'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.

Motorcyling (17/02/09)

In another demonstration of the highs and lows of Bangladesh, since arriving back in Parbatipur, I’ve had one great week of high-powered action followed by a few days of pinioning self-doubt. In a bid to cope with my latest spasm of uncertainty, I decided to join some colleagues on a monitoring field visit.

Now let’s be absolutely clear: when the decision to go on said field visit is made five minutes before leaving, chiefly because the senior management is all but absent that day, little reflection on the aims and objectives of the visit is possible; little consideration is given to how said visit ties into one’s placement goals; and the question of whether it is an effective use of resources and time simply does not arise. No: I saw a chance to escape and I jumped at it, in a manner some might term hysterical.

Brushing off a nagging sense of guilt at my rashness, I was soon speeding out of town on the back of my friend Mahabub’s motorbike, with Kalam-bhai and Sarah-di, (the project coordinator and my GBK counterpart, respectively) just ahead of us. The moment the lushness of the ripening paddy enveloped us, I knew I’d made the right decision (for my mental health, if not for my work).

There’s something magical about gliding through the countryside on the back of a motorbike. Gliding isn’t generally a word to be associated with transport in Bangladesh: the roads are so rutted and the available modes of transportation so lacking in suspension that an altogether more vigorous word is necessary. On this day, however, I’d decided to try riding side saddle for the first time. (All the women here ride sideways – it’s more culturally acceptable – but before today I’ve been unable to master this complicated art.) Although I spent most of the first hour gripping the seat so hard I lost feeling in my fingers, and raging against the injustice of expecting women to ride in this terribly dangerous manner, gradually I began to enjoy the feeling of supreme elegance that comes with riding this way.

For those of you who’ve never had the pleasure of trying this, I’ll try to explain how this works: You sit sideways on the motorbike’s seat, with your knees pointing forwards at an angle, and there’s usually a little ledge to put your feet on (although for bideshi feet, it’s really not big enough). With your left hand, you hold onto the bar on the back of the bike, and with your right, you grip seat behind you. Of course, the pros dispense with this holding on malarkey, and instead use their hands to gesticulate in heated conversations, phone friends, fix their hair, or hold onto multiple small children. Personally, although I once or twice released my right hand to rearrange my orna (scarf that covers the chest and shoulders, and has a habit of flying off in a revealing and/or life threatening manner – Mahabub told me several times to be careful, because it’s not unheard of for ornas to get caught in the wheels…), I generally held tight the whole way.

Travelling in this way is brilliant: you get a panoramic view of the countryside, whilst sustaining scintillating conversation with your driver. However, it’s not particularly comfortable (think tense thighs from the effort of trying not to fall off, and neck strain from craning to hear what Mahabub is shouting over the wind), nor is it very safe. Parents, grandparents: perhaps you should look away while I detail the road conditions? If you won’t take good advice, console yourselves with the thought that a) generally, no-one here will let me within 1 metre of a motorbike without a helmet on; and b)when I’m a passenger, whoever is driving drives at a special reduced bideshi-speed. If this is not consolation enough for what follows, don’t say I didn’t warn you…

Some characteristics of roads in Bangladesh
1.Cracks, ruts, potholes and stretches where there just isn’t any tarmac. This means you cannot relax at any point, as you have to be constantly vigilant for moments when the road condition threatens to throw you from the bike. Generally, Mahabub was very good at shouting warnings before we hit dicey stretches, but occasionally he was caught unawares. At these points, presumably when he felt me lift out of my seat, he’d shout something helpful like “Be careful that you do not fall down from the motorbike!” As if there was an element of choice there.

2.Thundering, overloaded buses driven by teenagers. Thankfully, it’d fairly difficult for these buses to sneak up on you: they have Bangla tunes blaring from the roof, they usually employ small boys whose sole job it is to shout at the other traffic on the road, and no-one in Bangladesh is shy about using their horn. However, somewhat worryingly, there were a couple of occasions when I took a backward glance to see what was going on around me, and there was one of these beasts bearing down on us, only a couple of meters away. Mahabub only tried to out-run one of these buses twice…

3.Thundering, overloaded trucks driven by idiots. To be fair, this might be an over-generalisation; there MIGHT be a truck driver in Bangladesh who isn’t a complete fool. Unfortunately, my experience of truck drivers in Bangladesh would not lead me to support such a theory. These guys think nothing of overtaking a slower vehicle even when there is another truck coming the other way that is also overtaking a slower vehicle. They also think nothing of hanging out of the cab window to stare at the bideshi on the motorbike that they have just overtaken, as they continue to speed ahead at sixty miles an hour.

4.Farmyard animals, small children and old people. As Mahabub pointed out, none of these groups have any sense when it comes to roads. We came close to killing representatives of these groups on multiple occasions.

5.“Brakeless vehicles.” Yes, these are exactly what they sound like: vehicles without brakes. When Mahabub first pointed to a plough hammering down the road at about fifty mph, and said “brakeless vehicle” I hoped it was a flaw in his (otherwise very good) English. Sadly not.

6. Shortcuts. It’s probably not fair to describe shortcuts as a feature of all Bangladeshi roads. Rather, shortcuts seem to be a speciality of my dear friend Mahabub. These included squeezing down an alley so narrow my knees grated along the wall, and haring along a dyke in someone’s vegetable field (think, a path wide enough for feet only, raised about a metre above the field).

Note: Mahabub seems to have received something of a bad press here. He’s actually a really good driver and I trust him fully. There were just a couple of moments when that trust waivered…

Peaks, troughs and roller-coasters (9/02/09)

Back in the UK, we were warned time and again by VSO, through many a delightful metaphor, about the ups and downs you’re likely to experience as a volunteer. During training, I just smiled and nodded knowingly, before turning my attention back to my hangover. It’s only since arriving here I’ve realised that, boy, did those guys know what they were talking about…

Things have been fairly roller-coaster-like from day one, but I seem to have been having a particularly intense time with the peaks and troughs in the last week. When people ask me how I’m enjoying myself here, it’s difficult to convey just how changeable and unpredictable my emotions are so here is a run down of my highs and lows in the last fortnight, so you can see for yourself what we volunteers go through.

High: a VSOB gathering in honour of the visit of a big boss man (a.k.a. VSO’s new CEO, taking her first country visit).
It was the first time in a while everyone had been together, lots of good free food was available and it was followed by several free drinks (courtesy of the Bagha).

Low: volunteers leaving.
Keith, one of the volunteers in my batch, returned to the States to do a photojournalism course. Of course, this was also an excuse for partying (and much Bangladeshi whisky was consumed in Keith’s honour), but it was also a pretty sad day.
If you’re reading this Leith, I miss you.

High: having a weekend
For the first time in what feels like forever (perhaps even since October) I got to take a proper weekend. This naturally involved a lot of lounging around in pyjamas, a lot of tea-drinking and a lot of crappy-TV-watching. Combined with several extremely leisurely meals, where breakfast, lunch and dinner ran together somewhat when Bruce produced a bottle of whisky and a tub of vanilla ice-cream, you couldn’t ask for more perfect downtime. What’s more (and perhaps this deserves its own individual ‘high’ section?) a delectable recipe for a whisky-vanilla-ice-cream float was discovered by participants in this eating marathon, which will hopefully become a mainstay at all future volunteer parties….

Low: Mad men
Without wishing to implicate anyone in particular, there seems to have been a rash man-related problems in the last week or so. While fairly inconvenient and decidedly sub-optimal, the storm has been weathered, leaving the Deshi Sisters (that’s me, Megbo and Loz, in case you were wondering) stronger than ever before.

High: lunch at the Bagha (again, god bless the Bagha)
Given the previous low, the Deshi Sisters decided that they were in need of a treat. So, in between frantic bouts of shopping, also justified in the same terms, (my salwar kameez count is now firmly in double figures, I’m happy to report), we decided that a ‘western’ lunch at the Bagha was in order. And, oh my, was that ever a good call! I have to be careful now not to drool on my laptop, but here is what I ordered:
- A bacon, lettuce and tomato baguette. Sorry, what I mean to say is, a bacon lettuce and tomato baguette. A BACON lettuce and tomato BAGUETTE. The emphasis is intended to point out that I have eaten neither bacon nor a baguette in MONTHS. What’s more, it came with cheese. Cheese. And, wait for it… mayonnaise. I’d forgotten what bliss such a sandwich can create. Ok, I need to stop.
- A glass of white wine. I’d also forgotten the simple pleasure of a glass of white wine at lunchtime. Even when the wine is something you’d normally grimace at at a party. Incidentally, if anyone reading this can figure out a way to send me wine, I’d be most interested to hear from you…
- Humus and pitta bread. Need I say more? Actually, yes I must: crudités
- Greek salad. Even though I don’t like olives and the feta certainly wasn’t feta, the very fact that there was lettuce and dressing was enough to have me in ecstasies.

Low: having an existential crisis about The Point Of It All
I knew it was coming. I knew it was only a matter of time before my ability to keep myself blithely busy without actually doing anything backfired horribly in my face, in an explosion of self-doubt and panic. And when it hit, it was just as horrible as I’d imagined. One minute I was eating lunch. The next, I was pinioned by the thought that there was actually no point at all to my being here, and that I and everyone else would be better off if I just went home and dropped the act. Luckily, the dark clouds passed, but it took a good few hours of eating peanut butter with a spoon and giving myself as firm a talking to as I could muster through all the peanut butter. Frightening stuff. By the time I’d pulled through, I had to dash to the supermarket to replace the peanut butter I’m demolished.

High: recovering from said existential crisis.
I had a series of meetings in the last week that have FINALLY clarified to an actionable degree what I’m supposed to be doing here. I now have a whole sheaf (yes, a sheaf!) of action plans on various different subjects, and I am currently enjoying a veritable flurry of activity. It’s worth pointing out, though, that this didn’t happen on its own. Far from it, in fact. Without the aforementioned explosion of self-doubt and panic, I would never have forced myself to march down to my organisation’s Dhaka office and demand a meeting with the executive director. And if I hadn’t done that, I’d still be sitting at my desk, wondering how best to get the ball rolling. All it took was a hair raising CNG ride into a part of Dhaka I’d never visited before, with half an address and a driver who refused to ask for directions and simply drove at great speed down any temptingly dark alleyway that presented itself. But nevertheless, my trip got the ball rolling, and I’m thoroughly enjoying kicking some organisational ass (or something far more development-theory informed and participatory…)

Low: my flip-flop breaking
While this might seem like a trivial inconvenience to you, I think this particular trough helps to illustrate the delicacy of my mental state here. Never before (well, ok, rarely, perhaps) would such a simple thing have come quite so close to tipping me over the edge. Coming hard on the heels of a grinding hang-over, however, and shortly after the disturbing incidents above, the breaking of my sandal ten minutes from my flat almost sent me tumbling into the abyss. I just about managed to march home, barefoot but with head held high, cradling my flip flips on top of my laptop and ignoring the giggling of rickshaw-wallahs, before bursting into tears.

High: party on the roof top
Having been in need of a proper party with a bar and a DJ and a dance floor etc for quite some time, I was overjoyed to learn of the party at the Dhaka Regency. In true VSOB style, we tried to wangle as many discounts as we could, but to no avail this time. However, an 800 taka ticket (about £8) got you a ‘light buffet’ and a free ‘cocktail’. Although the ‘cocktail’ is in inverted commas because it appeared to be flat coke and not much else, the ‘light’ buffet comprised piles of kebabs, pitta bread, more humus, salad, spring rolls, and as much of everything as you could eat when you’d only have 3 slices of toast with laughing cow cheese on them for dinner (eating is cheating, according to Ms Hawkesford, unless the food is free). The party was on the roof of the hotel, with a cracking view of Dhaka, a warm breeze cooling the dance floor and the moon shining down on everything. There was a swimming pool, shisha, deckchairs and gin. And then there were the Cameroonians, who are possibly the best dancers I have ever had the pleasure of dancing with. So this tempestuous week ended with me trying and failing to learn from the masters of booty-shaking, on a roof top looking out over Dhaka and its moon.

A day in my life... (8/2/09)

Inspired (well, mystified, really) by the number of people from home who ask me things like ‘Is there a supermarket near your house?’ or ‘Do you normally hand wash everything?’, I’ve decided to try to paint a picture of daily life here, if only so that such well-meaning yet guffaw-inducing questions cease.

It’s probably worth mentioning at the outset that there isn’t really such a thing as a typical day here. One day, I can be sitting at my desk checking facebook at 15-minute intervals for want of something better to do, and the next I’m rushed off my feet trying to mainstream gender and proof-read an 8000-word document and write a questionnaire all for impossibly tight deadlines. Likewise, one day I’m chewing paan with the local women, shivering against the foggy cold of a Parbatipur afternoon, and the next I’m drinking white wine at lunchtime in balmy Dhaka. However, as my life in Parbatipur is probably least imaginable for those at home, I’ll focus on a normal day here...

Getting up
To my great surprise, I’ve gradually learned to sleep through the azan, even though the mosque is only about 30 metres from my bedroom, but now I have a new problem. I’ve always known, due to the film of sawdust that accumulates under my bed despite my best sweeping efforts, that the frame of my bed is riddled with termites. It’s only recently, however, that my little termite pals have started waking me up each morning with the loudness of their destruction. I think I’ll have to take drastic action…

If nothing untoward awakes me before my alarm, I usually get up between 6.30am and 7.30am. Uncharacteristically early, perhaps, but there is a logic to it. Exercise. Before you picture me jogging through the paddy fields, think again. If buying carrots is enough to draw a crowd three people deep, there’s just no way Parbatipur is ready for a jogging bideshi,. My daily exercise is very much of an indoors nature, and usually consists of yoga or some form of exercise dvd (thanks again to Ms Kinchington). Now before you start chortling, remember that I really have no other option: it’s Davina McCall, a hip-hop dance workout, or lethargy.

Breakfast
Once the morning workout is over, it’s time for breakfast. If I’m eating at home, this usually involves tea and a bowl of precious oats (flown over by my wonderful, wonderful parents at Christmas) with honey and raisins, or perhaps banana pancakes if I’m feeling indulgent. When things are tough, however, I’ll treat myself in a local cha shop to a divine breakfast of paratha (fried flat bread), dim (omelette with onions and green chilli), daal and cha (tea sweetened with sugar and condensed milk). This is my favourite meal in Bangladesh, and usually costs about 20 taka (20p).

The walk to work
On week days (Saturday to Thursday), Ollie and I meet at half past eight at the top of my road (for road, read unpaved track). From here we proceed on a leisurely, thirty-minute stroll to the office, which is every day replete with relentless gawping, countless ‘Hello, how are you?’s’, and much dodging of the buses and lorries that thunder past at terrifying speed. We walk past paddy fields, ponds full of ducks, and tiny shops built from corrugated iron and bamboo. My personal favourite of the latter is a tiny fish stall close to our office, where the fish are often so fresh that you sometimes have to step over them as they make a break for it across the road. Daily, I say hello and enquire into the health of a young guy who works on the main road breaking bricks with nothing but a small hammer and pads on his first two fingers. He is never not there, and he is always smiling. Daily, the children who are cycled to school in little cages on the back of rickshaws shout at each other to look at the bideshis, then dissolve into giggles when I wave to them. I mean, really, I’ve been here for almost three months: when will the novelty wear off?!

The office
I’ve rambled on about work enough lately, so I won’t bore you with the details again, but there are a few small details to share:
• Without the lal cha (red tea – tea flavoured with lumps of ginger and lavish quantities of sugar), I don’t know how I’d get through the day.
• My desk chair is the most uncomfortable chair known to man. One of the arms falls off several times a day and has to be slotted back in, and I’ve had to resort to buying an extra cushion because my bum cannot take anymore punishment from the unrelenting wood.
• Lunch is invariably delicious fish curry of the kind that four months ago you couldn’t’ve paid me to eat. It’s always served with rice and dal and sobji (vegetables), all of which is eaten with the right hand so that my fingers are now permanently yellow from all the turmeric.
• My colleagues deserve an entire entry dedicated to them, but I’ll give you a flavour of the people I work alongside now. Some of them don’t speak very much English, so our conversations are very limited, but I adore these conversations, even if we do say the same thing everyday. There are Kobir-bhai and Jotinder-da, who are the general office dogsbodies and do everything from photocopying to motorcycle maintenance. Every day, I say hello and ask them how they are, and every day they are excellent and ask me how I am, and I can’t help but be excellent too. Then there’s Joy-bhai, who is the nephew of GBK’s director and who owns a shop nearby that sells everything you could ever want (and if he doesn’t sell it, he can definitely get hold of it for you). Again, his English isn’t great and I always feel like he’s laughing at my attempts at Bangla, but when I don’t see him at lunchtime I feel sad.

Post-work
After getting a rickshaw home, I generally feel like collapsing with a cup of tea and a book, but I’m usually prevented from doing so for any number of reasons. Either my neighbours drag me to their houses for tea or rice pudding or bapa pitha (amazing steamed cake with molasses), or I have to attend to pressing domestic matters such as cleaning my house or my clothes or myself. These latter activities all represent so much more of a challenge than I’m used to, and have driven me to desperate measures…

a) Cleaning my house. Bangladesh is both ridiculously dusty and ridiculously damp, which is a delightful combination when it comes to cleaning. The floor really needs sweeping every couple of days, but I generally can’t be arsed and just wear flip flips instead. My food stores need checking regularly for insects and damp. And washing up has to be done right away if my kitchen isn’t to become a party for the ants and the fruit flies.
b) Washing my clothes. Shockingly, there are no washing machines here (I’m being sarcastic, by the way). Everything has to be washed in a bucket with detergent and cold water. The process is usually: soak everything for 20 minutes, then pound it to hell and rinse (if there is enough water left to make it worth your while), then hang everything on the roof to be lightly scented by the dung fires that burn nearby. Mmm. Fresh.
c) Washing myself. I think I’ve already mentioned my drastically altered concept of personal hygiene, but I’ll elaborate a little here. Bathing at the moment requires a lot of forward-planning: it’s too cold for the shower and the other day the handle fell off, so it’s no longer even an option, therefore bucket-baths are the order of the day. This needs a kettle of boiling water and a bucket of cold water. However, after filling the kettle in the evening there often isn’t enough water left to fill the basin so I have to wait until either the water comes back on or the hot water cools down. And don’t even mention washing my hair. Those of you who know me and my hair will know that washing it is something of a challenge at the best of times, so hair washing now takes place once a week, tops. Personal cleanliness is overrated anyway.

As for the desperate measures: after two months of stubbornly doing everything myself and spending most of my free time cleaning, I decided to hire a helper. Gulshana comes once a week and gallantly washes all my clothes and cleans everything, even the bathroom walls.

Free time
Finally (I’m sure you’re sick to death of hearing about my day by now), in the free time I now have thanks to Gulshana-apa’s hard work, I amuse myself in a variety of ways.
- I read. A lot. I read an entire novel in one 7-hour bus journey the other day. (Crow Lake by Mary Lawson. It’s pretty good.)
- I write. Emails, letters, stories, this blog. I can’t get enough of it.
- I listen to music (keep the CD’s coming, wonderful friends)
- I watch DVDs. Since arriving, I’ve developed a passion for the West Wing and Gossip Girl, two series I’d previously been ignorant of or dismissed. 24, Desperate Housewives and The OC have also become lifelines. God bless American television.
- I shop. Admittedly, the shopping opportunities in Parbatipur are limited to the fruit market, the vegetable market, the meat market, the clothes market and an array household goods/hardware shops, all selling identical tupperwares, saucepans, scrubbing brushes and extension cords, but I can spend a surprisingly long time debating the merits of one colander over another.
- I cook. My life here revolves around food: buying it, cooking it and eating it. It took me a while to overcome my initial shock at not recognising the majority of vegetables in the market, and at the fact that every trip to the market requires you to be prepared to fend off the gawking mob. But if I didn’t have to shop and cook, I don’t really know what I’d do in the evenings. The first day I cooked daal was a ridiculously happy one for me. I have also made more banoffee pies since I’ve been in Bangladesh than I’ve made in the past twenty two years (the ingredients are easily available and it makes a good party piece for my local friends. Incidentally, the Bangladeshis love it, probably because of the high sugar content of the condensed-milk-cum-toffee).

Going to bed
Once all these fun and games are through, I climb into bed with my little termite mates and tuck in my mosquito net.