I am sure that many of you are wondering what I do with my time. After years of full-time employment, jetting across the nation to do various and sundry work and juggling hours of assessment and treatment, together with dreary waits at airports and driving to the back of beyond thrown in. Mix that up with with gardening, errands & chores, shopping, fixing, visiting, and socializing and you end up with a veritable cocktail of busyness. And 24 hours no longer seems enough to contain your needs and desires.
Fast forward to Doha where I am unable to work without my husband's approval letter and even once that is accomplished the question is - what to do? Most husbands are in specialist managerial level posts covered by a contract of 1 or 2 years that may or may not be renewable. Most other jobs outside of management still require experience and skills - teachers, librarians, secretarial, computers, HR, store clerks, etc and come with the added and usual 'bonus' of required Arabic as well. Trailing spouses are not usually the group of choice for these jobs - who knows when we will up and leave to trail the husband elsewhere, and third country nationals are that much cheaper too.
So what's a wife to do? (It's always a wife, and not a partner, as you need proof of marriage to live with your husband here.) The home front is pretty much taken care of with gardeners, houseboys and in-house maintenance crews. And even when you do bits about the house, there are only the two of you....so how much accumulates anyway? Cooking only one meal a day can hardly keep the brain cells buzzing either. Another issue is that most of us have limited household objects, gadgets, and stuff (all left behind in our other lives) that would usually have kept us occupied. Just so you know, I am not speaking for the ex-pat wife who has children here - that is a whole new level in challenge not covered in this discussion.
Fast forward to Doha where I am unable to work without my husband's approval letter and even once that is accomplished the question is - what to do? Most husbands are in specialist managerial level posts covered by a contract of 1 or 2 years that may or may not be renewable. Most other jobs outside of management still require experience and skills - teachers, librarians, secretarial, computers, HR, store clerks, etc and come with the added and usual 'bonus' of required Arabic as well. Trailing spouses are not usually the group of choice for these jobs - who knows when we will up and leave to trail the husband elsewhere, and third country nationals are that much cheaper too.
So what's a wife to do? (It's always a wife, and not a partner, as you need proof of marriage to live with your husband here.) The home front is pretty much taken care of with gardeners, houseboys and in-house maintenance crews. And even when you do bits about the house, there are only the two of you....so how much accumulates anyway? Cooking only one meal a day can hardly keep the brain cells buzzing either. Another issue is that most of us have limited household objects, gadgets, and stuff (all left behind in our other lives) that would usually have kept us occupied. Just so you know, I am not speaking for the ex-pat wife who has children here - that is a whole new level in challenge not covered in this discussion.
Friends become friends quite quickly - spurred on by common experiences and the ever present nesting instinct - we want home, wherever it may be, to become a real home even if temporary. Interestingly, our homes in our current country of residence are reflections of our husband's previous placement, so it is always a delight to have coffee with a friend - you can be instantly transported to Greece with goat bells, India with rugs, Singapore with puppets and treasure chests, and never forget the ever-present photos of children and grandchildren displayed strategically. Conversations flow with ease as stories unravel, sparked by picture, beads and baubles.
We join groups that make sense to the individual: like American Women Association, South Africans/Canadians/Germans etc in Qatar, clubs such as book, garden, bridge, knitting and mahjong. We attend lectures and speaker forums. We explore and tour the local sites. There are opportunities for being on executive committees, for volunteering and fundraising for charities. On the homefront most of us have created hobbies and interests in everything from photography, reading, blogging, correspondence, web design, online learning, languages, art, jewellery making, gardening and all the rest. Some of us are into Nintendo DS and virtual farming and fish tanks. All of us are on voip and facebook and active participants in the online community of the world wide web. Am I bored? Never. Do I get homesick? Yes. Do I question this stereotypical role? Sometimes.
It's not all koffee klatches, tennis and bridge. If all this sounds like the glory days of a permanent tourist or pampered other half - think again. All of us have left families and friends behind us, usually going "back home" only once a year for flying visits to reconnect with our children, cuddle with our grandbabies, and renew our friendships. We build a new life from scratch, sometimes over and over again. Daily, we contend with unfamiliar cultural practices, get lost on foreign roads, buy unknown and sometimes questionable produce (cans with labels in Arabic, so no comprehensible ingredients listed and no country of origin to be seen). We spend days in isolation as our husbands toil from early morning to evening. We get used to silence in the home - no doorbells or phones ringing constantly, and no children in and out. We have no specific structure to our day except the one we choose to impose on ourselves. We need to remain ever mindful that we are in a foreign land and to be respectful of our host country's laws and culture. This may mean anything from dressing differently, watching how you speak to others, and being vigilant during special occasions like Ramadan. Pole, pole - Swahili for go slowly, go carefully.
Whilst I have not talked about him, the ex-pat husband is the centre of our universe in our home on foreign shores. They will need a whole blog of their own, and at the very least - a gold medal for bringing in the bacon - oops! maybe it should be mula - slogging away tirelessly, working very long hours for six days a week, under precarious circumstances in lands far from home. We wish we could carry some of the burden.
To those of you sharing these ex-pat experiences: hats off to you! I am humbled by your courageous spirit. To those we have left at home: you have laid footprints on our hearts that will always lead us home.
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