Off to the sticks 14/11/08

If you’ve read this far, congratulations. After a mammoth effort, I think I’m now mainly up to date. My last week in Dhaka was a flurry of Bangla classes, training, shopping, packing and several scintillating social engagements.

Now, I sit here writing all this from the dining room of my swish new pad. Well, ‘swish’ might not be the right word, but it’s pretty great all the same. It’s cool here – not cold, as all the locals insist, wrapping themselves up as if it were Bonfire night – but blissfully not hot.

Ollie and I arrived here in Parbatipur on Friday afternoon, horribly hungover from our leaving party the night before. We were greeted at our new office, the headquarters of Gram Bikash Kendra (meaning Village Development Centre) by Sarah and Mukul. They are program managers in GBK, and are both young, friendly and have good English. We were given flowers, then tea, then snacks, then driven to our new homes.

I have, for the first time in my life, a flat of my own. It has far too much space for only me, and definitely not enough furniture for entertaining, but I like it all the same. There is an open plan dining room, from which all the other rooms open. There is a small but adequate kitchen which I spent yesterday night scrubbing from top to bottom; my bedroom, which has an en suite bathroom; a dressing room, so-called because all there is in it is a chest of drawers and a clothes rail; and a ‘sitting room’, so-called because I don’t know what else to call it – it’s huge and has two balconies, but is empty except for a blue plastic table and bookcase.

My landlord is an amazing lady called Meena. She told me that she will be my Bangladeshi mother, and her sons will be my brothers. On my first night, when I got home from dinner, she ushered me into her lovely flat, which is directly below mine, and plied me with sweets, fruit, crackers and tea until I couldn’t eat anymore. Although my Bangla is terrible, she has quite a bit of English so we had a little chat about our families and our home towns. The people who live in this building are all extremely friendly and curious about me: what I’m doing, how long I’m here, my family, whether I’m married or fancy getting married in Bangladesh, what religion I am (I say Christian to make things easier than explain agnosticism)… I do my best to answer all their questions, but I need to improve my Bangla pronto, or our meetings will soon get boring.

For the last two days, Scannie and I have been getting to know people in the GBK office. Every morning, we are picked up from our flats and driven on the back of motorbikes to the office, which is about 1 mile from my house. We’ve been shown around and introduced to countless people, none of whose names I can remember. Everyone is really friendly, but also really busy. Also, after the top level of staff, the amount of English spoken really declines. I need a Bangla teacher, and I need one fast!

Everything is massively overwhelming still. I can now get from a (my house) to b (the office) via c (the main road), but beyond that I’m still at a loss. We walked back from the office today, and by the end of the trip my face ached from smiling. I still have NO idea what I’ll actually be doing, and I still feel like that I’m horribly under prepared for what is to come, but as everyone keeps saying: you have to do things here aste aste (slowly, slowly), and I’ve got at least a year in which to figure this whole thing out.

Shaking our booties to funky house (or, The Ministry of Sound, Dhaka-stylee) 6/11/08

Yes, as unbelievable as it sounds, I tell no lies: On Thursday night I was persuaded, against my better judgment, to large it up at the Westin at a Ministry of Sound night. After spending the afternoon and evening hanging out in the Bagha club, and imbibing a large quantity of gin (expat guilt be hanged, I was stressed out), Laura used the ‘well, we’re leaving Dhaka in 7 days’ argument to persuade me that what I really wanted to do with my Thursday night was get wasted and dance in one of the most surreal experiences of my whole life.

How to convey how confusing this night really was?! The Ministry of Sound, in all their wisdom, selected the Westin Hotel as the location for this shindig. This was probably for lack of alternatives, but still, it was an odd arrangement. Picture, if you will, a function room in a fancy hotel. More than half the room is filled with tables covered in white table cloths, giving the whole affair the feel of a wedding reception or a slightly stuffy prom. Although the dance floor was tiny, at least there was a dance floor and people were dancing. The music was apparently ‘funky house’ – not to my taste really, but good enough to dance to. And dance we did!

Megan, Laura and I were with some friends of Megan’s and some friends of theirs from the Bagha. All of them were very lovely, but the minute any of them left to get drinks, we girls were surrounded by guys dancing in a variety of entertaining ways. (The clientele was mainly men, some much older than I would expect to see at a funky house night, some pretty young-looking. There were a few women, but in comparison to English clubbing, it was pretty strange to be one of the only girls there). To entertain ourselves when things got dull, we taught some of the extremely enthusiastic young men dancing near us a highly cool funky house version of ‘heads, shoulders, knees and toes’. What can I say, they lapped it up!


LATER – things get more surreal…

The next morning, I’d been invited to a fancy lunch in Gulshan by an expat friend of Rhori and Eli’s (two Filippina volunteers). This was all well and good, except for the fact that, naturally, Laura, Megan and I were all extremely hungover from our escapades the night before. After a completely wonderful meal (I am going on a gastric tour of the Philippines – the food is just aMAzing), the karaoke microphone is brought out, and I freeze like a rabbit in the headlights of some extremely enthusiastic karaoke singers. Actually, Megan freezes too, so there we are, crouched in the headlights of impending doom, waiting for our turn with the microphone (apparently, everyone must sing – it breaks the ice and is good for you. Ha!).

As most of you know, I really definitely cannot sing. Yes, I might like to do it melodramatically from time to time, but I’ve inflicted my terrible singing on enough people to know that it’s something I can’t do well. You’ll all be mortified to learn, then, that I became addicted to karaoke. After my initial solo rendition of Chiquitita, I developed a passion for karaoke power ballads. Four hours later, I’d done them all: Total eclipse of the heart, Can you feel the love tonight?, and My heart will go on (my personal favourite, for which the karaoke machine gave me 96%!)

Although it proved to be a fun afternoon (well, maybe not for everyone: I don’t know if Megan will ever be able to listen to a power ballad again), it only compounded my addled state of mind. What on earth was I doing, hanging out in fancy Gulshan, singing karaoke at the top of my lungs, with a group of grown up women with a predilection for the most corny power ballads ever – having a complete whale of a time!? I suppose it’s just one more part of being flexible and adaptable in this crazy new life of mine…

Go Obama, go! 5/11/08

It has been too long since I last updated my blog, so prepare for something of an epic…

What a day! We woke up here in Dhaka on the 5th as the results were just coming in. Like excited kids, Megan and I went to the office an hour earlier than usual to check the headlines every two minutes. We were in the middle of a session on ‘VSOB Policies and Practices’ when Keith got a message from his friend in the US, saying that it looked like Obama had won.

It was strange to be so excited about something that was happening so far away, which probably won’t have a directly significant effect on my life, but I wasn’t the only one. Everyone in the office seemed jubilant. Several of us were a little tearful.

And the strange thing was, all over the city people knew about Obama’s victory, and were pleased about it! Megan’s CNG driver could even quote the Electoral College figures.

In celebration of this monumental day, I had my first encounter with Bangladesh’s dodgy illicit-alcohol scene. The Galaxy Bar is probably the shadiest establishment I’ve ever set foot in. To gain entry, you have to get past tens of ‘security guards’, who are pretty shifty looking characters. I think only by virtue of being bideshis did we escape a full body search… Inside, the bar is completely dark, save for the flickering light of a couple of TV screens. Men sit drinking in ones and twos on low leather chairs. They watch silently, unmoving, as we stumble past (needless to say, Loz and I were the only ladies present). After ascertaining that imported vodka and whiskey are three times the price of Bangladesh’s own, we opt for the latter, and are presented with two bottles of (apparently) 75% proof vodka, carefully and politely wrapped in brown paper bags.

And so we celebrated this day in style, with vodka and 7up. Chin chin to Barack.

Four bideshis cause a scene in the sticks 3/11/08

This last weekend, we had our exposure visit – a whirlwind trip to visit a volunteer who has been out in placement for a while already. And my, what a whirlwind it was…

Half the group went north, to Sylhet and the tea estates. As for me, I went south to Patuakhali, to visit Rhori who works with four community based organizations (CBOs) in the Good Governance programme area.

Patuakhali is a small town, not far from the Bay of Bengal coastline. It’s not particularly far from Dhaka, but is separated from the capital by a maze of waterways that finally gave meaning to the oft-repeated description of Bangladesh as a ‘riverine’ country. It took us 13 aching, non-AC hours to get there (due to a 4-hour wait for one of three ferries). However, it was the most pleasant journey I’ve made by public bus in South Asia: the weather was perfect, and as the roads are pretty much straight and flat, there was a delightful breeze from the 80mph we were traveling at.

Having spent the last weeks dodging traffic and choking on exhaust fumes in Dhaka, it was unbelievably refreshing to escape to the countryside. The first thing you notice is the sheer green-ness of it all. ‘Green’ isn’t enough of a word to describe the myriad colours of all that vegetation – it’s just everywhere, every open space is occupied by trees and flowers and paddy and creepers and endless other types of natural growth. What with all the ponds, streams, canals, rivers and lakes, you’re just overcome by the verdant glory of this country.

The second most noticeable feature is the sheer abundance of people. There are no unoccupied spaces: it’s just one village after another. And between each settlement, the roads are just full of people and rickshaws. Probably unsurprisingly now, everywhere we went, we drew stares. I suppose we were more noticeable than in Dhaka. I suppose trying the old three people to a rickshaw trick for the first time was bound to draw more attention, especially when it was three bideshis in a small town where there are no other bideshis, and when the bideshi on top has ridiculous ginger hair, and when it’s 10pm and all other women disappeared from the streets hours ago. I suppose we were probably asking for it. Probably.

Wringing my hands
It was a real eye-opener to actually meet ‘the community’, as those people that VSO’s partners work with are respectfully referred to. After a long bus journey and an endless rickshaw ride down narrow muddy lanes between paddy fields, we finally arrived at the Muslim Para village. Greeted by a congregation of women seated in a clearing among corrugated iron sheds, we were confronted with a list of the community’s problems, read out by an appointed spokesman. Covering every conceivable problem that could face a deprived community, we were then asked if we had any advice for them. The awkward and rather stunned silence that followed was not one of my proudest moments: I could only mumble about being sorry, before we were quickly hussled on to see the next part of the organisation’s work.

This whole experience was then repeated later that night, when an entire char-dweller community was roused from its roadside shacks in order to meet us. I’ve never felt more helpless and useless than when I was introduced to some particularly poor members of this community, by way of an illustration of their problems. Char-dwellers are those who live on small spits of land or banks, created by the erosion of rivers and the accumulation of silt. Over time, the chars are washed away by the natural development of the river, taking these people’s homes and possessions with them. Some of the women I met have lost their homes six or seven times since cyclone Sidre in 2007. Many make a living making string out of discarded plastic bags, for which they are paid less than 50p per day.

All in all, it was an overwhelming and moving experience that really upset me. But it also made me realize, for the first time really, that perhaps my being here is genuinely one way of helping, in whatever small way I can.