World AIDS Day 2008

Happy World AIDS Day!

I spent this morning at an event in the Shit organised by the NGO I'm working with here, along with some other NGOs in the area and the local government. We started (well and truly on Bangla time at 11am, not 10am as advertised) with a "rally" - marching from the local government office to the edge of town, narrowly escaping being hit by oncoming buses and trucks on the busiest highway in the country. An interesting route, I thought, where we passed about 20 onlookers only, started approaching the busy part of town where we may have had an audience but turned around and went back to the local government office. This rally involved about 100 people, all wearing little hat-type things with something written on them in Bangla, and accompanied by a 3-piece marching band in full costume. Really. These Bangladeshis know how to put on a good program.

Then there were speeches by various important people in town, including my lovely self of course. I'm getting better at these sorts of things - I've worked out the trick is to speak quickly in my strongest Australian accent so nobody understands me anyway - and I'm also getting more assertive about not sitting on stage if I don't want to.

So it's been a great morning, but spent a bit more time there than I would have liked as I had patients to see at the therapy centre. I made a quick exit to head over there, before getting a call from my supervisor a minute later demanding that I come back to take tea with the local government social welfare officer. There were two reasons I didn't want to do this - (1) it was taking me away from my real work and (2) the guy in question was fairly young and I suspected that this was a ploy to scope me out as a potential wife. I made some quite strong protestations but my supervisor wouldn't hear of it... "You must come, he is a very important man for us!"

Reluctantly I went back to take tea with this guy, who within seconds of my arrival informed me that the rules stating that government officers couldn't marry foreigners have been changed so did I want to marry him? I tried my most polite but firm refusal and tried several times to change the subject, but he just kept banging on about it. "But you are not married... you don't have a boyfriend..." - as if it was the only possible logical solution to my "problem". The awkwardness of the situation was certainly not helped by my colleagues who were present, elaborating on my description of where I live ("Sitakund" - to which they added the exact location of my dwellingplace) and kindly giving him my mobile number after I'd left.

One of those "I love Banglade-... f#$cking Bang-... I lo-... f#$cki-... I love Ba-..." kind of days.