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.