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When my husband first asked me what I thought about going to Qatar, I must admit that I was at a little bit of a loss as to what he was talking about. When he narrowed it down to a country, I had to delve very deeply into my geographical knowledge and thought it might be ‘somewhere down there’, meaning the to me totally unknown Gulf area. I had no idea what to expect and could only find very limited information about the country, which we were going to call home for the next few years. I had notions about having to do my weekly shop on the market and living in very basic accommodation somewhere in the desert. Well, was I in for a shock! Not only do they have supermarkets, even hypermarkets, here but also proper houses and yes, there is a desert, but you need to drive a fair way out of town to actually be in the middle of it. Even though relief flooded through me when I realized that civilization had actually got as far as Qatar but in a way I must admit I was a little disappointed. My desert adventure would obviously be a lot more comfortable than I had anticipated. The emirate of Qatar lies on an 11,437 sq. km large, thumb-shaped peninsula on the West Coast of the Arabian Gulf. The country is flat with some rocky outcrops up to 40 ms high and very little natural vegetation. (In the towns, however, substantial planting has been carried out and there are a lot of palm trees and flowers.)

Before oil was discovered in Qatar in 1939, the basis of the economy was pearls. Doha, the capital, lies on the shores of the Persian Gulf and was once the home of the famous Arabian Pirate and Sheikh, Rahmah ibn Jabir al-Jalahimah. Qatar is a major exporter of fruits and vegetables to other states in the Persian Gulf.

Doha itself is a compact city that stretches itself around a horseshoe shaped bay. A 7-km long Corniche lined with palm trees and regularly dotted with themed and colourfully planted roundabouts stretches alongside the bay. The town is mainly modern, one of the oldest buildings being the old Emir’s palace, dating back to the beginning of the century, now part of in the National museum. There are souqs (market, bazaar like shopping area), but they are not comparable in atmosphere or tradition with, for instance, Muscat’s souq. Doha is growing and expanding daily, with the West bay area being the center of attention. New, architecturally interesting, buildings and malls are springing up virtually every month and the town has changed dramatically in just the short time since we arrived here.
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Before 1766 little is known about the history of Qatar. Most of the inhabitiants are believed to have been nomads or fisherman. It was the Khalifah family from nearby Kuwait that dominated the politics of Qatar from 1766 until their conquest of Bahrain in 1783. But the Khalifah family remained important in Qatar well into the mid-19th century. It was a conflict between the Khalifah family in Bahrain and the sheikhs of Qatar that led to the destruction of Doha in 1867. This conflict opened the door for British involvement. Qatar declared independence from  the UK in September 1971.

.To come and stay in Qatar you will need a visa, unless you are a GCC national (Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates). There are tourist and business visas for short-term stays but if you come to work and live here, you will need a specific working visa. Your company, who will organise a sponsor for you, will arrange this. Wives and children also need a visa and are often sponsored by the husband once his residence permit has been approved. Customs can be an adventure all by itself, be mentally prepared to be taken aside and your luggage searched when you arrive. Be sure not to carry any alcohol, drugs, pork products and explicit literature or videos with you (be careful with some women’s magazines, even though most of them are available here, any nudity or even cleavages are censored). If you keep in mind that Qatar is a Muslim country, albeit a lot more open minded than for instance Saudi Arabia, you will be fine. Once here, the first thing you are going to notice is the climate. Qatar has a so-called ‘moderate’ desert climate, but then everything is relative. We arrived here on the 10th May last year, at 5.30 a.m. in the morning and it was already 33o Celsius (92o Fahrenheit) in the shade. A bit of a shock to the system you could say. The best time to arrive in the country, if you have a choice, would be early spring to give you time to acclimatise slowly.  In summer the temperature goes up to 50o Celsius (122o Fahrenheit) with the humidity up to 95%. Stepping out of your air-conditioned house into the damp heat is a little like getting a wet flannel slapped in your face and after five minutes you need of a shower! Saying that, the winters are mild, with nighttime temperature down to 10o Celsius (40 Fahrenheit) and during the daytime it is just like an early summers day. Spring and Autumn here are lovely and you can organise a Barbecue without having to fear the inevitable downpour that follows such a thought in Britain.

Talking about compounds – compounds were built for workers to provide them with housing coupled with facilities like swimming pools, tennis and squash courts, and gyms and play areas. A few years back, those facilities very simply not available outside compounds. Nowadays all the sports facilities are available in the clubs dotted throughout Doha and thus there is a choice of either living on a compound or in single villas. For families like ours, compound life is great, as on most compounds you can send the kids outside to play safely and there are always some friends around. Compound sizes range from small (e.g. 5 villas plus one pool) to very large with even their own supermarket inside, some even have regular school buses commuting to all the major schools.

Schools in Doha are about as ubiquitous as the camels are just outside the town. There is at least one school catering for each nationality available. Most popular are probably DESS (Doha English Speaking School), which follows the British curriculum and only employs British trained teachers, Doha College, which is the follow-on, and the American School, the American equivalent to DESS. All schools charge quite substantial fees, so see if you can get the fees paid for in your work contact.
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Getting around Doha is very easy if you are lucky enough to have been provided with a driver or flag down the ever-present orange and white taxis. Driving your self is quite a challenging undertaking and I have met a few people that point blank refuse to drive here, but once you taken the first step, it can be adrenaline-arousing fun. Once you arrive in Qatar you can drive on your British license for the first seven days, after that you need to get a local license. This usually just involves some paperwork and a simple eye test, but sometimes, luckily only very seldom, it involves a driving test. This test, quite notoriously, has you reversing most of the way around a set course and specialises in parallel parking. A number of expats have previously been reduced to tears by this test, especially considering that nobody on the road seems to care about rules and regulations and certainly not about any parking etiquette. Currently there is a government ‘drive’ highlighting the importance of seatbelts and speed limits, but it has not noticeably changed anything but the number of police cars on the road. This, on the other hand is of an advantage when (not if) you are involved in an accident, because anywhere in the Gulf you are required to leave the cars involved in an accident exactly were the are (even in the middle of a roundabout), until the police turns up and surveys the scene. If you move either car, the insurance will not pay up..

. The cost of living is comparable to Britain, however, your salary being paid to you tax free, does generally soften the blow considerably. You can get virtually everything in Doha, and lots more than you might be used to, because the supermarkets do not only stock British brands but also American, Asian and other European brands, so the variety is great. Fruit and veg are cheaper if bought in bulk at the market and items like material for clothes are cheaper in the souqs, but otherwise western shops are good for everything. There even is a Marks & Spencer’s, Debenhams, BHS, Next and lots more. When in one of the substantial shopping malls, you could easily forget where you are, were it not for the Arabic families in traditional dishdash (men’s long white robe) and abayas (ladies’ black gown with matching headscarf and facemask).Your free time is well catered for with all possible sport available, if not on your compound then in a club. For the children there are fun malls and Palmtree Island, an island in the middle of Doha bay, offering anything from camel and pony rides to beaches. We joined one of the many clubs, which work on a membership only basis and offer places to socialise, partake in sports, restaurants and libraries and much more. For the weekends there are groups that regularly drive outside Doha to visit beaches, sand dunes, local forts and the Inland Sea. The Inland Sea is an inlet in the south of Qatar, which offers spectacular sand dunes, great spots for scuba diving and even flamingoes. The other weekend we went out with the National History Group to the salt flats and dug for ‘desert roses’, a very beautiful crystal like formation, made up of gypsum and salt.

It was the development of cultured pearls in Japan that destroyed the pearl trade in Qatar. Pearls and spices were traded for centuries by pirates from the Persian Gulf who sailed down the Swahili Coast to the Comoros Islands on dhows.

There is a distinctive advantage to Doha being a relatively small city; say compared with Dubai, as there is a real family atmosphere around the place. It is rare that I go out to the supermarket or a mall without bumping into one or two familiar faces. Qatar is currently trying to drum up tourist business, but apart from a lot of very plush hotels being built, tourism is very much in its infancy, if it has got that far yet. Live here is good, absolutely marvelous for children, and you really could get a lot worse appointments. So, if it is Qatar you are heading off to next, look forward to it!

For further information on Qatar, try the following web sites:

www.waiviata.com.au
www.geocities.com/shabah_88/qatarp.html
www.qatar-info.com
www.dess.org
www.dohacollege.com
American School email: asdoha@qatar.net.qa

Ulrike Lemmin-WoolFrey is German and studied Marine Biology in England, where she also met her husband. A few years and one daughter later, she has followed her husband to Qatar, where she has lived for nearly three years. Moving to Qatar was the catalyst to change her career and start freelance writing, and she now contributes regularly to various local newspapers and magazines like All Women and Abode, and a number of international magazines (Nexus), newspapers (Telegraph), and web sites. She specialises in family issues, travel and Arabic interests. To see Ulrike Lemmin-WoolFrey web site Click Here.

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