23/11/08 The Grand Pancake Party of Parbatipur

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.