Three days of sanity

“You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone”. Nothing could be truer, I’ve concluded, after spending three months away from home. Therefore spending three days in Doha, Qatar has been as close to home as it gets – at least for now. It’s a breather betwixt and between past-chaos (India) and expected to be chaos (Africa).

Words cannot start to describe how wonderful and almost foreign it felt to be in a country where things actually function in a known structure and system. Where the cars drive on the right (in double sense) side of the road, are equipped with seatbelts and only use their horns to wake up a driver who has fallen asleep on a red light or to signalize to the pedestrian wandering in the middle of the road that this is its territory and he better get out of the way. What I normally would have considered noisy traffic was now close to silence. No trash flooding the streets, ppl are not staring at you as if you were from Mars and therefore not stumbling over the none-existing garbage lying around and credit cars are widely accepted. You can also look completely lost and even pull out a map trying to orient yourself without anyone offering you assistance (ahh, just like home), whereas in India before you even knew you were lost everyone else seemed to have picked up on it and were gathering around you wanting not only to point you in the right direction, but actually follow you all the way. The only thing giving away that I’m not as home as I feel I am, are the long white robes the men are wearing and that I hardly see any women (literally due to their completely black covering outfits). Also the minarets towering into the air – amongst the enormous futuristic skyscrapers – tells me that I’m still quite a distance from home.

Doha actually had a Floridian feel to it with the SUVs being the king of the road, palm trees wherever you look, warm climate, ppl constantly exercising and no pedestrian crossing (all the pedestrians are in a SUV). It is also a city where business and money flow, and there are ppl from all over the world having business lunches dressed in their suits and ties in the staggering Qatari heat. Thou some seemed to have found the perfect solution, much to my amusement. In the middle of the waterfront park there were several businessmen in their black suits sitting on blankets in the shade either working on their computer (free wi-fi park) or talking on the phone. I had to admit that it wasn’t a bad idea and decided to join them the next day, thou I left the suit-part out of it. Also, the car brands are luxurious and I was more likely to spot a brand new Mercedes, Lexus, Cadillac or Porsche than any other car.

The days in Doha were much needed and well spent. I slept in and ate late breakfasts (that meaning 9 am), enjoyed having a king-size bed with soft and clean sheets, watched BBC and finally felt updated on the world. I spent most of the days in souq waqif (the old market place) where I drank great coffee, smoked apple hookah and watched ppl and the world go by. I even got an educational boost thanks to a random Swede I ran into. I feel reenergized after a Western boost and a few days of luxury.

Bring it on, Africa!