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.

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.