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An American in Qatar: Living in Qatar Ah salam aluykum. In Arabic that mean “Hello,” or more precisely, “Peace be upon you.” It’s been almost a year since I’ve posted an entry in my semi-occasional series called “An American in Qatar,” so I figured that it’s time to write again. In my last entry I described why I moved here to Qatar and what it's like to move to the Middle East. I’ve been here for 18 months now, so I wanted to describe in this lengthy update everything you want to know about living in this small, Persian Gulf country – and a few things you probably don't.
Things here are going well and I’m still happy that I decided to move to Qatar (pronounced "COT-tar"). In fact, and without a doubt, moving here was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
I still enjoy my job at the Central Planning Office (CPO) in downtown Doha, the capital and largest city in Qatar. I do computer mapping work, known as "GIS," for CPO’s five-person GIS team. The 100-person Central Planning Office, which occupies three floors of an office tower in downtown Doha, is a division of the British engineering consulting firm, Atkins.
About 150 people worked at CPO when I arrived here in May of 2013, but a few months later Atkins abruptly trimmed 50 people from the rolls. In the U.S. they call that being “laid off,” but since Atkins is a British firm, here they call it "being made redundant.” Whatever you call it, it’s not fun and was a major surprise for everyone involved. However, 100 of us survived the job cuts (whew!) and things have stabilized since then. I finished my West Bay Bus map several months ago and 20,000 copies were printed and distributed to the public, and since then I’ve been mapping and designing the future bus route system for Qatar.
So what’s living in Qatar like? It’s unlike anything I’ve ever experienced, certainly, but with that being said, people are people. People everywhere in the world, I think, are basically the same and all seek two main things in life: happiness and meaning. That’s true in America and it’s also true here. With that philosophical context in mind, I'll describe specifically what my life here is like.
I’m still living at the Beverly Hills Tower, a modern 26-floor apartment building in downtown Doha which is literally across the street from the MMUP Building, where CPO is housed on floors 14, 15 and 16. My daily commute, therefore, is about five minutes (seven minutes if the elevators are slow). Across the street from CPO in the other direction is the City Center Mall, the largest mall in Qatar, which has a Walmart-like store called Carrefour, where I buy all of my groceries, small appliances, hard drives, toothpaste and anything else I need.
I enjoy my apartment at Beverly Hills Tower, though like many things in the Middle East, looks can be deceiving. From the outside, BHT looks like a modern, gleaming and impressive apartment tower but it’s a bit decrepit on the inside and water leaks are common. A few months ago, my neighbor’s apartment ceiling sprung a leak and water flowed into the hallway, then a few weeks later, another apartment ceiling sprung a leak and water literally poured down the elevator shafts for several hours, forcing everyone to take the stairs for a week until they fixed it. I went back to America last summer for a month and before I left Qatar, I hoped that the plumbing in my bedroom’s ceiling wouldn’t burst and that my possessions would still be dry and intact when I got back here. Like I say, looks in the Middle East are often deceiving.
But despite the occasional plumbing problem, I’m content and self-contained. Everything I need is within a few blocks of my apartment so I haven’t bought a car, nor do I need one. But I have made a few forays out into the Qatari countryside, including an all-day excursion around the entire country, which I’ll describe later in this update.
Above left: The Central Planning Office's GIS team. From left to right: Helen (temporarily here from the UK), Indu, Bill, Oumer, me, and Shree. Bill, the team leader, is from the UK and the other three are from India. Above right: I live here at the leaky Beverly Hills Tower apartment building in downtown Doha. My unit is on the right side, 19 floors up.
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