Two weeks to go

Hey everybody. I just wanted to say that I'm fine and doing well. I'm very busy because the program is about to end, so I probably will not be updating this blog until I get back to the US. But rest assured that I will fully update it when I get back.

Exploring

Class on Saturday included a lot of important grammatical concepts, including how to form comparisons and impersonal construction and how to talk about liking and disliking. After class was over I had to take the quiz I had missed when I was sick.
I then took a rickshaw back to my apartment. My language partner was supposed to meet me later, and I waited a while for her to call. Then I decided to take a rickshaw to Gulshan 2 to find a bank where I could get money. I asked the guards at the Westin where I could find a charter bank, and they told me that it was about a kilometer south of there on the same road. They suggested taking a rickshaw, but I decided to walk there instead. I talked to people I met on the way. There was one flower seller, or folwallah, who I talked to for a few minutes; he asked me where I was from and whether I wanted to buy flowers from him. Further along I met some people selling embroidered bedcovers. I talked to one of them for a while, and other men stopped to join in. It was fun. He wanted me to buy one of his bedsheets, but I explained that I couldn’t fit it into my suitcase. I walked on, eventually found the bank, and took a rickshaw back to the Gulshan Dui circle. I talked to the rickshawallah a little bit. As we were moving away from the group of rickshaws he was sitting with, he yelled something about 50 taka to his friends. I asked him about it, and he said something to the effect of “it was a joke.” I was happy that I understood enough to get the humor of it.
Moumita hadn’t contacted me yet, so I went back to the Gulshan 2 bazaar, looking for ribbon to trim one of the salwar kameez I was going to take to the tailor. There’s only one lace shop in that bazaar, so I spent some time there trying to find something that would match. Nothing did, so I went to the next shop and bought some pretty, fancy ornas. I then walked through the market and found the lungi store area and the sari stores. People kept asking me to come in and look at saris, but I told them I didn’t need any.
The first time I went through Gulshan 2 circle, I had talked to a street kid selling stickers. When I went back out to the circle to meet up with Moumita, I met him again. He recognized me and we talked. I didn’t know enough Bangla to really ask him much of anything, but we talked for a bit anyway. I then met up with Moumita and took a rickshaw to Banani supermarket. We went to a few stores to look at ribbons for my salwar kameez, and eventually found one that would work. Then we went upstairs to get my sari back from the tailor and dropped off my new Monipuri sari and orna for finishing. Then I wanted to buy some Bangla movies. I asked the storeowner which were his favorite Bangla movies and bought two of them, then did the same thing for Bollywood. The rickshaw rides from Banani Supermarket to Gulshan 2 took longer than expected, because we got caught in a jam, but I managed to get home in time for dinner.

Hartal Holidays

After getting back from the trip I finally got sick. I was really tired, so I didn’t go to class on Monday. I tried to go on Tuesday, but then left early. I went to the doctor and he said that I might be dehydrated. I feel much better now, but we’ve decided I may be anemic.
This week was very strange in terms of our schedule. There were two two-day hartals. We had class on Monday and Tuesday, hartals on Wednesday and Thursday, class on Friday and Saturday, and hartals on Sunday and Monday.
On the 1st hartal day (Wednesday), I was still taking it easy so I went over to Moumita’s house and studied Bangla. I had missed a lot of work because of being sick.
On the 2nd hartal day (Thursday) I went shopping with my roommate Margo in the morning. We went to Gulshan Dui and visited the bazaar there. I used my Bangla to buy some shoes and a couple ornas while Margo shopped for fancy ornas in a different shop. We then went to a check out some antique stores and went in an air-conditioned chocolate shop. In the afternoon I went to Moumita’s house to study. She fed me some fried potato thing that had mint and chilies in it. It was a very interesting combination.
We were finally able to go to class on Friday. Our bus driver had the day off because it was the holy day, so we had to rickshaw to school. In class, we read about Nazrul Islam, Bangladesh’s national poet, and learned a lot of grammar. After class Audrey and I walked to the restaurant Magpie for lunch, which is right across from Noddabajar. They have delicious naan. We later went out again to Noddabajar to visit my tailor. We then wandered through Nodda trying to find some henna, but couldn’t find any for sale. Since the cooks don’t make dinner for us on Fridays, we decided to cook for ourselves and went to the Noddabajar vegetable market. We talked to the vendors and bought waterlilies, kaklon, carrots, two different types of shak (leafy greens), onions, and garlic. The best part of the meal was the fried kaklon.

Srimangal and Sylhet Trip: Day 3

I slept really well in the resort’s comfortable bed, and woke up early to find it raining again. We went up to the resort’s dining area for breakfast, and I had my seventh cha in three days. Too much cha!
We took the bus north again, ending up at a boat dock. We were supposed to take a boat to the next place, but the boat could only take nine people at a time. I wasn’t feeling well so I decided to stay with the teachers and take the second trip. We took the boat upriver, passing a lot of other boats on the way. We docked and walked for a while, then ended up at a lookout tower with an amazing view of the hills and river. When my group got there the others were doing yoga surrounded by the amazing view. Devin is a trained yoga instructor, so she was leading the group. After a while we took the boat back and it started to rain. We went back to the hotel for lunch and to check out.
After lunch we visited the nearby shrine of a pir, or Muslim saint. Surrounding it were streets full of little shops selling prayer beads and other souvenirs. Some of us women got out, covering our heads with our ornas, and went to look at the shrine while Bennett and some of the male teachers went into it. Women had a special area to stand where they could look at the outside of the shrine and say their prayers. Next to the bus there were a few faqirs who had made the pilgrimage from India to see the shrine and a few Hindus there to pray to the pir. Our bus driver is a believer in shrines, so the experience made him very happy.
After the shrine we drove along a street and found a basket-maker’s shop where they were selling the round pointed hats we had been seeing around Sylhet. Mary and Bennett both bought one.
We then drove through Sylhet city, which was really crowded but not as bad as Dhaka. On the trip back to Dhaka the sun finally came out. When it was starting to get dark we stopped at a large, nice restaurant and got naan and cha. Coming back into Dhaka we hit a traffic jam that took us more than three hours to get through. We finally arrived home at 1 AM to find that the cooks had food ready for us. They had made us pasta and chicken, which was refreshing because we had had only deshi food for the whole weekend. Corrine also got back late and ate with us; she had gone to Bogra for the weekend. She brought us back delicious mishti doi, sweet yogurt, which is the Bengali specialty.

Srimangal and Sylhet Trip: Day 2

On the morning of the second day of our trip I woke up really early and sat in the bungalow’s back porch for about an hour. The view from that porch was absolutely beautiful, with the cha bagans and the hills so near and the air clear in the morning sunshine. We ate breakfast in the clubhouse, and they served really good, thick bread. It was the best (non-naan) bread I’d had since coming to Bangladesh.
After breakfast we went trekking, which is the Bengali way to say hiking. We went to nearby Lawachara national park, a tropical rainforest, and hiked for about an hour. The air was so clean and fresh. I thought we were just going on a hiking trail without any real destination until we walked up a slope and emerged in a village. It was a village of the Kashi people, a tribal group that used to own a kingdom in the area back in the 1800s. Now they make their living by growing betel leaves for sale. The older Kashi speak their native language (which is in the Burmo-Tibetan language family), but the children are learning Bangla. We visited the school and talked to the kids, who were really excited to talk to us. They knew a lot more Bangla than we did. The girl I was talking to was in the fifth grade and read a lot faster than I can. As we were about to leave we found out that some of the villagers had made tea for us, so we took a break and drank the cha. I had more cha on that trip than I’d had for the month before it. One major issue with the rainforest was the leeches; several people were caught by them, as they say in Bengali. The Bangla word for leech is jok, which of course creates an opening for all sorts of leech-related bilingual jokes.
After returning to the resort to freshen up and get our stuff we drove to Sylhet city. The scenery in Sylhet district was different than the other countryside we drove through; there were more hills and ponds. We drove through several villages and small towns, including one town where all the rickshaws were red. In Dhaka they’re all different colors, so the fact that they were all one color there was surprising to me. One of the teachers said that it was probably the signature color of the local rickshaw factory. We finally got to Sylhet city proper, which is a fairly good-sized city but not anywhere near the size of Dhaka.
In Sylhet we had wonderful accommodations at a 4-star resort complete with a swimming pool, really comfortable beds, and Jacuzzis in every room. Our room had a verandah from which I could see water buffalo grazing in the distance. We ate lunch in the resort’s dining area.
After lunch we took a road trip to the north, passing through miles of flooded wetlands called beels. It was a beautiful but desolate landscape. Dotted in the distance were the figures of fisherman using their nets and boatmen pushing themselves through the water with poles. The temperatures got cooler and cooler as we headed north. When we were close to our destination we saw an elephant (hatti) in the road. He was trained to take money from people and hand it to his rider. We finally stopped at a cha bagan where you could see the hills on the other side of the border. It was my first glimpse of India! The Indian state we were looking at is named “cloud’s home” and deserves the name; the hills are covered in clouds most of the time. The wettest place in the world is just across the border there. The hills were really close, probably no more than two or three miles away across the valley.
Our next stop was a border post at the India-Bangladesh border. India was literally 50 yards away, but we couldn’t get any closer than that. Atif ran out to have his picture taken with one of the signs in no-man’s land. We then drove toward another place where you could see India on the other side of a river, but it was pouring rain so we weren’t able to see anything. When we drove back from there we had to drive through a flooded road where there was a stalled CNG full of water. The bus even had some trouble getting through. The most interesting thing about this area was that there were rocks, and even coal mines. We drove through a mining area with large piles of coal beside the road. Since most of Bangladesh is flood plain, rocks are rather hard to come by. The ride back to the hotel was really relaxing. It was raining again as we drove through the vast area of beels, and Atif played music that perfectly matched the surroundings.
Back at the hotel, we took advantage of the swimming pool! We convinced almost all the teachers to come in with us, including Rozima. Bengali women don’t wear swimming suits; they just jump in wearing salwar kameez. It was also good for our Bangla because we played monkey (boran) in the middle.
For dinner we went to the resort’s garden café. They served thai vegetable soup, which was absolutely delicious. I don’t eat enough vegetables here, so I had three or four bowls of the soup.

Srimangal and Sylhet Trip: Day 1

I’ll have to split the post about last weekend’s trip into three parts to make it more manageable. This post will cover everything that happened on Thursday July 1st, the first day of the trip.
After eating breakfast, we set out around 8 AM. Shanta and Atif came with us, as did Rozima, Shamim, Farzana, the professor who had lectured us on Wednesday (who I will call ‘the professor’), and one of his former students. Including our luggage we managed to fill up the bus.
I love driving. You get a feel for distances and a real picture of life in the countryside. This is even more true in Bangladesh than in the US. In the US, what you see from the interstate isn’t necessarily representative of the people who live in the area. In Bangladesh, since the roads are new impositions on the landscape, you can truly see what life is like around it.
It took forever for us to drive through the Dhaka suburbs. The professor called it a giant, expanding octopus and I can see where he drew the comparison. While we were still within the corporate zone of Dhaka we passed through a village area. At one point in this village area we were stopped in traffic, and a family came out to look at the bus full of bideshis. They seemed very friendly, and let me take their picture before the bus moved on.
After a long time we reached the outskirts of Dhaka and then the open countryside. The countryside was partially like Dhaka but mostly different. There were rickshaws and CNGs everywhere we went, even, to my surprise, in tiny little village areas. Every town we passed through had a monument in a traffic circle that reminded me of the monuments in the older parts of Dhaka. Since it’s the rainy season, whole areas of the country were flooded; men paddled boats through the open plain and fishing nets were everywhere. The Bengali fishing technique involves a net held by tall poles, and these contraptions dotted the flooded landscape. Sometimes I would see a man standing in a boat beside one of these fishing nets collecting his catch. Another common site was fruit and vegetable sellers sitting by the roadside with a basket of newly harvested produce. We drove through one town that had a fruit market full of jackfruit and lotkon fruit, which are little round yellow fruit with two sections on the inside, each with a hard seed in it. To eat it, you peel the skin and suck the fruit off of the seed. The teachers bought a bunch from a vendor through the window so we could all try it. As we drove on, I noticed that the flat green floodplain with occasional rows of trees and houses looked like the farmland in central Ohio. The professor explained that Bengalis always like to have trees around their houses and purposefully plant them there. He said that there is a noticeable difference when you pass out of the Bengali cultural area going toward Delhi in India; toward Delhi the houses are one place and the trees are another, but in Bengal they’re clumped together. The professor also told me about the Bangladesh division of land into lowlands, intermediate lands, and highlands. We passed through all of them during our trip, and there was a distinct difference in landscape and farming styles.
We drove through Srimangal town and through some tea gardens, or cha bagans, on the other side. We soon passed some cha bagan workers on their way to or from the tea fields. I’ll write more about the cha bagan laborers later in this post. We stayed at a tea resort that night, which was located among the cha bagans. The bungalows were old and not very nice, but ours had a wonderful view out back. Everything smelled fresh; the air was so much cleaner there than it is in Dhaka. We ate lunch in the resort clubhouse before heading out.
Our first stop was a village of a tribal group named the Tippera. The professor visits fairly frequently, so he knew the people there and talked to them. The first thing I noticed about the village was that their houses were made differently from other Bengali village houses I had seen. We were met by some really cute little kids and two women weavers. The women showed us their wares and I bought a lovely orna. Then I went outside and talked to the kids for a little bit, using my small amount of Bangla to ask them what their names were. The weavers took us to see their looms, which were sunken into the ground and different from any loom I had seen before. We then had to leave so we could get to our next stop.
Our next stop was a cha bagan laborers’ village. The bus parked next to a big field with a few stores along one side and a large pavilion a lot of children were waiting for us. It was a school holiday, but they had come to meet us. The professor greeted them with namoskar, which in Bangla is the Hindu greeting. Bangla doesn’t really have a non-religious greeting, so you have to choose based on religious affiliation. The cha bagan laborers must be Hindu. The kids were very cute and happy to see us. I talked to some of them, asking their names and anything else I could think of saying. Shamim, one of our teachers, picked up a drum and played while one boy sang. He had a wonderful singing voice. Then some of the children performed a dance for us that involved rapping sticks and moving in a circle. They had obviously practiced for a long time. We handed out candy and pencils that the program had bought. While we were about to leave the women were returning from work in the fields, carrying large baskets on their heads. Cha bagan laborers live in a state of extreme poverty and semi-indentured servitude. Their ancestors were recruited from tribes in India in the 1800s, and they are not allowed to go outside the cha bagans. These restrictions are loosening a little bit now, but they are still restricted in their access to education and knowledge about the outside world. They are paid 1 taka/day, in addition to a food allowance and access to a small paddy field. I walked back into their living area and, although they live in such poverty, they are still better off in terms of housing (and probably food) than many poor in Dhaka. My interactions with the children left me wishing that I knew more Bangla, so I could ask them more things about their lives than just what their name is.
We then went to the village of another tribal group, the Monipuri. To get there, we had to walk through a village and a raised road among the rice paddies. The scenery was breathtaking. Along the road there was a shopping strip with five stores selling handmade Monipuri merchandise. I bought a lot of things there, including a sari and some bags. As I came out of a store I heard the sound of a loom and the professor asked if I wanted to go find the weaver. I did, and we walked into the village proper to find him. He turned out to be an old man weaving by the light of a single lamp. I asked if I could take a picture, and got some good ones as he wove. Across the street another weaver brought out some ornas she had woven, and I bought one from her. Then we went back to the shopping area. Shanta and Farzana, two of the teachers, and a few of us were still in the stores after it got dark and started to rain. We had to hurry back across the dark fields to the main road in the rain.
Near where we had parked there was a tea cabin famous for its 7-layer tea. The tea really had seven layers, and each layer was a different color and flavor. No one is allowed to know how it’s made; they even lock the door while preparing it. My favorite layers were the top three, which tasted like ginger.
We finally went back to the resort for dinner. The bungalows were old and nasty, but our room had a gecko in it. Geckos are called tiktiki because their noise sounds like that, and they’re a great thing to have in one’s room because they eat mosquitos.

Will update soon!

Hello everybody. As you may have noticed, I haven't updated my blog for about a week. Last weekend we went to Srimangal and Sylhet on our big 3-day trip, then when we came back our internet didn't work. We're also in the middle of 4 days of hartals, so I don't know when I will regain internet access (I'm currently using my language partner's internet). I will post a full update as soon as I can.