Learning to Bangla in the 'Desh

Goodbye, Bangladesh

2010-07-16T17:16:00.001+06:00

This post has been a long time coming. I sit writing it in my parents’ house in Leicester, shivering in an English summer, and wondering how I got here.

Maybe this is how Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy must have felt when they got back from Narnia. Nothing at home has changed, and Narnia feels a bit like a peculiar dream. To be fair, people aren’t just exactly where I left them (i.e. coming up the stairs to shout at me for being in a room where I’ve been told in no uncertain terms not to go), but it doesn’t feel like things have moved on that much.

Which is fine, because I’d be well and truly screwed if everyone had grown up, got married AND found their dream jobs whilst I was gone. It does feel a bit like that in some cases, but thankfully not in all (sorry guys!).

Really, this post should be several. In my last few weeks, I had a load of good ideas for posts, but things were too busy and too downright emotionally traumatic to find time to write them. So this is all you’re going to get, I’m afraid.
So. Where do I begin? How can I say goodbye to Bangladesh? To friends, colleagues and the people who became my family in Bangladesh? To the rickshaw wallahs, the little children who shook my hand every morning on the way to work, the aunties and uncles who asked me endless questions on long journeys, the market men where I used to buy my vegetables every week, the woman I bought bananas from practically every day, the little boy who shouted hello every morning from behind his pyramids of cucumbers, and all the others who made my daily routine so much more colourful? How do I say goodbye to saris and lungis and salwar kameez, and silly sandals, anklets and heavy gold jewellery? How do I bid farewell to mangoes and pineapples and jackfruit and red spinach and shojna? And what about the endless emerald paddy fields, the damp heavy air and the furious storms? And then there’s the call to prayer, which I sometimes find myself listening for, even though I know I won’t be hearing it.

And what about all the things I have to say thank you for? For everything Bangladesh has taught me; for all the support of friends and colleagues; for all the experiences, which I can’t help feeling have changed me fundamentally.

Bangladesh, it’s been wonderful. Abar dekha hobe.

Goodbye, Bangladesh

2010-07-16T17:16:00.000+06:00

Jascim-bhai's house

2010-04-24T22:03:00.000+06:00

As the end of my placement draws near, I’m being increasingly flooded with invitations and entreaties for me to visit people’s houses, to visit their villages, hell – even to visit their mothers, before I go. I’m trying my hardest to schedule all these invitations so that I get to spend time with my close friends and the people I really care about, while not offending those who are essentially just big boss men in the office who want to be able to parade their bideshi for the neighbours to see (call me cynical, but I know these guys).

A few months ago, going to Jascim-bhai’s house would have fallen into this latter category. He’s certainly a big boss man in the office, and until January, I’d really had very little to do with him for a whole year – except a few times when he’d called me into his office and talked at me in rapid, incomprehensible Bangla, and I’d smiled, tried to nod at the right times, and run away as quick as possible.

But since we started working together on a project in January, he’s invited me to his house several times. I was extremely sceptical the first time – I thought he just wanted me to set up his newly-bought computer. But it turned out he actually wanted me to show his kids how to play computer games (not exactly my area of expertise), and to have dinner with him and his family. I was surprised to find that, beneath the bluster, he’s one of the gentlest, kindest guys I’ve met in Bangladesh, with three of the cutest, most endearing kids I’ve ever seen to boot.

He invited me for dinner the other night, and, as usual, the visit restored my faith in the world a little. As usual, within minutes of arriving at his house, Jascim-bhai himself went out to see his mates, leaving me to eat snacks and play with his kids. All night. I’ll always be grateful to kids in Bangladesh for just accepting me as I am, and not treating me as something special just because I’m a foreigner. Jascim-bhai’s kids do quite the opposite in fact: they actually think I understand whatever they say, even if it’s an extremely long story told at top speed, or a Khazi Nazrul Islam poem recited over and over and over again, because I didn’t give the right response. We must have spent hours, playing bingo and snakes and ladders and other games that I’d never heard of before, and eating bananas and biscuits and chana chur. Then, when Jascim-bhai finally came home, we all sat on their living room floor and ate chicken curry and rice and dal and salad together.

It’s nights like this that I’m really going to miss when I go home.

Domestic failure

2010-04-23T22:00:00.000+06:00

Today, craving something sweet and having long ago devoured the chocolate supplies I lay in every time I go to Dhaka, I decided to whip up a batch of banana-raisin muffins. Being the domestic goddess that I am, this required nothing more than twenty minutes of measuring, mixing and beating before the mouth-watering scent of baking brought the neighbours running to investigate.

After forty minutes in my oven (which is pretty pathetic to be honest, and fries every socket I try to plug it into), I judged the muffins ready. Golden brown, with a good sugary glaze on top, I couldn’t wait to have one. I only left them on the rack for a minute…

This proved to be a massive error. I can’t have been away more than two minutes, but when I came back, the rack – and all ten of my freshly-baked muffins – were crawling with red ants.

I screamed. I shouted obscenities. I might have even stamped my foot a little. But then my need to eat took over: it wasn’t too late to salvage my precious baked goods! Using the quick thinking and natural problem-solving ability that I’m lucky enough to possess, I decided to rinse each muffin under the tap. Yes, you read that correctly, I washed my banana muffins.

On the plus side, this successfully removed the ants. On the minus, the muffins became a soggy, squidgy imitation of the delight they had been. I ate one, just to satisfy my sugar craving, but there’s no denying it. They were ruined. Rather than admit defeat, I put them in a tupperware in the fridge thinking that the cold might sort them out. But I haven’t yet reopened the box again to see how they’re doing. I imagine that, true to form, they’ll stay there while I tell myself that I will eat one in a minute, until I can see the mould growing inside. Then, holding my breath, I’ll quickly the open the box and lob them into the rubbish bin, and try to forget that this whole sorry episode every occurred.

Workshops from hell 1

2010-04-20T20:03:00.002+06:00

Over the last few months, I’ve facilitated a lot of trainings and workshops. While I really enjoy facilitation, some of my experiences of the last few weeks have driven me to such disbelieving distraction that I had to take a note of proceedings. It was either that or start beating my head against the nearest hard surface… Here is an example of just one of many particularly frustrating workshops.

9.30am Scheduled starting time. Approximately half of the participants have arrived. All are sitting very quietly, but smile when I walk in.

9.47am Almost all participants are here now.

9.49am Deputy Director slouches in. Proceeds to go through the workshop outline I hand him, smiling brightly, demanding changes and alterations to everything from the grammar to the timetable. Had he been available to discuss the schedule any time in the last two weeks, I wouldn’t mind him pointing our errors. But as it is, I mind rather a lot.

9.52am People have started leaving. For cigarettes, for a stretch of the legs, to breast feed (that’s my co-facilitator, by the way).

10.15am Director waltzes in with a cursory ‘sorry’. Everyone leadps to their feet, rather as if their seats have been wired to an electric current that activates when he is present. Although he does apologise for being late, he seems to think he’s only 20 minues late, rather than 45. In workshop terms, I reckon 20 minutes is just about recoverable. 45 minutes is an entire session. I have to take quite a few deep breaths.

10.19 am Finally get started. However, Deputy Director continues to interrupt and find fault with everything we do. He wants to know where the marker pens are, why something hasn’t been explained (my colleague is, at this moment, mid-sentence, explaining precisely the point he’s harping on about. If he’d only listen…) I’ve seen few such overt displays of power in my life.

11.36 am Break morphed from 15 minutes into 30 minutes. I try to be understanding, but the main reason for the delay is that one of the facilitators, who’d assured me a particular document was translated and printed, was actually attempting to do it during the break (all 3 pages of it), and hoping I wouldn’t notice. More deep breaths. I contemplate praying.

11.42 am Group work. It quickly becomes apparent that one of the groups is really struggling. The project coordinator, who has the best English, didn’t turn up, and without the Bangla translation, it’s proving really hard for them to participate. I turn to find my co-facilitators for a bit of support. One is on the phone outside and waves me away in irritation. One refuses to go and help translate the document because there’s a senior staff member in the group and he doesn’t want to show up his boss. And one is off breast feeding her baby. Realise I’m grinding my teeth.

12.00 Deputy Director approaches me and asks if it’s possible to wrap things up before lunch. I must be hearing things. But when I ask him to repeat himself, it turns out I’m not. Want to scream. Instead, explain as politely as possible why there’s no way in hell a whole day workshop can be compressed into half a day – or rather, the remaining five hours cannot be squeezed into one. He nods understanding, and I think I may be getting somewhere. Then he explains that the senior management have very tight schedules. As if this is something I’ve never heard before.

12.04 Have to excuse myself for a few minutes. More deep breaths. I try to remind myself that it isn’t my strategic plan that we’re trying to develop, and that it means absolutely zilch to me whether or not it’s a good strategic plan.

1.16 pm Valiantly trying to finish the workshop as requested (because, after all, what’s the point in continuing if no-one will be there?) Gently remind the groups that they have 5 minutes to finish off their activity, and get yelled at by the Finance Manager. Want to yell back, with as many obscenities as I can think of, but with great self control I don’t. Have to go outside for some more calm talk though.

2.12pm Finished. As everyone slopes out for lunch, I think dark thoughts about all of them.

2.14pm Need to go and lie down in a darkened room.

Bizu

2010-04-17T13:48:00.000+06:00

Unbelievably, or so it feels, I have just passed my second Bizu in Bangladesh. Last year, I spent it in Khagrachari, enjoying lots. This year, I went to Rangamati because the security situation in Khagrachari is still not great, and – if it’s possible – I enjoyed even more there!

Bizu is the Chakma name for new year celebrations, which are observed across much of South and Southeast Asia according to the movement of the sun (usually on or around 14th April). In the hills, the Tripura, Marma and Chakma groups have given it their own name: Boisabi, an amalgamation of the different names given to this festival by each group: for the Tripura, it’s Boisuk, for the Marma it’s Sangrai, and for the Chakma it’s Bizu.

Although Bizu or Boisabi is observed differently in different areas, in the hills it generally involves three days of festivities. The first day, Phul Bizu, is a flower festival, where people exchange flowers and hang them in their doorways. Bitter neem leaves are also hung up, apparently to freshen the hew year. Unfortunately, owing to bad timing on my part, I have spent Phul Bizu both years sitting on buses, on my way to the hills.

Not to worry, however, because it is the next day, Mul Bizu, that’s the big daddy of Bizu. On Mul Bizu, it is the tradition to ‘go visiting’. Well, that’s what you do if you’re a bideshi and therefore not expected to receive visitors yourself. If you’re not, you probably spend a lot of time cooking for and serving the steady stream of visitors who will no doubt pass by. Going visiting may sound like the jolly past time of nineteenth gentlewomen, prone to attacks of the vapours, but in the hills, it’s a marathon of eating and drinking that pushes your stamina – and your stomach capacity – to the limits. In order to bring good luck to the new year, we were repeatedly told, you should aim to visit at least seven houses. Last year, we made it to thirteen houses. This year, I made it to fourteen before conceding defeat.

What makes going visiting so difficult is the pace of the schedule and the sheer quantity of food you’re expected to consume at each and every house you visit. I’m sure we were supposed to visit at least twenty houses, and doubtless caused great offense in our failure to do so. Estelle and Tony, who both live in Rangamati, made it to seventeen and eighteen houses respectively, even though they began at 9am, three hours before my friend Amy and I arrived, and didn’t stop until almost midnight.

In every house you go to, you’re usually offered the same dishes and drinks. Depending on how you feel about the food, this can be a good or a bad thing, but I don’t think I’ll be eating brown mishti or watermelon again for quite some time.

The classic Bizu dish is a vegetable dish called pachon, supposed to contain at least twenty different types of vegetables – the majority if which I was unable to identify. As it is cooked with the dried rotten fish paste that is so common in cooking here, I can’t say that I’m a big pachon-fan. Birani, however, is a different matter. This is boot dal (big round lentils, a bit like chickpeas), and usually has egg or meat bones in it as well. Even at my fourteenth house I was still reaching for a second helping. Watermelon is also offered, Bizu coinciding with the peak of watermelon season in the hills. Other foods on offer included: delicious curried pork, different kinds of pitha (cake) made with rice, coconut and green bananas, noodles with egg, brown mishti, jalepis (just like skinny donuts, according to Amy), omlette, rice pudding, noodle pudding, papaya, orange, apple, banana, grapes, fruit custad, deep friend fish, chicken curry, beef curry, ruti, paratha, boiled rice… the list goes on.

Now, don’t get the idea that you can somewhoe have a little of one or two of these things and then just say you’re full. This simply doesn’t wash as a reason not to eat in the hills (or all of Bangladesh, for that matter). The key to survival is to make sure your plate is never empty. This means you can point to your single piece of watermelon and truthfully claim to still be eating. That way, your host is less likely to stick another fried fish on your plate, or a generous spoonful of pachon. Another trick is to avoid stodge, as there is absolutely no way you can eat rice pudding fourteen times, even if it’s really tasty.

But this is only the food. Drinking begins early on Mul Bizu, and as early at 10am people were pissed. I thought we did well to avoid alochol until 12.30pm. After that, the parade of rice wine, rice beer (good for ladies, apparently, because it’s ‘softer’), whiskey, rum etc etc blurred into one. With all that eating, I can’t say that I got drunk, but walking up and down all those hills, especially after dark, required rather more concentrationt than usual.

I think we finished our last visit at about midnight, at which point we all stumbled gratefully home and into bed.

Day Three
The third day of Bizu is known as sleeping Bizu, or rest Bizu – and after the delights of Mul Bizu, you can probably guess why. It’s also the New Year’s Water Festival for the Marma indigenous group, so for many people – us included – there’s not rest to be had.

The Water Festival is celebrated throughout South and Southeast Asia, in Burma, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia, for example. The idea is that you sprinkle water on others, to cleanse them in preparation for the new year. Given that the festival falls in April, one of the hottest months in this region, it’s no surprise that there’s actually more splashing, squirting, dousing and dunking than ‘sprinkling’. If the splashing of water is supposed to cleanse you for the new year, I’d say we are all positively spotless by now.

We hired Moanaghar’s ambulance to take us to Chitmorong, a Marma Buddhist temple about an hour from where we were staying. Don’t ask why we hired an ambulance. It seemed like a really great idea, until we realised it lacked AC, windows and proper seats. At least it was easy to spot in a crowd – except when our two young drivers were off joy riding. Anyway, it was a lovely scenic drive around the Kaptai reservoir and along the banks of the Karnaphuli river. Tony said Chitmorong, a short boat ride across the river, was a lovely peaceful place, so I was imagining a day of lazing around, with maybe a dip in the river if there weren’t too many people about.

Unfortunately, on this day, Chitmorong resembled a zoo. It was heaving with visitors, monks, beggars and hawkers, and the sight of four bideshis was obviously too much to handle. Because we were all really hot after our ride in the ambulance, we foolishly decided to have a quick cooling swim, even though the river smelled suspiciously like sewage. It nearly caused a riot. Crowds thronged the banks of the Karnaphuli, everyone trying to catch a glimpse of the crazy foreigners. Well, kind of. That’s what it felt like as we climbed back up the banks in our wet clothes.

As we wandered over to the temple, the double takes and the ‘wows’ were flattering at first. Then, the sensation that I would never like to be a famous person quickly took over. At one point, we must have had a crowd of at least fifty young men trailing us, camera phones extended. As someone said, it was a bit like being pursued by a troop of zombies.

The real fun began when we went to watch the water splashing. Again, I couldn’t’ get a straight answer on the origins of this ritual, but it’s quite a spectacle to behold. Two boats are drawn up side by side, about six feet apart, and filled with water from the river. The contestants line up in front of each boat, girls in their beautiful Marma dresses on one side, boy on the other. Everyone is handed a little tin cup. Then someone blows a whistle and both sides have to fling as much water as they can at the other side, for what feels like an agonisingly long time. What the aim is, how a winner is decided, and whether this actually is a competition, I couldn’t say. But when they asked us if wanted to have a go, I didn’t hang around. By the end, you’re soaked, exhausted and filthy. Your eyes sting from the water, and your flinging arm is trembling. It was incredible!

After that, we spent the rest of the day eating and swimming on a quieter stretch of the river. That evening, we firmly refused all invitations to further programs, and organised our own program, involving rum and cokes, and honey roast potatoes. The perfect end to a perfect day.

One night in Chittagong

2010-04-15T20:00:00.000+06:00

Whatever romantic notions the title of this post may conjure up – discard them now. For those of you who’ve never heard of Chittagong, it’s an old port city in southeast Bangladesh, set in the hills, with a natural deep water harbour and a beach. While that might, to the uninitiated, sound appealing in a mouldering colonial grandeur kind of way, it’s actually Bangladesh’s second city, a busy port, and just as chaotic as the rest of Bangladesh.

My friend Amy, who was over visiting from Abu Dhabi last week, and I found ourselves with six hours to kill before our 11.30pm bus to Dhaka. We’d arrived at 6pm, expecting to just jump on a bus, but it was not to be. If you are ever be unlucky enough to find yourself in such a predicament, here’s our suggestions on how (not) to spend your time. We didn’t exactly stray far and wide in search of a good time: it being dark and me being so socialised after eighteen months in Bangladesh that I now regard darkness as indoors time, we weren’t particularly adventurous. The following recommendations are things to do on and around Sheikh Mujib road , so if you ever get stuck waiting for a Saudia of Green Line bus from Dampara, read on…

• First of all, don’t rely on the Lonely Planet to guide you. We were thoroughly disappointed by the LP’s recommendations, as you will see, and the map is highly misleading. At one point, we almost set off walking with our big backpacks to find a hotel that looked like it was just around the block. Two steep dual carriage ways and thirty minutes later, we still hadn’t reached the hotel by rickshaw. So be warned.

• So long as you’re not questing after authentic Bangladeshi cuisine (and after two days of forcefeeding in Rangamati, we were ready for a change), there’s a Pizza Hut on Sheikh Mujib Road that perfectly hit the spot with some appetizers (garlice bread) and aperitifs (well, ok, it was just iced tea). I know a lot of travellers would turn their noses up at going to a Pizza Hut in Bangladesh, but sometimes only the preprocessed comfort of a multinational chain will do. If you ensure that you manage your time well (no multi-tasking of any description, for example), you can quite easily pass a good forty minutes there.

• Next, you could think about heading out for a real aperitif. I say ‘could’ because, given the available options, I’m not sure it’s worth the hassle. The LP recommends an entertainingly seedy-sounding bar somewhere near Station Road, but as two bideshis alone, and after 8pm, for crying out loud, we decided it sounded like too much hassle. Far better to plump for a hotel. And seeing as Amy was paying for everything, we lighted upon the Hotel Agrabad – described by the LP as ‘plush’ (not my italics). I was wildly excited about the prospect of going to a hotel that apparently charges $110 for a single room, even if only for a drink, so perhaps my expectations were unreasonably heightened. Suffice to say that, although there is a bar, it is anything but plush, and two women there alone after dark were distinctly frowned upon. Add to this the fact that two local vodkas and a shared can of sprite came to 500 taka, and it really is a waste of money. You’re certainly not paying for the ambience.

• By this point, we were both pretty hungry, so decided to grab a rickshaw to try out another LP recommendation: Chung King restaurant, also on Sheikh Mujib road. The LP says that Chung King is “reputed to have the best Chinese food in town, as well as Indonesian, Thai and Indian selections.” Now, I don’t know if the writer actually visited this restaurant, or just heard about it from someone (maybe the owner?), but on the night we visited there was no selection – there was Chinese or Chinese, and it was bog-standard at that. On our way to Rangamati, we’d stopped in Comilla in a service station and had chowmein that was tastier. It wasn’t offensive at all, but it certainly didn’t live up to its recommendation.

• Feeling a bit disheartened, but a full two hours later, we struggled back to the bus counter and deposited our bags. On an earlier rickshaw ride, we’d spied an ice cream parlour a little further down the road from Pizza Hut, so went to investigate. Sadly, it was almost 10.30pm so the parlour was closing. The staff went a bit goggled eyed when we knocked on the door, but still refused to give us a scoop of ice cream each. Not to be defeated, we went back to Pizza Hut and plumped for a slice of chocolate cake and an ice cream sundae. All I can say is, the multi-national chains rarely let you down.

• Finally, after a slightly embarrassing incident where I had to sprint back to the Saudia counter to get some emergency cash from my backpack to pay for our outlandish desserts, we boarded the most lux bus I’ve ever seen, and promptly fell asleep. If the LP wants to throw the term ‘plush’ around, it might best be applied to the 760 taka Soudia S Alam Dhaka-Chittagong bus: it was like sleeping in a gently rocking arm chair.

On not getting the message

2010-04-06T13:55:00.000+06:00

I’m going to shout at someone soon if I don’t get this off my chest, so please forgive me another rant…

What is it with Bangladeshis and not getting the message? Back home, if you call someone twice and they cut your calls, you’d probably assume they are either too busy to talk or not your friend anymore. Here, however, if someone wants to talk to you, there’s simply no stopping them.

Last night, I was really late with for a deadline thanks to the national power board, and two colleagues were trying to get hold of me. I knew it was nothing urgent, as I’d spoken to them both less than an hour before. I rejected twelve calls from the two of them in the space of thirty minutes. TWELVE. Now, it isn’t unreasonable for a person to feel hounded under such circumstances, is it? Because I’m really losing perspective here. In the end, I turned off my phone (I wanted to chuck it out the window).

When the article was finished, and I called my colleagues back, they were both outraged that I had ignored their calls. They were understanding when I said I had been very busy finishing some work, but that’s not the point, is it?

Today is a Friday, what I like to think of as me-time. Working six days a week doesn’t give you a whole lot of time to relax, so on Fridays, I tend to reject all but essential invitations and disturbances, and spend my day reading, writing, watching The Wire and painting my toenails.

About an hour ago, a neighbour came over. I heard her downstairs chatting to the other housewives, before she came upstairs. Unfortunately for her, I was really not in the mood for idle chitchat, so I decided to ignore her knocking. My lack of response did not, however, discourage her.

Meanwhile, I was checking my emails or something. At first, the knocking was easy to ignore. I assumed she’d go away after a couple of unanswered knocks. But as the minutes ticked by, I found I couldn’t concentrate. Then, I heard her telling her son to go outside and see if he could see through the windows. I cursed, and turned the main light off, starting to feel like a fugitive in my own home. I heard the kid calling to me from the front yard, then telling his mother he couldn’t see me. Then my phone started ringing.

Eventually, they must have got bored, because she went back downstairs, complaining loudly. Then I heard the gate screech as she left.

Fifteen minutes later, I judged it safe to put the light back on.

Am I being unreasonable? Am I being rude to act like this? Part of me thinks so. But the other part thinks that if everyone could just take the hint and bugger off when I occasionally don’t answer their calls, we’d all get along much better.

The bastard ants

2010-04-01T13:49:00.000+06:00

Regular readers may remember my rants about the ants last spring. Well, they’re back and they mean business.

I don’t know if it’s a seasonal thing, but my flat has suddenly been overrun by ants of all descriptions. We’ve got tiny red biting ants, whose bites leave big red swellings for days afterwards; we’ve got big black buggers, who patrol the floor of my sitting room and give the most painful bites I’ve ever had from an insect; and we’ve got little black ‘uns, comparatively harmless, but bloody everywhere.

I noticed the first ones a few days ago, criss-crossing the wall above the dining table. They were black and small, so I ignored them. Then, I came home from work to discover a black stain on the floor that, when I approached appeared to dissolve in all directions at once. A dead cockroach makes a nutritious meal for most of the ants in the sodding neighbourhood, apparently.

And now they’re everywhere. In my grapes, on my table, emerging from the plughole in my sink… there isn’t a place these ants will pass over. I made the mistake of dropping a fragment of Crème Egg wrapper (from a crème egg, lovingly sent by my sister) during a blackout one night, and awoke the next morning to find it heaving with ants.

Now that I understand. If I’m going to do something so stupid as leave sticky chocolate wrappers lying around, I’ve got to expect an ant party. Of course ants want crème egg goo, delicious as it is. But what do they want with the dreggs of my (unsweetened) coffee? And how dare they attempt to infest my goddamn oats? Not to mention violating my water filter, which I really feel is taking the piss.

I think me and the bastard ants need to sit down and try to come to some sort of mutual understanding about what is and what isn’t fair game in this flat. Otherwise, the only option is war. And I really don’t like the odds on me plus a can of Mortein, versus an army of endless ants.

Dirty Dhaka stricken by diarrhoea epidemic

2010-03-15T23:18:00.000+06:00

As some of you may have picked up from my pathetic-sounding tweets over the last few days, I was recently struck down by a rather nasty bout of ‘the episodes’. I have never been this sick with diarrhoea before, and have never realised how truly unpleasant – and frankly dangerous – diarrhoea can be. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had travellers diarrhoea, and even giardia, many times before (I didn’t get the nickname Windy-bum Whitaker for nothing). I’m also well versed in the usual coping mechanisms (lots of oral rehydration salts and lots of water, combined with a tantalising selection of any of the following: flat 7-Up, bananas, toast, boiled rice, boiled eggs etc. My approach is always eat if you feel hungry, don’t eat if you don’t, and go to the doctor if things aren’t improving after 48 hours).

However, I’ve truly never been this sick in all my days in Bangladesh. I was only the other day thinking how lucky I’ve been, not to have been hospitalised, operated upon or airlifted out of the country, like many of my fellow volunteers. I was even applauding the steeliness of my immune system a little bit. I should have known that such thoughts only tempt fate.

Not to dwell on the gritty details, but things were BAD for quite a few days. To cut a long story short, I was practically bed ridden for three days, was given horrendously strong antibiotics, and lost about 4 kilograms in less than a week. Luckily, the antibiotics seem to have done their work, and I’ve managed to progress to non-toast-based meals over the last two days.

Usually, I can identify a likely culprit when I’m struck down with the episodes. This time around, however, I couldn’t think of anything suspect I’d eaten in the past few days. My only conclusion is therefore that the general grubbiness (read, pure filth) that characterises Dhaka simply makes one more susceptible to sickness of any kind.

During my hour of need, I was (slightly) comforted to learn that I and my liquid bowels weren’t suffering alone. ICDDR,B, the diarrhoea hospital in Dhaka – and obviously the place you want to be when you’ve got diarrhoea – has recently seen a major influx of patients as the temperature here climbs day by day. Apparently, it’s a common occurrence during this season – and one instance in which the ‘change of seasons’ can genuinely be seen to be affecting health. When I went to the travellers’ clinc that is also at ICDDR,B on Thursday, feeling extremely sorry for myself, it was sobering to see where the Bangladeshi diarrhoea patients wait out their episodes: on rubber-covered gurneys with holes in the middle and buckets beneath, in what is essentially an open air ward.

A bit of an epiphany

2010-03-05T22:45:00.002+06:00

I’ve had a bit of an epiphany lately, dear readers: I am ready to leave the ‘desh.

Although the thought of leaving regularly makes me want to weep, a very wise friend pointed out to me a few weeks ago that, when working in development, just as it is important to see out your contract, it’s equally important to known when to leave. And I’ve come to see, over the last few weeks, that my desire to stay here at GBK is more about my fear of the next step, than about what I can really contribute to GBK in addition to what I’m already doing. The skills that I have, and the support that GBK now needs, no longer match. It’s time for us both to move on.

I think my work here is (almost) done.

Now all I have to do is break this to my colleagues. Like my neighbours, they are forever trying to convince me to stay on in Bangladesh. For a while, I was genuinely searching for ways to stay. But now that I know this is not what I want, I just don’t know if I have the heart to tell my friends that, actually, for the time being at least, I’m done with Bangladesh.

Silver linings

2010-02-17T22:43:00.000+06:00

I arrived home from work the other day, pretty tired, and ran into Meena, my landlady. Because I’ve been working such long hours lately, I hadn’t seen her in a few days. She insisted that I come in and sit down. In between making me tea and piling at least a dozen biscuits onto my plate, she began to tell me how much she was going to miss me when I’m gone. She kept insisting that things would be altogether much better if I stay for at least one more year, that I live in her flat and (when I pointed out that I would have no job beyond 17th May, and therefore would not be able to pay the rent), that I get married in Bangladesh. Sumaia’s mother, who was passing by at the time, popped in to gossip. She said the same thing. Then Auntie from upstairs came downstairs and joined in.

Really, it was all very touching, and began to make me feel rather tearful.
But then, as Meena was bringing me my dinner (I only put up a feeble resistance to her offer of goat curry, I’ll admit it), the mood changed. She pulled her chair closer to mine, and glanced around nervously. Jumping up again, she pushed the front door closed. I began to worry she was about to offer me her son’s hand in marriage. As she leaned in towards me, I began to panic, racking my brains for polite ways to say no.

Alas, my consternation proved to be needless. Her proposition was of quite a different nature. She asked me very softly, as if afraid the neighbours would overhear, whether I planned on taking my rice cooker back to England with me.
I gazed at her in wonder for a moment, before carefully explaining that no, it was unlikely the rice cooker would fit into my backpack. She beamed enormously. Then she asked if I’d be taking the china teapot my parents bought while they were here. And so began an inventory of all the household goods that I’ve accumulated, and which she’s obviously had her eye on for the last year and more.

I suppose the lesson here is that every cloud has a silver lining. And the cloud of me leaving Bangladesh is, for Meena at least, lined with electrical appliances and crockery.

Job hunting

2010-02-08T22:42:00.000+06:00

The bright sparks amongst you have probably guessed from the title of this post that, finally, after many months of denial and procrastination, the time has come for me to decide What I Want To Do Next.

Oh, those six dreaded words. This question, while I was at home and being clouted over the head by it at every turn, made my heart constrict and my natural ebullience wilt, before the questioner had even reached the inflection at the end of the sentence.

Now, however, as I sit here in Parbs, I see the long, dark years stretch out before me, rather like the road does in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (think nuclear winter, with a bit of cannibalism thrown in for variety), and I know that attempting to answer this tortuous question is infinitely preferable to living in Leicester for the rest of my life.

I suppose I hadn’t realised, until the possibility of extending my placement here was torn to shreds, set alights and the embers danced upon by a thoroughly ridiculous decision (I’m not naming any names, before you ask), how much that possibility had been cocooning me from facing this depressing prospect. It was only when that particular rug was whipped out from under my feet that the need to Find A Job hit me square in the jaw.

Unfortunately, I’m no closer now to knowing what I want to do with my life than I was when I arrived here. Convinced I was going to have an epiphany in a Bangladeshi village, I quietly pitied my university friends, all madly applying for jobs the summer we graduated. And now, here I am, not so much closer to The Answer than I was when we took off from Heathrow back in 2008.

Back in the desh

2010-01-27T21:59:00.001+06:00

Bangladesh got really annoying while I was gone. Perhaps it’s just going through a particularly irritating phase. Perhaps. More likely, Bangladesh has always been this annoying, only I’d been here for so long I’d stopped noticing. Either way, I am struggling to readjust, especially after the blissful two days I spent on St Martin’s island last week – probably the best part of Bangladesh I’ve been to yet, precisely because it’s nothing like Bangladesh.

(I should probably give a slight disclaimer here – I’ve had a crap day and am feeling premenstrual . But I’m not going to make excuses anymore. Oh no. I’m telling it like it is.)

It began yesterday when I got back to the office for the first time in six weeks. I went in to say hello to my director, and after the initial pleasantries, he kept me waiting for ten minutes in silence while he rifled aimlessly through papers on his desk. When I asked if I should come back later, after he’d taken the second phone call, he said “No, no, just wait, one minute”.

Then the demands for “some demandable gift from London” began. Not just from the friends whom I’m promised to bring a little something for. Oh no. Nearly every single person in the office has stopped me over the last two days to ask where their present is. Even the people I don’t like, the high up management people who generally think it is beneath their dignity to talk to me unless they want something, such as helping them to get British visa, or bringing them a cheap English laptop from home. They have no shame, I tell you, none. It all came to a head today when one particular member of staff came into my office. I thought he’d just come for a chat as we hadn’t really seen each other since I’d come back, but I was sadly mistaken. After merely 30 seconds of small talk, he asked if I had something for him. I scowled, then explained that I had brought some traditional English biscuits and chocolates (which took up a sizeable amount of space in my backpack, I’ll have you know), which I was planning to share on Saturday when many people who are away on training will return to the office. It was his turn to scowl.

“Just food presents?” he demanded, clearly not impressed with this. I nodded.

“No useable item?” My scowl deepened. I explained (with some dignity, I think) that I am not a millionaire and therefore couldn’t bring a proper present for all 30 people in the office. He didn’t understand the word millionaire, however, so my dignity was somewhat lost. When I said that I am not a rich man, something that definitely translates, he laughed. Mirthlessly. No-one here believes that it’s possible for me not to be rich. I know that by Bangladeshi standards I am, but when we’re talking about buying 30 Christmas presents in England, I’m definitely not.

Anyway, this exchange continued for some ten minutes, with my face getting stonier by the second. When I asked, in exasperation, what he wanted me to do, he replied that I should have brought some small useable item for him. When I asked whether he rather not have any of my sodding biscuits as they clearly weren’t good enough for him, he asked whether I was feeling angry. In the end, I had to stare at my computer screen and count to ten whilst breathing deeply until he got the message and left.
After that, I had a good cry – more rage-induced than anything else – and decided that if no-one was going to appreciate me in this bloody office, if everyone was going to take me for granted as a limitless money-lender and bringer of “demandable” gifts, then I may as well just bugger off home.

Only Bangladesh was also waiting outside. My back was already up about this gift thing, but then, as I marched up the road to the rickshaw stand, the legions of “Hi madam, how are you’s?” began to grate against my soul, rather like a cheese grater would on bare flesh. I had on my best don’t-bloody-talk-to-me face, but some in this country are impervious to all subtle hints except shouting at very close quarters. Unfortunately for them, I swore loudly at many of the banana sellers in Haldibari today.

I finally made it back to my house, where I came upon Lily. I knew immediately that she was sulking with me for not keeping in touch, or not going to see her yesterday, or some other cultural faux pas that I was unaware of. She refused to even make eye contact with me.This is another really annoying Bangladeshi habit – expecting that the only thing you think about when you’re not with someone is them, and not really understanding that when I’m in Dhaka, or at home, I actually have other things to do (don’t get me wrong, I did keep in touch with my close friends, but if I’d kept in touch with everyone while I was at home I’d have done nothing by skype Bangladesh, and frankly, I’d had enough of it). At this stage, I couldn’t even be bothered to explain why I hadn’t been in touch (a broken mobile and a sim card left on my desk in Leicester). I just shrugged and sloped off.

By this point, I was about ready to break. So I decided that there was only one thing for it: Davina. Exercise has long been my saviour here, giving me a shot of endorphins when I’m at my lowest, ready to go out on a killing spree. My new Davina dvd thankfully did not let me down. There was enough punching and kicking in it to reduce my colleagues to blubbering wrecks who would not even be able to form the words “demandable” and “gift”, let alone tell me that my gifts aren’t good enough.

The last straw came during the abs section. I was feeling pretty good, had worked up a nice sweat, and was almost through. That’s when the knocking on my door started. It went on for the rest of the abs section and the entire cool down section (about 20 minutes). To be fair, it was only Shahanaz wanting her wages, and I can’t really blame her for that. But I was so close to the end and wearing only tiny little shorts and a sports bra (i.e. not in any fit state to answer the door), that I decided to ignore it. I assumed she’d just go away and come back later.

I was ready to scream by the end. My exercise-induced zen was utterly destroyed. But when I answered the door, a look like thunder on my face, they all just came trundling in as usual to poke around my things and ask inane questions. When Shahanaz asked if the winter weight babygro with attached mittens and booties, which my mother had sent for my colleague Sarah’s new baby, was for her five year old son, I really did think it was the end. She said that she’d seen it earlier, and that Meena-auntie had said I must have brought it for him. I forced to explain, with the poor boy standing there gazing at the babygro in wonder, that there was no way in hell it was going to fit him, and no, actually, I hadn’t brought it for him. His crushed and accusing eyes as the whole dog and pony show trooped out of my flat really were the straws that broke the camel’s back in this case.
I have to admit it. I cracked. Those chocolate supplies that were supposed to last me a good few weeks have been reduced to wrappers. However, having splurged my pent up rage onto this blog, you’ll all be pleased to know that I’m feeling remarkably better.

Welcome home, Dhaka style

2010-01-15T22:40:00.000+06:00

I was slightly disappointed not to be met by cheering fans as I emerged from customs, especially after an annoying delay in Calcutta airport (where there is not a bloody thing to do – it’s like they have a special second-rate terminal for flights to Bangladesh).

It was rather rewarding, however, to march out of the terminal into the staring, shouting, hustling crowd that always swarms around the airport in Dhaka, and inform everyone who made a grab for my bag or attempted to usher me into an outrageously overpriced yellow taxi (who needs airconditioning in January?), that I would not be requiring their services – all in fluent Bangla, of course. Hopping into a CNG for the first time in a month was like a warm embrace from Bangladesh, and I was surprised to find myself glad to receive it.

In the evening, I enjoyed a typical Dhaka Thursday night in – cheap nasty whiskey and a dirty kebab. Unsurprisingly, delicious as it was at the time, this delightful concoction gave all participants stomach upsets throughout the night.

God, it’s good to be back!

Homecoming, or, Searching for a Love Actually moment

2009-12-16T04:05:00.000+07:00

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

2009-12-14T04:02:00.000+07:00

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

2009-11-12T03:56:00.000+07:00

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

2009-10-17T10:50:00.000+07:00

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

2009-10-17T10:43:00.000+07:00

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

2009-10-09T18:30:00.000+07:00

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

2009-10-06T18:29:00.000+07:00

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

2009-10-05T18:28:00.002+07:00

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...

2009-10-04T18:26:00.000+07:00

… 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)

2009-09-05T21:11:00.000+07:00

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)

2009-08-28T14:20:00.000+07:00

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

2009-05-24T22:08:00.000+06:00

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)

2009-05-22T22:09:00.000+06:00

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 )

2009-05-17T21:38:00.000+06:00

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 )

2009-05-17T21:34:00.000+06:00

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)

2009-04-18T23:04:00.000+06:00

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

2009-04-18T23:01:00.000+06:00

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

2009-03-20T18:12:00.001+06:00

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

2009-03-20T18:05:00.003+06:00

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)

2009-03-01T21:49:00.001+06:00

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)

2009-02-25T16:53:00.002+06:00

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

2009-02-22T11:16:00.000+06:00

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)

2009-02-22T10:55:00.000+06:00

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)

2009-02-10T21:33:00.000+06:00

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)

2009-02-08T17:09:00.000+06:00

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.

Way down south (18/01-20/01)

2009-01-23T17:57:00.002+06:00

This last weekend I went on a jolly to Mongla, a port town in the south west of Bangladesh, perched on the edge of the Sunderbans with a great view of the Bay of Bengal. The Sunderbans are the world’s densest concentration of mangrove forest in the world, two thirds of which are in Bangladesh (the other third being in West Bengal). There are many legends about the Sunderbans (literally meaning, beautiful forest), featuring tigers and devils and a great forest protectoress called Bon Bibi. Recently, the forests have been getting media attention because of the growing number of tiger attacks on villagers who are, due to rising tides and a growing population, increasingly forced to venture into tiger habitats for food and firewood. Needless to say, it was with some trepidation that I ventured south to see what this mysterious tide land was like…

I should probably say that my visit had a purpose higher than checking out these natural wonders. Officially I was there for a VSOB study visit, to learn about an initiative of Rupantar, a large local NGO, aimed at improving the accountability and responsiveness of Bangladesh’s lowest level of local government. It was a fascinating visit, and gave me lots of ideas about potentially transferring these structures and practices to the north. Although there was, as ever, a lot of sitting dazedly as a heated debate flew directly over my head (it being entirely in Bangla), I still learned an awful lot and got to meet a lot of really interesting people (more on this later).

However, despite all that, it was the landscape that excited and enthralled me most. As you travel south here (bear in mind this was four full days of driving for two and a half days of visiting…), the landscape gradually changes. Where I live, it’s quite dry and although there are trees, they are much more familiar looking and somehow more controlled. As you go south, two things happen: it gets more watery and more wild.

Probably it’s is to do with the greater presence of water here, and the friendlier climate, but the further south you go, the more verdant and febrile the vegetation becomes. The trees seem taller, thicker. The greenery seems denser and more energetic somehow, exploding upwards everywhere you turn.

As you drive down roads miraculously raised up on sandy dykes, a lattice of fields rolls out around you in myriad stages of growth, studded with coconut and banana trees. There is the shocking lime of the rice seedlings, the milky green of the transplanted shoots, and interspersed between these, the flooded fields that await planting, gleaming dove grey and misty blue with the haze of the sky.

The raised causeways of tarmac are lined with trees that curve above, forming a lulling, luring canopy as far as the eye can see. Houses and shops, singly or in small, stretched settlements are precariously perched on oases of raised land, but you know that when the rains come, this will make little difference. Narrow paths atop dykes, or spindly bridges of single bamboo poles, are all that connect these abodes to the world.

This is what is means to say that Bangladesh is a delta country. Given the sure knowledge of rain and flood, you know that this land is really on the edge, fighting a constant battle with nature. The fact that this is also cyclone alley begs the question: how does any of it survive? The ramshackle buildings lean crazily over the water, made from corrugated iron, thatch, bamboo weave and banana leaf, and propped up on stilts. All of it seems worringly impermanent, as if the people here know they are living on borrowed time.

The land in the south is beautiful, but brutally so, a constant reminder that it has no sympathy for the thousands of people who cling to it.

*

The Sunderbans themselves

We only visited a tiny edge of the Sunderbans, and very briefly, but it was wonderful to see this so-much-spoken-about forest. It is all rivers and tides. Rivers and tides and trees.

The Sunderbans are where the huge rivers that flow through Bangladesh join the sea, and this is where the distinctions between river and sea, water and land, cease to have meaning. All the waterbodies in the area are saline, for example, and getting fresh drinking water is a constant concern for locals. This also causes huge problems for growing crops, which do not take to salty soil very well.

The land is dissected into islands of trees that rise out of the water at low tide, showing their muddy underbellies to the world, and slide beneath it at high tide, until the water laps the trunks of the trees.

Where the land is protected from the hunger of the tides, where you can walk even at high tide (which is in forest reservation land or in the precarious villages of those who dwell here, which are encircled by fiercely maintained dykes), the forests sing with wildlife. Deer, crocodiles and Royal Bengal tigers are just some of the hundreds of species that reside here, amongst the seemingly impenetrable protection of the forest.

The denseness of the forest and the trials of the weather make you wonder how anyone could possibly live here, and yet live here people do. The litre of wild honey I bought is testament to that: honey which, according to the Lonely Planet, is the most dangerous honey on the planet because of the dangers (tigers, crocodiles, bandits, the police…) collectors brave in order to collect it. It’s just one example of how the people here are forced to battle nature in order to survive.

A glimmer of hope (7/01/09)

2009-01-23T17:56:00.000+06:00

This is just a quick update on the work situation, for anyone who was concerned that I might be out here committing violent crimes in frustration at the total lack of progress on the work front.

1. A big meeting was had today, in which myriad things were cleared up. All the big wigs, including from VSOB, and at least everybody is now on the same page.
2. My objectives are now somewhat more clarified, and include: assisting VSOB with its move to integrate indigenous rights programmes within its governance programmes; facilitating the development of greater gender mainstreaming within GBK; organising some basic communications workshops on things like writing reports, case studies and press releases; and running English classes for GBK’s staff who are all desperate to learn English. There go my chances of Bangla fluency…
3. Although I feel more positive and optimistic about work now, I remain a tad sceptical. I will only believe it when the agreed meetings/workshops/trainings etc are actually carried out. I know it sounds horribly cynical, but experience has taught me not to count on time management.

While the nation voted, I went to the beauty parlour... (29/12/08)

2009-01-23T17:50:00.002+06:00

The 29th December 2008 was a big day for Bangladesh. The first national elections in six years were held after a state of emergency that has lasted for almost two years was lifted on 17th December. After many delays, and much last-minute wrangling, the election was held peacefully on the 29th. While outside, voters and campaigners mingled on the streets, making the most of the national holiday declared for the election, I and my oh-so-politically-aware friends made a trip to the beauty parlor…

To give you a little background to the election: a caretaker government has been in control of Bangladesh since early 2007, when the serving prime minister (of the Bangladesh National Party) resigned at the increasingly acrimonious and volatile turn in relations between the government and its opposition, which threatened to destabilize the entire country and derail its economic development. The caretaker government has, since 2007, worked to eliminate corruption in Bangladeshi politics and reform the electoral system.

Needless to say, hopes for 2008 were high. Judgments of the caretaker government have been mixed to say the least, with some applauding the significant voter registration drive it conducted, purging millions of false or duplicate names from the electoral roll, and others pointing out that, despite its best efforts, the same people remain very much in control of politics in this country.

Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina, leaders of the Bangladesh National Party and the Awami League respectively, have alternated in power since Bangladesh’s liberation in 1971. Both are related to former powerful Bengali/Bangladeshi politicians – Khaleda’s husband was General Zia********, while Hasina’s father was Bangabondhu, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, ‘the father of Bangladesh’. Despite the caretaker government’s best attempts to remove these two great women of Bangladeshi politics from the scene by imprisoning them both on corruption charges, it was unable to prevent them from leading their parties into the election.

Unsurprisingly (to anyone following the situation) the Awami League won. Hasina’s victory had been widely predicted in the days running up to the election, and greater support for the AL was certainly reflected in the allegiance of the majority of the rallies, marches and demonstrations I encountered in Dhaka and elsewhere. What was perhaps more surprising, however, was the scale of the party’s victory. The AL won by a triumphant two thirds landslide, leaving the BNP with seats in double figures. Although the majority of my friends and acquaintances here favoured the AL over the BNP because of its more liberal stance on most issues, the fact that the election was, essentially, a two-way contest between Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina does beg the question: has anything changed? And perhaps more importantly, will anything change?

Alas, only time will tell, but as I sit here writing this in mid-January, it appears that any change that may occur is not going to be rapid.

****

Ever since our arrival in Bangladesh, we have been bombarded with security briefings and updates from VSOB, advising us of the changing dates of the upcoming national elections, and warning us to avoid large gatherings, rallies and marches, and to refrain from expressing support of a particular party in public. As the election drew nearer, the emails from VSOB grew in frequency and insistence: for the three day electoral period, we were to work from home and avoid busy public places; on election day itself, we were not to set foot outside, having previously stocked up on supplies.

Although it was quite possible that things would turn nasty after the election, and that VSOB needed to cover its back by advising all necessary precautions for volunteers, I decided to take all this advice with a pinch of salt. Partly this was because, in reality, avoiding rallies after the state of emergency was lifted on 17th December to allow campaigning to begin was simply not feasible. Although some campaigning was done via painfully loud megaphones hitched to rickshaws, which you could hear coming from miles away, rallies were wont to descend without warning, surround you within minutes, and disappear equally quickly. Bands of marching, chanting men (note that it was always men and boys I saw, never women) would appear around the corner and halt all other activity as they streamed past in a flurry of clapping, shouting and waving banners, then they would be gone again. Taking avoidance measures in such situations would have been completely impractical, unless of course I wanted to behave like a paranoid tourist and, shrieking, force my way out of the crowd and demand sanctuary somewhere nearby.

My glib attitude to security around the election also stemmed from slightly less logical sources. In the first place, in all the rallies I’d ever witnessed or been dragged into, no violence ensued. What’s more, the thing that I will now always associate with Bangladeshi politics is not rampaging mobs, but the white campaigning posters that were strung up like bunting in every street. I think this demonstrates quite well the peaceful nature of the pre-election period.

I know, of course, that the lack of violence I witnessed doesn’t mean that no violence would ever ensure, but in such an eventuality, I planned to rely on my trump card: my bideshi status. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not arrogant enough to think that being British and charming would win me immediate protection. But the fact is, foreigners in Bangladesh are afforded a number of special allowances and protections here, owing to the Bangladeshi sense of duty to one’s guests. I decided to trust that this would be enough get me out of any sticky situations.

And thus equipped with my blind faith in the Bangladeshi people’s hospitality, I boldly made my across Lalmatia on election day, to a beauty parlour in Dhanmondi. Part of me wishes this tale was more noble – that I flouted VSOB’s security guidelines for some worthy cause, like saving a child from a burning building. Part of me wishes it was more dramatic – I had to dodge raging mobs and gunfire to get to my destination.

Unfortunately (well, fortunately, really), no such situations presented themselves. Polling happened peacefully on the whole, and the streets were full of people milling about, enjoying the national holiday declared for the election and the surprisingly warm weather. I and my friends strolled to the beauty parlour, unmolested by angry crowds, and enjoyed our facials. While neither noble nor dramatic, this will be my abiding memory of these elections. For someone who prides herself on being interested in current affairs, it’s a little embarrassing to admit this. But as with so many things here, my expectations of both myself and the things around me are proving to be way off the mark.

We wish you a deshi Christmas (25/12/08)

2009-01-10T22:53:00.003+06:00

Being swept up in the newness of everything, I hardly noticed that Christmas was just around the corner until I was on the night bus (huge error, by the way) heading for Dhaka in order to collect my arriving family from the airport.

Of course, there is no Christmas tat to contend with here, no rubbish Christmas music, no stress and no consumerist convulsions. For these things I am generally hugely grateful. But, much as I’m loathe to admit it, these things do hammer home a sense of Christmassy-ness that I really do love, even if they sometimes hammer it a little too hard (almost every year, hearing The Pogues one too many times makes me want to commit a violent crime). Needless to say, Christmas in Dhaka was going to take some work if it was to feel even vaguely like Christmas…

The Whitaker-Wylies arrived in Dhaka on 22nd December: cue an extremely happy reunion amidst a sea of returning hajjis. It was a little odd to have the fam in Bangladesh, in the way you often feel disorientated when two previously separated worlds collide, but it was also absolutely fantastic to see my parents and sister after such a long time (almost three months – probably the longest I’ve so far gone without seeing my parental units).

Interestingly, I think my dad had come to Bangladesh partly in order to escape Christmas (remember, this is the man who is primarily responsible for the fact that for the last few years, the Whitaker-Wylie Christmas dinner has been something like kebabs cooked on the barbecue outside). As a result, he was not particularly interested in the plans being cooked up in the VSO volunteer community to bring Christmas to Lalmatia.

Luckily this did nothing to limit our enthusiasm. Megan was a veritable powerhouse when it came to planning Christmas (I was busy running tours of Dhaka’s historical sights for the traveling bideshi show, aka, my family), and for this I will be eternally grateful.

Preparations for the Christmas period progressed swimmingly (again, I can’t claim any credit here. Thanks are due to Megan, Ollie, Laura and others). Ollie had gone all out on the alcohol-buying front, and we had a true cavern of delights, consisting of Heineken, Bangladeshi vodka, several litres of Bangla pani (literally meaning ‘Bangla water’, but actually referring to the potent rice wine brewed by indigenous peoples, especially in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, and semi-legally transported by VSO volunteers stationed in the CHT in 7-Up bottles), and – fanfare please – WHITE WINE. Yes, Scal had managed to procure a few sweet bottles of vin blanc, of vino bianco.

Seriously, it’s things like this that tempt me to believe that there is, in fact, a god.

Anyway. For Christmas Eve, we had a Christmas Decorations Party. Keith brought a miniature tree his aunt had sent him from the States. Megan had bought felt tips, blue tack and paper, and everyone got massively excited about making snow flakes and paper chains, which were then elaborately hung around the flat. Someone even bought snow in can, which brought a magical few seconds as we sprayed it around the tree, only to discover that the ‘snow’ was lilac, had the consistency of shaving foam, and evaporated in a matter of minutes. Megan – goddess of organization and brilliant Christmas ideas – had decided to make something that she named ‘Potent Pagla Pani Punch’ (forgive me if I haven’t got the name exactly right, Megbo!). This consisted of Bangla pani (natch), mango juice, 7-Up, apples, oranges and star fruit. It obviously went down a storm…

I thought things couldn’t get any better after that party. But how wrong I was!

On Christmas Day, the festivities kicked off with a Christmas brunch. No expense was spared. Scrambled eggs, fried tomatoes, toast, honey, peanut butter, jam, pancakes, cheese (yes, for the love of God, CHEESE!) were devoured alongside obligatory cans of Heineken and glasses of white wine. None of this might sound particularly exciting to anyone in the UK, but when you have been denied such delights for a few months, suddenly, even bland cheese and vinegary white wine become like ambrosia.

In the evening, the VSO induction flat hosted its second party in two days (god bless VSOB for finding a flat in a building where no-one complains about the noise). Apparently, in the last few years, Christmas amongst volunteers has been fairly fragmented, with the Kenyans, Ugandans, British, Filipinas etc celebrating separately. But not this year, oh no! Everyone came over bearing a dish, and we got down to some serious eating, drinking and dancing. To cap it all off, Scal made his debut as Santa, in a costume constructed from red cotton and cotton wool, dishing out Christmas beers to all and sundry. Oh the japes!

That I spent Christmas 2008 in Dhaka, where it was 20 degrees outside, with so many wonderful new friends and my family around me, eating food from eight different countries and dancing the night away to lilting, eternally cheerful Kenyan and Ugandan pop music, have really made me reconsider my take on Christmas. I don't even like turkey.

Grinding my teeth, Part Two: Adjusting to Bangla Time (16/12/08)

2009-01-10T22:52:00.000+06:00

16/12/08
Grinding my teeth
Part 2: Adjusting to Bangla time

When I first arrived here, I was surprised how quickly my jet lag wore off. However, two months in and the painful transition to Bangla time – or the wholly different work ethic here – is still ongoing.

I think, in order for you to really feel my hair-tearing, teeth-grinding, head-banging-against-brick-wall frustration, I’ll give you a couple of reflections to mull over…

- How does anyone plan anything when no-one has a diary? (Believe me, it’s not because they don’t have diaries, NGOs spend lots of money on company diaries, but NO-ONE USES THEM). A certain person (who shall not be named) has likened a certain organization close to us (that shall also not be named) as behaving like Wiley Coyote – i.e. not all that wiley, really, when you consider how Wiley Coyote appears to rush from one slightly dodgy idea to another, without engaging in sufficient monitoring and evaluation of his previous mess-up.
- If the tailor says your shalwar kameez will be ready in a week, allow ten days. They’ll always have an excuse.
- How can anyone get anything done when, in order to make any decisions of significance, the director (who spends at least 80% of his/her time elsewhere) must be present? (Answer: no-one can get anything done)
- If someone says that they’ll meet with you after lunch, what they really mean is: they might meet with you at some point in the near future (for near, read: within the next fortnight, or perhaps week if you really pester hard), if your paths happen to cross.
- Perhaps the reason everyone works ridiculous hours here – not because of the pace and intensity of the work load – but because of the lack of familiarity with the concept of time management that is generally displayed. A sixty minute introductory session is no barrier to someone who wants to give a forty minute oration touching on everything from our common humanity to the American presidential elections, despite the fact they know that they’ve made a power point presentation that will take at least 45 minutes to go through painstakingly, word for word, and that lunch stops at half past one (can you feel the tension?).
- If I have to watch one more person answer their mobile phone loudly in an inappropriate work context, I think I will do something that probably constitutes a crime (seriously: formal introduction to serious meeting, given by director in rare appearance, mid-speech…)
- Even when you’re clearly in a hurry (the bus you’re supposed to be on is pulling away behind you), shopkeepers will insist on wrapping your purchase in newspaper incredibly tidily, and incredibly neatly tying it with brown string to create a handle for you to transport your goods with greater ease (which is handy, as now you have to sprint an extremely undignified thirty yards to catch up with your departing bus).

I could go on indefinitely. I could, but I won’t. I don’t want to bore you.

Those of you who know me will know that I’m quite fond of organization (to put it mildly), so my frustration at this disorganization may not surprise you too much. But I really am trying my hardest to be chilled out, and to roll with the different cultural norms here in the ‘desh. I really am, honestly. Just don’t use this entry as evidence against me if I am tipped over the edge…

Grinding my teeth, Part One: What am I doing here? 15/12/08

2009-01-10T22:50:00.002+06:00

(A disclaimer: I’m feeling somewhat bitter and frustrated right now, so apologies if this post turns into a rant.)

Realizing that I haven’t yet written anything about the work I’m ostensibly here to do, I suppose I ought to say something. Although I’ve only been in placement just over a month, I’m quickly becoming acquainted with the joys and frustrations of working in development, and in particular, working in development in Bangladesh.

So: a brief outline of what I’m here to do is probably in order for those of you who don’t already know/didn’t pay attention to my lengthy explanations. I’m here working through VSO, an international development organization that works in 34 countries around the world through skilled volunteers. Although it’s a British charity, VSO also has recruitment offices in Kenya, the Netherlands, India, the Philippines and Canada, hence the mix of volunteers I’m working alongside. In each of its target countries, VSO works through partnership: in Bangladesh, this means there is a central program office in Dhaka, but volunteers are placed with a range of smaller, national and local NGOs all around the country. VSO Bangladesh focuses on three of VSO’s strategic areas: good governance; HIV and AIDS; and indigenous community rights.

My placement is with an indigenous rights organization based in north west Bangladesh called Gram Bikash Kendra (literally, Village Development Centre), which has been working with adivasi (indigenous) communities since 1992. It also has programs in various other areas, such as working with harijan communities (otherwise derogatorily known as sweeper or dalit communities). GBK is fairly large and quite well-established by local standards, and has had at least two previous VSO volunteers before Ollie and I arrived.

Now, what exactly are you here to do? I hear you cry. Well, prepare for a tirade, dear reader... I have no idea. One month in, and I have not a clue. I’m a pretty flexible and adaptable person (one of VSO’s recruitment requirements that they hammer home to you until your sick of hearing it), but even my flexibility is eroded by the intensity of my frustration. When I accepted my placement, it was on the basis of a pretty vague outline of what I’d be doing: capacity building for an indigenous rights organization, including documentation, communication, fundraising, networking and advocacy. Given the massively nebulous nature of most of the words in the above description, I accepted the placement on the assumption that all placement outlines are equally vague. Little did I know, mine would be more vague than I’d thought possible…

During induction, I met several times with my VSO manager and GBK’s executive director, to discuss the details of my placement in more depth. It was only two days before I actually left for the north that VSO decided to inform me that I’d be doing something quite different from what I’d first envisaged. They’d told me initially that I’d be working to build the capacity of GBK’s partner organizations (GBK works through 5 partners of its own – very small-scale community based organizations that work in different geographical areas with adivasi communities), in order that they would be able to work more effectively with local government. GBK would be ‘hosting’ my placement, but I wouldn’t actually be working directly for them. Quite a complicated aim, for sure, but something I could certainly have a stab at.

Then, VSO tell me that, in addition to working with these partners, they also want me to work with about ten of their own partners, based in several different parts of the country and which work in the area of good governance. Now, given that most volunteers work with four NGOs tops, I reckon working with sixteen is quite a tall order, especially when you consider that:
1. Many of these NGOs have no English speakers working for them
2. They are hundreds of miles apart
3. It takes time to build up a rapport with one NGO, let alone sixteen
4. I have no clear idea who I’d accountable to and where professional support comes from (VSO or GBK?)
5. VSO seem unwilling to give me a firm idea of what they want me to do, and GBK don’t seem to care

And so here I am. One month in, and generally not a clue as to what I’m supposed to be doing. Of course, I understand that adapting to a different culture takes time, and that things are done at a different pace here (see next entry), and that it’s important to do things in as participatory a manner as possible (i.e. I’m not going to decide my objectives unilaterally, but try to work them out on the basis of the needs of VSO, GBK and all the partner organizations), but unless I get a little more direction soon, I am going to wind up insane.

9/12/08 Eid ul-Azha, or Eating my own body weight in meat

2008-12-11T15:35:00.000+06:00

Today was Eid ul-Azha, or Korbani Eid, which roughly translates as slaughtering or sacrificial Eid. It’s linked to that episode where God or Allah (depending on which version of the story you subscribe to) asks Abraham or Ibrahim to sacrifice his most beloved son, Isaac, and right before he goes through with it, an animal is substituted in Isaac’s place.

Anyway, whatever the back story, the central focus of Eid ul-Azha, aside from a whole bunch of praying, is butchery. Sadly (or not, perhaps), I didn’t witness a single slaughter, compared to Ollie’s two. But I did see a whole lot of carcasses, blood and dismembered body parts. And I did eat a hell of a lot of meat.

For the past week, Ollie and I have been fielding invitations left, right and centre, to spend Eid with various different people, and our social calendar was chocka with visits all over Parbatipur. Because of all the butchering, the logical conclusion of this is that there is also a lot of eating. And I mean A LOT. So I’ll break it down meal by meal, to give you an idea of my day.

1. I ate breakfast with Meena, my landlady, while her family was out at namaj, or prayers, (this was a bit of a sore point for me, as I was desperate to watch the prayers, which happen in a huge field, with lots of celebration afterwards, but my genitalia apparently excluded me from attending). Anyway, breakfast was a delicious milky sweet concoction made with noodles, eaten with rice flour ruti, and then some pulao (rice cooked with oil) and beef.

2. Then, I went to GBK’s director’s family home with Ollie, Sarah (our GBK counterpart) and her husband and niece, as they are all Christian so weren’t celebrating at home. We took a 45-minute rickshaw ride through beautiful, quiet countryside that was all mud huts and paddy fields. This idyll was, however, interspersed with groups of villagers surrounding bloody, gradually dismembered cow carcasses. It was a bizarre sight, to see men tearing out internal organs or hacking through spinal columns at five minute intervals (I will upload some photos as soon as I can). There, we ate more misti with rice-flour bread.

3. About an hour later, we were called back from our repose for lunch. This was possibly the freshest beef I have ever eaten – literally two hours before it had been mooing in the yard. And, sorry cow, but it was delicious! Again, it was served with pulao, vegetables and ruti.

4. After some rest, we jumped back on the van and headed back into town. From there, Ollie and I went to another colleague, Alam’s house. I could hardly walk from all the food I’d consumed, so had to refuse the offer of more beef. But Alam-bhai insisted I ate some rice pudding, which was delicious.

5. Next, I headed home to spend some more time with Meena and her family. For the previous few days, I’d been kept awake by the bleating of a goat in the front yard of my building. Now the goat was no longer in the yard, but in a huge cooking pot. And, again, it just tasted so good! I ate a plate of goat meat, with yet more pulao, but at least Meena relented when I told her I really could not eat another thing.

6. I allowed myself a ten-minute lie down before dragging myself round to Ollie’s, where we had long ago promised Helal that we’d eat dinner at his uncle’s house. When they whipped the lids of several huge pots of goat, beef, pulao and vegetables, my stomach actually heaved at the thought of putting more food in it. But I couldn’t refuse to eat without appearing rude, so I ate. Again.

Six meals of pure meat later, my concerns about developing a protein deficiency were firmly laid to rest. I don’t know that I’ll ever be hungry again. The only problem is, I’ve already accepted invitations to lunch and dinner tomorrow…

The nightlife of Parbatipur 08/12/08

2008-12-11T15:32:00.000+06:00

The title of this post might be somewhat optimistic in hindsight. Parbatipur isn’t exactly a raving hotspot, and what ‘nightlife’ there is, is firmly over by 9pm. Despite this my diary seems to be fuller here than it ever was at home, and whoever said that they would’ve had a better nightlife in any other VSO country than Bangladesh was clearly doing something wrong.

I’ve already written about the amazing hospitality here, but what it essentially means is that, if I choose to, I might never have a free evening or weekend.

This afternoon, for instance, Ollie and I took a walk through the bazaar because I was having a tea-craving (probably just a sugar crash). After a nice cup of dudh cha (milky tea), we wandered on. But, as we don’t exactly blend into the crowd here, we inevitably bumped into a number of acquaintances. Three cups of tea and several misti later, my hands were starting to shake from all the sugar. We had met with a friend who works at the LAMB (mission) hospital, a guy that we’d once shared a rickshaw ride with, and who introduced us to the head of the local government, and everyone had insisted that we take tea with them. Sadly, I don’t know the Bangla for “I’ve eaten too much”, so I’m sure to end up a diabetic by the time I arrive home.

Last night we had a particularly interesting evening. Ollie’s landlord Helal informed us at 6 o’clock that we were going to meet the Mayor. Although I’d been looking forward to an evening to myself, I decided it wouldn’t be prudent to refuse this invitation. So half an hour later, off we trot with Helal, his wife Moyna and their five-year-old, Raisa.

The Mayor is the eldest of the Haq brothers, who are, by their own account, the local elite. This was not hard to believe: they live in a huge compound on the edge of Parbatipur with their wives and children, and their sisters’ families to boot. Because it is Eid tomorrow, although most of the family live in Dhaka, they were all back for the party. I was introduced to about a million people, and can now recall just one name.

Interestingly, this was the first house I’ve visited in Bangladesh where the women covered their heads on seeing Ollie, and who refused to shake his hand. It was also the first place in which I was ushered inside to hang out with the girls, while Ol was taken off to talk business and politics (presumably) with the men. I quite liked this, because it was nice to get to know the women of the house – when men are present they tend to dominate the conversation, which seems to be because of female deference and lower levels of English being spoken by women. The latter point means it’s also great practice for my Bangla. (An aside on this subject: I find it really odd when people say things like ‘Oh, you’ll get to see a really interesting side of Bangladeshi life that most people don’t get to see’. Surely this reflects a fair amount of bias, as by ‘most people’ they can really only be referring to 50% of the population, and not, in fact, ‘most people’ at all… )

At dinner we were served by the women of the house, despite the fact that they have an army of helpers, and we ate completely separately from everyone who lives there. This is one disconcerting aspect of Bangladeshi hospitality: as a guest, you don’t eat with the rest of the household. They bring you food then sit and watch while you eat it, which means you have to keep an eye on yourself, checking your table manners and facial expressions so that you don’t horribly offend someone).

After another absolutely delicious meal, we were taken upstairs to one of the family’s bedrooms, and here we finally met the Mayor himself. I can’t remember his name for the life of me, but essentially he’s a caricature of everything you would hope for in a small-town mayor. He had a massive black moustache that was slightly longer and pointed downwards at the corners, in a way that reminded me strangely of Manuel from Faulty Towers. His belly was suitably prominent beneath his navy blazer, which had shiny gold buttons on the lapels and the cuffs. And he had a flashy mobile phone with the loudest ringtone I’ve ever heard in all my days, which he answered every five minutes in the style of Dom Joley.

And then we were served yet more food (steamed cakes made from flaked rice powder, with date molasses. Oh heaven!) and tea, before finally being released to stagger home.

Although perhaps not quite a typical evening in Parbatipur (after all, it’s not every day we dine with government officials, but as Ollie pointed out, if you’re anyone in this town, we’ll have met you), most evenings are similarly full of company and food; and while this might not be quite the nightlife I left behind, I’m certainly enjoying it.

29/11/08 Turning 22

2008-12-11T15:30:00.000+06:00

I’d just like to take this opportunity to record the fact that I celebrated my 22nd birthday lying beside a swimming pool in the late afternoon sunshine, sipping on a cool 7-Up (I was nursing a pretty serious hangover, otherwise I would surely have been drinking a cocktail).

For someone whose birthday is in (English) November, the idea of a pool party was never really on the cards. So to celebrate in this way was pretty special for me. The night before, I’d gone to a party at the Nordic club, which is a really nice expat club in Gulshan, with Laura, Job and Ollie. There was loud live music (terrible), a Dj (good enough), a canopy of fairy lights (enchanting) and lots of dancing (exactly what I needed). It was perfect, save for the fact that so many people I love were so far away. Everyone else there was also immaculately dressed (how do they all have so many nice clothes with them?!), so I felt rather like a scrubber in my flipflops and one of the two dresses that I have with me in Bangladesh. But I was having too much fun to care.

After our sojourn beside the pool the next day, I went to Job’s flat (he’s another VSO volunteer, from Kenya) and we cooked some great African beef and ugali (a Kenyan staple made from maize flour). So we ate, drank rice wine and Bangladeshi vodka, and danced the night away. Again.

23/11/08 The Grand Pancake Party of Parbatipur

2008-12-11T15:26:00.000+06:00

Bearing in mind the overwhelming generosity of everyone here, I decided that I’d have to make some attempt at returning all the countless favors. Given that my neighbors never accept my protestations that I make the tea this evening, I decided that drastic action was necessary. And thus, the grand pancake party was conceived.

Since I’ve been here, cooking has taken on a much greater significance in my life than ever before. At home, food shopping is simple and cooking doesn’t need to require much thought at all. Here, however, when you don’t know the Bangla names of half the vegetables, and the other half is totally unrecognizable to you, things become a lot more complicated. Add to this basic problems such as the fact that my cooking utensils are basic (Tefal? What Tefal?), and I initially had no idea what to do with my rubbish, problems loom (I actually spent a lot of one night awake, wondering what to do with my rubbish. No exaggeration). One thing I remembered from Nepal, however, was that pancakes are really pretty straightforward to make: the ingredients are obvious, and they don’t require much technology to produce, so I have had many a banana pancake for breakfast.

When Momo caught me a-pancake-flipping one day, and I realized she’d never seen a pancake before, I decided to invite her and her family round the next evening, so that they could taste some ingreji pitha (English cake). And so the next night, I whipped up a batch of my best, unburnt pancakes and laid the table. Unfortunately, I lacked enough plates for everyone to have a big one, so Momo diplomatically insisted that we take the big plate of pancakes next door to eat them. But I think everybody enjoyed them. Rafat ate his with about a hundred-weight of sugar on top. Ratna called her friend Lily from over the road, and she came over with her daughter.

And from that day on, whenever I meet someone new when I’m with Ratna, she introduces me as the bideshi who made ingreji pitha for her. It’s also one of the reasons that she insists that I am khub bhalo (very good): I made English cakes, I will eat achar (pickle), and I do not to kiss boys or let them touch me. Note I didn’t say that I actually am good – just that I let them think I am…

21/11/08 My neighbors

2008-12-11T15:25:00.000+06:00

There are days here when I don’t spend more than ten minutes inside my flat from the moment I arrive home till the moment I go to sleep. As soon as I get home from the office, my neighbors pounce, and so begins my evening...

When they hear my footsteps on the stairs, Momo, Rafat and Laboni (the kids from next door and their fifteen-year old ‘helper’) come spilling out of their flat to say hello, then follow me into my flat. The first time this happened, I was little bit taken aback – after all, it’s such an un-English thing to do, to wander into someone’s home uninvited, and rifle through their things, asking countless questions about where things are from and how much they cost and whether I could buy an (insert random item of clothing, make-up, jewellery, crockery here) for them the next time I’m in Dhaka. But I’ve grown used to the company of the kids from next door, their mother, Ratna, and pretty much all the women in a 20 meter radius of my flat. They come over to my flat to chat about what everyone has done on that particular day (either housework or studying in their case, going to the office in mine), what everyone has eaten that day (always bhat – or boiled rice – for them, usually bhat for me too), and what everyone will be doing that evening (they will generally be staying at home and cooking, and I will either be cooking at home or at Ollie’s flat).

One of the first things we were told during induction was that the concept of privacy is somewhat different here. This made me a bit nervous, as I’ve always thought of myself as someone who really needs her own space. However, to my great surprise I’ve come to depend on these small exchanges (for instance, now that it is Eid ul-Azha and everyone has gone back to their villages, I feel horribly alone!). I don’t know how to fill my evenings anymore, unless my free time is interspersed with tea and snacks next door, or shouted conversations between balconies, or a 20-minute explanation of who is who in the photos I brought from home, or a visit to one of the houses across the way. Given that my Bangla is still rudimentary, to put it politely, my conversation certainly lacks any je ne sais quois, and the same subjects are always discussed: my country, my marital status, my job, how long I will stay, whether I’m interested in marrying a Bangladeshi man, and whether I or my parents will choose who I marry, in that order.

But none of this seems to matter. My neighbors treat me with such genuine curiosity and kindness that I cannot seem to say no, when they ring my door bell and want me to teach them card games, or let them try on my English clothes, or come over for tea.
- Momo is my lifeline – she’s nine years old, and has enough English that she can serve as a translator when my Bangla comes to a juddering halt.
- Her brother Rafat is five, and completely beautiful. I’ve never seen a kid eat so much sugar in all my days (literally, by the handful, straight from the jar), and remain pleasant.
- Laboni, their helper, speaks very little English and is generally ordered around by everyone. She’s feisty though, and when she wants something (like having a go with my skipping rope), she’ll get it.
- Hanan is Momo and Rafat’s father. I don’t see him too much, as he works late, but he is very mild mannered, and is always scolding his kids for bothering me.
- Ratna is their mother, and I adore her. She also scolds the kids for their incessant curiosity, but she is probably more curious than they are about me. She has admired my rice-cooker endlessly, and told all her friends about it. She admired one of my shalwar kameez for weeks until she asked me to get her one from Dhaka – and then, when I did, was completely over the moon. She is also very interested in Western ways: she’s now asked on multiple occasions whether I kiss boys, either English or Bangladeshi, and whether I or my friends let boys touch us; and whether I, my friends or my family drink alcohol).

Although before I would’ve thought that this constant curiosity would annoy the hell out of me, I actually find it completely endearing. Yes, it’s quite tiring because I’m always on my best behavior, and must always be ready to answer the door (i.e. I must be fully clothed and with my flat in a decent state), but really, I just enjoy the company. Yes, there’s a language barrier which slows everything down, but I do feel like I’m making some genuine friends. And if my neighbors weren’t so great, I’m not sure I could stay here.

This is not to say everything’s been hunky dory; indeed, there have been several highly embarrassing moments. I’ll give you two prime examples:
1. When Ratna and Lily discovered the photobook that a friend from home so loving made for me (oh Kinch, I miss you so much!). It contains several pictures that involve nudity and semi-nudity, and I was terrified that they would be outraged at my lack of morality and storm from the flat. Far from it, in fact: they were both highly amused, and sent their kids away so they could look and point and giggle some more.
2. On rummaging through my drawers in search of crazy English things, Momo and Laboni stumbled upon my supply of tampons, and asked, as they had of everything else in there, what these were. Sadly, my Bangla was not up to such an explanation, and my dignity was not up to even an attempt at an explanation, so I just muttered that I didn’t know how to say it in Bangla, and shut the drawer.

But I figure that, actually, the embarrassment is all mine, and it’s all part of the process anyway. So, for now, I’m happy to have my ‘privacy’ invaded at every opportunity; I’m happy to have company at every possible moment. Sure, I’ll get sick of it at some point, but for now, I’m glad to have left the English definition of ‘privacy’ behind.

19/11/08 Misti and cha, or Eating my own body weight in sugar

2008-12-11T15:22:00.000+06:00

19/11/08
Misti and cha, or Eating my own body weight in sugar

Before arriving here, I’d heard that Bangladeshi hospitality was second to none. ‘Yeah, yeah,’ I thought, sure that it would be nothing out of the ordinary. But, as so often in this new adventure of mine, I was wrong.

Pretty much everywhere you go here, someone will appear within moments with a tray of food that they will insist you devour, pronto. This can range from crisps, to puffed rice with molasses, to freshly made cakes, to bread and jam, to noodles, to achar (pickle, usually very sour or very spicy) to pieces of curried beef, to fresh fruit, to jalebi (amazing squiggley sweets, that are deep fried and which ooze sugar syrup when you bite into them) and any number of other delectable Bangla misti. You cannot refuse – mainly because the food is so good, but also because you don’t want to seem rude. And no thanks will be accepted – everyone seems to feel like being so amazingly generous is their duty.

Off to the sticks 14/11/08

2008-11-17T13:48:00.002+06:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2008-11-17T13:42:00.001+06:00

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

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

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

LATER – things get more surreal…

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

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

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

Go Obama, go! 5/11/08

2008-11-17T13:39:00.001+06:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2008-11-10T11:39:00.001+06:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Confessions of a guilty expat

2008-10-29T12:55:00.000+06:00

Two brief experiences in the last week have shown me what expatriate life can be, and taught me that I’m not exactly comfortable living this kind of life.

The first was our visit to the British High Commission. Despite my joy at the gin, and my ogling of the tantalizing swimming pool, I experienced distinctly mixed feelings at being their. While it might be a nice place to retreat if everything gets a bit much, it strikes me as odd that you’d want to spend much more than an occasional afternoon there. The place is so removed from what the rest of Dhaka is like, it felt a little like I’d temporarily left Bangladesh for some sort of heated up version of the UK.

What’s more, the guy who did our security briefing added to my reservations. I don’t which was my favourite comment: that Bangladeshis don’t have anything better to do than stare at foreigners walking down the street (about the staring culture), or that Bangladesh is grateful to Britain for its education system/civil service/law and order situation. With that last comment, I think there’s a pretty good chance that he was just attempting to rile us up, as do-gooding volunteers who leap onto their high horses at any invitation. But as for the first… it does raise some interesting questions.

My second flutter of guilt came when we made our abortive visit to the Bagha Club on Friday. Again, a potentially quite attractive place after months in the villages, but the whole experience left us all feeling a little uncomfortable. Perhaps we simply haven’t been here long enough to appreciate the purpose it serves (in fact, I reckon this is fairly likely); but again, that feeling of incongruity returned. The fact that we spent about 2000 taka each in one night (a monumental sum by local standards) made me feel terribly frivolous and wasteful. And while it was highly interesting, to mingle with the local expat community and meet lots of new and interesting people, part of me felt a little uncomfortable being there.
Probably, these feelings are my fresh-faced idealism showing through. Idealism that can be fresh-faced because it’s only been here 15 days. And probably I will learn to love the expat scene. But at the moment, I think I shall be retaining my 40 quid for when I’m desperate for some home comforts.

Two elections in the 'desh 26/10/08

2008-10-29T12:54:00.001+06:00

Politics has been on my mind a lot over the last few weeks. After multiple briefings and some careful perusals of English newspapers, I am slowly building up a general idea of the background to the national elections due to take place here on 18th December after a 18-month long state of emergency. Then, of course, there is the US election in less than a fortnight, and everyone here is really interested in it. Whenever Trish or Keith reveal the fact that they’re American, someone will inevitably make a comment along the lines of ‘George Bush – na, Barack Obama – ji’ (this is a direct quote from a stall holder I haggled over the price of beans with the other day). It still seems strange to me that an election in a country so far away should be followed so closely by everyone here. Obviously, it’s fair to say that the result on the 4th will be pretty significant for the world, but the fact that this stall holder would express an opinion on the election when many Americans (and Westerners in general) don’t know where Bangladesh is reminds me again of Western (and especially my own) self-absorption and ignorance.

I feel lucky to be in Bangaldesh at such an interesting time, so I’ll do my best to explain what’s going down here at the moment…

Following significant political instability in 2006, President Iajuddin Ahmed resigned on 11th January 2007 and declared a state of emergency. This instability seems to have arisen mainly from tensions between the two dominant political parties, the Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), who have alternated in power since independence, and who are responsible for immense corruption in Bangla politics. For four years in a row prior to 2007, Bangladesh ranked number one in Transparency International’s league table of corrupt countries; Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia (leaders of the Awami League and BNP respectively) have only recently been released on bail from prison, where they were held on charges of corruption.

In January 2007, the President handed power over to a Caretaker Government led by Dr Fakhruddin Ahmed, a former governor of Bangladesh Bank and senior staff member of the World Bank. By all accounts, this military-backed government has been largely successful in quelling the political instability that it was formed to tackle. Although it’s difficult to get an objective view, the Caretaker Government reportedly enabled the restoration of economic activity by cracking down on hartals (strikes), which are traditionally used by the opposition party to stymie the government. Hundreds of MPs were arrested on corruption charges in part of a massive anti-corruption campaign. A voter-registration drive and the formation of an Independent Electoral Commission have hopefully laid the foundations of free and fair democratic elections, which are set to take place in under 2 months.

Feelings about the Caretaker Government seem to be generally positive. Most people (well, VSO and the good people of the British High Commission at least) seem to think that it’s done its job as well as can be expected. Unsurprisingly perhaps, it now wants to wash its hand of the whole affair. So far, things are proceeding fairly smoothly towards 18th December: the parties are engaging in talks with the Caretaker Government, and are beginning to register with the new independent electoral commission. What’s more, the Jamat-i Islami (a reportedly Islamic fundamentalist branch of the BNP) has changed its name from Bangladesh Jamat-i Islami to Jamat-i Islami Bangladesh, which apparently indicates a distancing from fundamentalist Jamat-i Islami parties around the world.

However, doubts do remain. Despite the fact that the leaders of the two main parties were imprisoned for most of the Caretaker Government’s term, little has changed within the parties. That Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia will lead their parties into the election is a clear indication that little has changed. It seems that although the political structures of Bangladeshi politics have been reformed, the reforming zeal of the Caretaker Government has been unable to reach the substance of Bangladeshi politics. If this is the case, it seems likely that whoever wins in December may continue much as before. But we shall have to see.

The Lash in Dhaka 25/10/08

2008-10-29T12:53:00.000+06:00

Having been told time and time again by returned volunteers that it’s very difficult to get your hands on alcohol here, and hence the lash is a rare occurrence, my experiences of the last week have proved that this is, in fact, a lie. You definitely have to pay for it, but it is there. Let me document my experience of the lash thus far to illustrate this exciting discovery…

Incident Number One: Drinks on the British Tax-Payer
On our visit to the British High Commission earlier this week on a particularly hot and sweaty afternoon, we enjoyed our first alcohol in Bangladesh, courtesy of the glorious British state. After plucking up the courage to ask for it (having been offered only beer initially), I enjoyed an icy gin and tonic, feeling guiltily like an old colonialist. This is the life!

Incident Number Two: Dinner at Bruce’s
Bruce, a volunteer from Uganda, invited Laura, Megan, Ollie, Keith and I over for dinner the other night. We had amazing beef stew (I get excited every time I eat meat, as I don’t yet have the balls to go out and buy it), made even better by the production of cold cans of Kingfisher at the end. Mmm-hmm. Bruce refuses to disclose his supplier’s name to us, but clearly this guy has the goods. We also had our first encounter with rice wine, a specialty of the Hill Tracts region: it’s pretty potent stuff, smelling like paint stripper and tasting a bit like a combination of whiskey (the vapour) and vodka (the taste). Clearly, there is much potential for the lash here…

Incident Number Three: My first party in the ‘desh
It was another volunteer’s birthday last week too, and again Bruce played host to much delicious food, abundant alcohol and much revelry. I also met the mysterious supplier, but failed to get his number (bugger). There was extremely sweaty dancing, lots of covering the birthday girl in various edible substances, and I racily didn’t get to bed til 1am!

Incident Number Four: The Bagha Club
On Friday night (Friday being the new Saturday, dontcha know), we decided it was time to visit the Bagha club. Bagha, meaning ‘tiger’ in Bangla, is an expat club in Gulshan, the expensive embassy area of Dhaka. On arriving, hoping simply for a quiet drink, we discovered our several faux pas. Firstly, you can’t register at 7.30 on a Friday night. Secondly, there was a big party going on for which tickets had to be purchased. Having come only for one drink, I had a measly 500 taka with me, which turned out to be sadly insufficient for the night ahead. Thirdly, there is clearly an active party-scene in Dhaka and everyone there (NGO workers, military contractors, embassy staff, the rich kids of Dhaka) was dressed to the nines for the party. I was wearing mud-spattered trousers and a non-matching shirt and orna. Cue immense embarrassment on my part, and some swift conversion of said trousers into shorts.

Despite this collection of blunders, we were determined to have a good night. Through a cunning mixture of pooled resources and a hasty trip to an ATM (thank you, Ollie!), we amassed quite a few thousand taka and proceeded to blow it all on gin and 2 packets of crisps. All in all, it was a pretty weird experience (see later), but one that was worth it. While this record may make me sound a little like a wino, as after only 2 weeks here I’m not exactly getting withdrawal symptoms yet, it will definitely prove useful after many months in a tiny and probably almost totally dry village.

5 bideshis on the loose in Dhaka 17/10/08

2008-10-19T13:41:00.000+06:00

Today was the first day that we have been left to our own devices. Pretty risky, perhaps, because we’ve only been here five days, but I think we coped admirably.

It turns out lie-ins aren’t possible here, because it just gets too hot. So I had a fairly lazy morning, reading in bed and sweating. We decided to go to Rifle Square Market to sort yet more phone stuff out, and generally to see what it’s like. Hence, our first experience with public transport. The selection is diverse, and wholly unsafe, but very much fun. We picked CNG today because they’re slightly more anonymous than rickshaws, where it looks a little like you’re sitting on a throne, high above the masses, yet are also at the bottom of the pile in the transport food chain (except for pedestrians, who are fodder). CNG are like Thai tuk-tuks or Indian auto-rickshaws – motorised go-carts that bez along and zip into any available space in the heaving melee of traffic, honking their horns at random. The ride was great fun – it’s almost as cool as a/c, but you get to see much, much more.

Rifle Square Market, communicated to our driver in broken Bangla and some apparently universal hand gestures, turned out not to be the busy bazaar I’d imagined, but a flashy air conditioned mall. In the Grameen phone shop, we got into a conversation with some customers who first took our photos on their mobiles, then accused us of killing Princess Diana AND ruining all of Bengal through colonialism. I don’t know which was the bigger crime in their eyes. Martin and KR Mullah turned out to be really friendly, if a little crazy. They took us for very sweet coffee and singara (like samosas), and assured us that we would all be real friends forever now. KR Mullah can apparently help us wherever we are in Bangladesh because he is a big man in customs, which includes getting us whiskey and beer. I stored his card away safely for when things get tough.

That’s another funny thing about Dhaka – in that mall, if you’d changed the writing, you could have been almost anywhere in the world. Perhaps it was ignorant of me to think that you wouldn’t be able to find data cables here – but you can, and you can get them to fit almost any make of mobile phone. You can also buy a burger, fries and a coke from the fast food joints, and the complete series of almost any programme on TV. The fact that these can be bought for less than a fiver does suggest you’re not in London, but nevertheless…

One of the highlights of my day was when Laura decided to play bouncey ball with a kid in the mall. You should have seen the crowds it drew. I don’t think anyone knew what to make of a bunch of bideshis laughing as their overexcited friend tried vainly to bat this ball back to the kid, but everyone got involved in helping her out.

Not tempted by the fast food, we got street food for lunch, fresh from the boiling oil. Sitting in a tiny open-fronted room which contained only a fridge, a hob, a table and some chairs, there was no doubt we were in Bangladesh. The smiling young man who served us spoke no English, but we managed to order some more singara and some sugary puff-pastry concoction that, along with condensed milk char (tea), made the perfect lunch.

I’m definitely enjoying this life so far. Bangladesh is a very welcoming place, and it is certainly full of surprises. Considering I’ve only been here five days, I’m sure there’re a lot more in store. It still doesn’t feel real, the fact that this will be my life for the next year and more. I don’t know if I’ll ever get my head round it, until it actually happens. But I’m ok with that. Although it still feels a bit like a strange dream, it’s one I’m liking so far.

You've got to make it Bangla 15/10/08

2008-10-19T13:40:00.000+06:00

Bangla the language, that is. ‘Bangla’ is the name of the culture and language of this country, and ‘desh’ means country or land; so we are in the land of Bangla. So far, everyone seems to be enjoying the lessons. Pulak (note, Pu-laak, but Pu-lack: ‘you have to make it BaNGla,’ remember) is a great teacher, who points out on his own tongue which exact part of it should be touching where in.

After 3 hours of ‘repeat after me…’, we left for a tour of Gulshan, the embassy quarter. While it is full of beautiful old buildings in high-walled compounds, and has many lakes and tree-filled parks, it is still undeniably Bangladesh. So much greenery sprouts and rickshaw-wallahs swerve dangerously wherever you look. Despite the yellow number plates on SUVs, the armed guards and the signs which read ‘To Let: Foreigners Only’, Gulshan cannot cut itself off. Brightly-clothed street sellers still squat by the road sides, mould still festers on the walls of the embassies, and the driving is still abominable.

While we waited in the car for Judy, Clarifel and Hanny to visit their various embassies, the English and Americans began a wildly hilarious conversation about different slang words we all use. Explaining what the words ‘cad’ and ‘bounder’ mean proved more difficult than I’d imagined. All part of the bonding process I’m sure, but nonetheless I can’t quite believe that American hardware stores have sections for flange tools. In fact, I’m sure they’re making it up.

My favourite part of the day was our first trip to the local food markets. On our side of the road in Lalmatia, things are pretty calm. We get the odd stare, but it’s nothing too overwhelming: no-one is to surprised to see a bunch of sweating bideshis ambling aimlessly.

On the other side of the road, in Mohammadpur Market, things are wildly different. For the first time, I’ve seen what I imagined Bangladesh to be like: heaving markets, filthy gutters, hundreds of rickshaws, and huge crowds come to stare at the bideshis and their bizarre behaviour. Naked toddlers trail us for hundreds of meters, smiling and laughing at us, seeming to dare one another to go closer. Amid the immaculately stacked vegetables, we draw a crowd as Thaddeus buys squash. I shakily try out my Bangla, and get laughter in response. Three bideshis drinking sugar cane juice on a street corner appeared to be the highlight of many people’s afternoon.

My proudest achievement of the day was not, however, learning Bangla. It was finding our way home from the office for the first time. No driver, no guide. Just us and the Extrem Boys.

Has anyone seen the Extrem Boyz? 14/10/08

2008-10-19T13:36:00.001+06:00

After another hectic day of induction and greetings, I slowly feel like things are starting to fall into place.

Today we had our first little stroll around our ‘hood. Until now, I’d been feeling a bit isolated from the world, as we’re ferried around in our air-conditioned VSO minibus. Today, Marufa, who is in charge of induction at VSO-B and absolutely lovely, showed us a tiny bit of Lalmatia. We visited some local landmarks, such as various supermarkets that are surprisingly full of imported goods; the local Nando’s (no lie); and an art gallery that lies nestled behind palm trees in a walled compound off a main road – an icy paradise of art and chilled out café that looks set to become our local.

I’m not sure why, but I was so surprised to find this here. Dhaka is not what I expected of it: it is both more developed and more familiar than I expected it to be. Perhaps this is due to the area we live in? Lalmatia seems fairly affluent after all. But I can’t wait to explore some more of the city!

On our way home from drinks in the café, the Induction Flat crew decided to strike out and find our own way home. 2 problems arose: One, it was dark. Two, our map only shows the route from our flat to VSO’s offices. And we were not there. Cue much striding confidently, proclaiming that, finally, this street is familiar, only to peter out after a few minutes, mumbling something about a wrong turn, or every bloody food stall looking exactly the same. We made it home with the assistance of several extremely helpful locals, and the unforgettable graffiti that is opposite our block: the phrases ‘Extrem Boyz’ and ‘Fuck the Law’ tell us that we are home and dry.

Has anyone seen the Extrem Boyz?

2008-10-19T13:36:00.000+06:00

14th October 2008

After another hectic day of induction and greetings, I slowly feel like things are starting to fall into place.

Today we had our first little stroll around our ‘hood. Until now, I’d been feeling a bit isolated from the world, as we’re ferried around in our air-conditioned VSO minibus. Today, Marufa, who is in charge of induction at VSO-B and absolutely lovely, showed us a tiny bit of Lalmatia. We visited some local landmarks, such as various supermarkets that are surprisingly full of imported goods; the local Nando’s (no lie); and an art gallery that lies nestled behind palm trees in a walled compound off a main road – an icy paradise of art and chilled out café that looks set to become our local.

I’m not sure why, but I was so surprised to find this here. Dhaka is not what I expected of it: it is both more developed and more familiar than I expected it to be. Perhaps this is due to the area we live in? Lalmatia seems fairly affluent after all. But I can’t wait to explore some more of the city!

On our way home from drinks in the café, the Induction Flat crew decided to strike out and find our own way home. 2 problems arose: One, it was dark. Two, our map only shows the route from our flat to VSO’s offices. And we were not there. Cue much striding confidently, proclaiming that, finally, this street is familiar, only to peter out after a few minutes, mumbling something about a wrong turn, or every bloody food stall looking exactly the same. We made it home with the assistance of several extremely helpful locals, and the unforgettable graffiti that is opposite our block: the phrases ‘Extrem Boyz’ and ‘Fuck the Law’ tell us that we are home and dry.

So here we are. 13/10/08

2008-10-16T14:15:00.001+06:00

So here we are. Finally. After so many, many weeks of waiting, we landed in Zia International Airport at 6am local time. And now, as I sit here in our living room, I feel I need to take some time to process everything that’s happened today.

The flight was fine. In fact, it became positively enjoyable when I realized that BA gives out free alcohol. Every person who asked ‘how long are you going to Bangladesh for?’ gave us a wary look when we chirpily told them, as if we might well be escapees from an insane asylum. Although this didn’t seem to bode particularly well, most people also showered us with praise for what we were doing.

So it was with mixed apprehensions, and sleep-deprived dazedness that we landed in Bangladesh. A word about that – as the plane descended, it appeared we would be landing in an extremely misty pond. There appeared to be no area of dry land large enough to park a car on, let alone a bloody plane. Thankfully, by some twist of fate (or perhaps engineering genius), the airport is built so as not to flood. The minute we touched down, the windows misted over – telling us scarily quickly that, even though it was only dawn, the temperature was already climbing outside.

Laura, Ollie, Megan and I met up with Hanny, a short-term volunteer from the Netherlands, in customs; and after what Ollie described as a ‘pleasingly thorough’ wait at customs (they painstakingly entered data from several different forms, one finger at a time, then ignored most of what we’d put anyway), we made it to arrivals. A little VSO flag, held by Marufa, greeted us. Immediately, we, plus Keith and Trish, two American volunteers, were whisked from the heaving, sweaty forecourt of the airport, into the blissfully icy confines of our VSO minibus.

After a slow, horn-filled journey, dodging pedestrians, beggars and rickshaws going the wrong way up one-way streets, much reminiscent of travels in India and Nepal, we were deposited at our swanky apartment. For the next month, I will reside in the Induction Flat, a couple of minutes walk from the VSO Bangladesh programme offices, along with Megan, Ollie, Trish and two Filipina volunteers, Carifel and Judy. My spacious, airy room has two massive four poster beds with day-glo mossie nets separating them from the rest of the world. The window beside my bed looks down onto a scrubby little courtyard and a huge coconut tree. I still can’t get over the fact that I can see coconuts from my bed! That’s one thing I love already about the ‘desh: it’s so green. Everywhere you look, there’re plants and trees swarming up from the grimmest of holes, in search of the sun.

To cut a long story short – a long story about our first meal of rice and daal, about being greeted so warmly by the programme office staff, about receiving our first month’s pay in a fat envelope – we have made it here, and I love it already. I’ll finish this entry with just a taste of the things I have learned already:

1. Everything takes so much longer here. We made tea last night, which involved boiling water over a small gas ring to put through the filter, then reboiling filtered water for the tea itself. Perhaps a little long-winded, but we WILL be healthy! Luckily, we have Firoja, who cleans the flat and filters water for us. Although this makes me feel like a lazy git, I’m not complaining.
2. No-one goes to bed here. Ever. I woke up a lot last night, but there was never any silence. Even at 2am, kids were screaming, grown-ups shouting, horns a-hooting. Apparently, they do later on, but I’m not so sure.

Nerves and Packing 11/10/08

2008-10-11T23:07:00.004+06:00

Finally ready. Well, at least my stuff is. It is zip-locked, silica-gelled and crammed haphazardly into an assortment of bags. After several dodgy moments on the bathroom scales, I'm not truly convinced that it weighs less than 25 kilos. I'm not even sure if 25 kilos is the limit, or if it's in fact 23 kilos, or if I'm actually allowed 2 bags. Oh god. What if they confiscate one of my bags at check-in? What if I arrive in Banglades with a million zip-loc bags and half a kilo or silica gel, but no knickers!? What if they lose my bags on the way? What if I have to wear sandals and linen trousers FOREVER!

As you might be able to tell, while my stuff is ready, my head certainly is not. Having spent the last few days haring across the country and saying various drunk and weepy goodbyes, I don't really believe that tomorrow afternoon I'll actually be leaving the UK for 13 months.

Gulp.