Mid-week Musings: Culture Shock and Cultural Segregation

Here I sit in our newly rearranged office/den (the one with the on-suite bathroom!), sipping my green tea and thinking. Supper has been made and eaten, the dishes are being washed by our lovely dishwasher, and Darren is out on a quest to get a reading lamp. I decided not to accompany him today; a girl can only do so much shopping!

It's amazing how quickly this place has become home. I'm referring to both our apartment and the city itself. Of course I don't feel like I truly belong here, but I don't feel like a complete stranger either. I've got a pretty good handle on my job - at least, until they rearrange the classes at the end of this week and reassign our workloads. I know I could get around the city, as long as my destination was a well-known place. I've got - or have access to - everything I need here.

I think what I actually am suffering from is a false sense of belonging. I might be overestimating my ability to adapt to life in this country. I wouldn't be surprised if I've overcompensated for my uncertainties with optimism. I know I'm overconfident in my understanding of the way things work here. I wonder if these things are typical of people in the honeymoon stage of culture shock.

I am certain that a few months down the road I will find myself crawling into Darren's lap so he can soothe me as I weep over everything and everyone I miss. I am expecting to get more and more annoyed at the way "they" do things here. And I suspect I will find parts of this culture that I so desperately want to change. That's all a natural part of culture shock. But I hope that when it's all said and done I don't become an embittered expat, body in one country, heart in another.

Someone on the bus this morning said, "The expat life is a strange one. You never fit in." It's true - as a foreigner in a strange land, try as I may, I will never be accepted the way a national is. This is especially true in Qatar. As I've mentioned before, the country is a multicultural one, with foreigners from all over the world moving here in droves. Consequently, there are pockets of various cultures living within a muslim Arab society. These cultures rarely mix, but rather stick to themselves (whether by choice, habit or force, I'm not sure yet).

I wonder how much of this segregation is actually based on social status rather than culture. While there are certainly exceptions, the majority of the taxi drivers are from the same culture. Servers in restaurants are predominantly from another culture. Teachers and businessmen are from yet another. Construction workers are from another again. So when people from different ethnic backgrounds interact, they are often also interacting with people from a different socioeconomic class.

Even though I like to think I treat my taxi driver the same way I do my waitress, which is the same way I treat my colleagues, it is naive to think that it will be easy (or even possible?) to develop a similar type of friendship with each of these people (even given the right circumstances). I don't doubt this will be an area in which I struggle when the honeymoon comes to an end.

Nothing I have experienced here has really come as a surprise. Darren and I read a fair amount of information on Qatar before coming - most of which was provided by my employer. However, knowing something and living it are two very different things.

Well, my cup is empty, the call to prayer is playing and the computer wants to be plugged in. I guess it's time to end this little reflection session for now. I'm going to choose to enjoy this stage of culture shock while it lasts. And hopefully I'll be able to breeze through to the part where I come to terms with the new culture (whatever that means!). In the meantime, I will continue to enjoy the adventure of settling into a new country...and stay away from cranky old expats.

But first, another cup of tea!