Of Spiders and Protests

Whew it has been a long time! There is a lot to catch up on, but in a way it's been pretty quiet lately.

So right after I last wrote I took off for Jessore and Khulna (Satkhira, to be precise) for some field work. I only ended up sitting in on one interview for my project while we were there, but I did get to go to some focus groups for a project about embankments and women's empowerment, a school visit and a teacher training for a school-based water, sanitation, and hygiene project, and several other site visits for follow-up on other projects, mostly related to water. Jessore and Khulna are in the southwest region of Bangladesh, but because the area is on slightly higher ground, they are able to farm for most of the year. They still have major arsenic and salinity problems, though, and many of EPRC's projects are focused on making water with safe levels of arsenic and salinity more available for villages in the area.

Insect trap in a kitchen garden

Site visit - This village had both a pond sand filter (which the people are standing on) and a deep tube well installed right next to each other by different NGOs, neither of which were properly maintained.

Focus group on women and embankments - the group was larger later on.

School visit

Other than working, we also had a little fun while we were out. Bilqis, Sufia, and I did some shopping one afternoon and I picked up some nice handicrafts from an NGO's shop. We actually stayed in that NGO's guesthouse, too. At the guesthouse, a giant spider that honestly made me think of Aragog from Harry Potter, was sitting on the wall. I was ok while it stood still and I could keep an eye on it, but I couldn't sleep with that in my room, so unfortunately it met it's end under a shoe I threw at it from the bed. Two days later an identical spider showed up and hid from the broom in the air conditioner. I shared a room with Bilqis that night and then traded rooms with Sufia, who wasn't so freaked out by big, hairy spiders. I also did some slightly adventurous eating while in Jessore - we had quail (roasted whole, only missing the beak and feet), and dishes with small fish, also whole. The idea of eating a whole fish freaked me out at first, but they're satisfyingly crunchy and I've been craving them ever since. The best thing about the trip by far was the scenery, but unfortunately I saw most of it from a moving vehicle, so my pictures didn't turn out so great.

Aragog I next to a four foot fluorescent light bulb. (Aragog II, the Spider Who Lived, not pictured)

Waiting for the train back to Dhaka

Severely flooded area - you could barely see any land for a long time, except where the train tracks are raised.

People actually working on a farm (not something I was able to see on the ground because it was late in the day and no one would continue working if they could stare at me instead)

It's strange how returning to Dhaka feels like coming home, even though I've only been here about 2 months. When we first got back to Dhaka I spent a few days staying with Bilqis and her husband at their apartment. It was a very different experience from staying in the guesthouse, of course, but it is nice to be back in my own place now. While I was staying there, we visited the new flat that they are moving into, and we spent last Friday shopping for furniture. We did go to Bashundhara city (the big fancy shopping mall) to return a sari for Bilqis, and she ended up buying me one as well. She hasn't shown me how to wear it yet, so we'll see how that turns out.

Furniture shopping across from Bashundhara City

Since then life hasn't been terribly interesting. There have been a few more uprisings in the area, one on Tuesday when the students protests a new VAT on their tuition, and one today when the garment workers all over the city protested the new minimum wage. Both protests turned violent, and the student protests were within a few blocks of my guesthouse, but they had moved to another location by the time I was going home from work. I'm not sure if the garment workers on Airport Rd. were part of the protest today, but I certainly wasn't going to head over there to find out.

Today was a bit more interesting than usual for other reasons, too. It was a very busy day for a Friday, and I managed to pack in a facial, shopping, and lunch with Loida and Dawn for Dawn's last day in Bangladesh, buy a postcard, attempt to exchange a shirt, get my salwaars mended and then met up with Wahid later and did some serious walking around Lake Park. We saw one young white girl running there in a t shirt with the sleeves cut out and shorts above the knees, which is extremely revealing for Bangladesh, although I wouldn't have noticed in the US. I'm not really sure how you can live here and completely reject the unspoken dress code, as much as I would also like to get some exercise in something other than a salwaar kameez. I did see a Bangladeshi girl at the park running in a salwaar kameez and I was quite proud of her - running is also almost unheard of unless you're trying to catch a bus, or miss getting hit by a bus.

Surprisingly this hasn't been my usual novel, considering how long I've put off writing this blog, but here are some bonus pictures of the neighborhood to make up for it.

Far Pavilion Guesthouse (where I live)

A rickshaw that I did not subsequently ride. This was very puzzling for the driver.

The American International University in Bangladesh, a major player in the student protests, two blocks from my guesthouse

Om mani padme hum

Other than the fourth of July festivities, last week was pretty uneventful and a little boring...until taking off for Nepal. Nepal was awesome, and I really wish we had more than 2 and a half days to explore it! It is much more tourist-oriented, especially in Thamel, Kathmandu where we stayed, and that evokes a whole different grab-bag of feelings about being a foreigner than being in Dhaka where foreigners are few and far between. The nice thing about it was that people didn't stare, although we did get some remarks the first night about our salwaar kameez (or salwaar kurta in Nepali). Instead, we found it difficult not to stare at our numerous pale-skinned counterparts - I guess Bangladeshi culture is wearing off on us! (To clarify, "we" are Loida, Abbey, and I from Emory, and Katie and Sarah from UVA, all of whom work at ICDDR,B except me.)

Our short trip began with a two-hour delay of our flight from Dhaka on Biman Bangladesh airlines. Our tickets said we would leave at 2:45, but then we got to the airport and the schedule said 3:30. So, having tons of time on our hands we enjoyed the free snacks at "Spices" for Biman customers and eventually went to the gate and witnessed the strangest boarding call we had ever seen. We were sitting at the gate waiting, and then five minutes before our scheduled takeoff everyone in the room magically got up and boarded the plane. There was no announcement, no sign, everyone just got up and got in line. We sat on the runway forever in a smelly sauna of a plane waiting for some luggage issue and eventually took off. The return plane trip was equally eventful as we were felt up no less than 4 times in the Kathmandu airport (by security women) and had our bags thoroughly searched by a very unfriendly woman who confiscated Loida's spices because she "might throw them in someone's face". The actual flight was less eventful, and the Bangladeshi's seem not to care what or who is coming into their country as you can just walk out of the airport without going through so much as a metal detector.

While in Nepal, we spent the first full day in Kathmandu exploring the temples and spending copious rupees on entrance fees. It was really cool to see all the Buddhist prayer wheels, prayer flags, Tibetan (I think) monks praying, and receiving the blessing of a monk after taking that class in Tibetan Buddhism at Michigan, but the novelty wore off by the end of the day. We also saw some Hindu temples, but as I know nothing about Hinduism, it was kind of lost on me. I also felt weird about taking pictures of all these sacred sites and entering temples of gods I didn't even know existed. But the Nepalis do it too, and temples seem to be the place to hang out with everyone lounging around on them, although climbing on an elephant statue in Patan City to take a picture may have been a little out of the ordinary. At one of the temples there was an apartment building that allowed visitors to go up on the roof for free to get a good view of the temple, and the rest of the city. I'm sure it would have been even more amazing if it weren't the rainy season and you could see the mountains, but it was still a great view. The highlight of the day, though, was definitely the monkeys and their babies - so funny! One monkey had a juice box at one of the temples and looked like he would attack anyone who came within a 5 foot radius. And maybe he would have - my co-worker Sufia told me today that she did get attacked by a monkey at the Monkey Temple when she was there!

Monks praying

Master Buddhist artist at work

Elephant some of us later climbed on

Monkey with a juice box
Monkey with a view at the monkey templeA buddha and a photo of the Dalai Lama at the Monkey TemplePrayer wheels - om mani padme hum

The second full day we got a guide and driver (we also had the driver the previous day) from our guesthouse and went on a short tour of the Kathmandu Valley. Ironically I saw rice paddies on the outskirts of Kathmandu and I have yet to see one in Bangladesh. It was pouring when we left, and none of us were in the mood to walk around and see more temples in the rain (our "residents of Bangladesh" trick of the day before didn't get us the South Asian resident discount this time), so we skipped the first stop and went to a different Hindu temple. By that time the rain let up a bit so we walked through the temple and the guide told us a couple of stories behind the statues in the place, only one of which we really understood. Then we went for a short trek, maybe an hour and a half or so, along the side of the mountain. The views were spectacular, despite the clouds and lack of mountains, and we saw plenty of goat herding and mushroom hunting. A pack of dogs met up with us about halfway through and stuck with us all the way to the end, which was pretty cool. At the end of the hike, we met our driver and went to Nagarkot, a kind of resort spot in the mountains. It was another gorgeous view and we saw a snowy mountain peak in a break in the clouds. On a clear day, you could supposedly see Mt. Everest from the top of the hotel where we ate lunch. We made one more stop at a tower before heading back and passing out for a few hours before the World Cup final. I don't think any of us made it through the whole game - I was falling asleep in the bar where we watched the first half, but made it through regulation time before calling it a night. Viva Espana!

Rice paddies outside Kathmandu

Trekking

Goat herd on the trek

The road and one of the dogs that followed us - this was about the time they started accumulating

Some views from the trek

The last day we did some frenzied shopping to use up our rupees and get some decent gifts and things before returning to the land of practical items and gaudy jewelry. For a hippie such as myself, it was a shopping paradise, but I somehow still had $16 worth of rupees left at the end of it...

Well tomorrow evening it's off to Jessore and Khulna for some fieldwork. All I know is we're taking a train to Jessore, staying there two days, going by bus to a city in Khulna district that I can't pronounce for two more days, and then taking the train back to Dhaka next Wednesday. While it is sure to be a whirlwind trip, I hope there will be a little time for sightseeing before it's over. At the very least I will finally see some rice paddies in Bangladesh!

There's nothing more American than apple pie in Bangladesh

Yesterday, in celebration of American Independence day, the American Club in Dhaka let anyone with a US passport in (for $15) for a buffet dinner of deliciously American BBQ-style food, including apple pie and ice cream, entertainment in the form of a Bangladeshi band playing mostly American songs, and a raffle of some rather fancy prizes, all on the gloriously decked out lawn. The band was rather amusing - they played Guantanamera (not sure why) and I'm pretty sure they didn't sing half the words and they certainly had no idea what they were singing about. I Can't Get No Satisfaction was also amusing since they had the guitar/bass rhythm completely backwards. Perhaps even more entertaining, however, was the dancing. At one time they played the Macarena and not one person on the dance floor could get the timing right! All in all a good time. They also gave out gift bags of toiletries. I tried the cucumber melon soap first, but unfortunately I've been coming out smelling pretty manly. Not what I would have called cucumber melon....

A little blurry, but the lighting wasn't great for taking sweeping pictures of the scenery.

Friday turned out to be uneventful, as terrorist activities go, but I had a full day anyway. I finally met up with Loida and her roommate over lunch at Kebab-E-Q (quite possibly the most ridiculous name ever, but delicious and not too pricey). Shortly after that I met up with my friend Wahid and we went to the amusement park in Gulshan. It was amusing more in the way of being ridiculous than in the way amusement parks usually are...but for less than a dollar admission, the Oceana County Fair can't even beat it. Apparently it's more popular at night when it's lit up. Here are some pictures of the place:

The ticket

Rides and psychedelic mushrooms

Wahid in the "Underground Aquarium" - it was pretty dingy down there, but they had a lot of piranhas

Me and some fake tigers outside the aquarium

Some creepy preserved dolphin thing with sharp teeth

Later on, I met up with my more recent friend Rubel, but I don't think I'll be seeing much of him in the future...It was a strange reunion.

This weekend I'll be joining Loida, her roommate, and two other girls from ICDDR,B for a trip to Nepal! Then the following Saturday I'll be departing for Jessore for some field work there. Lots of travels coming up in the near future!

And the political unrest continues....

Well I was wrong about the hartal - I read a later report and it was more like 500 people who were injured in the capital on that day. Still didn't hear about any deaths, though, which is good.

Yesterday three leaders of Jamaat-e-Islami, an "islamic" party that is present the world, were ironically arrested on charges of offending Muslims or something like that (they said that one of their leaders was like the prophet Mohammad), although now they may go on trial for war crimes committed during the liberation war in the late 60s-early 70s - they fought to stay united with Pakistan. The Prime Minister has claimed this wasn't a political move, but it sure looks like one. Jamaat-e-Islami has now called for demonstrations against the arrests tomorrow, the holy day, which will probably start in earnest after the 12:45 prayer, as they have called for people to gather at the mosques for prayers tomorrow (the first one is supposed to be at 3:45 am, so I doubt they'll start then). So yet again, I'll be avoiding going to far in the afternoon because I'd rather not get caught up in the frenzy of silly political tiffs - there was already a rather large gathering around a man with a megaphone about a block from here when I came home. The last time this group demonstrated was 3 years ago, and I've been told that they set off a bomb in nearly every subdistrict in the country (there were 200 and some at the time). No one was killed, but it is still scary. This country is crazy sometimes!!

Yesterday was somewhat eventful - Bilqis and I visited a consultant at USAID to talk about their agricultural programs. It was a very helpful meeting, but there is plenty of follow up to do, as USAID doesn't run too many programs itself, but rather through partners like CARE and Save the Children. Then last night I had dinner with a friend of a friend who also works at the US embassy at an Indian restaurant in Banani (my neighborhood). She brought a bottle of wine, and it was amazing! It seems like soooo long since I've had a drink. We had a good chat, and it was nice to see some fellow Americans here. I haven't run into any since the first weekend!

In other news, I finally succumbed to watching Twilight tonight while avoiding the man with the megaphone crowd, and I hate to admit, I kind of enjoyed it. Some of it was ridiculous, but overall it wasn't bad. I still don't understand the fascination with Robert Pattinson, though - that forehead!