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.