Homecoming, or, Searching for a Love Actually moment

As many of you (but not my parents) already knew, back in July I booked flights to come home for Christmas. Since then, I have been looking forward to it like a small child looks forward to Christmas: the thought of Christmas in Blighty has got me through many a tough spot since July.

However, when the time finally came, it was slightly more bogged down in anxiety and self-doubt than I had anticipated. The bureaucratic challenges were many – I spent a sleepless week plotting my options if the Indian embassy refused to give me a visa – but I think the main cause of my disquiet was the idea that I might go home and find things irreversibly changed. As luck would have it, I came home to find that absolutely nothing has changed. Not one thing. Friends, relationships, habits, old haunts – all are pretty much the same as I left them. In some ways, I could find this depressing, but it is actually deeply comforting.

Landing at Heathrow at 7am was something of a shock. When the pilot announced during our descent that the temperature outside was minus three, I think I actually laughed. Having only my flip flops and a cardigan for warmth, I think I was attempting to block out the fact that such a temperature was going to be physically painful. Needless to say, the moment I stepped off the plane, before the air-conditioned blandness of the airport enclosed me, was a tough one.

Of course I was extremely excited to be in London after so many months of fantasizing about it, but I was nevertheless a little disappointed not to find everything a bit more momentous. The man on immigration didn’t say welcome home, for example, and there were no cheering crowds awaiting me in the arrivals hall. There was, devastatingly, no Love Actually moment. Instead, there was me with my stupidly heavy backpack (eighteen kilos, for god’s sake!), my stupid flip flops and my stupid little cardigan.

My first encounter with the rush hour underground brought me many a strange look, which I’m hoping were due to my bare feet and copious scarves than the fact that I hadn’t showered in 12 hours. However, I did note the lack of staring – or eye contact at all - between my fellow passengers – with some sadness.

Arriving at Victoria to meet Emily, I did get to have a bit of a Love Actually moment. She’d got up at 4.30am to get the train from Leeds, she’d brought me socks and a coat, and just as we headed outside to catch the train home, it began to snow. Cue much gleeful shrieking on my part, which did manage to earn one or two stares from passers by.

Later, I had the pleasure of a series of faintly Love Actually moments as I was reunited with friends and family at various stages. The highlight, however, has to be leaping out of a box to greet my unsuspecting parents as they arrived home from work. Bizarrely, I was unaccountably nervous about seeing them – as if they might not be pleased to see me (ridiculous, I know). Although I was momentarily concerned that my mother was going to pass out, it was a priceless moment. Both my mum and dad had fully swallowed the counter story Emily and I had been feeding them since July, that I was going to Vietnam for Christmas. Initially constructed to explain the airline’s debit from my bank account (which my parents consider is there duty to monitor), this bluff had evolved into a fully formed narrative involving the names of travelling companions, hotels and even itineraries, helpfully supplemented by several long conversations with my dad about which were the best places to visit in Vietnam.

Kolkata

Back in July, when I was booking my flights home, a minor stroke of genius led me to book flights from Kolkata to Heathrow, rather than Dhaka to Heathrow. This was mainly because I was feeling cheap (flights from Kolkata are more than £150 cheaper), but also because I’m actually genuinely interested in seeing this famous city, the one-time capital of the British empire.

It was with some trepidation and much battling with bureaucracy that I ventured across the border, due on the one hand to a previous trip to India in which I found the hustle altogether too much to bear, and, on the other, to the glories of sub-continental bureaucratic systems. This time, however, things were different. I don’t know if it was being able to speak Bangla, or just knowing that home was only a few hours away, but I had a wonderful few hours there. Actually, scrap all that – it was most likely because I spent the majority of my time in this majestic city taking hot showers (three in less than 24 hours – my personal best) and watching Star Movies in a gloriously comfortable bed in the Fairlawn Hotel. This is a very nice hotel (although I speak as someone who has spent her life either camping or staying in the very cheapest hostels, so I don’t think my standards are very high…), and I would highly recommend a stay there to anyone visiting Kolkata. It’s not exactly fitted to a back-packer’s budget at $50 for a single room, but it has amazing character – think last bastion of empire, with wonderfully incongruous paintings, ornaments and newspaper cuttings – and the tariff includes a lovely, scrupulously clean room, a more than ample breakfast (watermelon, cornflakes, and a fry up, anyone?), and afternoon tea at 4pm (glorious, simply glorious!).

I can’t really write much about Kolkata yet, as aside from a very interesting Discovery channel programme about the formation of the Sahara desert, I only saw two sights of much interest: the Victoria Memorial, and the Indian Museum. Although I was stalked by a slightly strange guy around the natural history section of the Indian Museum – I even (vainly) resorted to hiding in the invertebrates room (yawn) in the hope that he’d get bored and go away – I would thoroughly recommend both places for a visit. The Victoria Memorial is a wonderfully overblown testament to the folly of empire (Kolkata ceased to be the capital of the empire ten years before this monument to the Empress of India was finished), and well worth a visit (especially at only 150 rupees for entrance). It’s architecturally extremely impressive, and the museum contains a really interesting exhibition about the development of Kolkata and the various different socio-political movements that originated there. The Indian Museum is not quite so impressive, and although it is reportedly India’s best museum I didn’t find it as riveting (although admittedly, this may have been because my attention was somewhat diverted). However, it does have some natural history and art exhibitions that are worth a look. There’s also a central courtyard with a fountain and some handily placed benches – good for plotting stalker-avoidance strategies, but probably also for respite from the summer heat.

Despite my failure to really ‘do’ Kolkata – which some might hope would bring this post to an abrupt end – my twelve hour bus journey from Dhaka gave me ample time to reflect on the differences between West Bengal and Bangladesh. Once we passed the border, reportedly a nightmare of hassle and extortion but really quite straightforward, the bus bounced and rattled its way through mile after mile of villages that could almost have been in Bangladesh, before we reached gridlock in the Kolkatan suburbs. One of the most immediately striking differences between West Bengal and Bangladesh is that nature in West Bengal seems to be altogether more verdant. The trees that line the sides of the roads, just as they do in Bangladesh, are much bigger and older than those on the other side of the border. In Bangladesh, nature feels very much like it’s been shoved aside to make room for all the people. While there are trees and plants everywhere you look, they seem to be much newer, or more temporary. It does make you wonder what has happened to Bangladesh’s trees – perhaps they too were casualties of the liberation war? Or perhaps it’s simply the result of unsustainable population growth and too many poorly thought through development interventions?

Another obvious difference, from my elevated vantage point on the bus, was the omnipresence of flashes of vermilion in partings. Perhaps it’s unsurprising, given that India is a majority-Hindu state, but Hinduism is definitely much more visible in West Bengal.

My favourite sight was the number of sari’ed women riding bicycles. In Bangladesh, I’ve never seen such a sight in all my days. I find myself staring with much curiosity whenever I see a woman on a bike in Bangladesh, and they are almost always wearing headscarves, but in India I’d got bored of the spectacle by the time darkness fell.

A slightly more disheartening difference (purely from the standpoint of my personal vanity) was that the moment I stepped across the border, I immediately became less of a celebrity. At immigration, I got stared at a little – but I suspect this was mainly because I was pig-headedly refusing to allow anyone to carry my 18 kilogram backpack, and explaining my reasons for this in broken bangla. On arriving in Kolkata, I was terribly overwhelmed by the number of foreigners: I was no longer unique, I was no longer special simply because I was the only foreigner in view, and I have to say, I found the experience extremely upsetting. Needless to say, I lost no time in explaining to anyone who would listen that no, I was not travelling or on holiday, but that I actually worked in Bangladesh, and actually I’d been there for over a year and yes, I could speak bangla. I even proudly explained all this in bangla to a guy I got chatting to at an egg-roll stall, only to discover that he was in Kolkata on holiday from Bangalore and did not, in fact, speak any bangla.

Although I did very little of note whilst in Kolkata, I’m very glad I went. I had an instinct that I was going to like the city, and I do, very much. But it also served, with its bright lights and slightly saner traffic and buildings that have been around for longer than thirty years, as a kind of decompression chamber. I think flying from Dhaka to London would have been too much of a culture shock, whereas spending even a few hours in Kolkata reminded me that there was a world outside Bangladesh, before I was catapulted too harshly into it.

How to drive in Bangladesh

Travelling in Bangladesh is rarely easy. Despite being a country so tiny its name usually has to be written outside it on maps, travel over even short distances can (and almost without fail does) take hours, even days. For example, even though it’s barely 300 kilometres between my base in Parbatipur, in the northwest of the country, and Dhaka, the capital, the journey takes at least eight hours, and it recently took a friend over twenty hours to make the trip in traffic that was bumper to bumper the entire way.

The fact is that the existing means of transport, whether train, bus or boat, public or private, are wholly insufficient to meet the needs of Bangladesh’s burgeoning population. The roads and rivers are simply not big enough, and there simply aren’t enough buses and trains. Add to this the fact that every road is also clogged with rickshaws, bicycles, motorcycles and pedestrians as far as the eye can see, and you start to understand why travelling in this country is such a nightmare.

During a recent visit to a friend’s village, I rode for three very cold hours on the back of his motorbike. Alternately elated and terrified by National Geographic views and thundering Tata trucks, the journey gave me the (un)enviable opportunity to observe Bangladeshi road travel at worryingly close quarters. To my surprise, it quickly became evident that there is, in fact, logic to the way that people drive in Bangladesh. While it may bear no resemblance to any highway code we in the UK are familiar with, it is nevertheless a system, with identifiable norms, rules and typical behaviours.

The following tips were compiled to give the unwitting traveller in Bangladesh a fighting chance of getting from A to B without fatal mishap. I have learned from somewhat painful experience that you cannot beat the traffic in Bangladesh, leaving you with only one choice: to join the heaving, honking, lawless melee with your wits about you and your elbows out.

Basic principles
It is best to begin by trying to understand the basic principles that guide road users in Bangladesh. It is only with a clear understanding of such principles that you can hope to compete with other drivers.

The fundamental principle of Bangladeshi driving is very simple: never slow down. Slowing down is a sign of weakness that will be leapt upon – or, more accurately, mown down – by other road users. Do not slow down at any cost. Not when overtaking on a blind corner, not when passing through a crowded town and the road is littered with pedestrians, livestock and rickshaws. Not even when the vehicle you’re attempting to overtake is speeding up to prevent you from doing so and a much larger vehicle is rapidly advancing towards you in the oncoming lane. Your aim at all times should be to get to your destination in as little time as possible, whilst showing as little regard for other road users as is feasible without damaging your vehicle/killing someone.

This leads us to the second most important principle of driving in this country: show no consideration for others. Considerate driving will be seen as a sign of weakness, and others will rush to take advantage of it. So if a vehicle is, for instance, turning off the road, do not slow down or – god forbid – stop until the vehicle has cleared your path. Hell no. Just maintain your speed, swerve into the opposite lane and use your horn to communicate your extreme displeasure at such an inconvenience. Likewise, if there is a blockage of some kind in your lane, don’t hesitate to swing out into the other lane in order to overtake, even if this means driving on the wrong side of the road for several kilometres and forcing tens of other vehicles into the verge: in such a situation, you’ll have the element of surprise, especially if you use your horn to announce your presence, so other drivers will clear the way for you.

Now that you have these two principles firmly in mind, we can turn to advice for specific road situations.

Overtaking
Overtaking is a necessity on roads in Bangladesh. Whether it’s due to overladen lorries, broken down buses or out of control cows, you will need to overtake if you are to get further than 200 metres. When overtaking, do not let oncoming traffic intimidate you. One of you will, in all likelihood, be able to swerve out of the way at the last minute, and the faster you go and the more you use your horn, the less likely it is that it will be you who is reduced to this humiliation.

Traffic jams
Being able to deal with traffic jams is an essential skill, given the omnipresence and intractability of jams on Bangladesh’s choked roads. Road users must be prepared to deal with them head on, rather than mincing along patiently as one might feel obliged to do in the UK. No – a rather different approach is required if you are not to spend the majority of your day sitting in a traffic jam, drowning in your own sweat whilst acrid CNG smoke fills your lungs. Probably the commonest response to this is the frequent and demonstrative use of your horn. It may not make the traffic move any faster, but it will leave fellow drivers in no doubt as to your status on the roads. Another commonly observed response to traffic jams is ‘pavement driving’, which can be broadened to include squeezing your vehicle into any possible space in the vicinity of the road itself. Whether this is a filling station forecourt, a sewage ditch or a roundabout, this manoeuvre should be used whenever possible. Even if it ultimately slows down the flow of traffic, at least no-one will take you for a sucker.

Speed bumps
For vehicles with suspension: Speed bumps may damage your suspension, so you shouldn’t take them at full speed unless it’s absolutely necessary. Instead, speed up as you approach them, slam on the brakes at the last minute, and floor the accelerator as soon as your rear wheels are clear. This is a tried and tested method for losing as little time as possible in the name of protecting your vehicle, while ensuring maximum discomfort for any passengers.


For vehicles without suspension: proceed as normal.

Ambulances
Do not slow down or move aside to allow an ambulance to pass. After all, you don’t know if it’s a real ambulance with a patient in a life and death situation inside, or a truck full of officials on ‘emergency export duty’. Proceed as normal.

Speed limits
What speed limits?

Traffic police
For drivers of large vehicles (private car, bus, lorry etc): proceed as normal

For drivers of rickshaws and CNGs (in which you, as the driver, are physically exposed): do as they direct you, however counterintuitive it may appear. In situations involving traffic police, do not try to go against the grain: you may receive a good beating with a wooden stick in return for your obstinacy.

Pedestrians
If you are reading this as a future pedestrian on a Bangladeshi road, please bear in mind that you are without a doubt the lowest form of life on the road, and will be treated in accordance with your status in the food chain.

When crossing roads: use a slightly elevated hand to signal to the oncoming wall of traffic that you wish them to slow down. This is a surprisingly effective gesture in most cases. Don’t feel reassured? Take comfort in the fact that while the road traffic accident fatality rate is sixty per 10 000, one of the world’s highest, only 75% of these fatalities are pedestrians (according to this report, road traffic accidents are on the rise, while fatalities bloomed by 400% between the early 1980s and 2005).


Disclaimer
The author neither encourages road travel by any means in Bangladesh, nor accepts liability for any mishaps encountered whilst in transit.

Bangladeshi Baburchi

At the risk of sounding like a complete wuss, until today, I had yet to cook any meat in Bangladesh. Instead, I’ve happily existed on a diet of vegetables, pulses, rice, noodles and the occasional deep fried bread (okay, it’s not occasional, it’s more like a habit). Don’t get me wrong, I’m no vegetarian – I’ll eat meat that others have cooked for me with relish – but the idea of going to the slaughter house and actually purchasing the meat has always seemed like one challenge too many.

Picture it: a tin roofed shed, seemingly designed to ensure that the interior temperature is significantly higher than that outside. Enormous hunks of cow, strung up from the rafters, always a strange purple colour and invariably dotted with fat flies. It’s such a far cry from Sainsbury’s convenient polystyrene packed ‘steak’, or Marks and Spencer’s’ individually wrapped chicken breasts, that I – with my sheltered English life – don’t have the first clue where to begin. I don’t even know the names for the different parts of a cow, for instance. Pathetically inexcusable, yes, although I hope for others who have always bought their meat clinically separated from the animal of origin, understandable. It’s not that I’m particularly squeamish about the thought of my dinner coming from a once living and breathing animal. The only reason for vegetarianism that I’ve ever found seriously convincing is the environmental impact argument. It’s just that the whole business of buying, cooking and keeping meat has always felt a bit too much here. You might call it sheer laziness, in fact.

I have, however, managed to overcome this hurdle today. Not by seizing the bull by the horns (literally), and marching down to the slaughter house to buy me some beef. Oh no. Rather, I’ve totally dodged my underlying issues and taken my landlady up on her kind offer to buy my meat for me.

So today I had my first experience of cooking beef in the Bangladeshi style. And it’s amazingly simple! The beef comes ready chopped, so all you do is give it a good wash, bung it in a pan with a load of herbs and spices, a sickening amount of oil and salt, add some water and boil it for about half an hour. Then, hey presto, you’re done. Easy.

The only slight drawback is that I think my landlady was rather optimistic about how much meat I can consume, and – rather worryingly – I now have a kilogram of beef curry to consume before it goes off.

So please excuse me while I go back to gorging myself on red meat. There’s no time to lose.

A room of one's own

Having lived here for a year now, I can safely say that one of the best things about living in Parbatipur is having my own flat.. I mean, sure, I’ve had my own room before, but this doesn’t have quite the same potential for dancing around in one’s underwear, say, or being a ginormous slob and not cleaning up after myself for days at a time (you can make a mess in one room, then close the door and pretend it doesn’t exist! Magic. Until the ants force you back in to straighten things out, that is). So it has been with great pleasure that I have discovered, like so many before me, the joys of living solo.

However, as in so many things, the Bangladeshi context is filled with idiosyncrasies and surprises. I’ve written a lot already about how the concepts of privacy and personal space are understood rather differently here. Privacy, for instance, does not cover things like bowel movements or intimate medical conditions, although it does apply to ankles and décolletage (if you’re a woman, of course). Personal space does not apply to one’s home in any sense, and really only begins a few inches from your body if people are feeling really interested in you.

I’ve become accustomed, consequently, to being barged aside the moment I open the front door, and standing idly by as whoever has come a-calling gives their brother’s wife’s sister’s son’s daughter a grand tour of my home – which naturally will include a running commentary on me and my life and all the hilarious things I’ve ever done (forgetting my purse when going to the bazaar, getting to the bottom of my stairs before realizing I’m not wearing an orna, leaving a bag of spinach outside my door all night because that’s where I put it down when opening the door, etc, etc).

Despite what I think is my enormous flexibility and adaptability in the face of what some might term an assault (not me though), things have stepped up a level of late: last week, my good friend Lily actually broke her way into my flat in her eagerness to see me.

I hadn’t been feeling well for a few days, so had decided to ignore the knocking. I knew it’d be one of my neighbours, and I couldn’t be bothered to make small talk about our respective lunches, so decided this was as good a time as any to reassert some boundaries (something I’ve been meaning to do for a while. Seriously, jumping up from whatever I’m doing every five minutes to talk about the weather or dinner, or to be force fed misti has been getting to me a bit recently). However, this grand plan was to be in vain.

I sat on my bed, valiantly trying to read my book as the knocking persisted for ten solid minutes. And it wasn’t a continuous, regular sound that might easily fade into the background. Oh no! There was some straight forward knocking, a lot of serious-sounding thumping, and even a bit of rattling thrown in for variety. My patience began to wear thin. I was just fixing to march over, throw open the door and demand to know what imminent disaster necessitated this barrage in perfectly fluent Bangla (yeah, ok, maybe not the last part), when I heard the familiar clatter of the bolt dropping on my door.

Peering rather apprehensively around my bedroom door, I saw Lily framed in the doorway, glaring at me. What was I doing, she demanded to know, that meant I couldn’t answer the door? Furiously, I mumbled something about taking a bath. Sadly, this brilliant piece of subterfuge didn’t seem to take her in, perhaps because I was standing there fully dressed, book in hand. Anyway. It transpired that the house was not in fact burning down, and no-one was in dire need of any assistance that an unskilled bideshi might be able to offer. No. The big emergency was cake. Lily and Tarra were making cake, and I simply had to go and partake. Sighing in defeat, I threw on an orna and sloped after Lily.

As perturbed as I was by this incident, I have decided to press ahead with this reassertion of boundaries thing, and now only answer the door if I’m not in the middle of doing something else fairly urgent. Slowly, I think the message is getting through, and the knocking is getting less persistent. However, I don’t think anyone quite understands why I’m not answering: I’ve caught wind of several speculative conversations that there’s a problem with my hearing, and perhaps I should get my door bell fixed (hell, no!).

On a related point, now that I have my own place to take pride in, I’m becoming somewhat house proud. One of the things I’m enjoying about this is inviting people to tea, and trying to return (on a small scale) the staggering hospitality that I’ve been shown here. Adjusting to being a host in Bangladesh is proving to be a little challenging, unfortunately. For instance, I’ve never been able to get used to the practice that the host does not eat with the guests – rather as a guest, you are waited upon and watched as you eat. When it’s my turn to be host, I’m not particularly good at doing that: when other people are eating cake, I want to eat cake too!

But this is not the biggest challenge, however. The biggest challenge has been getting used to my guests throwing their food waste onto various inappropriate surfaces (the floor, the table, the work surfaces in the kitchen, all spring to mind). I know that it’s a different culture, I know that nothing is meant by it, but it doesn’t stop me wanting to shriek, in a manner rather reminiscent of a harpy, “what the hell are you doing?” or: “there’s a bin right there!”

The plague

My chilled-out Friday evening was shattered this week by the plague that seems to have descended on Parbatipur of late. Not locusts (not quite) but swarms of tiny bright green biting flies that cover the light bulbs and the walls until the blue paint becomes bright green and the light is muted to an unearthly glow.

I was sitting at my computer on Friday evening, minding my own business, when I became gradually aware that I’d been flicking a growing number of insects off my screen, and picking a growing number of insects from between the keys.

Then I looked up and almost had a heart attack. It was like something out of the Bible. They were everywhere, covering the wall around my light, zooming across the room from one bulb to the next. In the thick of things sat Gertrude, my resident gecko pal. She’s a bit of a fatty, so I can always recognise her, and she was having an absolute feast on the insects. We have an arrangement, me and her: she can stay so long as she eats all the bugs. But even she was overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of insects.

At this point, I did the only thing possible: I ran around my flat shrieking for a bit, then, remembering the neighbours and the inevitable amused curiosity that would follow, switched to cursing quietly. I tried switching off the lights, but the feeling of insects in my hair as they left their positions beside the bulbs was too much to bear.

Then I got out my bug killer spray. I was a little reluctant to do this, given Gertrude’s presence up there, but she wouldn’t heed the tea towel that I waved vaguely at her in warning (I’m afraid to touch her, lest her tail should fall off. I’d hate to be responsible for her losing her tail.) Anyway, I should have got out my umbrella as well the spray, because as soon as I started spraying it, the little shites started dropping like a soft green rain.

At this, I offed the lights and fled from my flat. My neighbours looked very intrigued to see me bolting onto the landing and stand panting beside the safely closed door as if I’d just shut a peckish wild cat in there.

Luckily, Meena had invited me to have dinner at her house so down I went. To discover that there was not one green insect in her house. I tried to convey my incredulity and ask how she had evaded the plague, but my Bangla really isn’t up to that, so I just got some raised eyebrows and concerned looks.

When I got back to my flat after dinner, I was faced with a scene worthy of the Somme (had small bright green biting insects been involved). So I spent the rest of the evening sweeping up their carcasses as best I could, removing the detritus of my cull and feeling a little sickened by how their bodies kept writhing in the dustpan.

VSO envy

As a VSO volunteer, it’s nice to have a network of other VSO volunteers who are serving in different countries. It’s nice to hear how they’re getting on, compare notes on the frustrations of daily life as a volunteer, and bitch about programme offices (only occasionally, of course…).

It’s nice, that is, until you see their photos of nights out in clubs in Phnom Penh, or hear tales of weekends spent on golden beaches in Mombasa, or read tweets about lunchtime swims in Vanuatu. Then, a small, mean part of you thinks: you’ve drawn a dud hand.

It’s not that I don’t like Bangladesh. I do like it in many ways, and there’s a lot of good things about working here. But there’s a definite shortage of night clubs, golden beaches and ocean swimming. Not that these things are essential, of course, but they would be nice every now and again.

I mean, yes, we have our occasional big nights out, our occasional house parties. We even do tequila slammers if we’re feeling particularly racy.

But, sometimes, I just can’t shift the niggling feeling that I’m missing out on something. Even the ‘most hardcore’ prize that we’ve modestly awarded ourselves here feels like a hollow accolade at times. (Apparently, someone once said that if you can live in Bangladesh and survive it, you can live anywhere in the world. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard this amongst the expat community, but it doesn’t really feel like compensation anymore).

Ah well, enough moping around. I’d better get back to my wild night of chopping vegetables and cooking rice in the dark. Rave on, rave on.

Being brought back down to earth

This confession does not make me feel proud, but yesterday I may have had a bit of a tantrum. Actually, I had a lot of a tantrum. It began with exasperated sighing. It progressed to stalking. And then there was the throwing of personal items onto the ground… Like I said, I’m not proud.

It all started because of the rain, really. It had been disgustingly, drippingly hot for weeks in Parbatipur, then all of a sudden, at about 2 o’clock yesterday afternoon, the heavens opened and it didn’t cease to pour until the next morning.

Unfortunately for me, this reduced my options for getting home. Walking was ruled because I’d chosen yesterday to wear white (a rather lame reason, I know). Taking a rickshaw, my usual choice, was also ruled out because apparently going out in the first rains after a long dry spell is dangerous for one’s health. (Incidentally, I think it was this little pearl of wisdom that started to get my back up… I mean seriously!?)

Anyway. Not to fear, Mahabub told me. He’d give me a lift. I just had to wait ten minutes.

Now, I know in the grown up part of my mind that I really should’ve been grateful for his kind offer. But I was functioning in the teenage part, clearly. I rolled my eyes. I felt a suffocating frustration settling onto me, somewhat like a wet duvet being dumped on my body.

You see, I’ve heard this “just ten minutes” before. It usually comes just before a mind-numbing 45 minutes (at the very least) of me being told to sit, sit, on the pretence of gossiping, while whoever it is I’m waiting for fannies about inanely with some vital piece of work that could quite frankly be done in five minutes tomorrow morning.

However, I tried to be optimistic. I waited fifteen minutes, then got my stuff together and went to find Mahabub. He was sitting at the computer in his office. He looked up at me apprehensively (you see, we’ve been here many times before). Apparently, the Project Coordinator has asked him to stay a little longer to help him with some vital piece of work which apparently could not be done tomorrow.

This triggered the exasperated sighing.

Mahabub, being sadly used to this behaviour on my part, said he’d go and talk to the PC.

I said “Fine” (in that way that 14 year olds have, which is meant to demonstrate that it is most certainly not fine), and stalked back to my office. Mahabub and the PC were having an agitated conversation in Bangla, glancing nervously at me from time to time, in the way that you might glance at a rabid dog that is still at a safe distance but might hurl itself at your jugular at any moment.

In a brief moment of rationality, I decided to accept my fate and do something useful with my time. However, my laptop currently takes about 30 minutes to boot up, and connecting to the internet takes at least another fifteen. Glowering all the while, I switched the computer on and sat down to wait for it. I could feel my blood pressure rising. The wet duvet was getting heavier. That’s when I threw the laptop bag onto the floor.

Unfortunately, Mahabub is wise to my moods. He turned from his conversation with the PC, and gave me a quite withering stare.

“It fell,” I mumbled, or something to that effect, my cheeks reddening. (Again: not proud).

Eventually, he managed to extricate himself from whatever vital task he had been given, and we set off in the rain, which had – rather fittingly I thought – began to pour.

The rage began to lift as soon as Mahabub insisted that I use my umbrella. This doesn’t sound too amusing until you realise I was sitting on the back of a motorbike. He had me holding it above our heads, angled against the rain, rather like a Roman shield braced against a shower of arrows. God knows how he could see the oncoming traffic.

By the time we’d made it through the mud and out of Haldibari, I couldn’t remember why I’d become so worked up. There was a fresh wind blowing – admittedly lashing rain into our eyes – but it was a welcome respite. The paddy fields flashing past looked clean and bright.

As we cruised into town, Mahabub began a serious conversation. I knew it was serious because he always begins such conversations with my name.

“Joshphin,” he said over his shoulder.

“Yes?” I responded gaily, tantrum forgotten.

“What was your problem just now in office? I think you are angry, maybe?”

“No, no…” I muttered, searching for a plausible excuse. “I’m just a bit… tired,” I finished, pathetically.

Mahabub eyed me disparagingly in the wing mirror.

“But you threw your bag onto the floor.”

(Oh the shame! The shame!)

“No, it, erm, fell…” I protested.

Again, the searching eye in the wind mirror.

“Okay, okay!” I gave in, “I threw it. I’m sorry. I don’t know why, I was just… feeling… impatient.” I felt ridiculous. Guilty and ridiculous.

At this, Mahabub snorted. Bangladeshi people, not just him, don’t seem to get impatient.

“You know, Joshphin. Sometimes I think to beat you,” he said, and laughed like a drain at his own hilarity.

I think my indignant laughter might have been taken too seriously, because he quickly added: “But softly, of course!”

And I was laughing all the way home.

Lesson for the day: Take a deep breath and count to ten? Grow up? Ideas on a postcard please!

Narrative Structure...

… is massively lacking in this blog of late. Extreme business and a dash of utter indolence have combined to make me a terrible blogger. Perhaps a blog doesn’t need narrative structure, but the gaping holes in this one have been preying on my mind of late. So, I’m going to attempt to give you a potted history of my last few months to put my mind at ease, if nothing else.

So what have I actually been doing with myself for the last six months? I hear you cry. My hearing is fairly optimistic – that anyone might actually care what I’ve been doing…

Anyway, my main occupation since about April has been being in charge of a research project about indigenous rights and local governance issues, which I’ve been conducting for VSO Bangladesh. (Reading that back, it sounds quite flashy, really. If only the reality were as glamorous…).

I’ll gloss over all the issues there have been with this project – partly because I don’t want to get done for libel, partly because I don’t want to bore you all to tears, and partly because it just thinking about it makes my blood boil still… no, instead I’ll focus on the positives: I got all-expenses paid travel to the best parts of Bangladesh (the Chittagong Hill Tracts); I’ve learned incredible amounts; and I got to be in charge of a fairly massive project (a chilling thought, I know).

It wasn’t exactly a 4 month party, but I’ll share with you some of the highlights, some of the larks from the field work (because frankly, what came after the field work – data entry, data analysis, report writing etc – was duller than dull).

- The one where it took me and Tonni (an VSOB intern who worked with me on this and was just generally wonderful throughout) ten hours and five different forms of transport to do a journey that should have taken four hours and one simple bus. Note that we also had a ludicrous surfeit of bags, boxes and paperwork with us, which only added to our woes).
- The one where VSOB decided to double the geographical scope of the project, but not to extend the deadline (and I still had to fight to get support from other volunteers on the project).
- The one where the train was late.
- The one where the train was late.
- The one where the train was late.
- The one where the train was late (etc, etc, ad nauseum)
- The one where the rainy season started and everything I owned started to rot.
- The one where my favoutire sandals went so mouldy that they had to be thrown away.
- The one where our room in Rangamati became a totally and utterly disgusting pigsty. Three girls, ten bags, a lot of laziness. Add to this the start of the rains, and you can see why things went mouldy.
- The one where a lizard the size of my arm took up residence next to our bed. It was blue and red and just wholly unnatural. And the cheeky sod kept coming back night after night. This might have had something to do with the state of the aforementioned room, however…
- The one where we stood in a waterfall fully clothed, then nearly froze to death when we got caught by a storm in the middle of the Kaptai lake.
- The one where I nearly curled into a little ball and howled at the thought of having to sit through another focus group discussion of which I could understand only enough to become convinced that everyone was making a dreadful hash of it and talking about completely the wrong things in completely the wrong way.
- The on where we caught between buses in a rain storm in Chittagong. The ten bags and three umbrellas didn’t really help us out much.
- The one where we went on the highest road in Bangladesh! Admittedly it’s not that high, but still – I’d lived the last ten months without seeing so much as a hillock, so I found it quite thrilling.
- The one where Megan got appendicitis.


All in all, it was a bit of an adventure. Although I learned a lot and had a lot of laughs, it’ll be a while before I’ve got the strength to do something like this again…

My screen debut (04/08/09)

Yes, my friends, it’s true. The time has finally come when the rest of the world has been forced to recognize my prolific acting talents. After all these years of labouring in the shadows, an unrecognized genius, an unsung hero, I have been catapulted onto the world stage. The moment has finally come for international stardom…

Well. Sort of. If, by ‘prolific acting talents’ you mean, ‘not being able to act in any way, yet agreeing to do it just for the larks,’ and by ‘world stage’ you mean, ‘the world of Bangladeshi tele-film’, then you might be slightly closer to the position I found myself in this week.

I was in the VSO office one day, beavering away as usual, when Martin, the administrative assistant and general saviour of VSO, came in and asked if I had a minute. Of course I had a minute, I always have a minute for Martin, so off I went. He introduced me to a very beautiful and glamorous friend of his, whose husband is a famous writer-director in Bangladeshi showbiz. This woman had a proposal for me: her husband was currently shooting a movie for Eid (an Islamic holiday, which has roughly the same status as Christmas does in the UK, and is around 22nd September this year), and was in need of a bideshi to do a bit-part. I was intrigued, of course, but explained that I have absolutely NO acting skills whatsoever. It would be no big deal, she assured me – a couple of lines, nothing more, it’d only be three or so hours on the set. And so I agreed to go to her home the next day for iftar, to take a look at the script and make my decision.

On seeing the script, I immediately had some reservations. Not about the content or the character – I was to play an official in the Germany, but more on that later – but about the ‘couple of lines.’ I only saw my section of the script, because the rest was in Bangla, but it was five full pages of dialogue long. Four separate scenes, three a couple of minutes long and one about seven minutes long. Again, I tried to protest: I don’t have any acting experience past GCSE drama, and even then I was at best unremarkable, and at worst, pretty rubbish. However, they only heard ‘drama GCSE’ and that was it: they were convinced I would be the next Kate Winslet.

Quashing my nerves and skepticism about my ability to do what they were asking, I agreed to do it. Why not? I was flattered to be asked, of course, but mainly dead curious to have a peek at the world of Bangladeshi telefilm. I’d seen several of these telefilms – they’re inescapable on buses and at other people’s houses – and generally found them a bit of a hoot. The acting is generally a bit clichéd anyway, so I thought, what the hell? The worst that would happen is that I’d show up, be clearly so awful that they’d have to politely ask me to leave and find someone else with a modicum of talent.

And that’s how I found myself on a Saturday morning, sitting in a makeup artist’s chair, having bright orange foundation swabbed onto my face and my eyebrows drawn on in what appeared to be charcoal. Given that it was Saturday morning, I was also obviously doing battle with a fairly serious hangover and about two hours of sleep (with my English sense of timekeeping, when the director said, we’ll be you up at 9am, I thought he actually meant he’d pick me up at nine. At 10am, I was still swigging oral rehydration salts and cursing Bangladesh).

There were a lot of people there that morning, makeup artists, camera men, lighting and sound technicians, and the usual proliferation of designation-less assistants (and bar the extremely beautiful lead actress, myself and the director’s wife, they were all men. Apparently it’s because of the late hours – women can’t do it because it’s not safe. The actresses’ mothers all showed up at dusk so they could chaperone.) I was introduced to everyone, then promptly forgot everyone’s names and spent them rest of the day calling them all bhai or apa. The lead actors – hero and heroine they call them here – were both very good looking and perfectly polite, although I got the impression they thought of me as nothing but a young upstart. With my hangover face on, I wanted to slip through a crack in the floor when the heroine emerged from the changing room in the most beautiful sari I’ve ever seen, looking glossy and radiant.

First things first, I got whisked out to go and buy appropriate clothes. They’d asked my to bring formal office wear to be used as a costume, so I’d had to explain that all I have are shalwar kameez. So off we went on the most extravagant shopping spree I’ve ever witnessed in Bangladesh. Money was no object, clearly, as it was insisted I needed a different pair of earrings for every scene, despite the fact they’d already decided I’d be wearing my hair down. Shame the director’s idea of what constitutes formal officer wear had to include synthetic shirts in four drab colours (brown and maroon, for instance!), and high heeled shoes with diamante bows on them. I decided not to ask any questions and just do as I was told.

The actual filming wasn’t as bad as I’d imagined. I’d spent the previous day lounging beside the Bagha pool, learning my lines, so at least I didn’t have to worry about that. I got horribly nervous at first, however, and it took a couple of takes before I relaxed enough to not look as if my face was made out of wood. But then it was fine. I just completely forgot that the camera was there, and the nerves went away. Still, it was amazing how many different angles they have to shoot it from, and how many times you have to say the same things in exactly the same way.

The next day, I had to go back again after work, to film the final scene. My character was a ball-busting customs official, who suspects the hero of foul play when he’s applying for a visa to visit Germany. The previous scenes were all supposed to be at the German embassy, as the hapless fool tries different ways to persuade me to give him a visa. The final scene, however, is when I visit him at his home (shot in a beautiful apartment in Gulshan). I’m visiting because I don’t believe he really has a wife, and find out that he’s actually arranged a contract marriage in order to get a visa (apparently, a fairly common practice). So the scene involves such classic lines as “I’m sorry, sir, but you have to face the law” and (to the police) “Take him away!”

No, I didn’t get paid and yes, there was lots of frustrating waiting around with nothing to do, but it was a lark! I don’t think I’ve got a future in Dhallywood (Bangladeshi Bollywood), or anywhere else that would involve acting (although the director did ask if he could call me again if he needed another bideshi), but I’m glad I did it this time. Certainly makes a change from life as a volunteer!

On a final note – the film is showing on Eid day, in about 3 weeks, and yes I will most definitely get a copy and you can all see what I look like with charcoaled eyebrows and a bright orange face.

Roza (25/08/09)

Walking home from drinks with a friend this evening (non-alcoholic, of course), I happened to be passing my local mosque at the time of evening prayers. Usually, this is a pretty quotidian affair, nothing to shout about really, just a bunch of men praying. Today, however, on the third day of Ramadan, Islam’s holy month, the mosque was so packed that worshippers spilled out onto the surrounding streets, kneeling to pray in the dust. Outside, the cafes and restaurants that had all day been churning out deep fried sweets and deep fried vegetables, were struggling to manage their hungry queues of people waiting to take iftar. Within minutes of the azan, the stalls had been stripped bare. After going almost sixteen hours without eating or drinking, they ate, they prayed, then they went home to their families to eat some more.

As white-capped men thronged onto the streets around me, carrying colorful packages and grease-stained packets, you could almost smell the relief and celebration in the air, mingling with the scent of frying aubergines and hot sugar. Everywhere I looked, men in their best were chowing down with their friends or hurrying home to their families.

And I was completely alone.

Until you experience a religious festival like Ramadan completely from the outside, it’s difficult to imagine how isolating it can feel. Sure, you see people observing Ramadan in the UK, but it’s a totally different story when everyone around you is fasting then enjoying iftar, and you are not. With the majority of my colleagues observing roza (fasting), I’d be feeling guilty at lunchtime as I ate my rice and dal. Walking home today, I decided that this combination of guilt and isolation really would not do, and thus my roza experiment was conceived.

3am Got up dutifully when my alarm went off. Reheated the khichuri I’d cooked the night before. Made some toast too, so it was a real carb fest. Had palmed to have tomatoes on the toast, and an apple for vitamins, but at 3am it was all I could do to tip the khichuri into a pan and stir it.

3:35am Stumble back to bed feeling pretty dazed and confused.

4:10am Realise that my first attempt at fasting has been jeopardized by the confusion surrounding ‘digital’ and ‘old’ time. I’d set my alarm for 3am having been told by my Parbatipur neighbours that 3am was seheri, the time for eating before morning prayers. Unfortunately, it transpired that they were referring to 3am OLD time (i.e. the time before the clocks went forward – see later post for time-related capers…), which is actually 4am digital time, and therefore the time by my watch. So just as I’m drifting off again, I hear the mosque begin to blare: “Time to eat, time to eat.” I think even in my addled state of mind, I managed to roll my eyes. Then later a while later, “Stop eating, stop eating.” I groaned. Then later still, the bloody call to prayer, which must be an extra-special bumper edition of the usual rendition, because it seemed to go on forever. Finally drifted off again, to have some very disturbed dreams, thanks to all the glucose that’s now haring around my system.

8:30am Roll out of bed. Feeling very disoriented. Stomach feels decidedly odd – maybe it’s as confused as my brain is at having eaten an unusually large meal in the middle of the night. I take a shower and feel a little more with it. Am lost for something to do, to fill the pre-work minutes. Breakfast so handily fills in this otherwise useless time. Decide to get down to some work to take my mind off food.

9.30am Just had a bought of what might well be called ‘loose motion’. Great stuff. My experiment is going well so far.

9.53am First stomach rumblings. Oh dear. Still over nine hours to go…

10.15am Starting to get the shakes. Really can’t concentrate on data entry.

10.43am After four out of six data sets entered, need a little lie down.

11.15am It’s really hard to know what to do when data entry-related boredom sets in. Normally, I’d just eat!

1pm Have arrived at the office and can’t help myself but moan about how hungry I am. A good Muslim would never do this, of course, but food is all I can think about. When I tell my colleagues that I am also ‘in roza’, as they say, they first look at me like I’m a little crazy, then they all think it’s utterly hilarious. I smile weakly and go and have a little sit down.

3.30pm Feeling pretty spacey. Having spent quite a frantic afternoon in the office, sending emails, searching for missing data sets etc etc, I’m a little bit exhausted. Also, feeling very hot despite the AC. Is that to do with dehydration? My self-cooling system is no longer working because there’s no cooler left? Who knows. Should have listened harder in biology. Trying to explain the intricacies of data entry/data analysis to Tonni, I start to feel like I might pass out.

3.50pm I’ve given in. Had to go and get a covert glass of water. Within minutes, I’m feeling better, clearer-headed, cooler, calmer… Try to tell myself it’s okay, I’m not used to the Bangladeshi climate, so it’s alright for me to drink water. Not sure what Allah would think of that, though…

4.15pm Only three hours to go now. Not actually feeling too hungry. Still banging it out with the data entry.

6.40pm Miraculously, still not hungry! Need some bloody water though. Going to meet Mahaboub for iftar now. Roll on the fried goods and sugar!

7.10pm Searching for a restaurant that meets Mahaboub’s exacting standards. Despite not feeling hungry, I’m not too steady on my feet. Never thought twenty minutes could feel so long. Worryingly, all the hotels seem to be full of people sitting in silence with full plates in front of them, waiting for 7.22pm, and the azan.

7.30pm At last, iftar! What a delight. Finally found a hotel that had two free chairs (admittedly, on opposite sides of the room, but who’s complaining when there’s food to be had?). Had to do some aimless wandering for twenty minutes, as I didn’t really trust myself to sit in close proximity to food and not eat. The azan was playing on the radio as we stumbled in and take our seats, and it’s quite a spectacle to behold. The hotel we (finally) lighted upon was a fast food shwarma café on Mirpur road, with tempting spit roasting chickens and doner kebab outside, and strip lighting, plastic chairs and off-putting photographs of fast food inside. It was also packed to the gills, yet utterly silent, save for the sound of hungry people eating. We ordered shwarma, which is chicken kebab rolled up in a flat bread with salad and some unidentifiable sauce. I never knew shwarma could taste so good, but it did. Twice.

8.30pm Finally get back to my flat. Stomach is still a bit uncomfortably full, but I make myself tea, and crack open a packet of biscuits and curl up to watch ‘The English Patient’.

9.15pm Time for bed. I’m exhausted. As I drift off to sleep, I smile smugly that I won’t be getting up at 4am again. At least not tomorrow, anyway.

A small mystery

Travelling to and from Dhaka over the last few days, I stumbled upon something quite curious. In the roadside hotel that the bus stopped in, the old glass bottle placed on my table for drinking water caught my eye. Although the bottle’s label was long gone, there was something familiar about the logo impressed on the glass – some kind of coat of arms, perhaps – but something I had definitely seen before. Then I looked at the bottle on the neighbouring table, where a scrap of label still stubbornly clung to the glass. Just three letters remained, but I realised what I was looking at. The washed out red ‘-off’ that remained was instantly recognisable to me: it was an old vodka bottle. Glancing around the room I saw that each of the fifty-odd tables was graced with a similar glass bottle as a centre piece. Different brands, different sizes, but all vodka.

Now tell me. In a country like this, where alcohol is officially frowned upon, where does such a supply come from? How did fifty old vodka bottles wind up in this little service station, bang in the middle of nowhere? And more importantly, why has no-one let me in on this little secret?

Green mangoes (17/5/09)

I’ve been waiting for mango season since I got here, and it is with GREAT pleasure that I’d like to inform you all I enjoyed my first mango of the season the other day. Mmmhmmm.

However, perhaps more excitingly, I also tried green mango for the first time yesterday. For a long time, I’d heard talk of these green mangoes. Some spoke of them reverentially, with glowing eyes and salivating mouths. Others spoke more disdainfully, dismissing them as ‘women’s food’. Some of my male colleagues were even ruthlessly teased when they confessed to being fans. Of course, this led to many a heated argument about gender stereotyping amongst my colleagues, and a great deal of curiosity on my part as to what all the fuss was about.

Green mangoes are basically just normal mangoes picked before they’re ripe, and served with lots of salt and red chilli. A lot of fruit here is served with salt and spices on it (watermelon, for instance) and usually I cannot abide it, despite my friends’ protestations that it just ‘brings out the sweetness’. Total rubbish. It makes the fruit taste foul. I definitely wasn’t expecting to be won over.

So I was pleasantly surprised to discover that, when it comes to green mangoes, the salt and chilli combination works like a charm. They go perfectly with the incredible sourness of the fruit, to make a lip-smacking, eye-watering snack (get the proportions slightly wrong, however, and you end up in physical pain, as happened today when some total amateur had clearly prepared our mango).

Luckily, there are dozens of mango trees outside the GBK office, now temptingly laden with slowly ripening mangoes. Unluckily, some big boss man has ruled that the mangoes should be left to ripen, and should not be eaten green.

Of course, this is not enough to put off a die-hard mango-fan such as I have become. I mean, the green mango season is short enough as it is, without any time-wasting tactics from the ‘management’. So in a quest for mango satisfaction, my friend Sarah and I have been perfecting our techniques for covert mango consumption. This involves sneaking over to the trees when everyone in the office is suitably distracted, spiriting the plucked fruit to the kitchen staff, then coming up with separate but simultaneous pretexts on which to visit the canteen.

Once there, we sit giggling and devour the fruit amid much wincing and smacking of lips, while the kitchen boy keeps watch.

This may sound like a lot of palaver but trust me: green mangoes are worth it.

Reflections from the Sonargaon Hotel (5th May 2009 )

The Sonargaon is one of Dhaka’s premier fancypants hotels. To a VSO volunteer like me – and to most of the population of Bangladesh – it’s the kind of place one can only dream of. Perhaps you hear stories of the wonders contained within, but the chance of your seeing them with your own eyes is slim to none.

So imagine my surprise when I found myself in the lobby of this very hotel, witness to the luxurious parallel world that it offers to those who can afford the (absolutely outrageously extortionate) prices.

It was an accident, really. Places like the Sonargaon are hardly on my radar in Dhaka, so far are they from my range of possibility. But I had a meeting to go to (discussing the legal system and violence against women in Bangladesh, don’t ya know), and the Sonargaon just happened to be the closest landmark. When I asked for the Sonargaon hotel, my CNG driver assumed I meant actually inside the hotel, and by the time I realised what was happening, it was too late to turn back (there’s a stupid one-way system and a lot of guards with rifles to enforce it). Then, the man outside hotel (you know, the one that opens the doors – I don’t even know the proper name for that) also assumed I was a guest and ushered me inside. I can only assume it was my bideshi status that made him think this – nothing else about my rumpled and sweaty appearance can possibly have given him that impression.

Now, I know I could have stopped this turn of events from unspooling at any point. I’m not saying I was a helpless victim who was forced into the Sonargaon, kicking and screaming. But I also didn’t plan to end up there. I want to make that clear. I’m not the kind of person who’d choose to hang out in such mindboggling dens of indulgence. I suppose there were a range of factors at work:
1. I was intrigued. I don’t think I’d ever been inside such a fancy hotel in my life before being swept into this one. The sight of the indoor fountain, the starched uniforms and the GRAND PIANO rendered me temporarily dumb, and sadly unable to protest as I was shown inside.
2. I was ninety minutes early for my meeting. I know, I know, quite ridiculous, but I didn’t have a clue where I was going and the traffic in this city is usually shocking.
3. I was flattered. Don’t think I don’t recognise my own pride. I was definitely flattered that anyone might think I belonged in such a place, despite my torn clothes and my dusty hair and the generally dishevelled appearance I cultivate here. If it had been England, I’d have been out on my ear in moments.

As soon as I came to my senses, however, I began to panic. My palms began to sweat, despite the powerful air conditioning. I knew I had to act as if I knew exactly where I was going, or there’d be suspicions. And so began Operation Blend In With The Ridiculously Privileged Crowd.

I spied a comfortable and thankfully empty seating area, and made a beeline for it. The ‘Guests Only’ sign nearly felled me as I strode towards the seat I had already selected (I have a schoolchild’s fear of signs and instructions), but my nerves held out. I’d chosen a seat a safe distance from the waiters’ station, but which also faced the main atrium of the hotel, so I could keep an eye out for any armed guards coming to escort me from the premises.

But the first person to approach me was a bow-tied waiter, who enquired if he could bring me anything. I smiled my sweetest smile, and told him I was waiting for a friend. I graciously accepted the menu he offered me, and let out a deep sigh of relief as he glided silently away.

After a few moments, when it appeared that I wasn’t going to be ejected from the building imminently, I began to relax and take in my surroundings. The lobby is all pale stone, polished to a high shine, and vases and vases of real orchids. The staff are legion, and all dressed in a theatrical array of different uniforms, presumably marking out their place in the pecking order. But the truly incredible thing – the thing that made my jaw drop in astonishment when I first stumbled through the doors – is the grand piano. A full-size grand piano sits in one corner of the lobby, being played by a small Bangladeshi man in a dinner jacket. The medley of songs he treats passing guests to is quite astounding, from Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata to a nineties boyband power ballad that I couldn’t quite identify (owing to my poor knowledge of pop music rather than his playing, of course).

The range of guests was intriguing. The majority seemed to be Middle Eastern businessmen, in expensive-looking shirts and dark sunglasses, talking quietly in groups around the lobby. Then there were the middle-aged white business men, marching through followed by porters toting briefcases and suitcases. I spied one white guy, in shorts and a multi-pocketed fisherman’s vest, who was almost definitely a journalist of some kind. The porter dragging the enormous tripod was a dead giveaway.

I couldn’t help but wonder at the kind of people who would use such a hotel. I mean, I know all the practical reasons of convenience and comfort, of course. But my brief perusal of the café menu informed me that a coke would set you back 115 taka, and a cup of tea 177. Although this might be cheaper than in England (that’s about £1.20 and £1.80), outside on the streets of Dhaka, coke is expensive, at maybe 40 taka, and tea is a snip at about 4 taka. Clearly only the very rich and the unhinged would come here. Perhaps there’s not much of a distinction between the two…

Although my fears – and my pretend telephone conversations with the ‘friend’ that I was meeting – proved unnecessary, and I was not unceremoniously booted out, I couldn’t help but wonder what the other people in the lobby thought of me. Perhaps because of the colour of my skin alone, people I assume I am a guest, one of them, the kind of person who belongs in that kind of hotel. That thought makes me a feel a little bit sick: I don’t want to be one of these people, I don’t want to be the kind of person who stays in such a bubble of luxury while outside there is both a lot more life and a lot more poverty. I’m guessing my ripped salwar, my dirty sandals and my chipped toenail polish are surely glaring signals that I’m not exactly five-star hotel material? But perhaps, the fact that I am a bideshi, that I come from the UK and can go back any time, (probably) get a decent job and live with the comfort of social security and an adequate salary my whole life sets me apart. Maybe – in fact probably – I am more like the people in the Sonargaon than those on the streets outside, and no amount of wishing will make it otherwise.

But then again, maybe my superb acting fooled them all. Those fake phone calls were the work of a genius, keeping all overly-attentive waiters at bay until it became clear that my ‘friend’ had been held up and I’d have to go and help him, and would be returning soon. Maybe my top-quality dissembling caught them all in a magnificent double-bluff, and the last laugh will be mine. I couldn’t say for sure, but I’m plumping for the last option.

The unbearable harshness of honesty (22nd April 2009 )

I came out of my house this morning, as I do every morning, and walked up the dirt track, past the goat pasture and the mosque, to Parbatipur’s main street. I was wearing a spanking new salwar kameez, fresh from Dhaka, with a racy new style (no sleeves!), and I’d even bothered to put make-up on that morning, despite the fact that, although it was only 8am, the sweat was already running off me. I was feeling pretty good this morning, let’s just say.

My friend Mahabub was waiting on his motorbike a short way down the road, as he does every morning. Now, he’s an awesome guy and I really would despair without him, but on this particular morning I came close to severing our friendship forever.

He took one desultory look at my glamorous new outfit and grimaced. My feel-good bubble trembled. When pushed for an explanation of this churlish behaviour, he informed me that my kameez was ‘so rubbish’ and that I should not wear it again. Ever. My bubble promptly burst

Although he eventually decided that it wasn’t so bad on closer inspection, it was too late for my self-esteem for that day.

Bluntness is one Bangladeshi trait that I simply cannot make my mind up about. I think Englishness wires you against it, so my kneejerk reaction is always discomfort and disapproval. But it can sometimes be endearing – if someone thinks you’re looking nice, they’ll definitely tell you about it. However, it can also be soul destroying. You know that when you are paid a compliment it is genuine only because you know that, if someone thinks you’re looking rough as a bear’s arse, they’ll also let you know. And there’s no cushioning of the blow.

The list of faults that have been pointed out about me is endless. Spots is a big one. If you have a spot, don’t think you’ll get away with everyone pretending not to see it and tactfully not commenting on it. Oh, no. Instead, the offending zit is immediately pointed out. Sometimes, you’ll get a loud “What is it?” which will be followed by a long discussion about why people get spots and how unfortunate it is that spots are so obvious on white skin. Sometimes, if you’re not quick on your feet, someone might even try to remove it for you.

Another favourite subject is teeth. I know the English aren’t famed for their shiny white teeth (I like to think it’s because we’re too strong to succumb to the pressures of the orthodontic industry), and I know my own teeth are far from perfect. But it can be demoralising to have the crookedness of your teeth pointed out to you in the middle of a meeting. Whilst you’re trying to deliver a presentation.

And then there’s weight. I’ve lost count of the number of times I smiled happily when someone told me I was looking ‘healthy’, as I tucked into a second helping of rice or my fourth paratha of the morning. Then a friend helpfully pointed out that ‘healthy’ is generally used to mean fat, and that maybe I had gained some weight since coming to Bangladesh? When I had to get a few of my kameez’s taken out at the tailors, there was lots of guffawing about all the rice and misti I must have been eating. I just rise above it all.

The list goes on. I’ve been given a pitying once over and told I’m looking ‘not so fresh’ on more than one occasion. I’ve been informed that, although sometimes I look very stylish, on this particular day, I have ‘no style at all’. I’ve been told that my hairstyle is rubbish, and that I should change it in order to please ‘the people who have to look’ at me. I don’t think there’s any aspect of my appearance that has not been criticised. But like I said. I rise above it.

The house of horrors (17/04/09)

My return to Parbatipur yesterday made me question why in the world I decided to come to Bangladesh in the first place. I was greeted by a veritable house of horrors, which I really must share with you (in expectation of full sympathy and many soothing noises). Let me guide you through my joyful return. As I do, try to imagine you’ve just spent the last two days on un-air conditioned buses, in punishing heat, alternately throwing up yourself and being vomited on my small children…

Exhibit number one: A mountain of crud beneath each window
Clearly, there had been a number of storms while I was away. The tell-tale sign is always the piles of dust, bits of twig, leaves, dead insects and pieces of tree that accumulate everywhere, although with particular concentration underneath the windows (even the ones you carefully remembered to close before you left).

Exhibit number two: Two lights left on
There was a blackout as I was leaving last week, and I thought I’d checked all the lights. Clearly not, however. This might not seem too horrifying, but think of the WASTE. Two lights left on for 10 days! I’m going to be held personally responsible when this country sinks as a result of climate change.

Exhibit number three: A bag of milk
I was ecstatic to discover that you can get UHT milk in Parbatipur. It comes in little plastic bags that say clearly on the outside something along the lines of: ‘No need to refrigerate until opened’. Yeah, right. Let me tell you, I’m going to be writing these companies a very strongly worded letter of complaint. There is every need to refrigerate before opening, because if you don’t, if you leave one of these innocuous-looking bags on the sideboard while you go away on holiday for 10 days, you may well come home to discover that they’ve mysteriously ruptured and leaked ALL OVER your kitchen, the leaked milk has naturally gone off and been set upon by a skin-crawling array of maggots, ants and cockroaches, and your flat is filled with the most disgusting smell imaginable.

A house of horrors, I tell you, horrors.

Exhibit number four: A fridge full of mouldy food
I didn’t say all of these horrors were not of my own making, did I? No? No. Good. So yes, I left half a banoffee pie and a bowl of defrosting tomato sauce and a partly-eaten cake in the fridge. And yes, I know that the power supply is limited at best. And yes, I also know that even with constant power all of these things aren’t likely to last 10 days without developing a nice rind of mould. I still reserve the right to be exasperated.

Exhibit number five: No gas
Once I have swept and scrubbed and wiped and gagged by way through the above, all I can think about is a nice cup of tea. Only to discover that my gas bottle has run out. Seriously God, not even a small break!?

Exhibit number six: Ants in my water filter
Failing a cup of tea, I decide to settle for a glass of water (it’s, like, 39 degrees outside). Only to discover that my water filter is full of cheeking sodding ants. How DARE they?! Tap water not good enough for them or something??

Exhibit number seven: Ants in my sugar
Surprise, surprise, the little chink in my sugar jar – the one that’s always been there but has so far evaded the ants – has been discovered and my sugar has been pillaged. I had to chuck it down the loo because I didn’t know what else to do.

Thank you for completing this short educational tour. For more information on becoming a VSO volunteer, please check out their website.

09/04/09 A scenic tour of Gazipur

For those of you who don’t know (and I’m sure the only people who know Gazipur are the ones unfortunate enough to live there), Gazipur is a noncommittal kind of place. It’s one of those faceless towns on the outskirts of Dhaka that kind of blend into one another as you travel out of the city, like a tiresome extension of the capital which you really don’t have time for.

Given this town’s less than enchanting nature, combined with the circumstances of my visit to it, my introduction to Gazipur could have been the sort of experience that breaks a person. After all, after a nine-hour journey in which, because the lights on the night train don’t switch off (wtf!?) and the AC in the AC compartment doesn’t work, and because you’ve been so surrounded by dodgy-looking guys that you’re too paranoid to do much more than sit nervously in your seat and try not to catch anyone’s eye lest they smile too familiarly and shout ‘You’re countree?’ in your face, you’ve not been able to sleep A WINK, no-one’s in their best state. Some would even say that, in such circumstances, you’re close to the edge. But I like to think of myself as an optimist.

I fell asleep on the aforementioned night train around 5.30am. It must have been sheer exhaustion, and the fact that, in desperation, I wrapped my scarf fully around my head so that no light (and no air) could penetrate. Anyway. When I awoke about an hour later, the train was pulling into a station. My thought process was somewhat disordered, owing to the lack of sleep and fresh oxygen beneath my scarf, but it went something as follows:
a) Although the sign said Joydevpur, and I didn’t recognise this, I knew that there were 2 stations in Dhaka and the two previous times I’d travelled by train I’d got off too late, therefore maybe this was the station I should be getting off at?
b) The lechy men were all leching again once they saw I was awake, so I didn’t want to ask them if this was the right stop.
c) I’m far too cool for school, so couldn’t seem like a confused, sleep-deprived bideshi who doesn’t really know where she’s going

So in a highly composed whirl (bearing in mind it was 6.30am and I’d had basically no sleep in the last 24 hours), I swept up my enormous, cumbersome bag and swept off the train. Oh so cool, oh so smooth. I’m sure everyone thought I knew exactly where I was going. I’m sure none of them were sniggering at me as I blundered into the middle of some forlorn, back-end-of-nowhere outskirt, wearing a sleep-deprived face, a rumpled shalwar kameez and toting an oversize backpack.

You might, therefore, say that pride led me to my fall into Gazipur. I’d prefer to put it down to my adventurous, go-getting spirit. But this is just speculation – let’s get back to the story…

By the time I’d discovered my error (a succession of exceedingly nice people helped me to the realisation that getting a CNG to Lalmatia was going to be something of a challenge, though none pointed out that I should just get back on the train, which stood in the station for a good ten minutes after I’d swept off it) it was too late. The train was pulling out of the station.

And that’s how I found myself taking a scenic tour of Gazipur, perched atop my overly large backpack, beside a very nice Garo (indigenous) man in the early morning light. And really, Gazipur isn’t that bad. It’s home to Bangladesh’s rice research institute, for instance. It has some lovely looking paint and cement shops. The Dhaka-Aricha highway bisects it, rather like an infected wound might bisect a not-so-healthy limb. The highway aside, it isn’t horrible – it just isn’t much to speak of. It’s probably not somewhere you’d be particularly chuffed to find yourself ever, let alone in adverse circumstances. But like I said, I’m an optimist.

When I found out that a bus to Mohakali (a place in Dhaka about half an hour from where I was supposed to be going) would take approximately two hours, I’ll admit, my optimism was somewhat challenged. And as the people piled onto the bus, the temperature climbed and the traffic slowed to a stutter, I began to wonder at what point it was okay for optimists to lose their rags.

An hour and three quarters later, we passed the station where I should have got off the train.

But then I realised that the bus was trundling through Bonani – only a ten minute ride from the glorious Bagha club. In other words, only ten minutes from a hot shower, a full English breakfast (with bacon!) and a dip in the pool. As I jumped off the bus and into a CNG I smiled smugly to myself. Even though I was a total prat, at least I was a prat who would soon be having a hot shower, a full English breakfast (with bacon!) and a dip in the pool.

The change of seasons 20/03/09

Last night, I woke around midnight and lay awake, trying to figure out what it was that had woken me.

After a few sleep-dazed moments, it hit me: instead of the usual nightsounds (trains passing, people talking, babies crying, termites chewing), I could hear nothing but the roaring of the wind. The wind! Usually (well, up until now, anyway), there isn’t any wind here. There might be the occasional pleasant breeze, but nothing that would qualify as actual wind. And this wasn’t any old wind – it was a full-on howling gale.

I jumped up and ran to my balcony, hoping it was raining (I’m longing to feel rain on my skin at the moment, it’s so dry and dusty here). Instead of rain, however, there was just the furious, relentless wind. I watched for a few seconds as the palm trees outside my bedroom, illuminated by the street lights, were lashed like something in TV news coverage of a faraway cyclone. Then all of a sudden, the power went off across town. Where moments before there had been palm trees flailing desperately against their windy assailants, there was suddenly nothing. Just the roaring wind and the dust it was picking up and wantonly redistributing.

For some reason, the sudden darkness and the relentless wind frightened me. I slammed the door to my balcony and dived back under my mosquito net, to bed. I lay there, breathing hard, watching the suggestion of lightning play across my ceiling and counting the seconds to the thunder. Eight seconds. Seven seconds. Outside, the corrugated iron of my neighbours roofs began to bang and whine. Eventually, lulled by the storm, I drifted off to sleep.

*

The next morning, everything looked pretty much the same, except for the fine layer of debris that had gathered beneath each of the windows I’d forgotten to close. Bits of banana leaf, twigs, scraps of plastic, heaps of dust. On the way to work, I looked out for signs of damage. A couple of trees now leaning at drunker angles than they had been the previous day. Piles of dead leaves already being swept up by women and children to use in cooking fires.

According to my colleagues, the storm was a mini-cyclone, and it damaged a lot of the flimsy corrugated iron houses of the poor. Apparently, such storms will be fairly common for the next two or three months – one characteristic of the new season. Bangladesh has 6 seasons, I believe, although I’m yet to get my head around the different ones. And the current season, the new one, is characterised by dryness, heat and sudden storms. Fun times ahead.

The Change of Seasons has taken on almost mythical significance for me here. For the last month or so, every slight headache or tiredness, every discomfort and major illness, has been blamed upon The Change of Seasons. While I can’t say I necessarily agree with this identification of cause and effect, it’s certainly true that the seasons are on the turn, and it’s all change here.

The mango orchards are in bloom, filling the air with an almost sickly sweetness. In just a few months, green mangoes will be ready for making pickle, and a few weeks after that the sweet mangoes will be ready for making daiquiris (I have great plans I tell you, great plans). Everywhere, the bright energy of new growth is juxtaposing itself against the dust-laden greyness of old. The paddy is every day more strident and irrepressibly green. In the heat of the afternoons, the cicadas are beginning to whir, and during the load-shedding blackouts that are growing more and more frequent, the cockroaches are multiplying like nobody’s business.

And then there is the heat. It’s gathering, day by day, like an old disused machine cranking up to speed. Each day is a squint brighter and a gasp more humid. The weather is hunkering down upon us, and I’m beginning to worry because there is going to be no escape.

The hills, the hills! 7th-9th March

Since I first learned that I’d be going to Bangladesh to work with indigenous peoples, I’ve had the fabulousness of the Chittagong Hill Tracts rubbed in my face. Everyone I got in touch with pre-departure either raved about just how much they loved it there, but how different it is to the rest of the country, or complained about the difficulties of living in the plains and how much better life is in the hill tracts. At the time, this made me a) panic that the most of the country, and more particularly, my would-be home, was some nightmarish place that would have to be endured rather than enjoyed, and b) green with envy at the tales of drinking and merriment that (apparently) is all that ever goes on there. Since arriving, I’ve realised that this is not really a fair picture: as I hope I’ve made clear, there’s lots to love about Bangladesh, and I’ve grown very fond of my little corner of the country. However, the tales of jungle juice and bamboo chicken that emanate from the hills via my esteemed colleagues who work there have remained highly intriguing, so you can imagine my delight when we managed to bully our programme manager into holding one of VSO’s jargon-filled workshops in Khagrachari (one of the three main towns in the CHT, and by all accounts heaven on earth… )

Now, a word about the CHT for the uninitiated: the hill tracts are a (surprise, surprise) hilly and forested (well, jungled really, but I’m not sure if this is an actual word) area in the south east of Bangladesh. Fairly cut off from the rest of the country save for a narrow strip of land around Chittagong city, the area borders Burma and some of the lesser-known states of India (such as tripura, which is also, interestingly, the name of one of the indigenous groups there) and is home to many of Bangladesh’s indigenous peoples. These indigenous communities are the most well-known both nationally and internationally, perhaps because they live in more discrete communities than the indigenous peoples of the plains and are more successfully maintaining their distinct cultures, or perhaps because of the long and bloody struggle for regional autonomy they fought against various governments of East Bengal, East Pakistan and Bangladesh. Although the fighting was officially brought to an end by a peace accord in 1997, many problems still remain: land disputes are ongoing with Bengali settlers encouraged by successive governments to migrate to the CHT; the army and the police, apparently needed to ‘keep the peace’, continue to harass indigenous people; and it is nigh on impossible to mention the term “indigenous peoples’ rights”, let alone work on behalf of these issues.

So it was with some trepidation that I set off from Dhaka to attend a workshop on the progress of VSOB’s indigenous peoples’ rights programme. After a minor panic about the fact that I didn’t have my passport details with me (as a foreigner visiting Khagrachari, you are required to have prearranged permission to visit and you must sign in and out as you go), my trip to the hills began.

That was the most arresting thing, at first: seeing a HILL. It’s a funny thing, but I have become accustomed to seeing a horizon as flat as a pancake, and to suddenly see a hill, however small and insignificant, was very disorientating. The hills in the hill tracts are very peculiar, too: they are not large, but they are very abrupt. The sides are steep and wooded, and the main road from Feni to Khagrachari (note, the idea of a ‘main’ road should not be taken too literally here) ribbons through them at what feels a frightening angle after so many months of bombing down perfectly flat, straight roads. It’s easy to see why competition for land is a problem here – flat land, suitable for rice cultivation, is a rarity, and paddy is tucked into the tiniest pockets of flat land.

The second, more insidious thing you notice (if you are an observant type, like me) is the number of army observation posts. As an esteemed friend of mine remarked, everywhere you go as a bideshi in the hill tracts, there really is someone watching you there. Again, with all the land taken up by army barracks and camps, you are reminded why there is competition for land. What’s more, as a force that is meant to be there to keep the peace, it is interesting to note who is holding the huge, old-fashioned rifles.

I was only in Khagrachari for one very busy day and two equally busy nights, so I’ll reserve further comments for my next visit (in April, for Bangla new year – a week of celebrating that requires some stamina, apparently). But I’ll give you my two highlights of the visit:

1. Alotilla: this is a scenic spot just outside Khagrachari town (although, annoyingly, it’s outside enough to require bideshis to check in and out at the check point and be back in town by 6pm). Alotilla literally means ‘light hill’: it’s a tunnel that goes upwards through the hillside, so that when you approach it from the bottom you really are moving towards the light. It was brilliant fun – I’m a big fan of the outdoors, so clambering up rocks and wading through a stream in the dark with only a length of bamboo filled with kerosene to light the way was just my cup of tea.

2. The rice wine: I’ll be honest. This is what the hill tracts are most famous for among volunteers. Obviously there are other reasons the CHT are brilliant, but when it comes down to it, bangla pani is what I was most looking forward to. In a country in which alcohol is officially unavailable, drinking openly in a restaurant is pretty damn exciting. Now, rice wine isn’t the most drinkable of alcoholic beverages. It has a pretty noxious whiff and I really can’t stomach it without a mixer (though I’m told that it’s the chemicals in the sprite that are responsible for the hangover, rather than any properties intrinsic to this raw form of alcohol…). But it’s the social act of having a few drinks with friends that I’ve missed since leaving home, and which I thoroughly enjoyed whilst in Khagrachari. I even carried a few litres back with me to share my colleagues here (well, those who don’t consider taking the infidel juice as a sin, anyway).

The Mutiny (25th-26th Feb)

Some of you no doubt caught the BBC’s rather sensationalist coverage of the mutiny of the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) which began on Wednesday. Given that I was in Dhaka when this occurred, just down the road from the BDR headquarters, I sort of hoped that I’d be able to write a riveting, real-time piece about what was going on. However, as it happens, being privy to an unfolding drama is not quite as dramatic as you might think. In reality, there was a lot of confusion and uncertainty about what was going on, a lot of rumours that turned out to be false, and a lot of waiting around with strict instructions not to step outside except in case of emergency. In short, although it was initially quite a surprise to be woken by the crackle of gunfire on Wednesday morning, and quite worrying to be escorted home, 20 metres from the office, on Thursday afternoon, the last two days were actually quite tedious…

I woke up early on Wednesday morning because the power, and thus the fans, went off, and it quickly became too hot to sleep. With the fans off, in my still sleep-befuddled state, I’m pretty sure I heard a distant rattling that, looking back, was probably gunfire. However, I didn’t think anything of it then, just rolled out of bed to take a cold shower.

The first real indication that something was up came midmorning, while I was in the throes of a hair-tearingly boring VSO review. Mamun, my Programme Manager, began to get messages and phone calls from friends and relatives, all with different stories, but all suggesting that something bad was afoot at the BDR cantonment. News filtered in slowly to VSO: there were lots of conflicting stories, and at first I felt nothing more than a mild interest – it seemed like just another episode of distant political wrangling that had no effect on me. But soon there were rumours of officers being shot, civilians being killed, bodies lying in the streets. It gradually dawned on us that this – whatever it was – was going to be serious.

It had never occurred to me before that you could be so close to the epicentre of something like this and still have absolutely no clue what was going on. When I say ‘close’, I’m not exaggerating much: the BDR headquarters are right beside Rifle Square market, the shopping complex where I buy my knock-off DVDs and where my family stayed when they were in Dhaka, all a 10-minute rickshaw ride from the VSO office. Yet no-one seemed to know what was happening. My colleagues were on their phones to contacts in the national newspapers, friends and family in the military, contacts in the government, anyone who might have an insight into what exactly was happening within the walls of the cantonment. But no-one could say with any authority what was going on. All we had were stories, rumours and theories.

(Incidentally, it seems now that the main grievances were about pay and conditions, and the leadership structure of the BDR. BDR officers are drawn from the main army, while the BDR itself is a separate border force that gets paid significantly less than the army, and has pretty much no opportunity for advancement because of the recruitment system. Given the current economic problems and the spiralling price of food in Bangladesh, the BDR’s tiny salaries have become more and more of a pittance, and it’s thought that this more than anything else was the mutineers’ motivation. At the time there were rumours of encouragement by the opposition, but it now seems that this was all hot air. However, the brutality of some of the mutineers’ tactics have left many questions about what they were hoping to achieve – questions that are now being investigated by the government. As mass graves are discovered and bodies pulled from surrounding sewers, these questions are likely to get louder and more insistent.)

Anyway, back to Wednesday afternoon: amidst talk of a curfew being declared by the government after lunch, VSO decided to send us home. Although the curfew never materialised, we all went home anyway and spent an agreeable afternoon playing cards and drinking beer (acquired – in violation of warnings – by Ollie, in the fastest trip on record to the duty free shop, thanks to the lack of traffic on the roads). Clearly, we VSO volunteers know how to make the best of a bad situation…

During the night, I was glued to the online versions of The Daily Star, an English-medium national newspaper; VSO also kept us up-to-date with the latest developments via their emergency number. It seemed, reassuringly, that the Prime Minister’s offer of an amnesty was going to be accepted by the mutineers, and we were given a tentative all-clear around midnight, although this was accompanied by a warning to wait for confirmation in the morning before leaving for work.

As I walked to the office the next morning the streets were quiet, but not so much as to arouse suspicion: it seemed that things were going to be okay.

But unfortunately this wasn’t to be. In a chilling repeat of the day before, another workshop was interrupted midmorning by the VSO staff being called to an emergency meeting. It turned out that the army was not happy with Hasina’s deal, given that more than a hundred officers were still missing, and was preparing to attack the BDR headquarters. Rumours that tanks were rolling down Satmasjid road towards the cantonment (literally a stone’s throw from the VSO flat where I was supposed to be staying with two other volunteers) brought a growing realisation that the situation was different from the previous day. The tension was visible on the faces of my friends and colleagues, and in the fact that we were allowed to use the office phone to call home and reassure our families (although how reassuring it is to be woken at 7am and told that your child is safe from a threat you didn’t know existed is debatable). When VSOB insisted on escorting Megan, Laura and myself from the office to Job’s flat, a distance of roughly twenty metres, I began to wonder if we were actually in real danger.

However, what actually happened was that we spent another afternoon cooped up in the flat, watching Gossip Girl and cooking. VSOB gave us strict orders not to go outside, but by evening I was so sick of being inside that I was half-tempted to head down to Rifle Square to see for myself what the deal was. Despite what was going on just down the road, the night passed uneventfully in Lalmatia.

By morning, things appeared to be back to normal. VSO texted to say that the situation had normalised, Sheikh Hasina’s skilful negotiation and firm handling of the situation had resolved the crisis, and both sides were backing down. Apart from a momentary wobble on Friday night, which did nothing more than derail our plans to go to a party at the British High Commission, life in Dhaka had very much gone back to normal.

Despite my personal experience of tedium at a safe remove from events, the situation in Dhaka this week was obviously very serious. The still-unknown number of dead, and the uncertainty over why and how the mutiny occurred, indicates this clearly. Since its independence in 1971, coups have not been uncommon in Bangladesh: it would have been another blow for the country’s struggling democracy had things this week spiralled completely out of control. Hasina’s government has only been in power for a month, and when reports of the mutiny began to emerge, it seemed like just another in a long list of obstacles for Bangladesh: had the events been badly handled, it’s not difficult to imagine a repeat of previous experiences.

But the mutiny did not blossom into a coup or even a serious challenge to the government’s authority. Because of this, some commentators are calling it a ‘triumph’ for Bangladeshi democracy. I’m not sure I’d go that far: that the situation emerged at all is testament to the shortcomings of the country’s democratic development. However, that the new government managed to prevent the mutiny from mutating into anything more serious is a significant achievement on its part. And for this reason, if it is capable of maintaining political stability in the long term and not allowing problems such as this from triggering a descent into chaos, perhaps the way might be paved for the future triumph of democracy in Bangladesh.

'The difference between Bangladesh and England...' (18/02/09)

I don’t know whether it’s because I’ve been spending so long sitting on Mahabub’s motorbike (he likes to talk, let’s just say, regardless of impending doom by bus), but over the last few days I’ve found myself engaged in some pretty deep conversations.

Topics included:
- Joining the armed forces: how this is regarded in Britain, whether I would like to join, the reasons I would never join voluntarily, the way recruitment works in Bangladesh, whether Mahabub would join etc, etc.
- The relations between management and other staff in GBK: how good do I think they are, how they compare with other organisations I know, whether I think there are any problems with relations, the culture of hierarchy and deference in Bangladesh, the potential problems that can arise when people cannot give their opinions freely, the possible difficulties when constructive criticism is not allowed (note: the last two points were hypothetical, naturally…)
- Opinions of members of staff: (can’t go into this here!)

But what struck me most was one conversation I had with Mahabub, while we were waiting for a meeting to finish.

“How many countries you have visited?” he asked me.

This is quite a common question, and I normally just say ‘quite a few’ because I can’t be bothered to work it out, but seeing as we had time, he asked me to name them all. As I went through them in my mind, and the numbers mounted, I began to wonder whether it was a good idea to keep going. It seemed so self-aggrandising, and so insensitive (he’d already told me he’d only ever visited India, and that was once when he was twelve). But I carried on, and eventually reached a figure.

“Maybe sixteen?”

Mahabub sat back in his chair to think about this. Then:

“How much does an English person earn for one day?”

I don’t know the average, so I guessed that the minimum wage is now about £6/hour.

“So that is about 600 taka an hour?” he asked.

I nodded.

“The Bangladeshi person get 500 taka for one day,” he told me.

Again, I nodded.

Then he sighed and said:

“This is the difference between the Bangladeshi and the English.”

Isn’t it just?

18/2/09 Shona Bangladesh

It was only during my recent sojourns to Hakimpur and Aftabganj that I realised what shona bangladesh really means. Of course, with my superb Bangla skills, I know the literal translation: it means ‘golden Bangladesh’ (and it’s from a Rabindranath Tagore poem that is now the national anthem). But the paddy was being harvested when I first arrived in Parbatipur, which meant that the fields were brown with the stubble and straw of harvest and I never really got the idea of a ‘golden Bangladesh’ (I’m going to do a whole post about rice later, so there’ll be more on this. Yeah, yeah, try to control yourselves).

As we cruised out of Parbatipur that day, however, the fields had been flooded, the seedlings had been grown and transplanted, and all of a sudden, the land was transformed. As far as the eye could see was an expanse of the most intense green imaginable. For mile after mile, it’s all I saw. The myriad colours, shades and textures of green render the word useless; they form a patchwork, dotted with the sari brights of working women, broken up only by the occasional stand of lanky palm trees.

Above our speeding motorbike the sky lazed, a hazy blue-grey almost painful to look at. The sun beat down, not too hot for now, but with the promise of fierceness to come. The wind on my limbs was delicious.

Later, after our work was done, we started back towards Parbatipur. As we sped along the same little roads as before, kicking up a trail of dust, the sun began its inexorable slide towards the horizon. As it went, its colour changed, glowing from white to yellow to orange in a matter of minutes. With nothing else to do, I simply watched as the changing light transformed the landscape once again. Mist was rising from the paddy fields, and, caught by the angling sunlight, it set the paddy alight so that the fields seemed to glow with the strength of their green. By the time we were motoring back into Parbatipur, the sun had sunk to a red orb, temporarily suspended above the glowing fields.

Bangladesh’s flag is green with a red circle in the middle, and I finally understand why.