Driving past the gates of the British Club in Mahooz or the Indian Club in Gudaibiya gives one an eerie sense of the isolation that this pandemic has infected us all with.
Undoubtedly, one of the joys of being based in Bahrain is the choice of social clubs and activities one could join.
During this awful year, many of the clubs have been helping some of the most vulnerable members of our community to cope in many ways. From organising chartered flights to augmenting government efforts for returning expats to distributing essentials such as face masks and even dry rations to those in need, these clubs have risen to the occasion.
Indeed, they have even provided valuable intangible services such as counselling for people facing the extraordinary stress of these times and – these days – the much-needed respite of an occasional Zoom cultural event online.
The expat community everywhere is usually made up of three types of people.
The first and most visible are those who take their work as community leaders seriously, lead or establish the different social bodies and can influence decisions.
The second type are those who are members of as many clubs as possible and sustain the activities either through subscriptions, volunteering or with their important ‘crowd’ presence in club events. The third type is the expat who turns up his/her nose at these cultural props and prefers not to join any club and talks snootily about the ‘politics’ in these committees. This last type makes up a sizeable minority in most communities although some nationalities seem naturally more inclined to club membership than others – the general belief is that if three Indians are in a room for about an hour, they will form a club, regardless of whether they know each other or not.
And they are not alone. The British community too has different groups – the Awali Caledonian Society and the Royal Society of St George, for example, and complementary groups such as the Bahrain Welsh Society and the Bahrain Irish Society which come from the same geographic region.
Regardless of one’s interests, clubs form an important part of the community and serve as the social identikit of the diaspora.
The Gulf expat represents a community which lives and works far from home and despite the long years of service, most of them have to either return home or uproot themselves twice over and migrate elsewhere since the rules for citizenship here are complex.
Under these circumstances, expats look to clubs to give themselves a cultural and social reference point, especially when it comes to shaping the values of the younger generation.
In these difficult times when people are struggling to make ends meet and trying to figure out their next survival move, a club membership is the last thing they will nurture and the first thing to be ditched when economising.
But the fact is that once the virus leaves us – and the signs of an effective vaccine are getting stronger every day – we are all going to need these familiar social and cultural stomping grounds to reassert normalcy.
The government must take this future scenario into account and make it possible for the clubs to weather this crisis with the same care that they are showing to businesses and infrastructure.
Authorities must call for a meeting of club officials, find out their sticking points (finance, mostly) and see if utility bills can be waived for this year for all clubs, for example.
Unless we plan today for the restoration of Bahrain’s glorious social scene post-Covid, it will be a bleak future indeed.
meeraresponse@gmail.com