It has been an uncharacteristically cold and wet winter in Qatar. That, coupled with the incredibly diverse international population of Doha, has resulted in a veritable smorgasbord of sickness. Next time you're in the grocery store, pick up a dozen packages of different types of medicine, compile a list of all the maladies printed on the various packages, and you'll have a pretty good idea of what's been going around, around here. Headache, soreness, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, fever, cough, runny nose, sore throat...you name it, we got it.
But at least we have a treehouse. After we watched Disney's "Swiss Family Robinson," my boy wanted a treehouse. The tree in our front "yard" (a 10-by-10-foot patch of grass, really) is barely big enough to support its own weight, but I managed to brace a platform up there, large enough for two kids (three, if one is small). Abu Khayed, a friend of a friend, took me down to the construction souqs in Najma (an area in downtown Doha) to find lumber, screws, etc. for the project. I'll have to go back down there, to the metal souq, and get a bumper made for the Jeep--once I get it out of the shop.
Abu Khayed and his son are contractors themselves, from Jordan, working in Doha because the construction market is red-hot around here. They specialize in decorative stone, and Abu Khayed showed me some impressive photos of some of their work. Their families are back in Jordan, so they, like so many other workers here, are suffering from separation and homesickness, for the sake of making enough money to buy a better future for their children. Some of these guys spend their entire working lives away from their families, seeing them for a month every couple of years. I understand their reasoning, and I appreciate their spirit of sacrifice, but I think the children would rather have their daddies at home.
Lucy, our adopted saluki, is getting along well, and is even learning to retrieve tennis balls. Sort of. She serves as an effective anti-terror device in two ways: first, most folks around here are deathly afraid of animals, especially large dogs (although according to Mohammed, the saluki is the one "clean" dog), and second, by throwing her offal over the wall, I have created a fairly comprehensive minefield out there. If anyone climbs into the compound over our section of the wall, we'll be able to smell their shoes immediately.
Posted by jon at February 23, 2005 11:31 PM