Kid Stuff

Qatar is a great place for kids. There is a lot for them to do here and ours love it. Our neighborhood has seventy kids or so, and they run in packs all day long. Kids are constantly coming to the door asking for our son, and sometimes even our daughter; she’s two, and the neighborhood girls make a big fuss over her. It’s gotten so bad I had to disable the doorbell (we can hear it upstairs), if they knock it doesn’t wake us or the baby. I have had children at the door as early as 5AM (morning prayer time), and as late as 11PM (on the weekends kids stay up late), throw in the fact that we, like good Qataris, take frequent naps, and you’ll understand the logic behind no doorbell.

The kids are of course football (ie soccer) fanatics, so that is a big draw. Qatar won the Gulf Cup this year, so everyone is pretty excited about that, and the kids know and idolize all the players. My son is picking it up. There is also a playground across the street from us. In addition to football, the kids also ride bikes and skateboards and play with remote control toys in the streets here. Cars don’t come through too often…

The big toy fads here are “bey blades” and Yu-Gi-Oh cards. I have no idea what the cards are for, except that they have monsters on them and the kids love them. They play games with them, but the games vary from group to group. My son just whips out a card and pretends that he is the monster depicted… other kids beware! He’s a tough little guy. Bey blades are essentially souped up tops. They are low friction tops with a plastic pull device that enables them to go very fast for a long time. The point is to be the one whose top stays going the longest, frequently by knocking others out.

There is also a swimming pool and tennis court here. My wife has been “cured” of playing tennis here. Whenever we would go out to play, the neighborhood kids would all come out to help. At one point we had at least 30 kids on the court “helping”, some with squash or tennis rackets, others with cricket bats, or whatever they could find. It was a very interesting game, but not what my wife calls tennis. It was hilarious. With so many people you need to have more than one ball going, and then someone decided that because of the varying equipment, we should even have varying kinds of balls. Things got crazy fast at that point, but it was fun. It’s too cold to swim now, once the temperature drops below 75 or so everybody dresses up and complains about how cold it is. I have yet to wear socks or a jacket here, the most I’ve done is wear an extra shirt on cool nights.

Women generally don’t swim here, at least not at outdoor pools like ours. It’s considered too racy. Our neighbor does swim, but it doesn’t affect her reputation because she wears a swimsuit that covers her from neck to ankle. It looks something like the old turn of the century swimsuits with the petticoats, loose fitting to hide the shape of the body. Most women don’t bother. My wife can get away with swimming because she is western, and therefore crazy. She is also discreet about it. Young girls swim with impunity until the age of thirteen or so, and then they tend to stop. There are no laws covering any of this, just social protocols and customs. Qataris are shocked and scandalized by seeing westerners swim at the hotels. One result of this is that Qatar has miles and miles of beautiful, completely undeveloped beachfront.

We got to experience Garangao here last October, it is Qatar’s answer to Halloween. On the fifteenth night of Ramadan (which just so happened to fall very near Halloween this year…)Qatari kids dress up in traditional costume and go door to door for candy, money and nuts. The clothes are formal Qatari dress; thobes and vests for boys, and a long embroidered veil and abaya for girls. Traditionally they sing a song at each house, but we didn’t know the Garangao song… they gave us candy anyhow. The other expats apparently aren’t clued into this… not even the Arab expats. The only people I know who went are Qatari, this custom is apparently exclusive to the Gulf. For us, it proved to be a great way to meet some of the Qataris in the area. The people give enormous quantities of candy, and make a big deal over the kids, but this is offset by the fact that the progress is slow…you get invited in for tea, to see the falcons, etc, so by the end of the night you wind up with about the same amount of loot you would get at Halloween, but with less effort and more fun.

Other kid activities I have described before, the amusement parks, malls, playgrounds, and zoo. There is never a lack of stuff to do. There are several theatres here as well, and most show films in English as well as Arabic, Urdu and Malayam. Video games are a big deal here too, and they frequently come second hand from all over the world in their original language. There are machines that play in Japanese, Korean, and some stuff I haven’t figured out. There is one large bubble machine in a mall that has instructions that must be in Welsh, …every other letter is a “y”. No one reads instructions here anyway, so nobody minds.

The parks here are great. The entire waterfront in town is one long park, with restaurants, playgrounds, and boat docks interspersed. You can jump onto a traditional dhow boat and have coffee or tea while tooling around the harbor for very little money. One boat is a ferry to Palm Tree Island… a small, developed beach island with playgrounds, swimming pools, and a restaurant. Al Bidaa park is on the landward side of the waterfront, and it contains a life size display of a traditional Qatari village settlement, complete with re-enactors on certain days who man the shops and exhibits. Here you will also find a bargheel or wind tower. This is traditional Qatari air conditioning, a two or more story tower, attached to a building and open at the top on all four sides, with a masonry or cloth “X” formation inside. The tower catches and channels the slightest breeze, and sends it downward into the building, where it circulates. Don’t ask me how, but it works.

Parks can be full of odd surprises too. I took my son to a new one not far from the house. He is an engaging lad, and full of imagination, and this particular park wasn’t quite finished yet, so there wasn’t a lot of structured things he could do. He went around noticing that there were holes in the ground, with uprooted trees near them. The trees were actually to be planted, but he concluded that they had been pulled out, and set about to discover who would do such a thing. I played along. He further found that the irrigation system wasn’t finished, and determined that it had been destroyed. It was obvious….someone who hated plants was destroying the park! Even more evidence came to light as not all of the park was yet covered with grass, much of it was sand. I suggested that perhaps a sandtroll was responsible. That must be it, a sandtroll had made his home here and was converting this beautiful park into barren desert.

I suggested we try to find out where it lives, and lo and behold, we had gone not 100 yards before we discovered a circular fenced area of rough sand and rock, with an enormous cave right in the center. I couldn’t have planned it better if I’d known about it. We took a flight of stairs down into the cave and stray cats and other things were scooting about in the darker corners. He was terrified and thrilled. I was amazed that he fully believed that there was a troll down there and that he was going to go in after him. The best part was the cloud of bats that flew out at sunset.

My eldest daughter is all girl. Her favorite things to do involve cosmetics and dressing up. The neighbor girls all like to put bows and stuff in her hair and she adores it. My maid can spend a whole morning with her with just some lotion, perfume and an outfit change. She’s in the right country. She also loves dolls. She too has a vivid imagination and concocts all sorts of complex plots with her dolls. She also fears Giants.

We read stories about Giants, and the idea has always gripped her, but what really got her was one day in one of the malls we saw some stilt-walkers at a special event…she was simultaneously horrified and fascinated…she hid behind me but wouldn’t take her eyes off of them and wouldn’t leave. Every time we went to the mall thereafter she would be on the lookout for Giants, and have to be held. Eventually I tired of this (she’s heavy!), and the next time we went, when she expressed her concern, I assured her that there were no Giants. She continued to be visibly afraid though, and was constantly looking around. Her brother helped me in reassuring her repeatedly that there weren’t any Giants, and not to be afraid. I picked her up and told her that there was nothing to be afraid of, and that there were absolutely no Giants in the mall and no sooner had the words left my lips than around the corner comes….what else? A Giant. Not some old cheesy stilt-walker either, but a real, live, Disney character style Giant with a HUGE head. All credibility vanished into thin air at that moment, and she’ll probably never believe a word I say for as long as I live. The Giant was some character promoting a sale, but the damage was done. She still talks about it.