Narrative Structure...

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

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

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

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

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

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


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