Day 196 - Demographics

Image of Doha Sheraton Hotel, one of the only buildings
in Doha now that was there in the late 1980's,
by vobios, via Flickr.com

There were about 300,000 people living in Doha when I arrived, 200,000 of whom were from somewhere else. Fewer than 100,000 of the people in the country, including the elderly, the women who didn't work outside of the home, the babies, and the school children, were Qataris. That left a very small number of Qataris in the workplace. Most of them were the bosses.

A large proportion of the 200,000 expatriates were there without their families. Those who were the laborers in construction and transportation, the gardeners, the drivers, the security guards, the cleaners didn't make enough money to be able to support their families in Qatar. They usually lived several to an apartment or room and only got home to their families every two or three years.

The number of Americans in Doha was about one-tenth the number of Brits. There were small numbers of other Europeans as well, including French, Germans, and Norwegians. Each of those western nationalities had schools for their children, even the small group of Norwegians had a school, but there was no American School. And that was something the U.S. ambassador was determined to change.

The effort began the year before I arrived. The ambassador brought together the American community to float the idea of starting an American school. The response to the idea was positive, but the vision was not shared by all. The devil is, as they say, in the details. I had been led to believe that those details were sure to doom the idea to never see the light of day. Within my first month in Qatar, however, I attended an American Women's Club meeting at the Ambassador's residence where he announced that there would be an American School in Doha by the opening of the following school year.

The support for an American school came from three different constituencies: the American-born citizens; the naturalized citizens, most of whom were from Arab regions; and the non-Americans who wanted their children to get an American education. Many in the first group assumed an American school would cater only to their children. They were not enthusiastic about what began to look like a school for everybody that was American only in the curriculum it followed. The latter two groups were closer to agreement, but they each had slightly different expectations about the curriculum or the make-up of the staff.

Once the ambassador announced there would be a school, we had to get on board to ensure that it happened. It was clear no school would be viable with only the children of the first constituency. The number of Americans working in the country with educational benefits sufficient to cover what would end up being very high tuition was too limited. The tuition would have to be comparable to what was charged by the British School or the French School. And that meant a larger number of students was necessary to collect the funds needed to pay the rent and teacher salaries. It was also clear that recruiting teachers from the United States, the expectation of a number in the second constituency, was impractical. Teachers would have to be recruited locally and that might mean not all the teachers would be American. It was also clear that it would not be possible to set up a school offering classes for Kindergarten through 12th grade. The school would begin with a limited number of grades, K through grade 4, and grow as the children in the highest grade moved up.

As the enthusiasm waxed and waned, getting the school started was delayed until just before the academic year was about to begin. Diane, the wife of the public affairs officer, Martin, agreed to serve as the first principal of the school. I don't know that she felt she had much choice. A correspondence course curriculum was selected for the teachers to follow. And a building was rented. Most of the initial group of students were not Americans, but were children of parents who wanted them to get an American-style education, the third constituency.

Progress the first year was positive. By the end of the first academic year, the principal and board of directors felt they could expand the number of grades more aggressively, through 8th grade, not just adding 5th grade as had originally been planned, but the building wasn't big enough for the additional classes. The landlord agreed to add another story on the building. Work began as soon as the school term ended.

That summer, the ambassador and his family left the country at the end of his term in June. The public affairs officer and his wife went back to the U.S. with their daughters for their rest and recuperation travel the month of August. During that month, an advertisement appeared in the Doha English-language newspaper offering a school for rent. My first thought was that an existing school in Doha must be closing at the last minute. But that wasn't the story at all. The school was a compound of buildings on a large plot of land owned by a Qatari woman who decided to develop her land. She thought there were enough apartment buildngs in the city, so she decided to build a school instead. She hadn't pre-arranged to lease it. She trusted that the school would be needed when it was done. And if she didn't find a renter the first year, she would leave it empty until the next year. Some might have characterized it as a que sera, sera attitude, but I saw it as an inshallah attitude of the most positive nature. Truthfully, I thought she was overly optimistic that an advertisement two weeks before the traditional opening of schools would have any result at all, a not very generous assessment of her business savvy.

Now that the Ambassador was no longer in the country and his successor wasn't expected to arrive until several months later, I didn't think there would be any pressure for the embassy to pursue leasing the new school. But the senior local employee in the Public Affairs Office contacted the woman to learn more about the property and the circumstances. He then called Martin to tell him about the school. Martin gave the go ahead for the local employee to contact the landlord who was adding another story to the original building to break that lease in order to sign a lease with the new school. I expected the first landlord to be reluctant - or worse - to break the lease since he had already added a third story to his building. But he wasn't; he just demolished the third story and went about finding new tenants. And the American School moved into the new buildings in time to open the second year of operation.

It was one of many examples during my two years in Doha that what looked impossible to me turned out to be just another day in paradise.