A day in my (new) Dhaka life

I don’t stay in Dhaka much. Or, at least, I won’t be from now on.  But here’s the description of one day in the life:

I wake up at 7:45 am, happy not to hear, for once, the clanging of construction on nearby buildings.  People are still out of the city for Eid holiday, so it’s quiet.  I pack up the last remaining things in the flat, check my email, open the door for Rashida (the maid), and talk to my mom on chat. Mom reminds me that she’d received my Verizon bill, so after I finished chatting, I go to my suitcase to find my cell phone, only to realize that it is gone.  Within minutes, the land phone rings, “the driver’s downstairs”, M coms to help me move, and there’s little time to figure out how the phone could have gotten out of the only place I had put it.

Stop at Sara’s, drop off two suitcases full of roommates’ leftover clothes, etc, that will go to the orphanage next month. Stop at guesthouse, unload the rest of luggage, return to flat, pay driver, hand over keys. Return to guesthouse by rickshaw.

M and I sit down for some late breakfast, and he begins to tell me his troubles over a certain young lady.  It seems that she is in love with him, but her family will not agree for her to marry a (poor) boy from outside of Dhaka.  It doesn’t matter what kind of person M is — only that he is from ‘the village’ and does not come from a wealthy family.  He had moved, last July, to another part of town so that he could avoid her family members, who were harassing him.  But he says that he worries daily about what will happen, because the girl has threatened to commit suicide if he doesn’t marry her.  He wants me to come up with an answer, which of course I don’t have.

M leaves, I check  all bags (no phone), sit down to wait for S, who’s late.  I’m upset about the phone. I decide to go to get my computer fixed at the place that broke it last July. Twenty minute CNG ride to IDB Bhaban, which is closed still for Eid. I stop by the UNDP offices to say hi, make sure it is clear that I cannot work anymore because of my research commitments.  Back to Banani to eat late lunch.  I go to Dhaba and sit down by myself. I imagine that the people around me are staring at me out of horror and pity (I never see Bangladeshis eating alone in a restaurant), but I’m sure it is just the normal, “oh look at the foreigner” stares.  While sitting in Dhaba, I decide to walk to the Gulshan Grameen phone to add minutes to the internet plan (thanks, SK!). A little exercise will do me good.

Walk to Gulshan, back to Banani along the lake (not necessarily the scenic route).  Chat with S finally, write several sentences in a dissertation chapter, work out. Talk with the MP, hope that he will take into consideration my plea for more funding for the orphanage.

Try to download “30 Rock”. Fail.

Nope, not there yet.

I had intended to be back in Bangladesh by mid-September. I have not, however, been able to get a new research visa, for reasons that have not been made entirely clear by the Bangladesh embassy, and I’m still in the U.S. I have been reminded of the power held by embassies, and in this case, foreign ministries.

It’s not my research that worries me so much. It’s the kids at the orphanage that I think of all the time. I have a large amount of donated supplies that I am so excited to share with the kids. And while I know they will have faith that I will return (I’ve returned so many times!), I worry about other things. How will Mohiuddin get extra food? Will Imam try to leave the orphanage again, because he thinks it would be better to get a job (at age 15)?

I want to go back, Bangladesh Embassy.. why are you making this so difficult?

Return to the Field

I have been in the US for almost two months now, and I return to Bangladesh in less than two weeks.  As I have spoken to my professors about my fieldwork, they seem to sense a sort of sadness in me.  I don’t know that it’s fair that what I often talk about is how hard it is to do fieldwork in Bangladesh.  It is hard.  It’s hard because of the poverty, it’s hard because of the rigid hierarchical relationships, and it’s hard because I’m a woman who wants people to be happy with my behavior.  I don’t think it’s wrong to want to ‘fit in’ as one does fieldwork, but I also do not like to set up expectations for my behavior.  I’m not a Bangladeshi woman, I never will be, and I only disappoint myself and others when I try to emulate the behavior and attitude of a ‘good’ Bangladeshi Muslim woman.

But I keep going back to Bangladesh, and I am looking forward to returning to my flat in Dhaka, to returning to the orphanage and seeing the faces of all the kids who I have gotten to know personally over the last year.  I am excited to return to my fieldwork, to begin seeing a dissertation in all this research.  I am ready to get back to eating fresh food.

I’m not ready for Dhaka traffic, for getting sick, for the heat that will continue through the end of October.  And maybe I’m not quite ready for bucket showers again, or mosquitoes, or the constant ringing of my mobile.   But I am more excited about returning to Bangladesh than my professors might think.

“Deep” Relationships

I have known Moslehuddin and Noorealam for a long time now–8 years.  When I first met them, they were both students at the orphanage and around 14 years old.  They taught Nicole and I Bangla words and phrases and took us to homes in the area.  They were our cultural ‘guides’, and we had a lot of fun together. I felt a deep attachment to them, and when we left, Nicole and I decided to help M and N and their classmates to go to college (meaning, grades 11 and 12  in American system).  So began a long relationship.

Moslehuddin and Noorealam are now 22/23.  They are doing their Honors (bachelors) at Dhaka College.  They’ve grown up to be very different people, and you can see it in the tensions that often erupt these days.  Several times in the last few months, I have been asked, by each of them, separately, to mediate disputes.  Moslehuddin, by far the more mature of the two, calls me at least once every two days to tell me what’s happening between them, urging me to make a decision and force Noorealam to abide by it.  As their boro apu (big sister), I do have this kind of authority, but I am reticent to use it.   And it’s not always clear to me when and if Noorealam is telling me the truth about his side of the story.

Moslehuddin says that a local boy has been harassing him and calling him ’street boy’, because Moslehuddin had a ‘relationship’ with the boy’s sister.  Now Moslehuddin wants to move to a different part of the city, but Noorealam says it’s too far away from their English class.  But when does Noorealam’s English class end? Moslehuddin says June, Noorealam says August.  Who am I supposed to believe? Should I, like the mother of a middle schooler, call the teacher? This is only a small example of the kinds of problems that come ringing on my cell phone.

When Nicole and I started funding the kids, I didn’t have any idea what kind of commitment I was undertaking.  Eight years later, Moslehuddin and Noorealam are only in their 3rd year of bachelors’, with intentions of doing their masters’ before getting jobs.  Every time I see Moslehuddin’s mother in the village, she begs me to take good care of him and help him to get a good job.

When Fulbright asks us to engage with the local population, I wonder if they ever imagine these kinds of relationships.  I am glad that I have been a part of Moslehuddin and Noorealam’s lives.  But our interactions are not always happy and uncomplicated.

Never Again, Bangladesh Biman

I have been planning my trip to Bali since December, when I called Bangladesh Biman–the government-run public airlines– to ask the fare.  Over the next few months, I decided on my exact schedule: I would fly to Bangkok, then to Bali; back to Bangkok, and spend some time there before returning to Dhaka.  In March, Thomas and I braved the Biman office in Motijheel to buy my ticket to Bangkok; after a two hour adventure, I had a ticket for 31 May.

Yesterday, one week before my departure, I received a call:  ‘Sorry madam, we are cancelling our flights to and from Bangkok from June 1. You will have to find another airline.”  What, what?? I have one week to deal with this??

Today I went to the Banani Biman office to see what I could do.  No, sorry, they said, you have to go to the same office where you bought the ticket.  Ok, fine, so I travel down to Motijheel, and after going to three different counters, I finally reach a nice man willing to help me.  Thinking I didn’t understand Bangla, he called another office, and asked for the agent who had sold me the ticket and asked him if he remembered selling a ticket to a foreigner.  I was baffled as to why I need the EXACT agent to take care of the matter, and how he could possibly remember this one foreigner to whom he sold a ticket two months ago (on second thought, though, it’s very possible that he would remember, being as I might have been one of a handful).  The agent, for whatever reason, refused to come into the office at that time, and asked if I could come in tomorrow.   I complained that I have to go to office, and the agent (through the nice counter man) said I should just come after my trip to Bali to get my refund. What? You gotta be kidding me! You owe me this refund, it’s the fault of the airline, and you want me to wait on my money?

After asking the counter man again if there was any way HE could do anything, I realized I would have to come back the next day.  It’s still not clear to me why I need the man who sold me the ticket to give me the refund.  It’s one of those mysteries of customer services in Bangladesh.

Says too much about Bangladeshi 'identity'

The ‘Critical’ Ones

As I walked out of the UN building yesterday, a man came up beside me and asked, “Are you observing?” I was taken aback by his sudden presence beside me, and even more surprised by the question.  “What?”  He repeated the question, which made no more sense the second time than the first.  Perhaps I laughed a little, and then began to speak to him in Bengali.  The conversation continued in English and Bengali, despite my attempts to continue on my way to my meeting.

“What is your country?” This is a very usual question. “What province are you from?”  Ok, ok, Georgia, no, it’s not California or near to California.  “What are you doing here in Bangladesh?” I gave my standard answer, in Bangla. And very quickly I had a prickly, defensive Bangladeshi man yelling at me about my incorrect pronunciation.  I might have laughed again.  Next, he told me that, as the British are the only ones who know how to pronounce English correctly, the Bengalis know how to correctly speak Bengali.

Yes, he was right.  I pronounced a “gaw” like “go”.  I do this sometimes, but not too often for it to be a pattern.  But I was offended.  Very offended, and angry.  Angry that this strange man had accosted me on my way to an important meeting, angry that he had pointed out a flaw, angry that this awful, gendered situation had happened to me far too often.

I think, in fact, he was as offended by me as I was by him.   That’s what my over-analysis has decided.  I had laughed at him, and he was getting his vengeance.  And it hurt.  My Bangla’s not perfect, but I pride myself in my pronunciation and accent.  Even if it was the incorrect pronunciation, there was no reason to scream in my face about it.  That was just rude.

And we don’t have provinces, jerk, we have states.

What I do in Bangladesh

My family and friends have been asking for a bit of narrative about what I am doing here.  It would have been a bit easier a few months ago, before my responsibilities multiplied.

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I am in Dhaka city more often than I was before, because I am now interning for the UNDP (United Nations Development Programme).  At least 3 days a week I go to the IDB Bhaban, where the majority of UN offices in Bangladesh are housed.  Some of my assignments are really interesting–monitoring the bills in Parliament, for example; others are less exciting.  Today, for example, I’m translating parliamentary committee lists into English.  Not so fun, but also not so taxing.

My second responsibility is to the Char Fasson Orphanage.  When I am in Char Fasson, I sleep in a guest room on the second floor of a building that used to house all the children.  Now, it’s in such bad repair that all the children live in two separate buildings on either side of the original structure.  The orphanage provides a good place from which to conduct my research, but I spend a great deal of time doing no research at all.  Instead, I am often hanging out with the children, helping them to play on the computer I brought for them, taking pictures, and showing pictures.  This past week, T and I helped to write a proposal for Save the Children, which would provide up to $40,000 for livestock, salaries, construction, etc at the orphanage.  The goal is to make the orphanage self-sustaining, so that it does not have to depend on either the government or individual donors for its financial stability.

My third responsibility (rather, the first) is to my dissertation research.  This component involves a number of different activities: listening to the conversations of those with whom I am familiar in Char Fasson, interviews with various religious officials and leaders, and observation of a number of religious events.  As I’ve noted in previous posts, some of my best ‘data’ comes quite unexpectedly, but I like to think that’s it’s all a part of placing myself in the right situations and keeping my eyes and ears open.  My research is essentially about the application of Islamic law in rural areas.  I have yet to decide, though, if the final dissertation will be more about women’s interaction with systems of law or on the issues of religious knowledge of various religious officials in the rural area.  Right now, I’m trying to focus on these things called salish courts; they are local courts which are assumed to have a certain right to operate, merely because the participants agree to abide by the decision of the local ‘judge’.  But the people who sit and make judgments in these courts are not trained in law necessarily. They are chosen because they are supposed to be honest, trust-worthy people who will make a just decision.

That’s a fairly good summary of what I’m doing here.  There are lots of other details that consume my life–heat, mosquitos, (lack of) electricity–but that’s all supposed to be secondary to my ‘real’ tasks.  I think at this point–six and a half months in–that it’s fair to say that I’m a fairly good fieldworker, but my strong point really is in my self-awareness of what I’m doing.  I hope that some of my future publications will be about the process of doing fieldwork and the challeneges that arise, especially as a non-Muslim woman working in a patriarchal Muslim area.

The Exhaustion of Being Involved with an Orphanage

In the last two weeks, the cook and the cleaning lady quit their jobs. The left-over salary money has been quickly re-allocated in order to re-hire the teacher/education supervisor and another cleaning lady. We’re not talking about much money here–only $50 or so per month–but it must be used wisely.

Why would anyone want to work at the orphanage (e.g. the cleaners or the guard)? It will never be profitable. And this one at least is constantly on the brink of disaster. A salary is never certain.  Yet still they stay, because the other possibilities are no more certain.

Aid organizations do  not want to provide funding for orphanages, because they will rarely be self-sufficient.  And it’s not quite as ’sexy’ as micro-lending.  We like the notion of giving a little money to make people suddenly self-sufficient.  But in my opinion, it doesn’t work that way (look forward to my next blog post!).

Sometimes I envy the people who work in the bureaucracies of NGOs in Dhaka. Their work seems so much more straight-forward and is not so bound up in the personal lives of individuals. They do not have to weather the daily ups and downs of a struggling institution.  I would never, of course, trade my experiences here in the orphanage… but it’s exhausting to be a part of something that often seems so mired in impossibility.

Buses and Street Justice

I know that riding a bus in Bangladesh means taking a risk. But beyond the annoyances of traffic and inordinately long waits for ferries, I have never been too worried. Our ride to Khulna was a new experience that I would have rather not had, but it was certainly eye-opening.

We had barely gotten out of Dhaka on Wednesday night when our bus driver slammed on the brakes, throwing all of us forward. No one was hurt, and attention quickly turned to the reason for our stop. A small truck had attempted to cross the road, but had been caught between our bus and another truck to our right side. Immediately, the young college-age boys in front of us jumped up and ran towards the truck, beating the windows of the truck with their hands and shoes. Although it was hard to see from where I sat on the bus, it was apparent that the boys were also beating the truck driver. Once the man had been pulled from the truck, the bus driver intervened and took control of the situation, leading the truck driver to the nearby truck stop to wait for police. The boys who had engaged in beating the truck driver were obviously not enraged… rather, they were enjoying the experience and began to smoke cigarettes outside. Suddenly we all heard shouting, and the boys ran back onto our bus, passing by their own seats and cowering towards the back of the bus.  In the open window to my right, I could see a mob of angry truck drivers and various other by-standers rushing towards the bus, several with lathis (sticks) and one with a metal hook.  It was obvious that they were demanding that the boys who had beat the truck driver be handed over.  Our driver–a cool-headed but assertive man–refused and called for the mob to wait until the police arrived.  In the tense minutes until the police arrived (it really wasn’t that long of a time), I found myself angry, in that way that fear propels anger.  I loudly berated the boys for their childish behavior, speaking in English because my voice and body were shaking.  I was angry that they had acted so ‘bravely’ (like goondas, really), but when it came right down to it, they were just stupid, cowardly children who would beat an unarmed man.  And I was particularly incensed that, in their stampede to the back of the bus, they had left me as the closest target to the belligerent crowd.

In the end, I was perhaps not in such danger.  The crowd knew who they wanted, and once the police came, they demanded that the boys unboard the bus.  After many arguments between both sides, it seems that the boys from our bus offered to pay for hospital fees for the bus driver, and, of course, to pay off the policemen who arrived at the scene.  The boys climbed back on the bus, a little shaken but still brash.  We were far behind schedule, but, since we were on a night bus, it mattered little, and we arrived in Khulna at 8:30 am.

Cross (you said WHAT?) Cultural

I have been sponsoring Noorealam’s education since 2003.  He has grown up a lot in the last year or so: become more confident, perhaps even a bit more aggressive.  I don’t always agree with him, but I know that he is still a good kid.  That’s why I was particularly stunned when, during a conversation on World War II, he confidently told T and I that Hitler was a “great leader” who was fighting for his country’s sovereignty.  At first I thought that perhaps he had read the material a certain way, without understanding the full picture.  Once he told us that Hitler had ‘won’ the war, however, I knew that the problem was actually in how much he knew about WWII and Hitler himself.  He was very confused by the looks of horror on our faces and our adamant response that, no, in fact, Hitler did NOT win the war.

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I do not know how to explain deodorant to the orphanage children.  They are also quite enamoured with the matches I bought at the Dhaka Commissary–the long, kitchen matches.   The ones in Bangladesh, they point out, are much shorter.

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In the rural area, I am often asked about ‘the way things are’ in the U.S.  As in, what do people eat the most of? Don’t Bangladeshis eat more than Americans? This second question is always difficult for me, because the reality is that the calorie count of most Americans is far far beyond that of most Bangladeshis.  But rural Bangladeshis DO eat a lot of rice, way more than I could possibly imagine eating in one sitting.  It’s just that, for many people, rice is by far their primary source of food.  So yes, I eat less rice, and generally I eat less in Bangladesh than I do in the U.S. . . . but give me a Papa John’s pizza, and we might have a contest on our hands . . .

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People know where ‘things come from’ in Bangladesh.  They know what their daily products are made of, and they know where such products are made in their rural area.  I was particularly stumped by the question of what mattresses are made of in the U.S.  This might be my own personal ignorance, but I think in general we in the U.S. know far too little about the makeup of the products we use.