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.