AL WUKAIR, QATAR // The flat desert landscape stretches into the distance and the silence is broken only by the occasional passing of lorries. Just 20km south of Doha, Qatar's rapidly developing capital, at first glance time seems to have stood still. Road signs warn of camels crossing close to a tiny farm that lies a few hundred metres from the main road. Here, near to the town of Al Wukair, a 45-year-old Bangladeshi, Aziz Julhoq, and a 32-year-old Sudanese man, Idris Abdalla, tend 40 animals kept for their milk.
"I prefer my own country, but I left Sudan to provide for my family," said Mr Abdalla, who has two daughters and one son. Visitors are greeted with a warm bowl of milk covered with froth, while at the weekend the farm's owner receives guests in a series of tents beside the camels' enclosure. A small raised circular platform nearby is used as a mosque. The farm has no electricity and the only signs of modernity, apart from the passing lorries, are the Qatar Airways planes that pass by overhead.
Inside a small shed are stacks of animal feed - 30kg sacks of wheat bran and 35kg sacks of barley green - while water for the animals is provided by mobile tanks as there is no mains supply. The two men who look after the farm visit Doha just once a month and depend on their employer, a Qatari, for transport into the city. But the area appears on the brink of major change: large developments are springing up just a few kilometres away on the way into Doha, including projects with dozens of new villas.
There are also labour camps and, further from the capital, occasional new villas that stand out in the flat landscape are under construction. It is a similar picture west of Doha at the village of Al Kharaib. Just 22km from Education City, Qatar's ambitious international university complex that contains a series of American branch campuses, life has altered little until now. Previously, residents of this village, populated by Qataris, used to live in bungalows spread over spacious compounds. Now, they are seeing the construction of their first two-storey buildings.
Dabit al Dosari, 20, a Qatari training to be a policeman, has always lived in the village and says he would be happy to spend the rest of his life there. "I want to stay here. It's quiet and all the people here are my cousins, my uncles or my family," he said. "Doha has changed with new buildings and new streets but here, it's not changed in the same way. "In this place, the people are Qataris, but in Doha they are from other countries. When you come here they give you a welcome."
The village has kept many of its Arab traditions. "There are too many salukis here and too many people have falcons. I have two salukis here and three in my garden." Mr al Dosari also has a falcon, which sits in a shed with its feet attached to a line when it is not being flown. He and his cousins keep a couple of camels, which they use for endurance races, while they also enjoy dune bashing in their Land Cruisers.
"Every day I go to the desert," he said. Mr al Dosari, who lives with his parents, three sisters and two brothers, says there are about 200 people in the village, all but a handful of them al Dosaris. But that is not to say they are unfriendly to outsiders. One of his younger brother's best friends is a 16-year-old Egyptian, Ahmed Masoud, a veterinary surgeon's son who has lived in Qatar since he was five and is based in the nearby town of Al Shahaniya.
Al Shahaniya sits on a road that runs through the centre of Qatar between Doha on the east coast and Dukhan on the west coast, and is currently being widened. "There has been a lot of change here," said the teenager. "Before it was a lot of locals, now there are Nepalis, Indians, Sri Lankans and Filipinos." Many of the Qataris have moved out of the town into larger villas provided by the government, leaving just the expatriates.
Just as Al Shahaniya is starting to alter as more foreigners move to the peninsular nation, so change is coming to Al Kharaib. Coupled with the expansion of the nearby road network, the new construction is likely to change the village's sleepy character. Residents such as Mr al Dosari, while having little desire to move to the bright lights and shiny skyscrapers of Doha, are nonetheless unsentimental when it comes to the changes around them.
"It's a good thing because everybody wants [to live in] a new building," he said with a grin. "It's getting bigger here." dbardsley@thenational.ae
