On writing a newcomer's guide to Doha

I think I mentioned that I have been working on a brief guide for new members of our church group.  I had all kinds of momentum after I volunteered to chair the committee...and then only one stalwart soul appeared at the meeting I called out of the five or six other volunteers...and then J got Scarlet Fever...and then I just shelved the project until I had more time or guilt set in.  Last weekend, both those things happened at the same time: I started to think I should perhaps get working on the guide again AND the woman I told I would do this in the first place checked in and wondered about my progress.  Time to get writing!

More precisely, it's time to get typing.  We had an earlier document to work with, and I had already done a thorough edit of that piece, cutting sections that seemed superfluous, shortening sections that were far too long, regularizing the format so the information available was easy to find, etc.  We decided that we only wanted to include locations that had actual street names, as opposed to instructions that reminded me most of the kinds of directions people gave in Guatemala ("You know the green door?  That's not it.  Go up, up, up and turn and a little right and pass where the old tree used to be and there it is!") There are no street addresses here, which complicates matters immensely, but we worked hard to find cross streets at least!  I had also done most of the additional research needed to flesh out the sections that seemed to be missing information already, and my lone helper had done research on two new sections as well, so really what I needed to do was check a few websites, update a few phone numbers, and re-type the whole thing, which I have been doing this past week.

In order to give you a little insight into life in Doha, the new guide contains the following sections:

• Essential print guides--like every major city, Doha has an entertainment coupon book and a version of the Time Out magazine.  We also have this incredibly detailed and super comprehensive book called Marhaba, which means welcome in Arabic.  This book is basically the Doha Bible, with maps and restaurant listings and descriptions about how to get a driver's license or hire a maid and everything in between.
• Event and information websites--despite the existence of Marhaba and Time Out Doha, I have found it very difficult to get information on what events are happening this week in the city.  I am forever finding out about something fun that we missed because we never heard about it.  So I have been assiduously collecting websites that list events so we can know more about what's going on.  Doha actually has a million activities taking place and it's a shame to miss so many of them!  This section includes a few of those along with some websites designed just for new residents, with even more up-to-date information about settling in.
• Schools and Nurseries--the question of schooling looms large here, where there are not nearly enough international schools for all the expat families that keep pouring into the city.  Some employers, like ours, sponsor various schools and arrange for automatic placements for employee children.  Others do not, and the wait lists to get kids into schools can be very, very long (one teacher at a primary school I met said their wait list had 3000 kids on it!).  Questions regarding schooling can make or break your time here, really, which is a shame.
• Shopping--consistent readers will remember that my biggest concern during my first days here (besides schooling!) was where to go to find everything I needed.  It took a while to discover that grocery stores are often located in shopping malls, that "express" stores are smaller but not necessarily less well stocked, that many kinds of things can be found in souqs or outdoor markets including vegetables and shovels, and that you can't judge a shop by its appearance on the outside (one of my favorite places to go now turned me off for months because it looked so dodgy as I drove past).  Plus, I would have loved for someone to tell me about the relative "bargain" stores when all the usual prices were giving me some serious sticker shocks!
• Healthcare--since our Scarlet Fever debacle, I have been plunged into the world of healthcare here, having visited several private and public medical establishments in the time since J's first symptoms.  What I have found is a little alarming: Western-style medicine is available here, but  you really have to search for it, and the physical facilities as a whole are not really up to snuff anywhere.  So we are including recommended pediatricians in this list (and I would include recommended dentists...if anyone would tell me someone they have visited and liked here.  It looks like most folks have dentistry done in their home countries.).  I have also discovered that many of the hospital's websites don't include accurate descriptions of where they are located, so I tried to track down the real locations of as many as I could or, at the very least, accurate phone numbers, also surprisingly hard to come by.
• Fast food delivery numbers--this section came as a request from the husband, who wanted me to remember to include information relevant to men, who often arrive here alone, before their families, and have to fend for themselves.  He said the knowledge that fast food can be delivered here was a revelation, and he wished someone had told him about it much earlier.  So we've rounded up the numbers for some of the usual suspects and included them in our packet.
• Drivers' numbers--likewise, when you first get here (and for a long time after that if you are an American), you are dependent on the cottage industry of cars and drivers or the official taxis to get around.  Unfortunately, the taxis need to be scheduled very far in advance, often don't have any idea where you live, and frequently don't show up at all, so the private drivers are preferable.  But how do you find them?  Basically, all drivers are referred by word of mouth, which is problematic when you are new and alone and not talking to anyone.  So we are going to include the numbers of some drivers we have had recommended to us or used ourselves, as a place to start for newbies.
• Fun things to do--Punishing summer heat notwithstanding, there really is a lot to do in Doha.  Some things, like dune bashing or visiting the beaches or forts we have yet to do ourselves but we know we will in the fall.  Luckily, my helpful co-volunteer wrote up this little section, which we include just to get people thinking, because really there is much too much to do to cover in one brief packet.  That's what all these giant print and on-line guides are for!

We decided that trying to be comprehensive was not only foolish, it was impossible, so the most valuable piece of advice we give people is to ask, ask, ask others for help.  I have found that the best sources of information have always turned out to be the women around me, at least one of whom has had my same questions at one point or another.  If we can impress upon folks that one bit of information, we will already have made their transition to life in Doha a gazillion times easier!