So I’ve been following the story about the fire in the shopping centre in Qatar. What leads me to follow this story? obviously, being a mum makes me very sensitive to any story related to children and harm to children. Why? children come into the world as these pure beings – full of love.  All they want from you is love, love ad more love.  This can at time be very intense, and this desire can manifest itself in different ways in the children,  but really it is all about love and it’s good to remind oneself of that fact when it all gets too much.

The other angle for me is obviously that this incident happened in a very rich Persian Gulf state.  The whole thing is truly horrific and sad and my heart goes out to the parents of the children. 

I remember when living in the UAE that I would often be worried about my son and his safety. His daycare was great and he loved it.  It was run by an Australian lady which gave me a sense of ease, warranted or not, but I felt better in the feeling that there was some sort of a standard likely in place.

My fear for my son’s safety was mostly about him getting home from his daycare (which was about 30 minutes drive away) in the back seat of a taxi. I did look into getting a good reliable taxi driver to act as my driver, but it was too expensive and unreliable.  So I nervously waited every day until he would get home. Thankfully I had amazing nanny that would make sure he would wear a seatbelt in the car. We also have the Wiggles for instilling good car safety practices into our Wiggles mad son.

I only hope that in the quest to build the biggest, tallest and most amazing thing super fast, that there is consideration for the simple things – like safety.

I’ve recently moved to Sydney after some time away. Before leaving I was definitely a ‘greenie’. I tried to emulate this in the UAE where I helped start a group called ‘Abu Dhabi Eco-Chicks’ with some friends. Being the UAE with a transient population, many of us left.

I am now the mother of two and trying to live by my principles, but have I gone soft?

I held a birthday party for my son on the weekend. Okay, so the most unsutainable thing was probably inviting the whole pre-school class, but for the sake of ‘inclusion’ and social resonsibility I invited all the kids and most came. In the end I resorted to party pies, sausage rolls, plastic plates and cups….which led me to think – how could I have done it differently?

I’m starting this blog, hoping to share some of my struggles and hoping to learn from others…

Follow me on the journey.

Elham