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.