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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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