Sweet Sixteen: Intlxpatr Celebrates Blogging
Welcome friends, to a virtual celebration of 16 years of blogging as Intlxpatr. Where we are living now, in the deep South, the pineapple is a symbol of welcome. You are welcome here.
Old friends have asked if we miss “the life.” Yes. We do. And we have a new life, a life we never dreamed would be so happy. We live just blocks away from our son and his wife, and our two grandchildren. My son and his wife are in the prime of life, working, busy, and trying to keep up with a jarring pace of life.
We are called in frequently. In the summers, we help drive to and from daily camps, and we often have the grandkids in the afternoons. School started in August; on Sundays, we coordinate with Mom and Dad on which days they will need us for which drop-offs or pick-ups, or appointments, or – well, we stay flexible. And we stay busy. And being so closely connected gives us purpose and joy.
I also have joy in this new life having rediscovered my love of the water. I am swimming 2 miles three days a week. Well, most weeks. I have buddies at the pool, and sometimes I spend too much time catching up, and then I have to scramble to get my laps in. I tell myself it isn’t about the numbers, it’s about living a good life. A good life needs good friends. Thank YOU for being with me on this journey.
We are about to take our first trip overseas since our Bordeaux trip in 2019. We will be going back for brief visits, mostly to places we have been before. Yes. We will be taking you along. As with so many of our trips, there are often times where, even in this day and age, we are without access to reliable internet, but we manage ☺️.
COVID has been a long slog. As you may know, I lost my Mother, early in the epidemic. She lived in Seattle and was one of the earliest victims. The grief I experienced hit me hard; I became touchy and angry, I didn’t love the things I loved, and it took me a long time to get through the uncomfortable process of grieving. Every year, in October, I make my Mom’s famous chocolate fruit cakes. In September (yesterday) I made her wonderful Autumn Plum Cake (pflaumekuchen).
And because, as we age, we are increasingly aware of fitness, and the need to eat the right foods, I will include something fabulous and healthy:
Yes, another first on Intlxpatr, LOL.
And because I firmly believe it is wise to drink less, I prefer to drink less of a really good wine.
A toast! To living well, my friends, whatever that might look like in your life. Bonne fete!
Adieu, Émile
As we stood outside in the back of the house, looking at the little courtyard and the terraces, my daughter-in-law said “We call this the cat crossing. We don’t know where they all come from, but there are always cats crossing.”
Soon we had one who came regularly, a cat like we have never had before. He was young and scrawny (we’ve had young, scrawny cats before) and his left eye was opaque. He showed up faithfully around the time we fed our indoor cats, looking for a meal, thus Émile. We bought separate bowls, and kept him – and his comrades – fed. Even when we travel, our housekeeper/ cat sitter would make sure he never went hungry.
The only way we knew he might like us was that when he heard our voices, he would come hang out. We were never able to get closer than 3 feet away from him, and even 3 feet made him goosey. We would thrill when he would spend a day or two up in his niche, a safe little place surrounded on all sides. Late in the day, he would wander away until meal time the next morning.
He was, like most cats, a ferocious hunter, and was proud to show off his latest squirrel or bird; what cat doesn’t love a fresh hot meal?
But one day, about two months ago, he started looking a little peaky. The last time I saw him, he was having trouble with a back leg. He disappeared.
Cats do that – outdoor cats. When they are unwell, they go somewhere. Sometimes they get better. We’ve had cats come back before, but I don’t think Emile will be back. The other cats have disappeared, too. There may be some kind of a cat virus going around, or, God forbid, someone may be poisoning them.
We would have liked to provide for Emile, to take him to a vet, get him immunized, get him checked out. We would have liked to give him affection. We would have liked for him to trust us.
And a part of me, thinking like a feral cat, imagines that none of that was of any interest to Emile. He seemed happy with the life he had, free, with a free-range menu supplemented by these strange two-legged beings who put out offerings for him on a regular basis. We sort of knew that this would be the way it ended, that he would ghost us in the end.
Being pragmatic, knowing the probability of this particular kind of ending, doesn’t make it any better. We’re still sad he is gone, and thankful for the time we had him in our lives.
Living off My Fat: Adaptation
It probably all started growing up in Alaska, where my mother would measure us in July to order our snowsuits as soon as the new catalogs came out. We lived where ships didn’t come in the winter, so supplies for the winter needed to be ordered – and received – before the ships could no longer navigate the channel.
Then came our life in Germany, where we lived by what my sister called “Commissary rules.” Her one word of advice as a newlywed leaving Germany, while I was staying, was “When you see something in the Commissary or PX you think you MIGHT need, buy it.” Definitely a no-regrets philosophy.
When we were sent to live in Tunisia, in the late 1970’s, we were instructed to take everything we might need for the next two years. Some things – chocolate chips – we learned to live without. We adapted to new foods, new ways of doing things. One of the great treats was the fresh, gorgeous, silky olive oil; I would take my jar to the little olive oil vendor at the nearby souk and he would weigh my jar, fill it, subtract the weight of the jar and charge me for the oil, which made everything taste French.
I did have a two-year supply of shoes for a growing toddler, also clothing for him in graduated sizes, and two years of age-appropriate books I could pull out of the closet. We were able to mail-order through the embassy pouch, and my mother was able to mail me little extras. One year, when I was running the Christmas bazaar, she was able to find red and green Christmas fabrics in July, at a discount, and mail them to us for our crafting. It was such a luxury!
In Qatar, I was always bringing back duffels with quilting rulers and rotary cutters for my quilting friends. In Kuwait, it was books for my book club and American sugar for a friend who liked to bake. Kuwait had sugar, but more coarse, and American sugar melts more quickly for a finer result. Who knew?
There are items from the past I still have in abundance – dental floss, women’s underwear, shoes – and staples I buy but no longer use in the quantities I once did because we no longer live a life where we entertain a lot nor prepare for unexpected people on temporary duty who need a meal and an exchange of currency. I am trying to bring down my supplies of artichoke hearts and pimentos, beans and rice, canned tomatoes, chutney, Tupperware and hand soap.
My Little Free Library, one of the best birthday gifts ever, helps me keep my books from overflowing.
We are happy, these days, to be living with less. We are still caught by surprise by rolls of baking parchment we are still using from Kuwait, dental floss leftover from our years in Tunis and an excess of Christmas decorations we still need to pare down. We try to go easy on ourselves. “Ah,” we sigh, “it’s a process.” God grant that we live long enough to use up all those supplies we bought “just in case.”
Chasing Petroglyphs: Dinosaur National Monument
I love it when I underestimate an attraction. This is the day we visit the Carnegie Quarry/ Douglass Quarry. I am going to quote from the Dinosaur National Monument Day Trip 5 folder now: The Visitor Center contains a fine bookstore, exhibits explaining the fossils, petroglyphs, and other park features, and information about how to see fossils in the park. The Carnegie Quarry . . . is one of the best Jurassic Period dinosaur finds in the world. Between 1909 and 1924, Paleontologist Earl Douglass discovered 10 species of dinosaurs, twenty complete skeletons and skulls. The Carnegie Quarry and other fossil quarries in the park have greatly advanced the study of dinosaurs. Current research in the park is focused on understanding the ecosystems the dinosaurs lived in, which has resulted in the discovery of new species of dinosaur, salamander, frog, lizard, mammal and plants. By protecting fossils, we can better understand the past. By understanding the past we can better understand the present.
There is so much I find both impressive and moving about this site. First, Douglass discovers this amazing site where an ancient river regularly flooded, killing local species in an early version of climate crisis, the bodies would be stuck in the mud, the mud baked hard, like concrete, and the cycle continues, layer on layer of bones, many with skeletons relatively intact, piled up in this location.
He had the genius to know it was a paleontological gold mine. Workers extracted skeletons that are now in the finest paleontology museums in the world. To me, here is where true vision comes in – Douglass had the vision to preserve an entire partially excavated wall of fossils, to create a beautiful, light-filled building to protect the wall, and to open this wall of fossils to the public, at no charge.
What better way to build public understanding and public support?
We drove to the visitor center, and caught a shuttle, which makes the circuit every 15 minutes. Soon we arrived at the Wall of Bones.
On the upper level, there are interactive stations which will help you identify exactly whose bones you are looking at. It’s amazing stuff.
All kinds of informational displays help you understand exactly what you are seeing.
I had never heard of Dinosaur National Monument. I saw it on the map and thought it would be an interesting stop on our way to Moab. I had no idea I would be so blown away by the Fremont Petroglyphs at McConkie Ranch or this Wall of Bones at the Dinosaur National Monument. Life remains a great adventure.
Tales from Before the Blog
Tonight we were eating Indian food, and talking about some of the truly great Indian restaurants where we had eaten in Doha. Our two favorite had separate veg and meat sections, and one, The Garden, even had them on two separate floors. The other, the Welcome, was a wonderful place, a place I would never dare to take my mother but a place we often went with friends. Once, we took another couple we liked, and we started with chots and dosas, and then ordered entrees. When the bill came, AdventureMan picked up and the other man objected – but only momentarily; AdventureMan showed him the total bill was 44 Qatari Dinar – somewhere around ten dollars.
Both The Welcome restaurant and the Garden were torn down to make way for a grand new walking street going down to the Souq al Waqif. We never saw prices like that again, or that kind of Indian-comfort-food-at-low-prices.
One story led to another.
“Take Her! Take Her!”
AdventureMan preceded me to Doha; I stayed behind and packed out, found new renters for our apartment, sold my car and arranged for my diabetic cat to fly with me to Doha.
When I got to Doha, I showed the veterinary papers showing Morgaine had the veterinary papers in order, but, as it turned out, I had not requested permission from the Qatar Department of Animal Health to bring in my cat, so I would have to leave her until I got permission. I discussed this politely with the customs official, a young soldier, and then I started pulling out my packets of syringes and vials of insulin, and I explained to him that she needed X amount of insulin injected at such and such a time, two times a day.
He looked at me in utter horror and said “Take her! Take her!” and I didn’t wait a single second but got everything back in my bag and walked out as fast as I could with my unpermitted cat. Things were easier then; there were always men with carts eager to take all your bags, so all I had to do was grab the cat and run.
“She’ll Have to Sign a Waiver”
No sooner had I arrived in Doha than a car showed up at my villa, a car I hadn’t requested nor chosen, but I guess the car I was meant to have. I had to learn to think in a whole new way. It was a really good thing I had the car because Operation Enduring Freedom was breaking out, and I knew I might not see my husband again for a while. He took an hour off the day after I arrived to show me where two grocery stores were; the one near us for the basics, and the French Carrefour, across town, but worth the drive.
But the company was horrified I wasn’t leaving. “We’ll pay your passage!” they said. “You can go anywhere! You don’t want to stay here, war is breaking out.”
I had just gotten to Doha. I was settling in. I had my abaya and scarf from our time in Saudi Arabia, and I knew the way to the airport; I could walk if I had to. My niece, Little Diamond, was coming to stay with me. We both spoke some Arabic, she spoke more than I did. I wasn’t afraid, and I didn’t want to leave.
“She’ll have to sign a waiver,” they told AdventureMan. I signed the waiver.
There were some dangers. While the USA and allies were gearing up to help the Kuwaitis take back Kuwait from the Iraqis, not everyone was on board. We learned to alter our body language, to walk and speak quietly, not to draw any attention to ourselves. We did our shopping calmly and efficiently. Even so, on occasion there was an occasional shop clerk who might ignore me and refuse to wait on me, but those occasions were rare, and the occasions of great hospitality from local citizens were many.
The day the war started, my sweet cat died. She had problems breathing early in the day, so I took her to the vet. Going to the Vet in Doha was not like any going-to-the-vet I’ve ever experienced before; you go, you sign in, you sit, if there is a chair left, and you wait your turn. It doesn’t matter how sick your animal is. It was chaos. Many people got very emotional and wanted to be taken out of turn. When I got to see the vet, who was always very kind, he gave her a shot and said “Now she will feel better.” I told him I thought she was close to the end, and he said maybe or maybe not. I took her home.
About three hours later she came and lay next to me quietly and I knew she was saying goodbye. She started gasping again, so I put her n her cage and drove as quickly as I could to the vet, but it was Friday afternoon, the day everything closes for mid-day prayer, he was closed, and could not be reached. By the time I got home, she was dead.
So the war is starting, my cat has died and I am not in a rational place. AdventureMan called and my niece talked to him. I think she told him the cat had died and I thought there was a chance it might just be a fit and she might come back to life, which was true. AdventureMan came home, I don’t know how he did it, but he did, and we drove out to the desert and buried our cat. He brought me back home and went back to the base and I didn’t see him for a while, except on television; as the CNN reporter stood in front of a sign at the press center on base, my husband sauntered behind him and gave me a wave. We still laugh about how he took a break to bury our cat just when war was about to break out, but managed to get back in time for the opening. He showed up when it mattered.
Welcome to Doha.
Creme Chantilly: Happy Easter, Mom
Easter week, and I allow myself Creme Chantilly with my morning coffee.
Cream whipped with powdered sugar and a little vanilla for Easter morning crepes with the ham and other Easter dishes, it is a bittersweet treat this year; sweet and joyful that we can gather as a family to celebrate Easter, our good health, our hopes for the years to come, and sad, too, because most of what I have learned in terms of meal preparation and entertaining, I learned from my Mom.
My Mom died a year ago this week, in Seattle, one of the earliest victims of the COVID virus. I am still coming to grips with the way she died. When she went into the hospital, they were trying to figure out what this virus was, and how do deal with it. Even those already in Seattle could not visit nor sit by her bed. Flying from Pensacola to Seattle was unthinkable, but such a temptation. She was brave. We all FaceTimed, and she told us we were good, and we were loved. She faced her demise valiantly.
Rest in Peace, Mom. I am thinking of you all this week, and drinking your Creme Chantilly in my coffee.
The Ninth Circle of Hell: Treachery
It’s a normal, peaceful, quiet Friday afternoon when my husband says “I want you to see this” and everything changes. He is about to clean out the cat litter box, when, (and really, this is propitious, not a bad thing) he spots blood on a recent stool. I quickly find a jar and a plastic spoon, scoop out the incredibly smelly bloody mess and seal it quickly. Within minutes, we are in the car and on our way to the veterinarian with Ragnar.
Our veterinarian is not the poshest vet in town, but he is one we consider very knowledgeable and down to earth. He may seem unemotional – that’s probably a good thing when dealing with sick or hurt animals and their anxious owners – but we always feel confident he will tell us the truth as he knows it, and he knows a lot.
It’s first come, first served unless it’s an emergency, and they are all emergencies on a Friday afternoon. There is already a long line waiting to sign in. We get in line, and before the office has even opened for the afternoon, there is a long line behind us.
My husband is a good man; he has offered to take Ragnar by himself. For many years, I had all the cat-to-the-vet duties, and he is trying to even things out, trying to give me a break, and in return, when it might be really serious, I always go with him so he doesn’t have to make a serious decision about an animal he loves by himself.
Going to the vet is probably one of my least favorite experiences in the world. I am empathetic. I am empathetic with people, and also with animals. My sense of smell is very strong. At the veterinarian office on this Friday, I smell the damp fur of anxiety, the involuntary urine, the smell of sickness and fear, and I have to do breathing patterns to keep down my own overwhelming sense of sorrow and turbulent stomach.
There is a lot of noise, people talking, dogs yipping, the waiting cats mostly scared and silent. There is one dog, somewhere, scared and in pain, and he makes a long, low, loudly mournful moan, time after time. It is the ninth circle of hell, the circle of treachery, and although we are trying to do the right thing for our little loved ones, they are in misery, and betrayed by the people they love and count on to take care of them.
We wait a long time, two hours, before the vet can even see us, and it is not the vet we trust, but an associate vet.
So the good news is that she is a compassionate veterinarian, and also knowledgeable; she wins our trust. Another piece of good news, Ragnar, although ill, is docile and curious. He is greatly unafraid, both a blessing and a curse, but part of his nature. She analyzes the sample, tells us it is full of bacteria, speculates briefly on the cause and gives us a container full of half pills to take home, advising us that they taste bad and to wrap them in butter or cream cheese.
We are all so glad to get out of there we come home and take naps. We are emotionally spent. Being home again helps. Snoozing helps.
The veterinarian very kindly had the pills split in half for Ragnar and soon it was time to give him his first pill, which is truly a two person job. Ragnar is usually ver good about taking pills, but there are two problems. The first is that the pill tastes very bad. The second is that because it is split in half, it has corners and is not so easy to swallow as a round pill. We also discovered that cream cheese was not a good medium for Ragnar; we wasted a half a pill and thoroughly frightened our cat during the cream-cheese experiment, and we had cream-cheesy cat drool throughout the house.
In very short time, Ragnar is back to being fully his lively, curious, fearless, active self and, at the risk of being indelicate, his stool was back to normal, and not bloody. He still has to take the pills, but with butter, we are getting it done and he forgets and forgives by a minute or two after the pill trauma.
The Covid Conversation
It’s been an interesting week. Last week, there was no swimming. It was a welcome break in terms of sleep; no alarm, being lazy (LOL, being lazy is sleeping until 0600 instead of 0530) taking a walk now and then when I needed movement . . .
It was also handy because at my annual skin scan, my adorable dermatologist wrinkled her brow as she looked at me through her magic magnifier and said “Oh! we need to take care of THAT!” and THAT was prominently on my cheek.
(A brief aside because I cannot resist – when I was shown to the exam room, the tech asked if I wanted a gown and I said yes, and then, not being a smart-mouth but because I wanted to understand, I asked “What is the alternative? Like I stand here naked? Do people do that?” Sometimes I really am a stranger in my own land, and maybe I’ve missed some growing lack of self-consciousness? The tech laughed and said “No, there are people who will NOT take their clothes off!” I tried to comprehend that and totally failed. “So what’s the point of a skin scan?” I asked, “How can they be examined?” The tech said “We pull at their clothes a little and look underneath, but yeh, it’s not complete.” Totally boggled my mind.)
I have never been so happy about masking in my life. Having a big crispy spot about the size of a quarter on my cheek makes me feel like a teen-ager again, like every eye will be fixed on my boo-boo.
With my mask covering my big blotch, I got my second COVID vaccination. Yes, I might be suggestible, and then again, I am not a big baby, but my arm was sore almost immediately. By evening, I had chills so bad I was taking hot baths to feel warm enough. I had a headache just between my two eyes, and I was SO tired. The next day, I felt the same. Finally, the second night, I took an Aleve and slept wonderfully. The next morning, I was fine.
So I really needed the week off from swimming. One funny thing about the COVID vaccination, and again, who knows, it may be in my mind, but all of a sudden I have a sharp sense of smell again. It comes from my father’s side of the family, some of us have it and some of us don’t, but I think it had faded, and right now, it is noticeably back again, and oh, what joy it brings me.
So all the health drama is over now, I am back at swimming, and we continue to have work done to make our house safer and more energy efficient. A roof inspector, seeing our stack of photo albums (labeled Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, etc.) asked us if we had ever been to Alaska, and that started a great conversation, one we are hearing over and over as more people get vaccinated.
“We’ve decided we don’t want to wait any longer. We don’t know how many good years we have left. We are going to travel now, while we can,” he said.
He and his wife want to see Alaska. They want to see France. We had a great conversation, and I sent him some information by e-mail.
COVID has had its gifts, and awareness is one of them. Couple after couple have told us the same thing, this feeling of urgency to do it now, while we can.
We have four trips booked. One, a passage from Japan through Kamchatka and the Aleutians and the Alaskan Gulf, we’ve had booked for over a year. Another is a trip which COVID cancelled, but we want to do it and have scheduled it again. Another is coming up soon, a trip with our family to New Orleans, where we will continue to socially distance in a VRBO near Magazine, near the Audubon Zoo, near the Saint Charles trolley and several of our favorite restaurants with our family, and one back out to Yellowstone and Glacier, staying in cabins, mostly with kitchens. We’re good with take-out; in fact we’ve grown to really like it.
It’s not a hardship for us. We are introverts. We travel quietly. We stop and observe. I take photos. At night, I write reviews and research possibilities for the next day’s route. Part of the fun I have in life is finding really fun places to stay, some of which, like El Tovar at the Grand Canyon, or Ahwahnee in Yosemite, (LOL, “Yo! Semite!”) have to book far in advance, like sometimes a year out or more. Right now, several of the most popular cruises are already booked in 2021 and 2022 by people a lot like us, yearning to be back out on the road.
People in Florida are concerned about another wave of COVID following Spring Break. I am thinking here we are, all eager to get back on the road, us restless Boomers, and we’ve forgotten the pounding compelling imperatives of youth – meeting, mating, maybe even committing. But that’s another conversation . . .
Pensacola: Florida Man
Today, as we were en route to pick up lunch, we were stopped at a stop light. We had been stopped there for about 45 seconds, the light was very red.
Suddenly, on our left, an SUV came rushing up and without even slowing down, much less stopping, he blasted through that very red light.
I’ve given up cursing for Lent. In the surprise and the shock of the adrenalin jolt, out popped “WTF??”
There is a character in Florida so common that he has his own meme: Florida Man. Florida Man Runs Naked Down the Interstate. Florida Man Kills Stranger With a Hammer While High on Meth. Florida Man Hit Man on Highway and Calls it In as a Deer. Oops, not that one, wrong state. But you get the picture. Generally, Florida Man thinks the rules don’t apply to him.
I had a run-in with Florida Man once, when we lived in the Tampa/St. Pete area, except Florida Man was a woman who was really PO’d with me when our two lines of cars were zippering to get on the interstate and when I zippered, even though she was honking at me in her big truck, she got infuriated that I didn’t defer, and she chased me up the highway, trying to cut me off, coming really close to hitting me. I left the highway rather than take a chance with a lunatic who was also likely carrying a gun.
Even for Florida Man, running a very very red red light at high speed without even slowing down is exceptional. And then, maybe 10 seconds later, a large Pensacola police SUV with lights and siren rolling, went zooming through the same red light, followed by another PPD vehicle.
This was worth a good ten minutes of discussion. We don’t think the police caught him (or her) as the car was going SO fast, and changing into the left lane, I am guessing the driver, just out of sight, turned left and evaded a confrontation.
AdventureMan observed that evading the police these days is a very temporary thing; clearly they were chasing this car even before he zoomed through the red light. They know the car, they’ve probably run the license, at the very least they have him on film. Two cars were chasing him; running the red light was probably just icing on the cake. So we are running the probabilities; I am saying if I know I am guilty of something, probably something serious, and the police are about to arrest me, running a red light might be a percentage play if it keeps me free another hour or day or month or two. Maybe it’s worth the risk to run that light, and likely this is not a person who is giving a lot of thought to the welfare of others.
How fragile life is. On a quiet, calm Sunday, just making a quick trip to pick up some take-out, anything can happen.
Exploiting Foreign Labor: Qatar and Kuwait
Living in Qatar and Kuwait was a life-changing experience. We loved the stimulation of living in an environment where little was as we expected it to be. The sights, sounds and colors were stronger, attention-getting, and learning to think in different ways kept us alive and young in ways we never anticipated.
There were also challenges. While as white Americans, we were high in the pecking order, we also realized we were high in a secondary category; there were the nationals, and there were all the others. We qualified, along with all the other imported labor, as others. We lived a great life, and we never forgot that we were “the other.” We were blessed with friends whose families had been living there long before our own country was even imagined. It gave a new perspective to our lives.
On the downside was the treatment of labor. Here are a couple of my own photos:
Traditional scaffolding
Working on a new building, these laborers are more than 12 stories up. There is no elevator, and this is their solution to accessing a location without climbing 12 stories in the 115 degree F. heat.
That breaks my heart is the statement that all these deaths are within the expected range. The laborers are treated with callous indifference. Most came hoping to provide their families with a better life, they lived in squalor and sent most of their salary beyond meager subsistence, back to their home countries. The employers held all the cards. They had a choice – take this terrible risk or go home.
I found this on AOL News and it said it was from Yahoo News.
Report: More than 6,500 migrant workers have died during Qatar’s World Cup prep
JASON OWENSFebruary 24, 2021, 11:34 PM
More than 6,500 migrant workers have died in Qatar amid the nation’s preparation to host the 2022 World Cup, The Guardian reports.
The report cites government data from the home nation of migrant workers including India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. The data have been compiled since Qatar was awarded the World Cup in 2010, working out to an average of 12 deaths per week, according to the report.
FIFA awarded the World Cup to Qatar despite widespread concerns over human rights violations and treatment of migrant workers that have only been exacerbated since. Amnesty International has documented conditions of workers being “exploited” and “subjected to forced labor.”
“They can’t change jobs, they can’t leave the country, and they often wait months to get paid,” a report from the human rights organization states.
According to The Guardian, 2,711 workers from India, 1,641 from Nepal, 1,018 from Bangledesh, 824 from Pakistan and 557 from Sri Lanka have died working in Qatar since 2010. The Guardian estimates that the actual death toll of migrant workers is “considerably higher” since the data it cites is limited to the listed countries.
The nation with a population of less than 3 million is depending on 2 million migrant workers to build its labor force. The Philippines and Kenya are among other nations to send migrant workers to Qatar, according to the report.
The listed causes of death include electrocution, blunt injuries due to a fall from height and suicide. Most of the deaths are listed as “natural” while citing heart or respiratory failure.
Daytime temperatures in Qatar can approach 120 degrees during the summer. Normally played in the summer, Qatar’s World Cup will be held in November and December because of the oppressive heat.
Nick McGeehan of labor rights organization FairSquare Projects told The Guardian that World Cup construction accounts for much of the death toll
“A very significant proportion of the migrant workers who have died since 2011 were only in the country because Qatar won the right to host the World Cup,” he said.
Qatar has built or is building seven new stadiums in addition to significant infrastructure upgrades including roadways, hotels and an airport in preparation to host the World Cup. The opening and closing matches will be held at Lusail Iconic Stadium in Lusail, a city being built from the ground up ahead of the World Cup.
Qatar: Death toll within ‘expected range’
Qatar’s government didn’t dispute The Guardian’s findings and characterized the death toll as “expected” in a statement to publication.
“The mortality rate among these communities is within the expected range for the size and demographics of the population,” the statement read. “However, every lost life is a tragedy, and no effort is spared in trying to prevent every death in our country.”
FIFA also provided a statement to The Guardian.
“With the very stringent health and safety measures on site … the frequency of accidents on Fifa World Cup construction sites has been low when compared to other major construction projects around the world,” the statement reads, per The Guardian.
FIFA did not provide The Guardian with data to back up its claim.
According to Amnesty International, migrant workers seek employment in Qatar to escape poverty and unemployment at home. It describes dirty living conditions with eight workers living in a single room one they arrive. Workers are sometimes promised one salary only to be to be provided a lower wage once they arrive.
The group spoke to workers who paid anywhere from $500 to $4,300 in recruitment fees to agents that leave them in debt before they begin working in Qatar.
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