So You Don't Know Driving

It's time for me to come clean:  I know you're reading this.  Well, not you, specifically, but that someone is.  I have a website linked to my blog to see how many people visit, and where that traffic is coming from.  It's interesting to see if anyone is tuning in, and where they are.  But don't worry. The most I know about you is your city, sometimes only your country.  I don't know your name, email address, or physical address.  Except for that guy who sits in his basement and checks to see if I've posted anything lately.  I keep telling you, Dad...I'm on it.

Last week I noticed a hit from a Google search that someone did from Mumbai, India.  This is what the person Googled:

"i don't know driving but is it ok to learn it in doha"

No, sir.  No it is not ok.

I spend a lot of time in the car, mostly acting in my role as Unpaid Family Chauffeur.  My working conditions are deplorable.  Drivers cut me off in roundabouts, men going far faster than me pass me on the right, and I get stuck behind slow-moving vehicles all the time.  I often think I should write about driving in this city.  But the fodder for that post is too deep and too thick, so I think it's best to write little bits at a time, if only to prevent my eye from twitching.

For this entry, let's concentrate on the driving school in my neighbourhood.  This school has a collection of little brown and mustard-yellow cars with big red "L's" stuck with a magnet on the back.  My kids asked me what the L stands for.  I told them:  "Learner".  When I'm behind one I mutter another L-word under my breath.  (Not a bad word, but it might be a little impolite.  Think fingers in the shape of an L on your forehead.)  These cars always have two people in them, the Learner and the Instructor.  They are always both expats.  Chances are high that the Learner has come to Doha to get a job as a driver.  Chances are also high that he has never before been behind the wheel of a car.

The Neighbourhood Learner

The beauty of having this driving school right in my very own neighbourhood is that I get to encounter these little cars and their drivers frequently, and collect quite a few data points about them and their habits.  Here is what I've managed to piece together so far:

1.  The Instructor's arrival in Doha preceded the Learner's by about two and a half weeks.
2.  The Learner is incapable of looking over his left shoulder, and
3.  If there is an employment sector in Doha whose remuneration is solely Danger Pay, the Instructor may very well be the highest paid man of this sector in the city, next to the guy at Carrefour who won't let me return my faulty blender.

It must be a joyous undertaking having a fellow-countryman teach you to drive in a foreign country. You speak the same language.  You're comfortable in each other's company.  You both have an affinity for under-shooting the posted speed limit by a good 30 per cent.  And culturally, you both think that checking your blind spot is for sissies.

But I fear we may be reaching a Dark Age of driving in Doha.  Those with seemingly little experience (or maybe just not enough knowledge of how they make the rest of us crazy) teach new expats to drive, and they in turn teach others to drive, and so on, into perpetuity, until soon no one who has attended a driving school will even know what the colours of the traffic lights mean.  If that's true, then things on the streets of Doha will only get worse.  It may already be too late.  I saw this printed on a card hanging from a rear-view mirror just the other day:

The Pledge of the Driving School Graduate


I will go 70 in a 100 zone because I fear the awesome power
of this Nissan Sunny.


Why merge when pulling blindly out into traffic
is so much more exciting for everyone?


The roundabout is mine.  All mine.


I will ignore the woman in the white SUV behind me,
who is honking and gesturing wildly.
My English is not great, and I have trouble hearing her, but I can read her lips.
I think she just called me a Learner.

Learning Curved

"Not that I'm complaining, but do you think the next vacation we take can be one where we don't have to learn anything?"

Ha.  'Not that he's complaining.'  Well, not now, anyway.  But I do recall an awful lot of griping coming from this 11-year-old and his two brothers on our previous holidays.  Granted, those were filled with old churches, ruins, museums, temples, tours, technical visits, road-side attractions, more ruins, and a couple more old churches thrown in for good measure.  And always, on these adventures, there was their dad, eager to fit in "just one more stop", and happily providing all the minutia they never dreamed they wanted to know, displaying his love for all things historical, sometimes sounding like a walking guidebook.  In a good way, of course.

Don't get me wrong.  We had a great time on these trips.  They were an escape from the regular routine and the confines, both tangible and not, of Doha, and we crossed some serious swaths of must-do's from our bucket lists.  But they were anything but restful.

This trip was going to be different.  We would turn off our brains and not learn a thing.  This holiday was going to be about navel-gazing.  So, we unanimously decided on the Maldives, and spent a week at Kuredu Island Resort on the northern atoll of Lhaviyani.  Upon arriving, we took off our watches and tossed them, along with our flip-flops, back into our suitcases.  Certainly we wouldn't need them on this vacation.  We walked barefoot down the beach to breakfast, and then returned to snorkel just steps from our front door, where we saw a little shark on our first outing, and crazy multi-coloured "rainbow" fish.  We banana-boated, wake-boarded, knee-boarded, parasailed, and dolphin-safaried.  We cooled off in the pool, then had Happy Hour mock- and cocktails.  We ping-ponged, night-golfed, and played board-games before dinner.  We went to the spa, and slept in.  We ate, we drank, we ate, and we drank.  We swam in the ocean.  The only ruins we saw were the kids' dessert plates from the buffet.

About four nights in, Dan asked the kids at dinner, "Has anyone learned anything, on this trip so far?"

Thing 3:  "I learned how to knee-board.  And also that there are mini sharks right out there!"

Thing 1:  "I learned how to wake-board, and that if I use a 7-iron, I can get the ball about 75 yards."

Thing 2:  "I learned to parasail.  And also that recently, the first democratically-elected president of the Maldives stepped down voluntarily (or more likely was overthrown in a bloodless coup) as his detractors thought he was too much of a moderate for an Islamic state—"

Hold the phone.  The only reason this aforementioned 11-year-old knew this is because he asked. And naturally, his father answered.  As if he could help himself.

When we grudgingly finished our week on Kuredu Island, and I hung onto the dock for dear life, my body stretched horizontally while my family tried to drag me onto the seaplane, I wondered if I had learned anything.  Turns out that I did.

I learned that there is a place on Earth whose beauty surpasses all others.  I learned that the sea can be an impossible turquoise and that sand can be as fine and white as flour.  I learned that there is water is so clear you can stand ankle-deep and count the fish swimming by.  I learned that sometimes, in the morning, you can look outside your bedroom door and watch dolphins jumping out of the ocean.  And that the shade of a palm tree, just steps from the water, is the best place in which to lose yourself in a good book.

I didn't learn, but was reminded, of how lucky we are to live where we live, for better or worse, and to go to the places we've gone.  Check your boarding passes and fasten your seatbelts, boys.  Class is in session.

Mr. Donna Tracks an Elephant

For those of you keeping score at home, you'll remember that on our recent trip to Sri Lanka, I purchased a wooden elephant.  We've been lucky enough to visit countries that we had never dreamed of going to before, and I've felt compelled to bring back "a little something" as a memento of our time there.

Our visit to a wood-working shop in Matale was a bit rushed, and I'll admit that my decision-making skills may have been impaired.  I had thought that a carved, wooden elephant would be the keepsake of choice, and since I'm not much of a knick-knack-on-shelves kind of person, that would mean that my elephant would have to be large enough to sit on the floor.

And then I spotted him:  two feet tall, intricately carved dark wood, with his trunk curled upwards — good luck, I'm told.  Done.  Let's buy this baby and get out of here.  The salesperson directed us to the counter.

I'm sorry...how much did you just say?

"That's with the 20 per cent discount, Madam.  We'll ship it free of charge to your nearest port, and there will be a small clearance fee once it arrives at Customs."

OK, fine.  I paid about that much for the mosaic table I bought in Jordan, and delivery went smoothly.  I can practically spit from my house to the Port of Doha.  When it comes in, I'll just whip down and throw it in the back of my car.  Easy-peasy.

That was mid-December.  Then for over two months, nothing.  Nothing, nothing, nothing.  Silence, even.  Cue the crickets chirping, the tumbleweeds rolling.  I was starting to feel a little sick about it, thinking I'd been had, so about six weeks into this silence, I picked up the phone, and with a terrible connection and the three Sinhala words I know (none of them useful in this situation), called the shop.

[Loudly] "Hello! I'm calling about an elephant I purchased in December!"  I repeated this sentence to each successive person to whom the phone was passed until ultimately being handed to a fourth who could speak English.  I was assured that it had been shipped in mid-January.

Finally, on the last day of February, I received an email from a local freight company saying it was here.  Or rather, Mr. Donna received an email.  This was a handle I was unable to shake for the remainder of the long, drawn-out transaction.  It said I owed 1100QR, and when I called Leo at the freight company, he said it would be best if I came down to his office to discuss obtaining my shipment.

Well, suddenly, things really seem to be moving along!  I'll just drive down on Saturday, talk to Leo, pay my "small clearance fee" of 1100QR, and collect my elephant.  I'll be home before my teenager is even out of bed.  Leo invited me into his office, asked me to sit down, chatted for a bit, and then surreptitiously added another four-digit number to the total of my invoice.  I looked on despondently.  This, apparently, was his company's service charge.  A service charge in addition to the 1100QR I already owed for the privilege of having this elephant arrive in the country.  As he put the final zero on that amount, I watched as the invoice transformed into a ransom note.  I envisioned my elephant in chains, blindfolded, trays of sloppy gruel and filthy water being passed through a slot at the bottom of his cell, desperate to be released.

The following two and a half weeks brought a series of phone calls, emails, and texts from Leo, each outlining more demands.  I needed a Certificate of Origin from the shop, more cash, copies of my passport and Residence Permit, a Letter of No Objection, in Arabic, from my employer (my husband's employer...and what, exactly, were they not objecting to?), even more cash, my first-born.  These instructions were doled out to me, each one like a carrot on the end of a thin strand of hope, just out of my reach.   Every additional condition diminished my purchase, and made the size of this elephant seem inversely proportional to its cost.  I felt, with certainty, that it would arrive at my house and it would stand six inches tall.

With no great fanfare, and in an anti-climactic blur, my shipment was delivered early last week, a mere 13 weeks, a confusing paper chase, and an unmentionable amount of cash later.  There was no picking it up at the port myself.  One single man carried the 50 kilo wooden box on his shoulder into my house, and then I uncrated it.  All 21 inches, or about half a metre, of elephant sit on the floor beside the piano.  Sometimes when I walk past it, my passive-aggressive side kicks it a little.  Sometimes a tusk falls out.  And sometimes, when I look at it, I recognize what a unique piece it is.  Welcome to Mr. Donna's house, Big Guy.

True Grit

We've been overcome by beige.

I'm sitting in my beige house, looking out the window at my beige car, typing on a computer that sits on a formerly black countertop (now beige).  And no, I haven't been transported to a movie set for some monochromatic art house film.  I'm living in a dust bowl.

For the past four days, and for several days each week in the last, oh, I don't know, eternity, the wind has been blowing in Doha.  I'm not talking about a gentle ocean breeze, brought across the Gulf and carrying with it the smell of salt air and a bit of humidity.  This is a full-on, nasty wind, either blowing directly from the north, or from the west, where it has spent enough time over land to lose any moisture and gentle beach vacation memories that it may have once carried with it.  And when the wind hasn't been blowing, there is a haze that hangs in the air that would rival Toronto on a summer day.

I suppose I should be thankful that we're not under a layer of sand.  Most of the sand stayed behind.  What we get instead, coating the kids' bikes, my petunias, and any slow-moving cats wandering down our street, is what gets up and leaves after the wind beats the living daylights out of the sand:  dust.

Some aspects of this weather remind me of a good old-fashioned Canadian snowstorm:  the howling wind, the stuff being blown across roads in spidery fingers, the decreased visibility, and the desire it brings with it to stay indoors.  But even the indoors is not impervious to the dust.  A book or a piece of paper left on a table will, in a matter of hours, leave its exact shape, chalk-outline style, on the surface once removed.  Just yesterday, I lost Dan for about 15 minutes while he was having a nap on the couch.

We're all cranky.  I can tell you that it's not pleasant to have dust up your nose, and at the back of your throat, and forming a fine film of grit on your front teeth.  The novelty of using my windshield wipers to brush away a layer of dust every time I get in the car in starting to wear off, too.

It'll be 40 degrees Celsius before we know it, and the humidity will be so high we'll have to swim to our cars.  I'm going to try to get rid of all the sand in my teeth before that happens.  I know visibility is poor, but try to follow the sound of my voice:  "Pbblt.  Pwah.  Blech."

The Week the Children Went

Once a year the kids' Middle School offers an amazing adventure to its students, aptly named "Week Without Walls".  Some of us affectionately call it, for reasons that will become apparent, "Week Without Kids".  Each class, from Grades 6 through 8, experiences some pretty outstanding field trips, and the kids are encouraged to reach beyond their limitations, and take risks.  Our family is lucky to have two Middle Schoolers this year, in Grades 6 and 8.  Sixth Grade stays in-country, while Seventh and Eighth Grades travel by air to their destinations, with classes being split in half to travel to two separate destinations.  Because parent volunteers were not required as travel chaperones, the following account is based on hearsay, third-hand information, and conjecture.  It may also include a small extrapolation of the "It was great" description I received.

Pre-WWW:

A large sign in the Grade 6 Commons is displayed with the title "What Are You Willing to Risk?".  Entries include, but are not limited to:  "I will sleep in a tent even though I'm not comfortable with that" and "I will have fun in a group without my close friends."  One Sixth Grader writes:  "I will risk writing something on a public board in a school hallway."  Clearly, he gets his sense of humour from his father.

Friday:
Grade 8 boards a plane at 1:50 am, headed for Kuala Lumpur. After a five-hour lay-over, the group makes its connection to Kota Kinabalu, on the island of Borneo.  Upon disembarking, the 70 students giddily exclaim that the 40 minutes of sleep they got en route was more than adequate.  Seventy-two-hundred kilometers away, parents in Doha simultaneously hit the snooze button for the third time and feel a fleeting pang of pity for the seven Travel Leader teachers.  The poor saps.

Saturday:

Tents at Camp Bongkud

Eighth Graders arrive at Camp Bongkud, and tour the work sites.  The group is treated to a cultural performance put on by school children in the village.  Tents are assigned and blankets distributed.  A cursory inspection of the bathrooms results in about half the kids declaring, "I'm good, thanks—I went on the plane."  Evidently, there's something about a hole in the ground with two foot markers on either side that causes performance anxiety.

Sunday:

Sixth Graders begin their adventure.  Doha temperatures are unusually cold, and these desert kids have to endure 12C in the morning.  Action-packed day at the camel racetrack, the Emir's equestrian facility, and the falcon souq.  Mom happily reports no new pets in the backpack at the end of the day.

Eighth Graders begin their work in earnest.  Camps International in Bongkud helps the local village in development projects, such as a new women's centre, a community centre, and a water tower.  The group mixes cement and moves a mountain of rocks.  Reportedly, the cold, light trickle of the shower at the end of the day is totally worth every minute of the hour's wait.

Monday:

Sixth Grade takes a bus trip to Al Khor Island as part of their environmental service.  The island is home to a large mangrove forest.  After a beach clean-up, the kids take part in an island walk/scavenger hunt, which involves voluntarily wading in the cold water.  Mud facials ensue.

The early morning climb

The Eighth Grade team makes a 5:30 am climb to the top of Golden Hill, for an amazing view of Mount Kinabalu, the highest peak in Southeast Asia.  After returning to camp for breakfast, the group finishes all of their projects, and then some.  In addition to completing all of the cement work, the students build a bamboo shelter for single mothers to grow vegetables, and level ground for a children's centre.  They cap the day off with an evening of skits performed by both teachers and kids, the details of which I'm not privy to.  I guess what happens on Borneo stays on Borneo.

Tuesday:

The Sixth Grade group spends their day at a local school, painting walls, creating audio recordings of children's books, and making bookmarks.  Lunch follows at Chili's Restaurant.  By one account, records are set tying ribbons to bookmarks.

Eighth graders visit the Ranau War Memorial, in honour of the 2,700 Australian and British soldiers who were marched to their deaths by their captors in World War II.  Shopping at the local market follows, and then an attempt is made to visit the nearby hot springs. The springs are too crowded due to Chinese New Year, so the group returns to camp, swims in the river, and plays badminton and cards.  In the evening, they host the local community to perform a dance and sing a Malaysian song.  The performance goes well, and so the group is ultimately spared being voted off the island.


Wednesday:

View of Doha from Banana Island

Today will go down in history as "WWW Sixth Grade Extravaganza".  The day begins with a dhow boat trip out to Banana Island, followed by a traditional Arabic lunch on deck, with swimming in the Gulf.  They return to shore, then school, where the fun continues:  colossal sleepover at school in tents on the baseball field, tie-dyeing, pizza dinner, ice-cream sundae bar, movie and popcorn, Karaoke, more swimming, ping-pong, campfire and s'mores.  Whew.  I'm tired just writing it.

The Borneo group begins their long trek back.  After a bus ride and one flight, several hours are spent at the airport in K.L. awaiting their delayed second flight of the day.  Students stampede at the first sighting in seven days of food that is neither chicken nor rice nor good for them.  Travel group leaders begin to silently long for the return of Walls.

Thursday:
After 25 hours in transit from the camp, the Grade 8 group is delivered back to their sleepy but smiling parents at 3:15 am at the Doha airport.  The choice between a bowl of homemade soup and a hot shower proves difficult, but is resolved by following the old adage, "When in doubt, follow your gut."

The threat of having to take part in the Polar Bear Swim in the school pool for anyone out of their tent before 7:00 am keeps most Sixth Graders sound asleep until 7:30.  Breakfast is served by parent volunteers, and the kids are picked up at 10:00 am in order to return home for the "sleep" portion of the sleepover.

Both kids slept away the well-deserved day off school before heading into the weekend.  They returned to school on Sunday with a few yawns, a new outlook on their world, and a few new friends.  And hopefully, an appreciation for the dynamic and adventurous school that they are lucky to attend.

Juggling Lessons

"What an experience!"

If I had a nickel for every time I heard that in the last couple of weeks, I'm sure I'd have at least a dollar.  The reason for all the exclamations was that my 13-year-old was volunteering as a tennis ball-boy for the ATP Qatar ExxonMobil Open for the second year in a row.  I'd always smile, and nod, and say, "Yes, it is.  He's very lucky," and then secretly feel a bit puzzled by what exactly they meant. What was it about him doing this that other people found so appealing?  Was it the limelight?  The brush with celebrity?  The public display of competence running around picking up after somebody else?  (Oh, if only he trained at home!)  It wasn't until after the tournament was over that I fully understood what The Experience meant for us.

Let me just start by saying that I was the first official loser of this year's Qatar ExxonMobil Open.  Last year, the tournament was held during the Winter Break from school.  This year, the boys would be back in school when it was on.  There was, and I'm quoting myself here, "no way" I was going to have him staying up until midnight at the stadium every night, and then dragging him out of bed at 6:30 to go to school the next morning. This, while simultaneously organizing his life around school, hockey, soccer, piano...the list goes on.  Uh-uh.  Nope.

Evidently, when Teenager-Who-Really-Really-Wants-To-Do-This-Again teams up with Dad-Who- Doesn't-See-What-the-Big-Deal-Is, they will win by a landslide every time they are confronted with Beat-the-Fun-Out-of-Everything Mom.  And so it was that his responsibility became my responsibility.  I would have to make sure that he got to the stadium on time, that he was fed, that he had his homework done, etc., etc., and that everyone else in the family was taken care of.

Water for Tsonga

He had a few balls to keep in the air, too, so to speak.  Ball-boy Supervisor Lady was pretty firm in her expectations, and the thought of being put on one of the smaller courts for a second year in a row, now that he had earned experience, made him a bit indignant.  Tell her he's going to be late, or miss his hockey game?  Sleep, or miss his first class?  Leave school before the last class of the day, or get cut from one of the higher ball-kid teams?  Continue to go to Junior Varsity soccer try-outs, or explain the situation to his coach?  It became clear that he was accountable to everybody, and that this was starting to feel like his first real job.

Returning balls for Nadal

It's hard to appreciate any experience when you're in the thick of it, when you're in the trenches battling family schedule conflicts and losing ground to sleep deprivation.  But as the week wore on I noticed a shift in responsibility, almost imperceptible at first.  Instead of hearing "Man, I'm hungry" as he climbed into the car after school to go to the stadium, I started hearing, first thing in the morning, "Mom, would you mind bringing me a sandwich when you come to pick me up?"  And instead of the frantic posturing about which teachers would be mad if he wasn't in their class, the thought process became more logical.  At midnight, upon returning from the stadium, he'd tell me, "I've told Miss M. that I will have to miss the first couple of shifts, because there's a class I can't miss" or "I've sent an email to Coach L., Mrs. E. and Mr. K. telling them I won't be there tomorrow, but that I can get the work done on my breaks at the stadium.  Coach thinks this is a great opportunity, so he's OK with me missing a couple of practices.  I think I've got it all taken care of."

Mon fils retrieving balls for Monfils

So, we both learned something that week.  He learned to manage his time, his relationships, and his responsibilities.  And I learned that there are a lot of people out there who exclaim "What an experience!" who are a whole lot smarter than me.

Last Thursday I put that same boy on a plane for his 8th Grade service trip, to the island of Borneo.  I hope (and I secretly know) that there will be a change in maturity, that he will be a little closer to independence than he was when he left.  And if that happens, I think we can chalk it up to experience.