Isabelle in Doha
A French expatriate in Qatar from March 2008 to February 2009Archive for heat
Summer in Doha or How to survive in this heat and steam ?
That is the main question by mid July. The temperature is now stuck at 42-44°Celsius (107-111°Fahrenheit) by day and go down to 33-34°C (92-93°F) only (!) at night.The humidity rate has grown suddenly and you feel like you are in your bathroom or in a steam bath… Everyone with children has went back home during the school holidays and will not return until early September…
So either i fly back home to spend a sweet but lonely (=without my husband) summer with my 6 months old daughter, stuck every evening on the computer screen skyping with my husband… 
– that i did for only two weeks in July – or i find ways to survive summer in Doha to be with him… 
– that i have been doing since…
I still can go to the malls where i can shop, eat and attend the Doha Summer Festival events, i can meet the rare other women i know are still here, try to go to an open museum, or stay at the apartment where i can take care of and play with Iris, watch movies and shows on tv, blog all day…, start – at last – my first watercolor in years!, find another apartment, write to friends and family and chat and skype with them, prepare our first anniversary party, organize my photographs, print some of them to put them in frames, cook for Iris and both of us with our new steamer, blender and food processor, make scrapbooks of all the stuff we brought back from our trips before the birth, there is plenty of things to do at home!
I regret that i cannot take Iris for nice outside walks, that the only air she is breathing is the conditioning one or the wet and hot one.
In fact, summer in Doha is like spending time waiting for the snow to melt or the thunderstorm to pass.
It is getting really hot outside…
I have heard about it so many times before we arrived in Doha.
For the past month and a half, the weather has been growing hotter and hotter and i cannot just bear it anymore, even in the evening. Maybe i could walk along the corniche at night with my husband when it is 28 to 30°C but i do not want to go outside with my 4-month-old daughter, even at night. I feel it is way too hot for a baby! So what can i do for now?
I am begining to live exclusively inside, going from appartment to car, from car to mall or villa or hotel… but it is only May and i am really wondering how i am going to handle all summer like that. Especially when many people said it was nearly impossible to stay much longer outside while the air is so hot and so wet!
No wonder almost all the women come back home for the next two or three months, leaving their husband to their job and hot wet days and return only in September!
