Jingle Bell Rock

One of my all-time favourite movies is Mean Girls. Now, if you haven't seen it, don't write it off as a teenage piece of fluff. And if you have seen it and didn't like it, then it's highly likely I don't like you because you clearly have no sense of humour. This was the movie that really shot Lindsay Lohan to stardom, but let's leave our opinions of her out of the judgement of the movie.

Anyway, bit of background for those of you who haven't seen it (but you really should be out the door headed to the video shop to rent it)... The main character, Cady, is a girl who grew up in Africa and was home-schooled by her zoologist American parents. They move back to the US when she's 16, she starts going to a regular high school and has to quickly come to grips with the girl politics.

There's one scene where Cady is discussing with a couple of her friends why she can't see them that night, because she has to practice with "The Plastics" (the cool - and mean - girl group) for their act at the school Christmas concert.

Cady: We're doing a dance to this song...

Janis & Damien [in unison]: Jingle Bell Rock.

Cady: You guys know that song?

Janis: Everybody in the English-speaking world knows that song. They do it every year.

Now, cut back to Berna and I - driving from Darjeeling to Gangtok in a share jeep. A song with a very catchy chorus in English comes on the radio. I start singing along to the chorus and bopping away in my seat, before realising something. I don't know the words to the verses because they are, in fact, in Hindi. I turn to Berna and ask, "Is this song popular in the English-speaking world?" She looks at me with slight bewilderment and replies emphatically, "No."

Shit I'm going to struggle back home after a year of not using toilet paper, cutlery or anything that would be considered "manners" in the Western world, totally out of date with the music scene but scarily in touch with the latest Bollywood hits. 8 weeks til touchdown...

Unexplained absence

Sorry to all 2 of my regular readers... been in India... again... with Berna (my sister, for anyone not related to me who happens to read this blog)...

If you think this year hasn't exactly been work, work, work - you'd be right. Yay for taxes!

Negligent Bideshi Aunty

Another thing I may have mentioned just once or twice is my little friend next door, Momu. She has just turned two, and entered the "terrible twos" big time. She asks "what's this?" about everything. She has a very short temper if she doesn't get her way. But she's so so so cute that it's almost impossible to stand firm and not give in to her 2-year-old demands. She calls me "Moni" but often other people refer to me as her "bideshi aunty" (bideshi = foreigner).

One of Momu's favourite things is to go upstairs to my "house" - if I haven't seen her for a few days, the first thing she'll say is, "go upstairs!" I think it helps that I am a total slob, so my room is invariably a pig-sty with plenty of interesting things everywhere for little girls to find.

I was on the phone the other night, while Momu was upstairs with me. She was having a great time going into my room, then coming out to the lounge room where I was sitting, with her newest discovered object to find out what it was. After about 20 minutes of this, however, she came out looking very sheepish and pointed to her pants, saying "shi-shi" (Bangla for wee-wee). Thus ended Episode 1 of Negligent Bideshi Aunty.

Episode 2 is somewhat self-explanatory from the following photo:I love the look on her face, it's as if she knows full well that she's found something that firmly belongs in the "adults only" category. She sounded so cute saying "beer" though!

Not appropriate

Yesterday, I cooked up a big pot of a lentils and vegetables for my dinner... and today's lunch... and tonight's dinner... and tomorrow's lunch... and tomorrow's dinner. Typical single person cooking, really - same as what I used to frequently do back home.

The others who live here find that quite intriguing, and one of the men was asking me about it tonight.

Tofail: You not cook tonight?

Me: No.

T: But you eat?

M: Yes, I cooked this last night. One day of cooking, then three days of eating. It's a good system.

T: But if you are cooking for two person, then is not three days eating.

M: Well, no. But I am only cooking for one person.

T: But when will you cook for two person? [NB: This is not an attempt to weasel a free meal out of me, cos they don't like my cooking. This is an indirect way of asking when I will get married.]

M: Ummmm... I don't know. [Brainwave.] Only Allah knows!

T: But how do you know Allah knows?

M: Ummmm...

T: Did he tell you to eat tonight? Now?

M: [Somewhat confused.] Ummmm... [Brainwave.] Yes! I heard the singing from the mosque, but because I do not understand Arabic, I think this is Allah telling me to eat my dinner.

T: [Cracks up laughing.] This is not appropriate.

Short hair!

Now, I may have mentioned (just once or twice... or a million times) that my short hair is a constant source of confusion and concern for Bangladeshis. Beautiful women have long black hair. The only reasons a woman would have short hair are because she is sick, has lice or is crazy. Many, many times I have tried to point out the virtues of short hair (cooler in summer, easy to look after, suits my face etc) but with no success in swaying peoples' opinion. The standard trifecta of questions (what is your name / country / marital status) includes a bonus question for me: why do you have short hair?

The first time I had a hair cut here, the colleague who took me got a severe telling off by all the others upon seeing my trimmed locks on our return. When wearing a sari at a work function the other day, one of the most senior staff members told me that everything about my appearance was "most excellent - the only problem is you do not have beautiful long hair." [I also got told I was "heavy shundor*" which I was initially offended by, until I realised that "heavy" is one of those words whose meaning gets lost in translation.]

* shundor = beautiful

So I could hardly contain my excitement a couple of months ago when I spotted a female news reader - with short hair! I pointed this out to the other people who live with me, but they just dismissed this, saying, "But this is not Bengali system."

And then, at another work function today, I met a very funky young Bangladeshi woman with short hair. She was most surprised when I asked for her photograph, wondering what the hell was so photogenic about her. When I said it was because of her short hair, I don't think she could have been any more pleased than if I'd said it's because she is an Aishwarya Rai lookalike. This groovy chick has spent lots of time in Burma studying with Buddhist monks there, trekked illegally into Thailand and Cambodia, so far refused to get married... Pretty different to most other Bangladeshi women.
When I looked at the photo later, I was filled with jealousy cos her haircut's way cooler than mine! I should have asked where she had it done...

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.

You can't be saving the world ALL the time

I just got back from Dhaka after my volunteer group's quarterly meeting... on the bus.

Why did I get the bus, when I'd already booked a plane ticket for 7:50am in the morning (so I could get back to work, being the diligent person that I am)?

Because I'd gotten so shit-faced the night before that I bloody slept through my tax-payer-funded flight.

Please accept my humble apology, Australian tax-payers far and wide who are reading this.

It was a very good lesson to learn... why I should not book flights in advance, because I am totally useless at catching them (remember the 3 flights missed in one day the weekend I came to Adelaide for mum's 60th and was also moving house in Melbourne?).

I love Bangladesh!

There are three types of day that I seem to experience over here.

The first is an "I love Bangladesh!" day, which is the category that today fits into. More on that later...

The second is a "f#$king Bangladesh" day, where everyone is annoying, everything goes wrong and I generally wonder what the hell I'm doing here. Acknowledgements to Amy for coining this highly imaginative phrase (I wanted to get it piped onto the top of a cake once, but thought the cake shop boys might actually know what it meant and didn't want to offend).

The third is an "I love... f#$ki-... I lo-... f#-... I love Banglade-... f#$king Bang-..." day, i.e. the type of day where something great happens, followed by something really shit - in cycles of about 2 seconds. This is the most unsettling kind of day, because I don't know what kind of mood to get myself into.

Anyway, today was an "I love Bangladesh!" day.

I had an interesting morning going on a village visit, with a frustrating start to the day getting there but I was feeling so chilled and excited about going to Dhaka that it didn't worry me as it normally would have. I lugged my suitcase around this village (normally I have a backpack but am planning a grog run to a duty-free warehouse, so a suitcase was necessary to discreetly bring a slab of beer back to the Shit) which was pretty amusing in itself.

I then got on a bus to Chittagong and because of the global economic crisis, falling Aussie dollar and my inherent tight-arsed-ness, I decided to try getting the public bus to the airport (at a cost of approximately $0.70, instead of a CNG at a cost of $4). After the first change of bus, I had a lovely chat with some men on the next bus, who were very helpful and gave me instructions on getting to the airport. I had to change bus at the same point where they were getting off, so they offered to help me find the next bus. Unfortunately, they were a bit wrong and I was going to have to take another bus to a different point, then change again for the airport bus. Making a total of 4 buses to get to the airport. At this point, I told myself not to be such a tight-arse and after beating a CNG driver down to a reasonable price and checking that he had change for a 500tk note, off I set.

When I got to the airport, the bastard driver told me he didn't in fact have change for 500tk. In a display of perfectly controlled emotions, I slammed my hand on the grille between him and me (perhaps why it is there, to stop angry passengers from being able to punch the poor guys) and demanded he find some change.
While he's off asking at the ticket counters and then asking members of the public for change (he came back to the CNG several times to tell me it was a useless mission but I wasn't budging), a police officer-cum-traffic controller started banging on the CNG with his bamboo stick. Someone told me that the quality of a police officer's stick is a good indication of his or her rank. So this guy must have been middle of the road, but regardless, he was not happy about this CNG loitering in the airport arrivals area.

After much arguing with my driver, and much stick-banging from the police officer, I finally got out of the CNG with my correct change (honestly - he picked the wrong bideshi to try to screw over) and walked into the airport terminal at 3:32pm. Not being sure beforehand what time I would make it to the airport, and since there are flights every hour between Chittagong and Dhaka, I hadn't booked a flight in advance. I asked someone which was the next flight to Dhaka... "GMG [the airline's name] - 3:35pm!" But it's already 3:32pm?! "No problem, just some small delay - just 1o minutes." And so I bought a ticket and boarded a plane (leaving behind another far more organised volunteer who'd arrived at the airport for his flight in an hour) to Dhaka.

One of those days where everything kind of "worked" in its own crazy Bangladeshi way. This country really agrees with me!

Rickshawala Idol

One of the most common modes of short distance transport in Bangladesh is the rickshaw. This is like a 3-wheeled bike, with the rider at the front and a bench seat with a retractable hood (like on a baby's pram) at the back. Rickshaws are not only for transporting people (and I've seen as many as 5 adults on the one rickshaw) but also animals, bicycles (as I myself have done), larger quantities of food, household items etc.

It is beyond the scope of this little blog to make any comment on the ethics of rickshaws - the drivers are hideously underpaid (average wage would be about 2000tk or AUD$40 per month) and it can be pretty demeaning work. On the other hand, the traffic pollution and congestion in Dhaka would be so much worse if there weren't the estimated 1 million rickshaws on its roads. And it terms of trying to ban rickshaws (as is often debated), there needs to be a pretty comprehensive plan in place for what these 1 million men are going to do for work instead.

Personally, I quite like riding in rickshaws especially on quiet country roads when there's hardly any sound and you're slowly passing endless green fields of rice. I do, however, refuse to let a rickshawala get off to walk me up a hill (cos the bikes don't have gears, they can't go up anything steeper than a short gentle slope).

Bangladesh is famous for its rickshaw art - painted panels, patterned vinyl covering the seat & hood and as many extra adornments as the owner or driver (cos most guys don't own their rickshaw but rent it for the day) can afford. When I first arrived, I wasn't that rapt in the rickshaw art, but as time goes by I am coming to love it more and more. It was something I hadn't fully appreciated until I went to Nepal and India, where they also have rickshaws. If people think the cycle rickshaws are inhumane, they should check out the hand-held ones powered by barefoot men running through the streets of Kolkata... that was a sight that made my tummy turn a bit. Anyway - these rickshaws look so boring compared to the ones in Bangladesh where rickshawalas often take an enormous amount of pride in the presentation of their chariot. I'm sure Dhaka would be far less tolerable if it wasn't packed to the gills with brightly decorated rickshaws colouring the streets and adding some visual interest among the grey concrete buildings.

A rickshawala is a guy who rides (or drives, as some say) a rickshaw. They are among the poorest of the poor people in Bangladesh and work long hours at one of the most physically demanding jobs for very little pay. To see these guys struggling through the streets during Ramadan, when most of them are fasting from sunrise to sunset, would arouse sympathy in even the most hard-hearted Hannah. The rickshawalas typically wear a lunghi (which is a tube of fabric worn like a sarong) and a shirt, many of which are so hideously ugly that they're fantastic. Some of the other volunteers have wanted to offer money on the spot to buy the shirt off the rickshawala's back.

It is an extra treat when you score a rickshawala who sings. This was recently turned into a "Rickshawala Idol" (not it's real name, but I reckon that's a better name than the one they came up with) contest - a singing contest for rickshawalas.

And here is the winner - in one of the rare times that Bangladesh makes it into international media for something other than a natural disaster or the latest political fiasco:

Wheel of fortune turns for singing rickshaw rider

Just call me Kylie

Kwong, that is - not Minogue.

Since getting back from India, I've had a huge burst of energy and enthusiasm for life in general really.  I've been getting up in the morning to go either walking or cycling.  I've been far more motivated about cooking in general, including making a couple of batches of brownies.

But last night was by far my most gourmette venture yet... oven-dried tomatoes.  Clearly not very difficult, all it involved was cutting tomatoes into quarters, drizzling (yes, I drizzle now because pouring is for amateurs) over some oil (it's supposed to be olive oil but that's difficult to find and hideously expensive here), cutting up some garlic into small strips and poking those into the tomatoes then leaving on a low temperature overnight in the oven.

So yeah - easy but check out how professional they look!

Can't wait to bake some in a loaf of bread with some herbs... if I stop eating them and there are any left, that is.

Mood swings

Another example of the inability to get settled into one mood here:

This afternoon, my supervisor told me that there was a letter for me on his desk. I went in to get it and noticed that the envelope wasn't (and hadn't ever been) sealed. Slightly miffed, I picked it up and then noticed that my name and address weren't in the see-through plastic window on the envelope. In other words, someone had clearly taken the letter out of the envelope, looked at it and put it back in again (the wrong way around). This really gave me the shits - it's one thing for people to pull my groceries out of my shopping bag and look at the price labels (seriously, this is what happens) but opening my mail takes privacy invasion to the next level.

I stormed out and found my supervisor, demanding to know who had opened my mail and why. Infuriatingly, he didn't understand why I had a problem. He just patiently pointed out that the fault lay with the phone company for not sealing their envelopes properly. I agreed that, yes, this was an issue but I still wanted to know why this was perceived to be an open invitation to read my mail. This time, he said the finger of blame should be pointed to the postal workers since they must have removed it. I tried to explain that this couldn't be the case, because the way the letter had been put back in the envelope meant that the name and address couldn't be seen - so this must have happened after delivery, otherwise they wouldn't have known where or who to deliver it to.

I have no doubt that it was someone at my work who opened the letter, and I'm pretty sure which person it would have been. It really really really gets on my nerves how little respect for privacy there seems to be here - which I don't know is widespread or if people feel somehow entitled to go through my things because they are "looking after" me.

So feeling like my head was going to explode with fury, I headed into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. The cook, Moriam, had rearranged lots of the furniture in one corner and gone through all the cupboards to clean and tidy everything. I asked her why she'd done this, wondering if there was a specific reason or just a spring clean.

Her response? She wanted to rearrange everything so there was more room for me to prepare my meals at the table because she knows I struggle a bit with doing it on the floor. (She'd laughed at me taking "knee stretch" breaks the night before when using a floor grinding stone to make some home-made peanut butter.) Also, a vegetable peeler that I'd bought (for about 40 cents) had gone missing which was giving her considerable stress since she's the one who washes the dishes and felt personally responsible. Which I guess she may have been, but it really didn't worry me and I'd already gone and bought a new one.

See what I mean? With one person being fucking annoying one minute and then someone else being so delightful and thoughtful the next, it's impossible to stay in a bad mood for too long. (Conversely, it also means that good moods are often nipped in the bud!)

Now THAT's a beach

A couple of friends in Australia just got married and went to Fiji for their honeymoon.  They were very amused when they visited the self-proclaimed "world's 7th best beach".

Bangladesh's honeymoon capital (complete with advertising billboards for a particular brand of oral contraceptive pill using the slogan "Welcome to happy couple city, Cox's Bazar") is a beachside town on the Bay of Bengal which claims to have the longest unbroken sea beach in the world.  Now according to a reliable source, the longest (by another 100km or so) is actually in Brazil.  But, according to everybody here, Cox's Bazar is the most beautiful sea beach in the world.  No question about it.

My opinion - okay, but nothing special.  On another trip to Cox's Bazar recently with a fairly large group of other expat volunteers, one of the girls who'd organised our "programme" for the weekend had included a visit to a special, secret destination to chill out one afternoon between swimming at the beach and going out for dinner.  When we were trying to weasel out of her what and where this place was, all she would give away was that it was "really good... for Bangladesh."  This is a bit of a common theme - any other visitor here would possibly be a bit disappointed by many of the things that we get so excited about after 8 months of being here (and used to lowering our expectations).

It is nice to have a sea change, especially for people for whom it is so culturally entrenched to live close to the beach.  But - after taking Bren & Karen there when they visited - I don't think I'd take any other visitors there especially, cos it is pretty disappointing.  There are many wonderful things in Bangladesh, but if you want great beaches, go to Thailand, Malaysia or Indonesia (or stay at home in Oz).

There's been a campaign recently to come up with a list of the New 7 Wonders of the World, including a category for New 7 Wonders of Nature.  Being so proud of their beach - and generally not terribly widely travelled to have seen other beaches to compare it to - the enthusiastic Bangladeshis nominated Cox's Bazar beach for one of the natural wonders.

Now, I know I wasn't there at the best time of year (it was pissing down with rain the whole time) but this is my picture of this "wonder":

Compared to the world's 7th best beach in Fiji:

Not much comparison, eh?

The funniest part of the story though?  There had been some dodgy websites set up or something, that were somehow rigging the voting system and so Bangladesh's entries got disqualified from the competition!  I think this is bloody hilarious, given the political history and current situation in Bangladesh (a national election due to be held on 18 December) where true democracy is looking like a bit of wishful thinking.  Happily for the Bangladeshis, they've been reinstated in the competition (I bet they tried to bribe someone to do it though!) and Cox's Bazar is currently #3 on the list... that's what happens when you've got a country with 150 million people voting.

So thanks to Dan for permission to use these photos here (well, I'm sure he'd give me permission if I ever get around to asking him).

Puzzling

It was with mixed feelings of horror and amazement that I watched one of my 11-year-old patients do a jigsaw puzzle today, helped by the therapy assistant I work with.  It was a very simple puzzle of Winnie the Pooh and friends containing about 20 pieces, each one about 5cm square.  A 5- or 6-year-old could easily have done it.  But it was fascinating watching this kid and my colleague attempting to put two "outie" bits together (as opposed to an "innie" and an "outie").  Or a middle piece into the border.  Or two pieces that clearly had different pictures and did not belong together.

I know the kid may not have had too many opportunities to do jigsaw puzzles in his life, but it was unbelievable seeing how he was totally incapable of applying any kind of logic to it.  (You know - does the picture line up?  Do the shapes match?  Etc.)  Even more scary was that my colleague had no idea either.

This incident might help to explain how some of my frustrations come about.  Trying to teach in an interactive way is nigh on impossible - people aren't able to come up with their own answers.  They don't know how.  They expect to be told everything.  Their whole life, they've rote learnt information and regurgitated this in exams that don't require any application of the knowledge.  They ask "what?" but never "why?" and don't wonder "how?".  Things are black and white - there's no grey.  They have all these separate bits of knowledge but are not able to work out how to make all the bits fit together into the big picture.  Or how to make the bits fit into different situations.

I was just watching this kid thinking, "No wonder they struggle to find solutions to the many problems in this country when people can't even solve a jigsaw puzzle!"  You know - not taking into account all the complicating factors of poverty, corruption, gender inequality, environmental problems...

Yet another time when, after thinking about it all for ages, I just shook my head and said, "It's all fucked."

No tension, no mention

On a sunset walk around the lake (where Gandhi's ashes were sprinkled) in the Hindu pilgrimage town of Pushkar, we met a Hindu holy man who was preparing himself for some kind of performance or something.

He stopped us and we got the usual questions (what is your name / country / marital status?) before this guy told us that he had, "No wife, no children, no money, no job - no tension, no mention!"

And thus "no tension, no mention" became something of a motto for the three of us, especially as we could relate to the bits about no wife/husband, no children, no money and no job!

No tension, no mention.  It even rhymes.  I love it.

Unexplained absence

I've been in India for 3 weeks.  Sorry to everyone who thought I was dead (Berna).

A little snap to keep you happy til I get around to writing something about it all...

You know you've been Banglafied when...

... you see your freshly baked garlic and herb bread crawling with opportunistic ants (who pounced while you took a quick wee and left the bread uncovered for a minute) before thinking, "Extra protein!" and brushing / blowing the majority off... then eating the remaining ones with the bread.

And I wonder why I'm sick all the time!

Eid false start

Eid-ul-Fitr is the end of Ramadan, the Islamic month of fasting.  The Islamic calendar is based on the moon, so it was uncertain until the night before whether Eid would be today or tomorrow.  If they saw the first sliver of the new moon last night, Eid would be today.  If they were unlucky, the moon wouldn't be seen until tonight and Eid would be tomorrow.  There is a "Moon-Sighting Committee" who would officially announce whether the moon had been seen or not - and phone numbers had been published in the newspapers for people to call if they saw the moon.  I think they were a bit ambitious to expect it to be today - they knew it was going to be today in Saudi Arabia but there they'd seen the new moon at the start of Ramadan a day before Bangladesh.  Someone else told me that it's always the day after Saudi and they didn't know why there was this "will it or won't it be the same day" every year.

The lead-up to Eid is like the lead-up to Christmas.  The shops are open all hours, with everyone buying new clothes for themselves and as gifts for their family and friends.  The traffic in Chittagong was insane, with jams at the major intersection near Tania and Bri's house (it feels so weird not to say "Carly and Tania's house"!) at 10pm and later, when normally it's pretty quiet well before that time.  Last night, the cook's kids were at the office for Iftar (the meal when they break the day's fast) and were excitedly showing me their new clothes and shoes, before packing them up to take to their house for Eid day.  It really felt like Christmas Eve - and was so nice to be with a family who were going to be involved in it all, not just hanging out on my own.

So I woke up early this morning, rushed down to the kitchen to ask Moriam if it was Eid day.  No... no moon last night, so it's tomorrow.  After all the excitement of the night before, it was a bit of an anti-climax to see everyone fasting still!  The weather today has been beautiful - sunny but not too hot.  The forecast for tomorrow is for a 100% chance of precipitation... not really compatible with all the walking from one house to another that is planned!

To top it off, my horoscope for tomorrow predicts:

You may have to be careful with your physical appearance or well-being today as you are vulnerable to accidents.

Bugger...  Hope that's not referring to my sari-wearing and walking in the mud.  I don't want any incidents of slipping in the mud in my new sari!

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.