The change of seasons 20/03/09

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

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)

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)

I don’t know whether it’s because I’ve been spending so long sitting on Mahabub’s motorbike (he likes to talk, let’s just say, regardless of impending doom by bus), but over the last few days I’ve found myself engaged in some pretty deep conversations.

Topics included:
- Joining the armed forces: how this is regarded in Britain, whether I would like to join, the reasons I would never join voluntarily, the way recruitment works in Bangladesh, whether Mahabub would join etc, etc.
- The relations between management and other staff in GBK: how good do I think they are, how they compare with other organisations I know, whether I think there are any problems with relations, the culture of hierarchy and deference in Bangladesh, the potential problems that can arise when people cannot give their opinions freely, the possible difficulties when constructive criticism is not allowed (note: the last two points were hypothetical, naturally…)
- Opinions of members of staff: (can’t go into this here!)

But what struck me most was one conversation I had with Mahabub, while we were waiting for a meeting to finish.

“How many countries you have visited?” he asked me.

This is quite a common question, and I normally just say ‘quite a few’ because I can’t be bothered to work it out, but seeing as we had time, he asked me to name them all. As I went through them in my mind, and the numbers mounted, I began to wonder whether it was a good idea to keep going. It seemed so self-aggrandising, and so insensitive (he’d already told me he’d only ever visited India, and that was once when he was twelve). But I carried on, and eventually reached a figure.

“Maybe sixteen?”

Mahabub sat back in his chair to think about this. Then:

“How much does an English person earn for one day?”

I don’t know the average, so I guessed that the minimum wage is now about £6/hour.

“So that is about 600 taka an hour?” he asked.

I nodded.

“The Bangladeshi person get 500 taka for one day,” he told me.

Again, I nodded.

Then he sighed and said:

“This is the difference between the Bangladeshi and the English.”

Isn’t it just?

18/2/09 Shona Bangladesh

It was only during my recent sojourns to Hakimpur and Aftabganj that I realised what shona bangladesh really means. Of course, with my superb Bangla skills, I know the literal translation: it means ‘golden Bangladesh’ (and it’s from a Rabindranath Tagore poem that is now the national anthem). But the paddy was being harvested when I first arrived in Parbatipur, which meant that the fields were brown with the stubble and straw of harvest and I never really got the idea of a ‘golden Bangladesh’ (I’m going to do a whole post about rice later, so there’ll be more on this. Yeah, yeah, try to control yourselves).

As we cruised out of Parbatipur that day, however, the fields had been flooded, the seedlings had been grown and transplanted, and all of a sudden, the land was transformed. As far as the eye could see was an expanse of the most intense green imaginable. For mile after mile, it’s all I saw. The myriad colours, shades and textures of green render the word useless; they form a patchwork, dotted with the sari brights of working women, broken up only by the occasional stand of lanky palm trees.

Above our speeding motorbike the sky lazed, a hazy blue-grey almost painful to look at. The sun beat down, not too hot for now, but with the promise of fierceness to come. The wind on my limbs was delicious.

Later, after our work was done, we started back towards Parbatipur. As we sped along the same little roads as before, kicking up a trail of dust, the sun began its inexorable slide towards the horizon. As it went, its colour changed, glowing from white to yellow to orange in a matter of minutes. With nothing else to do, I simply watched as the changing light transformed the landscape once again. Mist was rising from the paddy fields, and, caught by the angling sunlight, it set the paddy alight so that the fields seemed to glow with the strength of their green. By the time we were motoring back into Parbatipur, the sun had sunk to a red orb, temporarily suspended above the glowing fields.

Bangladesh’s flag is green with a red circle in the middle, and I finally understand why.

Motorcyling (17/02/09)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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