Well I’m in the airport waiting for my flight so i thought I’d kill the time by writing about Qatar
IT WAS STUPIDLY HOT – Got to 54 degreec C today.
Doha is an interesting place. Culturally it is very very VERY different. Did i say it was different. Certainly off the plane i realised that I, as a white guy, was pretty fly, ok ok ok, that I was the minority. There are very few white faces around. There are however many many different nationalities represented. Chinese, Phillipino, Indian, Afghan, the list goes on…. As an Irish guy you do OK. Except for the fact that they jut assume you are British. But Here that goes down well. If you are American or British you get alto of respect and the workers will do anything for you. It gets a bit weird after a while. At least I felt weird.
What stuck me first is the way in which people are treated. there is not a real sense of friendliness between workers and bosses. It’s very raw and cold. Bosses see to treat employees like idiots and couldn’t really care less if that upsets them. In India there is the cast system. Here there is a hierarchy of nationality and if you are on the bottom rungs (Indians, philipinos) then you can expect to get treated very badly indeed. Calling a spade a spade: It’s very very racist but in a civilized manner.
Qatar seems to be mostly about money. Most of these people have come here to make money. In fact if you are not Qatari you are more than likely only here t make money. Everyone i asked about whether they liked it here or not had the same reply. “No but you can make good money here”. So you have all these guys coming over to work as labourers, kitchen staff, and porters – the grind work. Most of them are uneducated and the result is a city that is built on shoddy if good intention filled workforce. It’s as if some guy just decided he’d be an air-conditioning guy and went bought what he thought were the tools needed for the job despite not actually having a clue. Now i appreciate
The team I have been working with have been a really great bunch. Nice and friendly which was a blessing. I think i would go out of my mind completely if i had to deal with people here and not have someone to have a good chat with. None of them are Qatari. in fact they’re quite a mixed bunch of people. Portuguese, Lebanese, British were being represented. All of them really lovely people.
So would I live here? – Um….no. I think i could handle it for a while but it would eventually drive me nuts. Ruth living here would be another ting entirely. I would not be able to stand the way women are treated. If a woman calls a man a liar- she gets nicked! The heat would probably fry here and if she ever had to drive here she would probably die of a hart attack at the thought if she saw how they drive here. It scares even me! Also she hates white cars. there are lots of them here as it a good colour for car in this climate – nice and reflective. Ultimately Ruth wouldn’t be able to stand not telling people about Jesus.
I’ll write more about te work we were doing cause i think we are about to board.
