Shingles and Life

Dear all:

I have really thought about sharing this one...so here you go.  

I have been off all week on sick leave.  In my ten years of teaching, the only thing that has kept me away from work for more than two days consecutively is the birth of my children and a broken back.  After only three months of teaching in Qatar, I have been off work all week with Shingles.  Shingles is caused by the varicella zoster virus, the same virus that causes chickenpox. After a person recovers from chickenpox, the virus stays in the body in a dormant (inactive) state. For reasons that are not fully known, the virus can reactivate years later, causing shingles. I am not a medical doctor, but I do teach science and I know how to make inferences quite well.  I can attest that the virus is stimulated by a) poor environmental conditions or b) stress.  I have both of those things here in abundance.  

I first thought that I had pimples breaking out on my forehead and then I thought that I was allergic to walnuts.  The pain became so great and the "pimples" were spreading to my left eye brow, then my left eye lid, my left lymph nodes under my ear and then the back of my head.  

I checked myself in to the Doctor's office.  Here in Qatar, they have hospitals and clinics all over the place.  I went to a clinic, paid 50QR, grabbed a seat and thankfully ended up with Dr. Zahid, a fantastic GP from the UK.  He knew what was wrong with me right away and actually referred me to the eye specialist in case my cornea was involved, and it wasn't thank goodness.  We ended up having a long chat about why the two of us are in Qatar.  Interesting that he and I had many parallel things to share.  He put me on several medications including two pills five times a day, a topical cream twice a day and eye drops three times a day.

This whole situation has caused me to re-evaluate things.  Why am I here?  How hard should I work?  What is most important?  There is more that I would like to share obviously...but that will have to happen in some other forum at some other time.

I am recovering.  I have another Doctor's appointment today.  Hopefully everything checks out and I can move forward looking through an entirely new window on life here in Qatar.

Ed

Help for India - Follow Up

This is a follow up to my previous blog about our school security guard, Ali.  His home was destroyed and his family was displaced by Cyclone Phailin.  I have included the original blog below in case you missed it.  Our school through various fund-raising initiatives and donations was able to raise nearly 20 000 Riyals, enough money from his family to build a new home and get a fresh start.  He was a very happy man this week.  I talked with him on Tuesday and he was incredibly humbled and thankful for all of the support that he and his family received.

He is a little letter that he wrote to the staff at ISL - Qatar.  Enjoy!

Help for India

Hi everyone,

Sorry for the delay in posting.  I am watching the traffic on our blog site.  To date we have had over 2000 visits!

As you probably know, two weeks ago a massive cyclone hit the eastern coast of India.

Here is a link to an article entitled, "India's Cyclone Phailin leaves trail of destruction".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-24510464 (copy and paste the link to your web browser)

Ali is one of our security guards at school.  This guy smiles and waves to us every morning.  He is such a nice person!  Ali is from India and he is the only income earner for his entire family.  He had made arrangements to be married over the Christmas holidays, but his plans were dashed have due to the financial burden left by Cyclone Phalin.  The cyclone destroyed his home and his family is currently living in a shelter with many others who have been displaced.  Of course, the situation is compounded by the sub-standard living situations that existed in many parts of India prior to the arrival of the devastation cyclone.

So, my wonderful wife took it upon herself to hold a bake sale at school today in support of Ali and his family.  Muffins, cookies, brownies, and a whole bunch of other goodies were sold for 5 Riyals a piece and an incredible 6300 Riyals was generated ($1735.00 CAN).  This will certainly have a big impact on their recovery and we can't wait to give Ali the good news!

Ali, keep on smiling :)

Paint Ball Outting

My grade 12 Geography students invited me to go out paint balling tonight at Katara.  We formed a team of six and played another group of guys.  One of them was a professional paint baller that I just happened to snipe right in the face during our first game.  It was a nice opportunity to get to know the students outside of class time.

The most amazing part of the night, I didn't get lost on the way home...that's a first for me!

Doha RFC Quiz Night

We went to the Doha Rugby Club Quiz Night last night.  To start, there was a game between the Men's 1 Team and the Qatari National Team.  Final score 73 - 3 for the Men's 1 Team.  A complete blowout, but fun to watch.  The quiz lasted a couple of hours and had everything from music, to movie clips, the general knowledge questions.  I ended up scoring an iPod Shuffle through the raffle that they had.  Sweet!  The ol' fold the raffle ticket trick worked once again.  It was nice to get out and have some fun...it's just that the sun comes up really early and so do Aislyn and Nate! :)

No Line on the Horizon

Check out the view from my bathroom!

Big Accident on Shamal Road - Qatar's 401

Doha News

"Qatar residents have been complaining about traffic jams this afternoon following an accident on Shamal Road near IKEA.

It appears that construction equipment sitting on a flatbed truck tipped forward and crushed the cabin of the truck.

It is unclear whether the truck driver was injured. The accident happened around 4pm, according to commuters heading into Doha."

There was a birthday party in our compound tonight and one of our teaching colleagues left our place at 6:15 pm.  She texted us at 8:15 pm and told us that she was still on the highway and hadn't moved at all.  She ended up staying at a fiends place tonight because she couldn't get home.  

It looks as though the crane wasn't a secured load.  Knowing the crazy drivers around here, the driver must have hit the brakes pretty hard at speed and then the load shifted forward completely crushing the cab of the truck.

We have seen some pretty interesting driving here.  No signalling, misjudging the speed of other vehicles, drifting from one lane to the other, distracted drivers on their cell phones, speeding excessively, aggressive drivers, impatient drivers and poor vehicle maintenance.

Hold on a minute, wait a second, that sounds an awful lot like Toronto!

Life's a beach!

Darn interweb wi-fi thingy.  I spent an hour last night posting this blog and got up this morning only to find our that it didn't post!

We got home last night at 10:00pm from an amazing day at the beach.  We were just north of Al Ghashamiyah (see the map).  We were invited to go to a camp set up by an incredible family from Jordan.  Lindsay teaches their daughter and another teaching colleague of ours teaches their son.  So the group of us headed up to the camp around 12pm yesterday.

After a short one hour drive, we had to park our cars and head out across the desert on a 4 X 4.  The camp was a little more than what we expected.  A big wooded shelter with a palm leaf roof, equipped with seating for 20 or so, an RV, a separate washroom for men and women, two other big tents, one of them air conditioned, a volleyball court and helpers quarters.

We dropped of our stuff, made our introductions and the guys headed out for a little fishing excursion.  We set up a 90 m net about 300 m from shore.  The interesting thing to note was that there was an old wall out in the water that was used to capture fish as the tide went out.  It had a few holes in it, hence the net!

There was about 12 adults and 8 children in total. The kids played perfectly all day long.  It was such a nice day for all of us.

I stood down by the water for a bit with their boy from grade six.  He was talking to me about skipping stones and the fact that the only stones that were available to skip were the black ones.  I found that odd, since the rest of the beach is white.  Turns out, in the 1980s there was a huge oil spill that covered the entire length of Qatar's eastern coast.  The black stones are actually crude oil biscuits mixed with sand.  I cracked one open and it smelled just like Mike Piva's garage.  I started to look around and they were everywhere.  What a shame.  Not to ignore that fact that the spill would have been devastating.  Apparently there were a number of dead whales washing up on the shore after the spill.  The amazing thing that I found however was the ability of the Earth to fix itself.  Much of the oil had turned to stone along the shoreline.  Eventually the oil will simply be reabsorbed and disappear.

Later that night, we had a big dinner that was prepared in a traditional method using an Earth Stove.  It is an underground smoker.  There is a coal bed at the bottom and the heat is captured as the food sits on racks inside a round chamber buried in sand.  The chicken and baby goat (if you can believe) was very moist and tasty.  Along with some seasoned rice, it made for a very nice meal.

After an entertaining game of volleyball, we had our first, second and then third dessert!  We were well fed without question.

All in all a great day was had by everyone.  We have been invited back and I think that we will take them up on that offer!

Night everyone and Happy Movember!

Nate...I love that kid!

Aislyn with an oil biscuit.

Can I see myself inthis thing?

Nate unknowingly pointing to the hardened
oil that lines the entire Qatar coastline.

Hermit crab.

The thatched hut where we had dinner.

A feast!