Cooking class with Minoti

Minoti is the therapy assistant at the therapy centre where I work 3 days a week.  She is really lovely, but we have a few issues because she speaks possibly even less English than I speak Bangla.  Which is not a lot.

I'm normally quite stressed out at the therapy centre.  I enjoy it, but it's just hard trying to communicate when the majority of my patients don't speak English.  My Bangla is getting better all the time, but not good enough to get a decent history or provide any meaningful education to my patients.  So that's a bit stressful, combined with the fact that hardly any patients show up til 12pm, and the therapy centre is supposed to close at 1pm.  It doesn't bother me to stay longer, but there is pressure to just churn through the patients to get them all seen by 1pm (even if that means 5 or 10 minutes each) so everyone can have lunch.  I'd rather spend a good 20 minutes with each patient, even if it means they have to wait a bit longer (they should arrive earlier!) and I don't get lunch til later.

Also, the Bangladeshi approach to illness and disability is quite different to mine.  People really get into the "sick" role here - I've seen patients who are perfectly capable of doing everything for themselves but don't because they expect their family members to wait on them hand and foot.  Why?  Because they're "sick"!  From birth to death there's a general habit to do things for the person - if a little kid is a bit messy eating or drawing or whatever, the parents will just do the activity for them.  It gives me the shits!  So at the therapy centre, I'm forever slapping peoples' hands away so the patients can have an opportunity to practice and do things for themselves.  But then at other times, when I'm struggling with a dead weight of a patient falling to the floor or using all my arms and legs to keep a person in a good position and trying to ask another person to pass a ball or a toy or move an object... does anyone step in and help?  No!  I've had up to 6 people sitting watching me struggle with someone on the floor, before yelling in frustration, "Can someone bloody help me?!"  Anger management issues?  Who, me?

So poor Minoti is often on the receiving end of my frustrations at the communication and cultural differences that I face.  I wouldn't be surprised if she thinks I'm the biggest bitch in the world, cos I'm generally a bit grumpy after a frustrating morning of what often feels like useless therapy.

It was lovely, then, for her to invite me to her house today for a cooking lesson.  She'd made some coconut sweet things that I loved and asked if I wanted to come to her house to learn how to make them during the Eid break.

Her house is just on the other side of the railway line (but there's no such thing as "the wrong side of the tracks" here - it's busier on my side, but more beautiful on her side), near a creek, and surrounded by trees.  There's no electricity to her house, meaning she doesn't have the bloody TV on all the time!  It was so quiet and beautiful... I couldn't hear the highway noise from here and the only interruption to the peace and quiet were the infrequent trains.

I'd asked Minoti about her husband before, and she'd told me he was in Chittagong.  I'd presumed he was there for work, as quite a few couples here live separately during the week and the husband will come to the family house on weekends.  So when I asked Minoti if her husband was coming back to Sitakund for Durga Puja, she told me he's never coming back.  As in, he's left her.  Bastard!  So Minoti supports herself and her 2 sons on a wage that's less than $50 a month.

Her younger son, Mitu (11 years old), was keen to help and hang out with me (who wouldn't want to hang out with me?).  Minoti said he's very naughty, but he seemed absolutely delightful to me.  He was so good, helping her out by fetching water from the tube-well and various things from inside.

The "kitchen" was in a separate bamboo hut with a tin roof and mud floor.  It had a fire-place built into the floor (i.e. it was made of mud) and there were 2 more outside.  This was the first time I'd really been present when someone was cooking on a fire, rather than a gas stove.  Bloody hell, it was smoky at times and the fumes sometimes causing coughing fits in all present (not just me with my uninitiated lungs).  But Minoti was oblivious to the "hardship" that I saw - she just got on with the cooking.

We made shondesh which were like coconut toffee things - desiccated fresh coconut cooked in shitloads of goor (a different refinement of sugar, bought in solid form) and oil.  Pretty bloody unhealthy but, like all bad foods, really tasty!  Then we made pitha which were like sweet pasties with the same coconut mix (but cooked a bit less, so it wasn't so solid) in the middle.  She had special pitha moulds, which made them into beautiful sea-shell shaped pastries.  This was Mitu's favourite bit, assembling the pitha.  These were then deep-fried for about 20 seconds, making yet another healthy (!) but super delicious treat.

It was great to spend a few hours with Minoti in a much more relaxed environment than the therapy centre and to see her house and environment in which she lives.  Despite the many hardships life has dealt her, she is happy and her boys seem happy and are really good to their mum.  Another day where I was glad to be living in "the Shit" and felt really lucky to be able to share in the lives of these "real" Bangladeshis.

A year of the shits

So I've been possibly the most ill in the tummy that I've been in the 6 months that I've been in Bangladesh.  (Although the first time I got sick, "multi-tasking" was given a new meaning.)

We have a new housemate in the Chittagong house - Bri, who is here for 12 months as an English language teacher trainer.  She arrived in Chittagong on Monday afternoon to an empty house, as I was still in Sitakunda and Tania away for work.  I arrived at about 6:30pm, intending to go to my Bangla class.  My belly, however, had other ideas.  I'd been a little dodgy when leaving the Shit but figured it would pass.  This is an approximate transcript of the conversation that I had with Bri when I arrived at the house:

Bri (hearing me come in the door): Hello?!

MFT (hurriedly taking off my shoes): Hi.  Sorry, I really need to go to the toilet.

Some time later...

MFT: Sorry about that.  I'm Monica.

Bri: No worries.  I'm Bri.

Conversation continues for about 5 minutes.  Interrupted by another toilet break.  Repeat same sequence of events about 6 times.  MFT sits "sipping" (or so I thought) oral rehydration solution.

MFT: So where are you from, what do you do, blah blah the usual questions...  Oh shit.  (Makes mad dash to bathroom to vomit previously sipped rehydration fluids.)

So my last couple of days have been a bit of a juggling act, trying to achieve a fine balance between rehydrating adequately but not at too fast a rate such that I will just vomit everything back up again and be back to square 1 (or even a little behind).  I burst into tears today when Moriam (the cook) and two of her daughters came in to check how I was going, fed up with the whole bloody thing.  Even a visit from Momu wasn't enough to cheer me up, cos she just wanted to get up to mischief and I didn't have the energy to be keeping an eye on her.

I have been fed the following, in attempts to fix my poor tummy:

• flaked dry rice with water, banana and sugar (breakfast, lunch and dinner)
  
•  green coconut juice (between meals)
• Tasty Saline (a local version of Gastrolyte) - I thought 4 packets in one day would be enough, but was told I had to drink 10!

How I long for those carefree days when my digestive processes didn't have such a profound impact on my ability to function!  How is it that I can eat food at dodgy local restaurants and drink tea from cups washed in dirty buckets of water and be fine, but then NOTHING (I hadn't eaten since about 9am) can make me sick?  I was just bragging the other day about not being sick for a month and thinking I was finally getting used to these Bangladeshi tummy bugs.  Bastards.

Scientific advances

A bit of pre-reading for today's post - some research indicating that turmeric (commonly used in Indian - and Bangladeshi - curries etc) can reduce the size of a haemorrhagic stroke:

Indian Spice Reduces Size of Hemorrhagic Stroke

Firstly, the writer (doing their best to bring research into popular media) is obviously ignoring the fact that most Indian curries are cooked in a shitload of oil.  Or ghee.  Which, to my understanding, is pretty much just butter with all the healthy bits taken out.  May as well inject it straight into your arteries.

Secondly, the researcher was inspired to study medicine after his encounter with an orthopaedic surgeon?  Seriously?  I've met a fair number of orthopods in my time.  Most are wankers.  Some are okay.  Only 1 or 2 could be described as "nice and interesting".  Orthopaedic surgeons are like the rottweilers of the medical profession - blood-thirsty, anti-social and poorly-behaved.

Based on these two incredibly intelligent and well thought-out observations, the only natural conclusion one can come to is that the researcher has no idea and hence these findings cannot be trusted.

Bun in the oven

A few weeks ago when I was in Dhaka, I bought a second-hand oven from one of the AYADs who was leaving.  I'd been thinking about getting an oven ever since my visit to Rajshahi in May, where I stayed with Nadege and her bread-baking housemate.  It opened up a whole new world of possibilities - bread, roast vegies, cakes, biscuits...  Given that I'm really not a fan of the bread you can buy here (the standard bread is really sweet and more like cake than bread) I don't know why I even hesitated to buy an oven - $50 for a new one is a small price to pay for the happiness it could bring.  Nevertheless I did hesitate... long enough for Paul to send an email advertising the various household goods up for sale cos his assignment was finishing and it was time for him to shesh the 'desh.  (Shesh is Bangla for "finish" but has become an everyday part of speech in many different ways including as a verb.)  So I got it for the bargain price of about $34.  Yay!

I've never made bread by hand before.  It always seemed like something that was too hard.  But, as I'm discovering, it's really as easy as pie.  Easier, in fact!  I've found a good recipe that doesn't taste too yeasty.  I get wholemeal flour, which is so exciting as it's a bit of a hassle to find brown bread outside Dhaka (although it's recently become available in Chittagong).  So the whole process takes a couple of hours, but the individual steps aren't too time consuming and the end result is soooooooo worth it.

Having mastered plain brown bread, I've started experimenting a little.  I made some herb and garlic bread the other night (with herbs lovingly sent from Australia - thanks Pirca!).  Nadege (another AYAD) and her husband, Ash, came to visit so we made some date and coconut bread yesterday which went down a treat for breakfast today.  I've just now taken another plain brown loaf out of the oven, see:

I can't even begin to describe how exciting it is to eat the bread, especially fresh out of the oven.  It takes considerable will-power to leave some for later!  I've also been loving myself sick eating roast potatoes and pumpkin and a local variety of eggplant.  Overall, my happiness rating has shot off the scale...  Definitely a good investment.

Turtle mosque

Carly will kill me for taking this long to write about Friday's excursion on our last day together in Chittagong - she's a much more dedicated blogger than I am.  But she's officially ended her One Year in Bangers blog, leaving it up to me to give an account of our sight-seeing adventure.  I could have crashed and burned under the extreme pressure, but here it is...  Pretty punctual for me, really, only being 4 days after the event.  Slack as by Carly's standards though.  Anyway...

At one point, Tania had told me about going to visit this mosque that had turtles out the front.  It's always hard to picture what something like this is going to be like, especially in Bangladesh.  Tania didn't really have much idea of where it was though and doubted her ability to be able to get back there another time.

A couple of months later, I was actually reading the tourist info on a map of Chittagong that I have.  Surprise, surprise - there was a picture and little blurb about the Bayazid Bostami Dargah, which they described as having a tank with thousands of turtles.  Again, hard to picture what it was actually going to be.  From this description, we'd envisaged a glass tank with heaps of little domestic-type turtles in it.

So we jumped in a CNG, the driver amazingly understood where we wanted to go and we were on our way to a busy mosque late on Friday morning.  As we drove in, there were heaps of little stalls selling bags of bread cut up into little cubes, which puzzled me until later.

There was a pretty big pond out the front of the mosque, with heaps of people - both men and women - gathered on the steps.  Men usually use the pond to perform their "ablutions" before they pray, so it was a bit weird seeing women there.  Then we saw the first turtle...  It was HUGE!  At least 100 years old, in my marine-expert opinion.  And they were funny-looking.  They had snouts like a pig, so they could swim underwater and only have to stick up the tip of their snouts to breathe, rather than poke their whole head out.  They were slimy from living in a pretty stagnant pond of water for ages, and their skin was white with a bit of slime on it.  They had big claw-like nails but the weirdest thing was their necks...  Carly was spot-on with her description, saying they looked like foreskins.  Their heads kind of poked out and retracted back into their necks, with the skin indeed folding up on itself to look like a foreskin.  Creepy.

The bags of bread could be bought for 10tk, along with a long bamboo stick to poke the bread on the end (like cooking a marshmallow on a campfire) and feed to the turtles.  At one stage, there were about 6 or 7 turtles gathered at the steps to have a feed.  People were also feeding them bananas, but the turtles didn't seem too keen on those.  The little fish, however, swarmed to any food that was being thrown in.  The pond had an unbelievably dense population of these fish that were a bit smaller than a goldfish.  As far as we could see, there were thousands (even millions!) of these fish swimming in crazy patterns.  They were quick little buggers, quickly flitting over to any new source of food or other disturbance on the pond's surface to check it out.  I reckon this pond was a good symbolic representation of Bangladesh, actually - a few big fat turtles swimming around and eating up everything that the outsiders were giving, with this dense population of little fish left with the crumbs of the chunks of bread that were given.

The turtles weren't too greedy - they came to the steps, ate their fill and then swam off again before others would come over to get a feed.  I reckon we would have seen about 20 or 30 different turtles, with no idea how many more were in there.  There was also a guy (presumably an employee of the mosque - although potentially he just does this for fun) swimming around in the disgusting water of the pond, grabbing the turtles and bringing them over to the steps.  Ew.  Lots of people were touching the turtles and Carly even braved a quick run of the hand over one's shell.  I wasn't so keen and kept my distance!

I'm embarrassingly un-knowledgeable about Muslim practices, but I think the "ablutions" involves washing out every orifice of the body before praying.  So there was one guy performing his ablutions next to us (and a turtle in the water), putting the water in his mouth to wash it before spitting it out.  I don't want to pass judgement on any practices that I don't understand... but (here I go)... ew.  Seriously.

BTW - no photos, sorry.  Carly and I decided we couldn't be bothered bringing our cameras cos that would mean bringing bags and it was too hot for that sort of shit, especially when there was every chance it would be crap.  But this was one of the few things that has pleasantly exceeded my expectations in Bangladesh and we were spewing we didn't have our cameras.  But I'll definitely take more visitors there in the future, so watch this space for photos.

Trusty servant Patsy

On our way back from an embarrassingly delicious Pizza Hut dinner in Chittagong, Carly and I stopped in at a shop to get a few things.  Keen to show off my newly-acquired skill of coconut shredding and/or desiccating, I bought a fresh coconut to eat when we got home.  Having seen Shagorika (the neighbour) cutting open a coconut with a scary-looking machete-type knife, I doubted we'd have anything at the house that would do the trick.  So I asked the guys at the shop if they could cut it open for me - another example of a bideshi woman speaking a bit of Bangla and smiling sweetly to get a favour.

As we left the shop, Carly commented that it was like that scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail where King Arthur and his trusty servant Patsy rock up trotting along and clapping coconut halves together.  So we had a good little giggle trotting along the road, clapping our coconuts together and singing about "brave Sir Robin".  I really wanted to call Berna (my sister) to ask her to guess what I was doing but it was a bit late in Adelaide for her to find something like that funny.

Carly thought the sight of me squatting on the floor using the coconut desiccator we borrowed from the landlord was too good a photo opportunity to pass up...  Sadly, you can't really get a good idea of what I'm doing from the photo, but you can see why my knees are going to be stuffed after a year of squatting to cook at floor level.

So this is how they make the stuff you buy in packets!

I had nasta (snack) with Momu's parents the other day after work (I'm loving having Buddhist neighbours during Ramadan!).  Momu's mother, Shagorika, made a sweet noodle dish which had a milky sauce and delicious shredded coconut in it.  When I asked what the ingredients were, Shagorika showed me a big jar with some coconut she'd prepared which was absolutely delicious!  I asked her if she could show me how to do it, if I bought a coconut.  They love this sort of stuff, so of course she was more than happy to teach me.

A few days later, I organised a coconut and went over for my lesson.  She was amazing the way she used a huge murderous-looking knife to cut open the coconut into perfect halves by making little cuts all the way around.  She then showed me how to use a utensil that looked like a citrus zester, but with bigger holes.  A coconut shredder.

She was insistent that she'd shred the whole coconut, cos I had a bit of a go and was pretty slow being the first time I'd done it and all.  I asked the cook, Moriam, if she had another shredder I could use at the same time to have a go at the other half.  She looked at Shagorika's implement with interest, then went off and got her own version, which was set up like the floor knives they use here but with a circular saw-type blade horizontally on the end.  Shagorika had no idea what this thing was, so Moriam quickly showed her.  It cut the coconut into smaller flakes.  A coconut desiccator!  You know - to make desiccated coconut.  Shagorika was a bit skeptical of this, saying that it produced "less beautiful" coconut for what we were making.

Anyway, so we finished making our preserved coconut (with shitloads of oil and sugar - in typical Bangladeshi style, they are wizards at making healthy foods unhealthy) which was GREAT and I've been enjoying with my porridge in the morning, along with some dates which are available everywhere at the moment cos they are a traditional Iftar (breaking of the fast during Ramadan) food.

I might think too deeply about insignificant things such as this, but I was quite chuffed that I'd learnt the difference between how shredded and desiccated coconut are made by hand.  I'd never thought about it before when using these straight from the packet!  And having done it myself since, I'll have a renewed appreciation (or possibly scorn) for the supermarket variety when I get back to Oz.  It's really not as nice when you don't do it by hand from a fresh-off-the-tree coconut.

Well said, sister

Last night, I was helping Mina (the cook's 16-year-old daughter) with her English homework.  (This was even though I didn't understand the homework, as the instructions could only be described as shithouse.)  She showed me a short essay she'd written about the dowry system.  I hope she hadn't copied it from anywhere, cos I thought the opening was great with an uncharacteristic display of passion.  Enjoy...

The dowry system is one of the most hateful practices of our country.  I could never agree with the dowry system.  It is a shame on Bangladesh.

And so it continued talking about the reasons why Mina thought it was such a "hateful" practice.  Pretty sobering subject matter, considering that Mina's father died about 7 years ago and her mother is now widowed with four children and barely 2 taka to rub together.  An arranged marriage is pretty much the only option for someone like Mina to help improve her family's situation, although she's not really a desirable wife as her family won't be able to come up with a good dowry.  Mina told me that she doesn't want to have to pay a dowry to her future husband.  She was pretty resigned to the fact that she would enter into an arranged marriage but reasonably happy that she would at least have some choice over when she would get married, as she wants to finish college and hopefully go to university first.

It really puts my own "problems" into perspective talking to Bangladeshis about stuff like this.  Makes me feel like a bloody princess for complaining that I can't meet anyone nice!

Crazy brain

I've been getting a few emails lately from various Aussie friends in the UK on working holidays.  (As an aside, it makes me wonder at times why I chose Bangladesh for my quarter-life crisis.)  A few have commented about getting a particular line from The Waifs' song London Still stuck in their heads, whilst taking the Tube over to Camden to wander around.  (I don't know how many have bought some funky records with that old Motown sound, though.)

After writing the title for my previous blog post, I've had another Waifs song in my head - Crazy Train.  With a bit of creative word substitution, it's almost made today's experience of getting text messages, missed calls* and actual calls from various admirers** I've picked up along the way somewhat enjoyable.  I wish I was a good enough harmonica player to recreate my own groovy instrumental interludes to my poor singing of Crazy Brain.  I did have a little attempt, cos I brought my harmonica with me, but it was really unsatisfactory cos I'm shit at playing harmonica.  (Having your name in the instrument's name doesn't automatically mean you'll be good at it.  One actually needs to dedicate some time to learning and practising.)

So, all Waifs fans out there, maybe have a crack at seeing me in your kitchen and picturing me now as I toast to my small town and drink the happy hour (or dance around in my floral orange mu-mu and drink the oral rehydration salts)...

Oh crazy brain, rolling down that crazy BRAC***

* Missed calls are a peculiarly Bangladeshi phenomenon (this is a statement made from my extensive international experience, of course - particularly given that this is the first overseas trip where I've had a mobile!).  Basic gist is someone calls you but only lets the phone ring once before they hang up.  I'm yet to work out what the purpose is.  Maybe it's like when you first got your driver's license and honked the horn whenever you drove past a friend's house?  The 21st century way of saying, "I don't actually want to talk to you but I just want you to know that I'm thinking of you."  Which is all well and good, but a bit strange when the caller is someone whose number you don't have.  Or maybe, given that most people here aren't too flush for cash, they're hoping that you'll call back.  Again, well and good, but rests on the (usually misguided) assumption that you want to talk to them.  I think someone should propose an AYAD assignment for "text message education officer", to educate people about the wonders of the SMS.  If someone sent me a text saying "I want to talk to you about X but have no credit. Can you call me back?" I'd be much more likely to talk to them.  And text messages are so much cheaper than calling!

** "Admirer" is my attempt to be slightly more positive about my "stalkers".  Maybe I'm being a bit dramatic - there haven't been any gifts of toenail clippings or anything seriously film-script-inspiringly stalker-like.  Continuing to call after up to 15 calls have not been answered is a bit abnormal though, in my book.

*** BRAC is the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, the world's largest NGO (in terms of employees - over 100,000!) - and found in Bangladesh!  It is testament to the NGO "industry" here.  So yeah, totally unrelated to the "crazy brain" thing, except that it's Bangladeshi.  Pretty dubious association, but it made me have a little giggle to myself at my ingenious context-specific rhyming word substitution.

POSTSCRIPT: I just ignored 2 calls from my supervisor. It's 11:39pm, dude!  I'm bloody sleeping!  (Well, clearly I'm not given that I'm awake and typing this - but re-reading the above ramblings confirms that I definitely should be asleep.  Right after I hit "publish post" and expose my over-tired, diarrhoeatic thoughts to the world.  Or my small number of loyal readers, anyway.)

Latest installment in "Crazy Texts"

Maybe this was a bit mean, but as soon as I received some crazy text messages this morning, I forwarded them on to Carly.  Consequently, she posted them on her blog first, because they really were bloody funny.  Check it out here.

I think they were from a guy that I bought phone credit from ONCE.  That means my encounter with him lasted a maximum of 5 minutes.  That might put it all into context a bit better.

New skill for the list

Sari-tying. Not fast, still a bit of room for improvement... but definitely getting there. I even did most of this one on myself!