Me 2, Large insects 0

Just killed the first cockroach in my room - it tried to hide in my dirty underwear, but I was not fooled. A couple days ago a crawled out of my pillow and tried to hide under the bed, but there there be monsters and my flip flop put him out of his five-legged misery. Small flying insects on the other hand are winning the battle, as the mosquitoes have been hungry the last couple of days. I have yet to figure out they manage to bite the underside of my feet, but they have - on both sides.

On the way home from the EPRC office today it was the first time I could see in the windows of the buildings on Airport Rd. (the main road between my guesthouse and the office) and I discovered there is a huge garment factory, i.e. 5 floors and at least a block long, right there. No doubt something in my wardrobe came from there.

Today we finalized the Bangla version of my questionnaire after much continued misunderstanding of the format and why certain sections were repeated. Everyone at the EPRC office has been great, despite the significant language issues we have had. As Bilqis explained to me the other day, even though many school and university books are in English, everything is spoken in Bangla because the language is common to the whole country, whereas in India, English is used as a standard because there are so many languages. The next step in the project is another pre-test tomorrow and then ethical training. I will shortly be writing a comment to the Emory IRB about how culturally inappropriate their training is for this situation (and I assume the situation for many people doing research abroad).

The first round of pre-testing the survey went well except for the misunderstanding of the questionnaire format. It was interesting to see fairly large plots of land devoted to farming in the middle of a small slum area in Dhaka. For the Bangladeshis, it was also interesting to see a white person sitting in on a bench in their midst - I drew a continuously changing group of staring men, women and children, which is partly why I didn't take any pictures at the site. I didn't want to make the crowd any bigger, although I don't think a digital camera would be quite as exciting in the city as elsewhere.

Enough about work. Yesterday was a day off and I did some exploring. In the morning I went out alone for the first time (can't believe it took me so long) and took a rickshaw to road egaro (11) to buy somethings like shampoo, phone credit, and an umbrella. Along the way I found the pedestrian bridge over Airport Rd. and took a picture of the view:


I walked around a bit and must have smiled at this man, Wahid, who then insisted on being my friend. He helped me find an umbrella, but I couldn't avoid giving him my phone number (he speaks English). We will see how that turns out.

Later I went to lunch at King's Confectionary because I read about it in my travel guide. It was a very foreign establishment with cakes and doughnuts and spaghetti, but I managed to find something kind of Bangladeshi on the menu. I also met a guy from Ohio there, and it was refreshing have a smooth conversation.

Still later, I went with Rabeya, from EPRC, to visit some other EPRC staff in the hospital - one has dengue fever and the other was in a motorcycle accident. I've never been in a hospital overseas before, and it was eye-opening to see the hallways of the emergency ward of Dhaka University Hospital (also where they put the poor patients) full of people lying on the floor with bandages on their heads and things, while upstairs there are private rooms with no one in them.

Rabeya also showed me around Dhanmondi while we were out, and I bought a new salwaar kameez at the Dhanmondi Shopping Center. We ate there as well, and it is really amazing to me how much Western style food there is here: KFC, BFC (Best fried chicken), Euro Hut, just to name a few. We also visited Aarong, the retail branch of BRAC, but I thought it was kind of expensive. The goods were very nice, though, and it was air-conditioned. My favorite part of the trip was definitely the park across from the parliament building (one of the strangest buildings I have ever seen). The park is huge and it was very crowded on a Friday night. There is a pyramid there that has something to do with a former prime minister, but I wasn't clear what. We had a strange encounter with a cross-dressed man (I've read that Bangladeshis usually deny that homosexuality exists) and a couple of women who were suddenly about 6 inches in front of us, yelling in our faces. I have no idea what they said, but Rabeya gave them a few taka and they left. Here are some pics of the park:

The pyramid

The parliament building - doesn't quite do the geometric holes in the wall justice

On the way back, I experienced my first janjart (traffic jam) in a baby taxi (Chris will be proud - haha). Here are some pics from inside the baby taxi on there way there:

Kind of feels like being tiny in Mario Kart...

Rabeya

Well, sorry for writing a novel. I'd love to hear what's going on with everyone else this summer, so please send emails!