During my first night in Qatar, I was amazed to see how modern all the buildings were and how advanced the infrastructure was. The next day, as I was getting off the metro, I could not believe my eyes when I saw a city of skyscrapers and gigantic shopping malls. As I continued to observe the culture in this part of the Middle East, I was surprised to see how friendly everyone was on different levels of society. I was also very intrigued by the history of Qatar being rooted in pearl diving and fishing and how proud the people were of that. It draws similarities to the American Wild West and how we are proud of the hard work and suffering Americans had to go through to create the comfortable way of life we live today.
This trip has given me so many experiences I will never forget. For example, we got to go into a real, Middle Eastern, mosque and learn about the differences between culture and religion that are tied to Islam and the Middle East. This was very important to me because I have never thought about that distinction in the Islamic religion and how much culture had to do with the representation of their faith. Another amazing experience I gained from this trip was going sand-bashing in the Qatari sand dunes and seeing the border of Saudi Arabia. That was an incredible overnight trip, filled with fun memories such as hauling a kayak up sand dunes and riding it down or swimming in the Persian Gulf at six in the morning. Another point of interest was seeing all the agricultural businesses here. This was incredible as there were very stark distinctions between the American and Qatari ways of agriculture. There are also very stark differences in the topography and water availability between these two countries. I was surprised to find out that most of their agriculture does not make any profit, instead, it is subsidized by the government, after some thought and conversation, it was evident that agriculture was not present in Qatar for any monetary reason, only for the ability to one day be self-sufficient. The Souq Waqif was my favorite place to go for a few hours of fun as it was the most ?Middle Eastern? feeling part of Doha I found. The Souq Waqif is a market where merchants sell various items to make a living, I was very fond of the fake watches. Surprisingly one of my favorite parts of this trip was the schooling. It was very interesting to know the similarities and differences between Qatar and America in a business, cultural, religious, and historical sense; as well as learning Arabic to help get around the country.
I have learned a lot about how Qataris do business, especially pertaining to their agriculture. Some lessons I have learned are how much infrastructure and money it takes to be able to grow food and fiber in an arid climate with little water, even then some of the areas of production are not self-sufficient for the country’s demands and imports still play a major role. This will help me in my career because I have a strong passion for growing food with limited resources and plan on starting an aquaponics wholesale supply company and want to start an aquaponics business, this was great to see just how much work is needed for large-scale production.
