Delirious in Dhaka

There is not one empty street, corner, nook or crany in this country. The streets are crowded constantly and the days heat drones on. The culture is beautiful and vibrant. The women's saris and salwarkameezs' (forgive my spelling) are as colorful as color can get, and set against the beautiful brown skin of a Bangladeshi woman it becomes quite the complement. However, the white women that roam these districts and find themselves tempted by these luscious colors should think twice. Ladies, we just don't look the same in them. But, yes, we can still dabble.

The spicy food which at first stings the nostrils soon becomes a welcoming drain to the days heavy dosage of pollution that congests the airways. The fog produced from the disel feul fills the halls and doorways of any shop running on a generator that in a city which loses power 5 times daily becomes an odorous and frequent thing.

But the friendly hellos "assalomyalakum!" are frequent and seem sincere. Our guards are always smiling day and night when we enter. The begger children, persistent and talented, are adorable and light hearted. I entertain them with songs when I can't give them small Taka or candy. Is this cruel? I don't know, but why not give something?

Work continues. The crowded drive in a CNG to the office during daily rasta jams (traffic jams) that occur every second, of every day, of every month, of every year, has become routine. And the cubical is now shared by four not two and keeps multiplying by three. We are all getting to know one another. The interns bond and form a unique connection from the understanding of the others days of love and despair.

It is a cyclical motion that moves neither forwards or backwards, up or down, left or right. It represents time; time that does not care to stop for the saddend silence that sits and lingers in dark places, time that does not wait to be made or had, but instead makes itself with the space allocated to her. She beats like the rapid pulse of a runner who bids her time till the winds give her flight.

silently the sounds shift

Do you ever find yourself in mid statement of an in depth conversation, and suddenly find your jumbled words dangling amongst you and your peers like an object suspended in motion? Well, I have and still do find that that is something I have come to perfect. The other night myself, two fellow interns, and a fulbrite scholar decided to go out for dinner (I tried deep fried bread or roti that is amazing and must be a heartattack waiting to happen). The ever famous question of "what will guys do once you graduate?" was popped by Steve, the fulbrite scholar and elder of the group. Tim immediately answered that he was going into the peace corps,
Caely quickly followed lead.
I sat there.

I don't know if I want to join the peace corps! I don't even know when to time my showers so that I don't get caught in the dark with shampoo in my hair when the power cuts! But, I guess that has always been the way I have done things making the decisions as I go for I can't tell if one day I'll be more into playing the piano or the guitar. That's just how I am, and I like me that way. I act spontaneously and sometimes... (ok often) irrationally, but that's how I like to live. And I often find that that is the best way I learn as well.

So while the air thickened and I began to babble on (in an incoherant fashion) about the impossibility of ever really being able to know and understand another culture as your own and the therefore compromising position of development practitioners in and of itself, I stopped talking
relaxed
and said
"I have no idea where I was going with this."

Well isn't that how it's always been. C'est la vie.
We all had a good laugh, finished up our fruit cups topped with vanilla ice cream, and departed to the relief of the wait staff that was waiting to clean up after us.

"Khuda haphej."
"Khuda haphej!" He smiled politely and held the door for me. We stepped out into the warm night air and parted down the spacious Banani district roads towards Steve's appt. to watch some Arrested Development.

O' nuts

I dabbled with a Bangladeshi habbit the other day. I decided to sit down with Sheitra, our ma and caretaker, and her friends to watch a Z classic Bangladeshi film in our appt. No sooner than my bum hit the bed did I find Sheitra shoving the popular red chewing nut into my mouth. The inital taste wasn't so bad...it was what came after that did me in: a green leaf smeared with a white, waxy, paste. While the women found my facial expressions more entertaining than their afternoon flick, I found myself running to the bathroom. Thank god I didn't swallow otherwise I think I would have been stuck at home praying to the porceline gods for a couple of days!

springy spirits

"Alright, everybody get into position the show starts in two minutes!"
"What?! The show?! But we've only had one rehearsal! I have no idea what my lines are!"

The next thing I knew I was sitting in the back of the auditorium watching my fellow cast perform a cheesy dance number that could have been straight from the musical "Mamma Mia!" I quickly jumped back on stage for the closing number to find that our last song was Sade's debut song from the album Lover's Rock. The show came to an end and none other than my former high school musical director stepped out on stage to give a final thank you....wait somethings not right....wake-up!! I opened my eyes to find m yself not in that long forgotten Saline auditorium, but in my firm but comfortable bed in Dhaka.

"Whoa, talk about disorrienting" I thought. "What induced that dream?"
It was most likely the news that Tim, my fellow traveller, had imparted to me the other day.

"You dated Meagan Bigulki?! ...ha...what a coincidence I went to high school with her."
This dream hasn't been the first of its kind though. I have had many dreams in the last two weeks in which I have visited places and moments in time that I have not thought about in years. This must be my subconscious working to find the familiar, the normalcy in my presently not so normal life.
I, coincidentally enough, found to my suprise this morning that home was following me in other ways. I reached into my drawer to retrive my father's video camera to find that my entire family had decided to come along for the ride in a tiny 2" by 2" cassette; in my opinoin, a not so comfortable way to trave, but it seemed to work for them. Everyone seemed happy.
This morning Tim and I did not head styraight for BRAC headquarters, but instead travelled accross the bridge with its mass of overhanging wires, down a muddy and relatively uncrowded street to road 27, house 12 to ASF, Acid Survivors Foundation. Here we were to begin our research.

"Oh god...that poor woman's face" I thought. I nodded my head and gave a smile.
"Salaam."
Our correspondant was more helpful than I could have hoped for. She was warm, kind, not afraid to tell us what she really thought abuot the government, politics. My understanding of the Bangladeshi justice system was definitely enhanced. My conclusion: terribly corrupt. Murder, bribary, corrupt judges, police, lawyers, everyone has a price. Our ASF correspondant's sister was just murderd six months ago by her husband and brother-in-law. She worked for Canada's equivalent of U.S.A.I.D. She was a human rights activist. There were more equally atrocious stories. Acid throwers buying the courts, women whose husband's threw acid in their faces and left them for dead, a man who refused to marry a woman who then threw acid on him and is now attempting to try him for attempted asult. The stories were never ending, but not all were so bleak. Many women and men had found community and peace of mind at ASF and some perpetrators were tried and convicted. Our friend and correspondant also stated that ASF provides (free) facial reconstruction to victims, even when surgery is needed multiple times.
She had much to relay (a huge folder, dvd, and a handbooks worth), but the biggest message I received from her was that nothing comes without a price, her's: a painful, constant reminder for a cause.

"No judgement. No justice."

She managed to keep smiling, although she had no qualms addmitting that the subject often aroused her emotions.
We signed out at the gate, p[arted past the guard, and stepped into the scorching heat on the pothole, trash covered, dirt trodden road. The sun and heat stiffled my senses, but the palm trees and foliage provided some shade to think.

"Wow...Tim....if we research this issue well, we could possibly do some good...(possibly?) and BRACs so huge and widespread...think of all good it could do!"
We couldn't help but walk down road 27 , past the CNGs and rickshaws, past the convience shacks, past the mosque and the men in punjabis, with an elated look on our faces not because we thought that we were especially smart, or that we had thought of somehting never thought of before, but bc we realized the privledged position given to us in part by BRAC, the color of our skin, our nationality (it is not somethning to be proud of but simply the reality). We thin k Kumkum realized too, and now so did we. Hopefully we'll be able to play a valuable roll. We'll see.