Things I forgot to mention

I have discovered the name of that lake which brought me so much comfort when I was homesick- it is called Banani Lake. Banani is a district in Dhaka city which is very close to where my friend lives, and it is the only body of water between Mirpur and Gulshan. 

My newspapers only came for two days in a row, but I did get one while I was away so we'll see about tomorrow morning.

I am currently planning a trip to the Sundarban, which is a region in southwestern Bangladesh where the Bengal Tigers live and is also the world's largest mangrove forest.  My Italian friend Marzia has gone on her village trip this week so I am taking it over for her so we can get good deals in advance hopefully.  I am waiting for a call tomorrow morning from a tour guide man who is going to help me organize it, and whose name Marzia got from another group of interns who has worked with him.  It looks really incredible, and one of the Muslim men who helped me on my first day in Bangladesh has kept in touch and he says it is the treasure of Bangladesh, and he is sad to not be there. He is going to send me information tonight about the things we should make sure to do. Woohoo! It feels really nice to finally be motivated to get out and do things, so I am confident I will get a good look at all Bangladesh has to offer in my time here.

I got emails back from my colleague's Mom here in Dhaka as well as the High Commission.  Sharmini has invited me to the Canadian Club and since the wedding is only wednesday-friday I would love to go on Saturday night.  I have to call her on Tuesday when she is back from Chittagong to see what we can arrange.  She will also try to get me a short-term membership at the Canadian Club, and I will thus be connected to the Canadian expat community! The High Commission has also invited me to their International Women's Day celebration on March 3rd; I will get the invitation by courier next week which will be a great souvenir.  I am happy to be invited, because I keep getting emails about all the millions of events taking place in Ottawa and at Carleton through the Women's and Gender Studies department over the course of a few weeks, so at least I will get to celebrate with some Canadians if not with my peers.  That will also be at the Club- I definitely did not bring appropriate Western clothes for such a venue so I will wear my fancy Salwar Kamis the first time I go and assess the situation, and then maybe invest in something from Gulshan, which is where most of the Western stores are. 

Tomorrow is the dress rehearsal for the wedding and I am picking up my blouse and petticoat which were custom-made for me to wear under my Sari; thankfully, I have coordinated the two I am borrowing from Sana and don't have to get another set made- what would I do with a formal belly shirt in Canada!?! I am also going to buy some small heels as that appears to be the formal standard here, yet another addition to my massive shoe collection. I am getting VERY excited for the wedding, probably paralleling Sana's current stress level.  It's almost too bad for me that the wedding is this week, as there are only three working days so we would have been able to plan a larger trip were I not very happily previously engaged. 

Is anyone actually reading all my posts?  The blog was too big after two posts for me to open it so I'm sure it's a lot for you. Do keep in touch!

Love, Lesley

Srimangal Trip

I'm baaaack!

The tea estates trip was great.  We left here at about 6:30 am and picked up two new German interns (a very nice couple named Cecil and Anneciata) in another area of Dhaka before leaving the city.  We were nine in total, two Austrians, three Germans, an Italian, two Chinese and myself.  The roads, as I have commented before, are pretty awful but I found they were better in the North than in the South of Bangladesh, and definitely better than those in Dhaka.  We arrived at our guest house in Srimangal (pronounced something like Shrimangol) around 2:30 pm, and I must say it was a very pleasant surprise! There are pictures at the end of the post because I find it very hard to manage the post when I am writing around the pictures I include.  As you can see, it was very beautiful and in a nice little compound.  We were five girls in the one house, and the three boys were in a room in the main house which also had a tv room, about 6 other bedrooms, a cafeteria-type room where we played cards, and the dining room with the kitchen alongside.  We ate lunch (me with my hands, everyone else with spoons) which was amaaazing, the fresh village food can't even be compared to what I eat in the city.  It was pretty much what I ate in the other village; lots of rice, dal with every meal, a meat dish and vegetables.  For lunch the veggie was fresh pumpkin (we saw a cook carrying it in beforehand) and it was fantastic, cut up in chunks and boiled, with a nice sauce.  The others all had a hard time with the spices, and that's how I know I am in fact adjusting to the ubiquitous spice.  I still won't touch the chillies themselves, but I can eat a meal without a litre and a half of water- progress!

The guest house has a coordinator named Peter, one of those from the minority Christian community here in Bangladesh.  Peter organized a mini-bus for us; this one was truly mini, with only seven seats so each time we were in the car two had to sit backwards on top of the motor behind the drivers' seat.  We went to this little shop which is famous for their seven-layer tea; don't ask me how they manage to get it in seven layers, but the picture below shows that there really are distinct layers! We ordered one tea each of 2 to 10 layers and each sampled some of every one. Certain layers weren't all that good, but a fun experience nonetheless! After we returned to the guest house, where one of the assistant boys walked us about a half a km to a pineapple plantation.  Apparently pineapples grow on bushes... I kept my mouth shut on my lack of knowledge on pineapple horticulture, as I would have guessed they grew on trees! We made it just in time for the sunset which was absolutely incredible from the top of a hill over the pineapple rows and the tiny lake at the bottom.  About 3 km of pineapples are grown by this one family, which leases the land from the local government.  You have to be quite well-off to begin with to be able to rent even a tiny bit of land, so I was quite surprised.  That was about it for our first day; dinner was fresh fish with the standard Bangla rice, dal and veggies, and I don't know what they do to the potatoes here but they are great. Maybe, again, it's just the freshness.  We played some games before dinner, and went to bed pretty quickly after we ate as we were all tired, but dinner wasn't served till after 9 so, really, it wasn't all that early.  I unfortunately couldn't sleep at all, despite the mosquito net and the fact that I have adjusted to the hard beds. I was quite slow getting out of bed in the morning, but was still ready before the bus arrived to take us out for the day.

Our first stop was at a lake, which was quite lovely and had tea plants all around it, with paths cutting vertically and horizontally along the surrounding tea-planted hills.  There was apparently a monkey but I didn't see it.  After walking around the lake for about an hour, we had cha (tea) at a stand about a minutes walk in front of the lake.  We were going to visit the national park, but we all wanted to learn more about the multitude of brick-making factories all over the countryside of Bangladesh so we asked Peter if we could stop at one.  So we stopped and wandered around taking pictures and getting stared at as always, but I think this time it was more from sheer surprise that anyone would want to stop there.  It is a really incredible operation; there are many different crews who work, some pulling out the necessary wet soil from the ground, others actually making the bricks by hand.  Someone dumps piles of wet soil, another rolls out a chunk on the ground and another plunks it in the mould and carefully pulls the mould off in time to plunk in the next rolled chunk, always amazingly exactly the right size for the mould, which has the company's letters imprinted on the bottom (top once they flip it over and pull it off).  There are lines and lines of bricks drying on the ground, which are stacked after probably a couple of weeks into huge lined-up piles.  There are then women who carry the dried bricks to where another crew lines them up in a crevasse to be fired.  The fire runs all the time, blowing plumes of black smoke up into the air.  The heat comes out the bottom of the pillar into the crevasse, where it fires the bricks.  I couldn't figure out how long they stay in the line of fire (litterally!), but it is HOT in that crevasse! Other teams move the fired bricks to another section of the field where they are again lined up, waiting to be loaded onto trucks after an order comes in.  Everyone works eight hours a day, seven days a week.  They make 700 taka a week, or 100 taka a day.  We spent 100 taka on tea for all of us earlier that morning.  Each brick weighs 5 kg; the women who carry the bricks do so on their heads, and pile up ten of them (aka 50 kg) and then walk quite a distance to the fire, all day, every day.  They are the only women employed there, about 50 women to the 150 men doing the other work although we only saw maybe 6 of them; I assume we arrived around lunchtime.  We had to ask several times to get anywhere near the fire as it is very dangerous, but of course it's only dangerous for tourists and maybe 15 men work directly on top of it all day long.  I stepped just one step in the wrong place and was pulled back by a lovely old man who probably saved me from a burnt foot, as where I had stepped crumbled into the very bright orange of the fire beneath it.  I got a picture of him maybe 5 minutes earlier, which I have added at the bottom. The old men here are very photogenic, and I am quite proud of this shot. 

We were getting ready to leave to carry on to the forest, but the owner of the factory (an ancient and very tall man in Muslim dress with a walking stick) wanted to serve us something so we waited with him in the overseer's quarters while two men drove to get snacks and another two went for tea.  It is here that I discovered my new favorite Bangla snack, their version of trail mix.  I can't really describe it, but it has soy nuts and a few different-sized savory bits which are, of course, slightly spicy.  I bought some in the bazaar today, and am enjoying them as I write.  The tea was great, not the usual condensed milk-tea but a delicious clear cinnamon tea.  After a few group photos with the factory owner, we sardined ourselves back into the bus and went to the national park forest. There is a fare for Bengalis and a fare for foreigners, which is US$ 5 compared to probably less than US$ 0.50 for the locals. There were signs everywhere about not littering which, in Bangla style, are obstinately ignored.  The further in you go the less garbage you see, so we were glad to get on the less-beaten path.  Some people actually live in the national park, and cultivate lemons around their houses.  Not much to see other than trees, so we took a few photos and moved on.  We read in the Lonely Planet book the Italian had procured that there are traditional tribes still living in the region so we wanted to see that, but we ended up at a fenced-in Christian community.  I could have spent maybe two minutes there but we were there almost a half hour.  Nothing all that exciting, but Bangladesh is the land of hurry up and wait so everything takes longer.  The Church is only open on Sundays so we couldn't go in to see it but we did go find it, and the very Christian structure (not as impressive as a Cathedral) was somehow comforting. Everyone dresses the same apart from the Christian women not covering their heads with a scarf; they do wear Salwa Kamis so it didn't really feel any different other than the Church itself. 

We then went to a tea estate, which was the last thing on our schedule for the day.  It was, of course, closed until March so we went to the tea estate region and didn't even visit a tea estate! It was still a fantastic weekend away.  We went back to the guest house and ate lunch at around 4pm.  I finally convinced the girls to try eating with their hands, a. because it's fun and b. because Sana rightfully proved to me that it actually tastes better when mixed by hand.  They wouldn't ever believe me until they ate with their hand (right only, as it's very rude to eat with the left since it's the hand used in the bathroom) and ALL agreed that it tasted better! The mini-bus from Dhaka was supposed to arrive at 5 pm, and by 6 pm we were getting quite worried.  We couldn't get ahold of the man at Grand Prince hotel who had organized the transport for us, and I won't go into the details of the ensuing drama but finally at 7 we found out that there had been some mechanical troubles and he was on his way.  3 or 4 of our group were supposed to be leaving Dhaka at 7:30 this morning (Sunday) for their village trip, so we were very concerned about getting back Saturday night.  He did eventually show up and we made it back to Dhaka at 12:30 am, dropping off the German couple and getting back to the hotel by 1 am.  I was very happy to shower and collapse into bed.  I went into work a little late today, which I would normally never do intentionally but here is the norm.  So I was there at 11 instead of 10:30 and it was a non-issue.

Regardless, I am still quite tired so I think it will be a very early night for me after a Chicken Steak and Naan dinner.  Today I just couldn't handle Chinese food again so I ordered a chicken pizza which was very good; any dish with vegetables mandatorily comes with chillies so I just wanted a cheese pizza, and got talked into chicken as well which I was fine with.  I think it will be added to my standard fare because chinese food twice a day is tough to manage a month in.  I don't know what I am going to do two months in when I can't stand to even look at beef chowmein! Maybe venture into the Indian menu now that I can stomach the spice, although nothing comes with descriptions on the menus so I will have to prepare for disaster a few times.    

The last picture I will include is one for my Dad, so Mom please make sure he sees it.  This is the building next to the Grameen building here in Dhaka; as you can see, their bamboo "protection" structure starts in one place and ends about three rows of bamboo over at the top, a testament to Bangladeshi security standards for their construction workers.

Heed Bangladesh Guest House- so nice!





Pineapple Sunset



Beside the arm in the bottom left corner you can see a pile of mud

 

My saviour and bff



Eating by hand- you push it into your mouth with your thumb






Women carrying bricks



Newly made bricks drying- endless!





Marzia (Italian friend) and Pineapple plants



Rickety Bamboo





Pineapple valley



Awesome day at work!

Today was grrrreat! I was given the annual reports for the Kosovo project from 2005-2009, and I was able to find data for 2010 later in the day when I was working on some GT stuff.  I am producing a database of all the things I need to include in my report (which is a LOT!) and have also been able to compile a bunch of spreadsheets for my Carleton research paper.  I spent most of the day going through the annual reports, and had about 2 hours to work on the GT database I was starting before I had a meeting with Prof. Latifee at 5pm.  He is really supportive and has high hopes for my GT report, and I am really hoping my work meets his expectations.  We talked for just under an hour, and most of that time was spent talking about his experiences in Afghanistan in 1996 when Grameen Trust was invited by UNHCR (UN High Commission for Refugees) to start a project there to help those affected by the war.  Unfortunately this project didn't succeed due to the tight reign and demands of the Taliban, and in June 1996 the Taliban forced them to shut down.  My project for Carleton is comparing and contrasting the successful project in war-torn Kosovo against the failed one in Afghanistan just three years earlier.  I won't bore you with the details of my proposal but I will let anyone who is interested know when it's done in April so you can read it if you want. 

I am meeting a few other interns for dinner in about half an hour, and then I will be in my room working on my proposal and getting ready for our trip to the Tea estates tomorrow morning... we are leaving at 6 am :S I have foregone my afternoon nap, mostly since I was at work until 6, and also so I can get to bed early tonight and be on time for our departure.  I don't know much about the plans so I will let you all know the details when I get back on Saturday night... or maybe Sunday after work depending how tired I am! Regardless, things are rapidly getting under way here and I will have to stay on top of all my research and report development so I can get everything done. 

I was originally planning to come back to Canada around April 10th, but there is a big conference going on at GT starting April 2nd or 3rd, and then the participants will go to the villages and come back to do more discussions. It will be a great place to network with actual microfinance practitioners and entrepreneurs, so if I have to stay a week or two more it probably wouldn't be a bad thing all around.  But, once I know the exact dates of those meetings, I will have to book my flight home as I tend to be more productive with deadlines... I would like to have a draft of my report done in a little over a month so that I can make any changes they want.  In my meeting today we only talked about half of the elements, so once those are well underway I will get another meeting to show Prof. Latifee where I am at and figure out where I am going.  AAAAH! Somehow two months doesn't seem long enough now that I am actually working.  Saturday will be exactly a month since I left Ottawa, and Wednesday will be a month since I arrived.  This city is still crazy, but I am looking forward to all the exciting things coming soon. 

I did finally make contact with my friend's mom at the Canadian High Commission, as well as another general email to the High Commission, both to which I received replies.  I have been invited to the International Women's Day reception at the Canadian Club on March 3rd, so that will be an awesome tie-in.  Hopefully it won't be my first time at the Club, as my colleague's mother will try to get me a membership for my time here and if that works out I will definitely want to go there the last weekend in February, after the wedding the weekend before.  Which is only 6 days away! There is a big dress rehearsal on Valentine's Day (I'm glad I will be busy) and then events get started on Wednesday, lasting until Friday.  Such fun! And only good comments on my Bollywood dancing, please and thanks!

xox Lesley

Hartal excitement

Dear loved ones,

I am still fine, no problems since the Hartal (strike) started on Monday. I didn't go to work on Monday as we were advised the violence would make us targets.  I have finally figured out what is going on, after hearing many mixed reports before the hartal started. 

Apparently the Dhaka Stock Exchange has been plummeting, and they (the opposition party and their supporters across Bangladesh) are also protesting hikes in the prices of necessities, and shortages of water and electricity.  There is also a lot of beef about a new airport the government wants to build which is apparently against national interests, although I'm not sure why- they have backed down from that plan so they were quite ticked that the opposition went ahead with their hartal. It has actually been fairly violent, I think one report said about 100 people have been injured in clashes with the police.  Lots have been arrested, and there was a lot of vandalism at the march sites- mini-busses torched, windows broken, etc.  It pretty much shut down the public transportation system, although the rickshaws were supposedly out in droves as always. Apparently a passenger bus was essentially destroyed in Mirpur, which is where I am, so I was quite happy to not be in the middle of it. 

The government says it is a defamation campaign leading up the the Cricket World Cup starting on the 17th.  As lots of people have already started coming to Dhaka for the matches (although their numbers hardly make a difference), they say it could seriously harm Bangladesh's image with so much international media coming to the area.  I imagine there will be about zero domestic impact since cricket is to Bangladesh as hockey is to Canada, only multiply the population by a zillion. 

I was looking at the Grand Prince hotel's website again a few days ago, and noticed that I was supposed to be getting the daily newspaper.  Although I didn't raise it with the reception desk or even say anything about it in the hotel, I have been getting newspapers to my door for the last two days. Bizarre! I am happy about it because for some reason I really can't be bothered to go to the lobby to read their copy, but it does seem a very strange coincidence that the day after I noticed I wasn't getting what I was paying for it magically arrived. After a month of living here! It even has my room number on it.  We'll see how long it lasts.

I have double-checked my registration on the Canadians Abroad website, just in case.  I have also emailed the High Commission here in Bangladesh to see if there is anything I can get involved with over the next couple months.  It just so happens that another Global Politics student's parents work for the High Commission in Dhaka, so I have emailed her mom as well. I will let you know what the fallout is!

In other news, I have finally successfully read the restaurant menu! I have been craving something Western, and I discovered that to get grilled chicken breast I need to ask for Chicken Steak. Not a chicken cutlet, which is deep fried and has green chillies and onion POUNDED into it.  The chicken steak is delicious, juicy, and has a really nice (not spicy!) BBQ sauce on it.  I had it twice yesterday, but I am going to hold off for awhile until I really need it again so I don't get sick of that, too.  Chicken fried rice and beef chowmein are getting quite old, although I will never tire of the delicious butter naan.  I typically only eat two meals a day, between 1 and 4 pm and again between 9 and 11.  I usually have a Carnation Instant Breakfast with milk in my room in the mornings, although today I discovered that my milk had gone sour :( I am off to the bazaar downstairs now to stock up on water and milk, and maybe a small tin of sour cream and onion Pringles. We'll see if the mood strikes me.
That's it for now, just wanted you all to know the lowdown and that I'm alright.  Onto my research proposal!

Love love.

This will be a short one, I promise!

My new desk!

I don't think I have mentioned that everything in my room is very close to the ground- bed, bedside table, "sofa" and little table- they are all tiny.  Needless to say it makes writing blog posts, emails, and weekly log updates for my internship coordinator a bit of a challenge.  Knowing that the amount of writing I am going to be doing will shortly be increasing exponentially, I finally took the initiative to ask reception if there was any way to get a desk in my room.  They told me to call housekeeping, which I was trying to avoid because they don't often understand what it is I need. Case in point: I called for a roll of toilet paper and a box of kleenex, and I got two bath towels, two rolls of toilet paper, and a handful of soaps and shampoos! I did finally get my kleenex though.  Back to the story: I called housekeeping, and as I expected I shortly had a manager at my door trying to figure out what it was I wanted.  I explained by putting my hand against the wall, saying "I need a desk that's taller than the table"  he said "but your room is so small" (thanks, I hadn't noticed!) and I said yes but I have to do a lot of writing and it is very difficult to do on my lap.  So, off he went again, and came back with two guys carrying a desk! Yaaay! So I got my desk, and the accompanying chair is the nicest piece of furniture in my room. 

Tiny bed and tiny furniture

 I did save all these pictures so they would be straight-on, but for some reason they have all come out sideways again.  So I hope you can get the gyst of my layout. So here is my abode for three months, and although small it has become quite comfortable.  The bed is hard as a rock, litterally; I sleep with earplugs in because of the street noise, so I just keep my phone alarm on noise plus vibrate and the vibration wakes me up no problemo. Mom and Leanne had a good laugh at me hitting my bed so they could hear how hard it was! Thankfully I have adjusted to the hardness, and although I very much miss my giant, soft, queen-sized bed I am getting along just fine. As I have mentioned, one of the things that is helping keep me grounded is my job searching and summer class planning for once I return.  I had a pretty bad day today, wasn't feeling well thanks to my chicken cutlet dinner- aka GREEN CHILLIES POUNDED INTO MEAT AND FRIED, so although I tried to pick around them I had a pretty long night. I didn't go to work today so my meetings will be rescheduled either for tomorrow or the next day, but I had a nice long sleep and have done some things around my room and have also finalized my preliminary essay proposal to hopefully go over with James tonight so I can get the for realz one in on Thursday night or Friday before we take off to the Tea estates! More info to come.  XOX 



Shower-head beside toilet



Population Density and Road Rules Culture Shock in a Photo




I don't think I need to say much more... cars, trucks, motorbikes, CNGs, rickshaws, and foot traffic. Yup. 

 

All kinds of excitement!

Today was my first day of work at Grameen Trust, which was actually quite slow to start but I'm confident that once I've had the meetings I need to have I can just get down to business and get er done! I also have to write a small report for Grameen Bank in order to get my certificate, which is likely to be the most challenging paper I write this "semester" as we didn't do anything at GB so it's going to be a stretch. But I want that piece of paper, I earned it just by surviving here for a month doing nothing!

Tomorrow I will be doing research and enjoying some time in the hotel with the very dynamic group of new interns whom I've befriended quite quickly.  There is another girl from Italy named Marzia, a German guy named Ingmar, a Chinese guy who is very hilarious and I have yet to figure out who he remids me of, another South Korean girl, and a pair of quite exciting Austrian girls named Ellie and Lisa. You may be wondering why I will be in the hotel tomorrow; there is some kind of political showdown happening tomorrow (unrelated to the demonstrations in Egypt and other places) in the form of a strike, of which I have no credible information.  So I will be reading the papers tomorrow and Tuesday to be able to report back on the situation, very Journalist of me! (Kathryn, aren't you proud?) Anyways, I'm hoping for a weekend-like sleep-in followed by insane amounts of productivity.

I am going with five of the new interns to the Tea district whose name I cannot remember, and we will be visiting some tea plantations and enjoying the general splendour of Northern Bangladesh.  I am also excited for the train ride, as I will now essentially have used all modes of transportation in the country! Small feat, I know, but count your victories right?

Okay it's 1:10 am, and now I will NEED a sleep-in instead of just wanting one! More details about work once I've met with someone important and someone else important. One of them is the Managing Director of Grameen Trust, Prof. H I Latifee, who has actually written some very good pieces about the Grameen Model and GT.  You can find them here if you are at all interested: http://www.grameentrust.org/short_biodata.html

OK BED! NIGHT LOVED ONES!