If you are coming to Qatar, expect a country of contrasts, all of which make it a weird and wonderful place to visit.

Did you know, for example, that Qatar does not have any forests, but intends to have planted 10 million trees by 2030? (They planted a quick million in the run-up to the FIFA 2022 World Cup as part of their massive greening strategy).

They were, in fact, the first Arabic nation to host the global soccer spectacle and did so in spectacular fashion, successfully hosting all 64 games in its capital city of Doha.

Qatar has an inland sea, iconic architecture, superb public art and a history that goes back 50 000 years.

It is the second flattest country in the world (after the Maldives); there are five men to every woman living here, and each of us is benefiting from an anticipated annual economic growth rate of 4.8%.

So here continues part 2, of the weird and wonderful in Qatar. (Here’s the part 1 should you have missed it).

Warning: it’s going to get mucky.

Qatar successfully managed to bridge the gap between the Arab world and the West when it hosted the FIFA 2022 World Cup. Many have cited it as the best World Cup to date.

6. Religious complex

We came to Doha, Qatar, because of our faith. We are Christians and, as you might already know, the H is an Anglican priest. He’s the senior priest at the Church of Epiphany in the Anglican Centre in the Religious Complex in an Islamic country.

Yes, weird and wonderful all at the same time.

It’s weird that a staunchly Muslim country allows this. Indeed, the government even granted ‘people of the book’ a large tract of land in 2005 to build their own places of worship.

While the constitution provides for this freedom of worship, it does not allow Christians to evangelise outside of officially permitted places, like the massive Religious Complex.

It is wonderful to see a full carpark and the Christian faithful queuing to enter the Religious Complex to attend Orthodox, Catholic, Anglican and the Interdenominational Christian Church centres.

In fact, I have seen more Christians on Fridays (since that’s our new Sunday) in Qatar, than I have ever seen anywhere else.  

There are 51 different nationalities in the Anglican Church of Epiphany.

The Religious Complex has a car park for 8000 vehicles. It is full every Friday when the Christian faithful gather to worship in this Gulf country.
People brave the heat and the queues for the security checks to attend services within the Orthodox, Catholics, Anglicans and Interdenominational Christian churches at the Religious Complex. In December 2022, more than 58 000 people visited the Anglican section, which hosts 90 different groups.

7. Shared birthdays

Back in the day, Qatar was a sparsely populated desert. The original inhabitants were mainly tribal families of Bedouin Arabs whose lifestyle was nomadic. There was some fishing and pearling too.  

But then oil and gas were discovered in the late 1940s, and Qatar rapidly expanded into the modern, luxurious first-world destination that it is today.

A nation accustomed to a frugal, nomadic existence with a rich oral tradition was suddenly thrust into a flashy first-world environment. Or to quote a friend, ‘from camels to cabriolets in a matter of years’.    

It is not uncommon then to find the senior members of entire Qatari family/tribe sharing the same birthday (1 July), with a different year.

This is simply because there were no government services or registration offices then to record the birth of a child and so forth. It was simply someone’s word passed down the generations.

I had thought this weird, until a Sri Lankan friend told me she’d miscalculated her mother’s big birthday. She’d turned 60 and not 58 as her mother’s passport had stated.

“They were unable to easily register her birth as a baby, and so like everyone else, she was given 1 January 1965, instead of the actual date of birth, almost two years earlier.”

In some households, all birthdays are celebrated on the same day, since the individuals were born before official birth registration processes were in place.

8. To wee or just to see

It’s true. I admit that sometimes I visit a public toilet just to view it, and not to use it.

I do this, simply because many of the public toilets in Doha are a marvel.

Granted, with South African public toilets as my yardstick, I am easy to please.

I well remember hauling out my cell phone when I first arrived in Qatar in February 2022. I could not believe how clean, efficient and sweet smelling the toilets were at Hamad International Airport.

It was the first photograph I took of my adopted home back in February 2022, and I have been doing so ever since. Yes, there’s a blog post in the making, but I just wanted to include public toilets with their marble floors, self-flush facilities, floor-to-floor mirrors and full-time cleaners on my list of the weird and the wonderful.

From loos to poos and moos…

The public toilets, like this one at a restaurant in the traditional market Souq Waqif, are generally spotlessly clean and visually pleasing.
Many bathroom facilities are made of marble, have huge mirrors and even chandeliers. Now you know why I sometimes just have to go – and see!

9. Flying cows

Well, when you think moocows, you think manure, don’t you? Yes, those big splotchy cow pats …

Okay, maybe not, but there’s a mucky theme running through this post, so please bear with me.

Actually, you are probably thinking milk, cheese, yoghurt and all things dairy. Or beautiful bucolic scenes of said cows ruminating across rolling fields of lush green grass …

Or perhaps it’s the Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon … lyrics and a supporting mental image.

Is this your visual cue when someone mentions cows?

In Qatar, the latter isn’t too far from what happened in May 2017 when 165 Holstein dairy cows were urgently air-lifted into the country from Germany.

That, my friends is how the dairy industry began in Qatar.

A Saudi-led bloc imposed air, land and sea restrictions on their neighbour, Qatar, meant the country had to act fast since it was almost entirely dependent on imports to meet the basic needs of its growing population.

Today, the country is home to 24 000 dairy cows which live in purpose-built, air-conditioned facilities in the desert. The local company now supplies 95% of country’s fresh dairy produce.

The Baladna cow factory is where the country’s 24 000 dairy herd live … yep, indoors. It is also where 95% of the country’s dairy produce comes from.

And finally …

10. No mucking around

As shared, a great deal of time, energy and water is invested in keeping Qatar both clean and green.

We were none too surprised then when the gardeners spread truckloads of fertilizer on the lawn that is home to a beautiful frangipani grove in front of our ground-floor apartment in Lego Land.

The pong was so strong we were unable to open the windows as it permeated everything, especially the washing drying on the clotheshorse.

Camel manure, we declared.

We had seen and smelt camel manure when visiting the Shahaniyah Camel Race Track outside Doha, so presumed we knew what was behind the new odour on the lawn outside our compound apartment.

We had recently enjoyed a great camel racing excursion and recognised the tell-tale smell.

But we were wrong, very wrong.

“Oh, no,” advised Lego Land’s supervisor, “it’s biosolids … domestic sewage”.

Human poo in pellet form!

“It’s free. The government treats it and packages it. We just have to fetch it.”

The frangipani trees may like it, but I am not sure I do.

Treated or not, this doesn’t sit well with me.

I mean it’s weird; wonderful too in terms of recycling and the beneficial nutrients it brings to the soil/sand.

The very thought of human faeces sprinkled liberally about is just downright weird. And then knowing we’ve tramped through it and brought it into our home, well, that’s just gross.

Sis!

The frangipani grove onto which our apartment looks does well on water and you-know-what!

So that’s my initial take on the weird or wonderful.

I know there’s more. I’d love to hear what you find weird or wonderful or both.  

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