sea at 8.00 am, past the Coastguard station at the mouth of the harbour, past large, empty cargo ships moored waiting to be loaded or dispatched to other ports and then out towards the even larger, loaded vessels waiting for a slot to unload, to idle in the current and fish.

Fishing here is certainly different to that which we're used to at home on the Hauraki Gulf. At home one finds a reef, anchors and then, between feeding the small fish which suck the bait off the hooks, reel in fish that pass the 27cm size limit with some degree of regularity. Here we cast out and let our lines drift as we waited and waited and waited for even a hint of a nibble.

There were brief flurries of excitement when tangled lines convinced people that there was something biting in the depths and when one of the crew members hauled up a small shark but none of the elation of filling buckets of fresh fish many of us, still filled with NZ fishing expectations, were wishing for.
However, the lack of fish did allow for plenty of conversation over countless cans of Pepsi and chilled water and, as the sun warmed the boat, inspired the odd doze on the deck.

All of which made the day incredibly pleasant.

Joy keeping me under control as we wait for a bite.

Somewhere around three or four hours into our waiting and following the time honoured ritual when there are no fish biting, of reading the paper, swigging a can of drink and wandering down the boat to see how Joy was getting on with her fishing and conversation then ambling back to check on my rod, I felt a substantial tug on my line which did bend the rod tip off the horiziontal. Reassured that I had more than someone else's line on my hooks I reeled in and found I had hooked a couple of remora or sucker fish.

Unfortunately one dropped off as I was reeling in which left me with the one most unusual fish I've caught and the only fish caught by us for the day and, thus, the proud recipient of the Brian Woolhouse Cognition Fishing Cup!

After a very pleasant barbeque lunch and further no fish line dropping the crew ordered up lines and we motored off to drop anchor at Banana Island for a spot of swimming and diving from the dhow.

Here we were brief companions of the owners of a well appointed yacht and a private dhow with a string of jet-skis long-lining behind it before we headed back to shore and the need to prepare for the new week.

As the heading for this post indicated this week has been one of increasing heat and dust as summer creeps in to the Gulf.
Each day we've driven, in temperatures of 35-40C, through snakes of sand swirling in curlicues across the roads as the winds from Saudi begin a sweep towards the sea and through Qatar until to day when the dust has swirled sufficiently high to turn the sky white and to obscure the buildings around us. We can hardly see the Ramada hotel which is directly opposite us,or, for that matter, La Cigale in the other direction.
The more established ex-pats all promise higher temperatures and humidity and even dustier atmosphere. Our friendly chemist, with whom we chat when we go for our evening walks, has told us that at the height of summer, with the temperature in the 50s, the air has to be cut, sliced and filtered before one can breathe it!!

Other than these events Joy & I celebrated her birthday on Friday at La Cigale which was a very pleasant experience. Good food, well presented at one of Doha's 5 star hotels making Joy's birthday one worthy of memory.

Making her birthday even more memorable has been an invitation, not only to offer three paintings for an exhibition at the Souq Waqif, but to join another N.Z. artist in a joint exhibition of work in the future and two commissions of paintings to be done for other Cognition colleagues. As well, she has noticed an increase in traffic on her website (http://www.joys-gallery.webs.com ) which has made her really happy, especially if the interest gets her the feedback she has gotten from other ex-pats in the area.

Qatar Mystery

QATAR MYSTERIES

This week was one of mystery: First, it is another week over with the big question where did it go? The second was to try and understand why is there a fascination with sport and the apparent need to support a team.
The first question might be answered with the week went by so fast because there has been so much to do at work that the days flick past.
On this front I must confess that I have been feeling a bit like marmite being spread thinly on toast as it has been monthly report time which has meant filling out and filing reports on our actions and observed outcomes with all the interested bodies. Doing this exercise makes one realise how much one has done and how much more needs to be done.
Getting the English resource books from the library and into the English Department revealed the lack of English language books available in the library which has meant pushing to get a purchase confirmed and more books ordered. Not an easy task as there are few specialist bookshops that can supply the sort of texts a school needs here in Qatar.
As the end of the year draws near the number of tests being administered has increased in a lead up to the national exams in mid May.This has meant great angst for both teachers and students alike. For the students it has meant trying to rote learn responses to tests that test understanding of language and application of skills while the teachers worry about getting the tests marked and recorded in incredibly short time frames.
The second mystery was presented last night when we went to the first soccer game I've been to in memory.

This was the Heir Apparent Cup being played at the local stadium between The Qatar Sports Club and the Al Rayyan Sports Club.
The competition for the cup is reportedly intense as the local paper stated unequivocally: "It is a known fact that the people of Qatar greatly associate themselves with this tournament along with the Emir Cup."
We decided to go along with the others, who appreciate the finer points of the game, from the apartments to witness the event that had had such a huge build up with advertising and enthusiastic newspaper reporting and, from my position, to discover what the attraction of mass spectator sport is.

Earlier in the day Joy & I drove past the stadium where the preparations were under way for the pre-match entertainment and the big event.

Scarf Huckster outside Al Saad Stadium

There were blow up slides, bouncy castles, stilt walkers, face painters, mini cars and hucksters selling supporter paraphernalia of all sorts scattered around the car park area. This seemed be the popular attraction for the kids and families in the area and offered an indication for the evening crowds.
The evening provided the crowds and with the ticket offices closed and no indication of possible sales or sold out signs those of us who hadn't purchased tickets from the outlets at the shopping malls during the week formed scrums at the windows in the hope that someone would say if tickets were available.

The ticket scrum

In the end we gave up trying to buy a ticket from the windows with the scrums and walked around the stadium to see if there were other outlets and were signalled to by one of the military in charge of the Family Section entrance and admitted to the game.
Once inside we found the rest of the Mazda group and sat back to enjoy the spectacle. The arena was full with supporters groups waving red or yellow banners urged on by drummers who were to keep up a constant beat throughout the game.

Crowd and drummers

In the arena the Qatar Military Band was assembled to play the National Anthem prior the kick-off. The band were resplendent in their maroon and white and highly polished instruments as they paraded across the field to perform.

Qatar Military Band at Al Saad Stadium.

Once they had marched off the teams emerged from beneath the stadium to matching roars and much banner waving from their respective supporter areas of the stadium. The announcer made a series of comments both in Arabic and English which , because of the distortion created by the speaker system sounded identical to any announcement at any stadium or rail station anywhere in the world.
We stared at the ground for some ten minutes before we ralised that the game had gotten under way. The signal for this being a cheer and intense drumming from the red supporters followed by heavier drumming and more cheering from the Yellow supporters as the players started running down the field towards the net at our end of the stadium.
The ball flew into the crowd, was thrown back and was duly kicked up and down the field for another 30 minutes for a 0 -0 first half.

Men kicking a ball in a soccer game.

I ventured down stairs to the concession stand for fruit juice. This was an experience in itself as the stand was being over run with a swarm of kids of all sizes and decibel level all clamouring for attention from a harried couple of salesmen who were trying to sell water, juice and food from a stall made up of cardboard boxes of their wares. Like the ticket sales window here was the opportunity to get down into a scrum much to the bewilderment of the other ex-pats like me who had been queue trained from childhood.
Back inside the stadium the men resumed kicking the ball up and down the field accompanied by the drummers, vigourous hand clapping and banner waving punctuated by injury time as players somersaulted into prone positions, clutching their ankles or heads, on the grass and Red Crescent golf buggies zipped onto the field hoping to carry the player off on the stretcher they carried with them.
This half finished 0-0 which meant the teams gathered on the sideline to be watered and more sideline drumming before playing on for another 30 minutes for another 0-0 result.
Then the teams lined up in mid field as selected members aimed the ball at the respective goal keepers until one of the teams had put more balls into the net than the other.
This resulted in a parade of men past the Heir Apparent and the passing over of a huge gold cup to be paraded around the arena much to the delight of the yellow supporters.

Victory parade

The celebrations were punctuated by floods of paper, banging fountains of coloured tinsel from cannons mounted in the corners of the stadium and explosions of colour and booms of fireworks fired above the stadium roof.

Fireworks at Al Saad Stadium

Which left us still wondering what we had experienced and still bewildered about the fascination the media and public have with mass spectator sport.