Smelting Pot

When you've been writing a blog as long as I have, it's inevitable that writer's block will hit. And now, after 2 whole entries it has finally found me. Between "The Block" and an extended trip back to the glorious U.S. of A., it's been quite a while since my last post.

I suppose those with less blog experience than I would probably attempt to sidestep "The Block" with some object focus, networking, picture association or some other silly writing technique. What I do when this happens to me is come up with what I think is a clever title and then spend the next few weeks trying to fabricate a life experience to go along with it, in turn, justifying another blog entry.

Here is the outcome:

Step 1 = figure out what “smelt” really is.

Smelt is mainly defined as "A family of small anadromous fish common in the North American Great Lakes."

Here is where I hit another blogging snag. I’ve been scouring the Doha restaurants and grocery stores for any trace of this delicacy in hopes of a "chance" encounter but to my knowledge the North American Great Lakes are still in North America. Unless some local Qataris have a hankerin for some smelt, it’s not going to swim it’s way over here. We even took a trip to the local fish market where we were able to slosh around in fish guts in 112 degree heat. While we were unsuccessful in our quest for smelt, we did find an entire shark and an enormous octopus should we need one.

Step B: Move on to another use of the word.

Smelting is defined as "A metallurgical thermal processing operation in which the metal or matte is separated in fused form from nonmetallic materials or other undesired metals with which it is associated."

I had a bit more luck trying to incorporate “smelting”....read on.

In a country with a population of around 1.2 million people, only roughly 350,000 of them are local Qataris. The rest of us are Expatriates (a.k.a. Expats). An Expat is a person living in a country other than their legal residence.

Based solely on the experiences we've had in the past couple of months, there appears to be three distinct "caste" systems here in Qatar. In category 1 at the top of the food chain are the local Qatari people who have undergone (I admit, I'm stretching a bit here) "smelting" and have separated themselves in fused form from the other two undesired categories.

In category 2 are the "educated" Western expats much like ourselves that are here for what we would refer to as white collar jobs.

At a VERY distant third are the expats that the locals have sponsored and allowed to come over and handle their nasty chores. While they are here voluntarily, word on the street is that they are sometimes subject to less than desirable behavior and working conditions. They mainly come from the lower economic areas of Southeast Asian countries in which they may not have been able to find employment. Typically they make less than what we would consider minimum wage and send as much money home as possible to support their families. Most of them won't return home for years after coming here because they can't afford the airfare.

The picture below shows the parking lot at the mall. The men in full jumpsuits have been hired to stand outside in the lot all day and offer to wash your car for 15 QR (around $4.10) while you shop. I will not deny that I love this convenience but I do feel bad for them being in the heat all day and the fact that out of that $4.10 they probably only take home a small portion.




It has definitely been an eye opening experience for us and we have thoroughly enjoyed being exposed to such a mixture of people from so many different countries. We have met people from Holland, Wales, Ireland, The Philippines, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Turkey, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Lebanon, India, Ethiopia, Malaysia and um, Canada. The funny thing is that we still haven't met a single local Qatari person! We see them shoving past us to cut in line at the malls (mall picture below) or trying to run us off the roads etc. but haven't had the occasion to be personally introduced to any. I do think this is an appropriate time to insert that when looking up the definition of caste system it actually says: "caste should not be confused with class." However, I would NEVER put that in writing and am fighting hard not to form an opinion until I actually have the opportunity for a face to face chat.

Equally as strange is the fact that we have only spent any significant amount of time with one other American couple. We were put in touch with them through the pet relocation company we used and have met them a few times for doggie play dates and to walk the stray dogs being kept at the Qatar Animal Welfare Society (Q.A.W.S. - http://www.qaws.org/). We have heard of several other Americans in the area but haven't met any.

In our compound, we have a lovely family from Sudan, a Moroccan woman and her Palestinian husband, my new friend Moushira from Egypt and her husband George from England and some other neighbors from the U.K.. We have also become fast and hopefully lifelong friends with our wonderful neighbors from Sydney Australia. Peter, Sara and their 5 year old, Grace, are dog lovers and even watched our dogs for 3 weeks while Mark and I were gone immediately putting them on our 'A' list. We all arrived here in Doha around the same time and Sara and I have enjoyed lots of struggles together trying to figure out this crazy place. My personal favorite is the dead goat she found in our dumpster. Curry anyone?



I took this picture of our front door from the steps of our neighbor’s villa across the way. As you can see, we are in close quarters and life here on the compound reminds me of being in a college dorm somewhat. I have lost track of the times I've run over to Sara's in my PJ's to borrow something or vice versa.





And finally...

Number III: Attempt to manufacture some relevance, any relevance at all, between the title of this week's post to it's content.

I couldn't for the life of me remember where I came up with "Smelting Pot" other than the fact that I wanted to write about the variety of people we have met and of course the saying "melting pot" came to mind. But Smelt??? No idea where that came from.....until I sat down with Mark to watch a re-run of a TV show I saw on my own a few weeks before starting this post. There it was, "smelt", in an episode of Glee. It all makes sense now.