Barisal

It was Monday morning and as usual we were having our weekly test to greet the new academic week. However, this Monday wasn’t the beginning of the week, but the end. Tomorrow started the much anticipated Eid holiday break, which lasted from Tuesday all the way through Sunday, giving us 4 days off from class. Most of us Fulbrighters were taking this time to adventure out of the city: Christy to Malaysia, John and Laule’a to the beach hotspot Cox’s Bazaar, and Keith to Sylet to seek out some spiritual progress.

I had attempted to manage a means to travel to Chittagong (Bangladesh’s most well-known city outside of Dhaka) in order to meet up with my language partner and visit his village outside the city there. Despite the complications of buying a train ticket in Bangladesh (for instance, there is no web-based system for this like in India), a fascinating option exists through the phone service where you can actually reserve tickets through an automated program over the mobile. After dozens of attempts with different classes and trains and dates, I realized that everything was booked solid. Additionally, John had tried to get bus tickets down to that direction of the country and was met with no option other than to resort to flying; the buses were packed with reservations. Evidently this was a holiday that certainly involved travel for many Bangladeshis. Even in the newspaper there was an article about how difficult it was going to be this year to find means of transportation for Bangladeshis to meet their families in other locations of the country. Although I could have visited the train station to see if there were train bookings available through direct reservation, I decided against that struggle, not only because I knew the train station would be packed and my limited Bangla skills could prevent me from getting the right ticket, but also because if I did get a ticket, I knew that it might be at the cost of someone returning home for the holiday celebration. In the mood for something new, I decided to see what it would be like to travel in Bangladesh by launch boat. Perhaps there was a way I could get to Chittagong by sea. Who knew? And if not, as long as I could board a boat I would end up somewhere new outside of Dhaka, and that was my number one priority for the break. High time for a change of scenery and a little less structure in the day-to-day routine I’ve sunk into in the comfortable enclave of Dhaka’s posh Baridhara. After class finished that Monday, and after a quick bite to eat, the backpack was packed with a few changes of clothes, plenty of medical-related products just in case, a new book, and an inflatable pillow and bed sheet. Nothing of massive value. I filled up the water bottle, and was on my way to the local bus station. I had one destination in mind: Dhaka’s most famous port, Shadarghat.

A massive water-fearing entry and exit point of the city, Shadarghat would be the place to go to find a launch boat leading outside of the city. It’s no small journey from our northern lair in Baridhara; Shadarghat lies in Dhaka’s deep south. I was on a bus by about 3:30. No problem, I would be able to get there in plenty of time to hopefully find a boat before they departed that evening. Traffic was slow. The bus crept at a pace that never quite exceeded a walking pace it seemed. 4:30. Now we spent most of our time halted in gridlocked traffic. At least I wasn’t standing like many of the others on the bus, although the leg space was a tad insufficient, and my knees jutted into the seat in front of me. No matter, it was plenty distracting just observing the outside traffic. Darkness fell. As we neared the older part of the city, cow markets took up half of the road space. With the family purchase and consumption of a cow being the centerpiece of this holiday, hundreds and hundreds were lined up. If I knew where to walk to get to Shadarghat, I would have gotten off the bus in a heartbeat. Many people would get on, wait for an hour, and in frustration decide to walk instead because we simply were not moving. The work day was over, everyone was on their way for Eid break, and in bulk, people were bottlenecking to Shadarghat to board a launch to reunite with family outside the city.

By the time we had finally gotten there, 4 hours had passed (for the same distance, only 20 minutes is required without traffic). A man on the bus I was talking to was also headed to the ghat, and ultimately to the same place I had in mind, Barisal. I heard rumors of a launch service from there to Chittagong; plus it is supposed to be a great place to spend some relaxing time anyway. The man, a brightness about his face all the while, led me though hoards of cars, trucks, and luggage-laden people to the area of the ghat for Barisal-directed launches. The ghat itself, a massive dock, was indescribably jammed with humanity. Massive three and four story docked launch boats extended down the ghat, every one just the same: filled to the brim with people occupying any possible open space, even on the roof. We somehow managed our way to one of the 4 or 5 heading to Barisal. I ascended to the top level to witness the frenzied hollering and thousands and thousands of people cramming the dock and squeezing across narrow wooden planks onto the massive launches, luggage in hand. The hundreds of cabins on the launch were completely booked well in advance; I knew the deck was where I’d spend the night. The bright-eyed bearded man and I found a small spot on the deck on the nose of the upper level, just enough space to spread out about half a bed sheet. We and a few nearby others exchanged some bread, fruit, and conversation before lying down for sleep. I had hoped to pee before sleeping. No hope though, every square inch of the aisles alongside the edge of the boat leading back to the bathrooms was already claimed by sleepy stakeholders. The steel deck was hard on the shoulder if I slept on my side so I woke up several times. The air was crisp, just enough to see your breath if you were paying attention. A slight humid wind constantly sieved its way over the deck, making my hair dance. The bodies strewn all about, covered with blankets, resembled what I imagine a rescue boat would have looked like for the Titanic. The stars glimmered overhead, spanning my whole vision when I laid on my back, the faint streak milky way visible too.

Abruptly being awoken by the blaring horn just above our heads, eventually I rose (with no hope of falling back to sleep) to see what we kept honking at. We were in a thick fog, the kind where our visibility was even worse when we shined the powerful watch light ahead. Traveling at a snail’s pace, we had no other way of warning other boats that we were in the area other than periodic flashes of light and bellowing horns and sirens. At the railing of the deck, I could hear the engine hum of another ship before I could see its lights. It’s humming got louder and louder. The diesel chug sounds eventually were so audible they could practically be our own. Finally a glow emerged from the fog; the ferry was just to our left, and we turned slightly to avoid collision. A few minutes later though, we weren’t so lucky. Peering into the fog, suddenly I saw bright flashlights flick on ahead of us. The light beams started moving frantically. We continued forward. Then the shouts began. From the direction of the waving flashlights, within a few seconds the shouts erupted into crosses between hollers and shrieks from these unknown sea-fearing men. People arose from our deck to see what was going on. Suddenly from the fog the metal hull of a boat emerged into view just meters from the nose of our launch. My eyes widened, as I realized an oblique collision was imminent. The whole deck shook as the edges of the boats made contact. Loud metal crunching noises pierced the air and showers of sparks flickered. The shrieks of the men (now visible) became bellows of enormous anger. Our deck occupants lined the railing, observing the chaos but saying nothing in reply, as if watching a movie. Perhaps people weren’t surprised; at the docking ghats the launches will jolt as they nudge into each other. However did seem out of the norm, at least, I imagined it must have been. Our launch continued forward, its momentum unchangeable. We plowed into another parked boat, adjacent to the first. I couldn’t tell what this was, but it seemed that these boats were parked for a reason, and that we were really breaking something, perhaps a rig of some kind. Metal continued to clang and creak amidst feverish shouting from the boatmen. After creeping to a stop, we backed up and the shouts from the men continued. Amidst thick fog, I still didn’t know what kind of structure/boat we laid such heavy damage to. Altering our direction, we continued forward, and the deck-fearers reassembled themselves like a puzzle, resettling onto the now dewy and slippery metal deck. Still wide-eyed, I stayed at the railing of the deck for some time, eventually detecting our port of arrival as sounds and lights leaked through the lessening fog, thinning as the sunrise approached.

Although a flood of people flowed from 4 or 5 massive launch boats into Barisal, the ghat itself was only just big enough for the ships to park themselves. Waiting for some time until the crowd lessened, I made my way to the ghat to explore around a bit. After asking around, the majority consensus was that there was indeed a launch boat to Chittagong, but it only left weekly on Fridays. And with that, I realized that my Eid vacation would be spent here in Barisal. The last person I was questioning about Chittagong launches was about my age and he spoke more English (although still clumsy and difficult to understand) than the market men and boat men around. I asked if I could join him to wherever he was heading. Fortunately, it was a walk along the beautiful riverside. He had come to the ghat to enjoy the sunrise. As we walked along the brick path that lined the riverside, with broken conversation we introduced ourselves (his name was Emon) and he would answer questions I had about anything from the crops I’d see growing by the river to the massive rusted ship yard that looked like something from a ghost town.

After about half a mile, he invited me to a park where he plays cricket. In addition to a cricket game going on, there was also a soccer game being played as well as dozens of people walking the circumference of the rectangular park. With many pumping their arms dramatically, it was nice to see such activity so early in the morning. Eventually I was introduced to the whole group of cricketers, all about my age. I filled my water bottle up at a tube well that people were drinking from. Although I had hesitation, Emon guaranteed that the water (unlike in Dhaka) was safe to drink here and was very fresh. Aside from the slight sulfury aftertaste, the water indeed was fine, and in fact for my whole stay in Barisal (much to my enjoyment) I never needed to buy bottled water and never fell ill. Emon directed me across town to where he and many of his friends live. Barisal is certainly smaller than Dhaka, the wide streets lined with buildings that never exceeded a few stories. Traffic that day was non-existent; a lack of jams in an urban environment was certainly something I welcomed. I saw few cars too, perhaps that’s one reason for less traffic. On the streets you’d mostly see cycle rickshaws and electric rickshaws, reminiscent of Dhaka’s green CNGs but much quieter and newer-looking too. Cycles and electric rickshaws? I guess there was nothing left to pollute the air other than the occasional motorcycle. Emon directed me to a hotel across from his house. For 200 taka a night (3 dollars), the room was comfortably equipped with a bathroom, sink, cabinet, thin mattress on the bedframe, clean sheets, a mosquito net, and even a small couch and table. Despite the early morning, I was off in no time with one of Emon’s cricket friends, Sukhen, to a Hindu village to observe a famous festival there.

Sukhen, my age, is an art student. In fact, upon first meeting him, he quickly drew me a picture of two chickens. The bulk of Sukhen’s friends are also artists, as well as many poets. It was nice to see so many engaging in studies other than the banal Dhaka business and economics academic scene. Barisal in fact was the academic center of the country before Dhaka emerged as the main area. Sukhen spoke little English, but somehow his gazing eyes communicated what was needed in conversation. That and a mouth that was either thoughtfully silent or smiling.

The village we went to was named Koloshkati and required the means of a mini-bus, cycle rickshaws, a ferry, and a small river boat to reach. We had about 6 people in our group (including a professor of poetry in Barisal, a lecturer of sculpture from Dhaka University, and a few of Sukhen’s friends), none of whom had seen the festival before. Upon entering the main part of the village, we bought some jilebi (small funnel cake-like morsels steeped in sugar syrup) and had some tea as people gathered around to witness the white man in town. The village is known for its pottery, so we went around learning about their trade and would occasionally run into a puja site, where colorful and ornately decorated museum display-sized gods were housed in cloth rimmed huts. The displays usually had several characters in them acting out a scene, usually with a smiling delicate-faced god nonchalantly piercing the body of some warrior underneath her with a spear; or also I saw the warrior underneath being attacked by a clawed animal. Blood (sometimes distractingly neon pink) seemed always part of the scene, again however the serene and colorful god or panel of gods being the center of focus.

Although the sites of the village were enjoyable, I found myself distracted by how easily annoyed I was at being shoveled to one place followed by another. Commanding “Matt! Where are you?” and “MATT come see this!” statements were never far away, always seeming to distract me from what I was enjoying. Interestingly enough, it seemed that our opinions of what needed to be seen in the village differed. Perhaps I’d be interested in gazing at an ancient brick structure for some time or a chicken coop; yet I was usually led shortly thereafter to yet another Hindu god display or yet another site where villagers were making pottery. In this way, it not only mattered what each of us wanted to see in the village, but what my hosts intended for me to experience in the village. It wasn’t as if we were a group of friends negotiating where to go, I was a foreign guest and my hosts seemed to take upon themselves the burden of not only showing me a ‘good’ time, but also exposing me to the ‘culture’ that they thought I was interested in: the quaint or exotic aspects of the village that a tourist might photograph for example.

Of course fortunately not everything was about me; the others had a high time snapping their photos away, capturing over and over again elements of the village that they don’t get to see in the city. My silent criticisms of this made me feel even more distant than where I already was in the group dynamic, characterized thusfar by disparate nationalities and language barriers. However, this somehow carved out the space for me to live the experience in my own way, despite the attempts of the others to structure exactly what I was doing and seeing. I felt more aware about what I wanted to observe of the village in reaction to what I knew I didn’t want. I realized how I had consumed quaint and exotic elements of a different life in the past to no personal avail, and how now I realized I was more interested in focusing on one striking place or building in the village, or perhaps by making small talk with a shopkeeper across the creek. Being more deeply involved with my own experience rather than living it through the others in the group or through the robotic initiatives of cultural consumption and specticalization adds a refreshing element of liberation and self-definition to how I recall that experience.

I soon realized, as we returned to the main part of town, that the streets were filled with about 4 times as many people. Darkness had fallen but ‘Christmas’ lights hung abundantly above the streets warmly lighting the activity below, and of course the large puja sites with scene recreations punctuated the environment with not only intense light but also usually blaring music from oversized speakers. Crowds would inevitably gather around me if my stride broke to wait for part of our group or if we stopped somewhere. When this would happen I would usually either gaze back smiling or drift my eyes above the heads (not a hard job with my relative height) to something interesting. Sometimes I would single out a person in the crowd to have a few questions with, and similarly sometimes someone would come forward and ask about my background if he were comfortable enough with English. Never once did I feel threatened, although maybe a tad embarrassed that I sometimes couldn’t dampen my wide silly smile at the beaming crowd.

Caught amidst the surroundings of a thick crowd, someone from our group motioned for me to sneak over in his direction to see another puja site. With an exasperated sigh I followed him down an alley, preferable to me and a herd of Bengalis staring at each other. As we turned the corner my jaw dropped. A mass of hundreds of people gazed forward at a giant holy scene recreation that was being lit solely by the piercing beams of thousands of spinning green lasers as if in some overwhelming sort of dance club. Pulsing music throbbed and gave additional life to the scene, the center god’s serene smile and peaceful half-closed eyes unaffected by the commotion around it. I absorbed all of this for about 2 seconds before the power went off and everything went black. As if a fleeting flicker of consciousness imprinted the image, in the blackness with a confused but awestruck face I considered whether or not I actually observed such a sight. Those around me, including the friends I was with, didn’t make any hint that they thought the scene was over-the-top. Yep, just another normal sight in the throngs of a Hindu festival. I imagined such a light and sound show pervading the space of a large Christian church. Moments like that smack you upside the head and say “So, did you FORGET that you’re in a place that operates completely differently than what you’re accustomed to?! Don’t pretend that you actually know what to expect here all the time.”

After being invited to sit in a special central seating area at the town’s main puja scene (again, crowd-formulating) and being offered traditional prasad/sweets, we made our way to the entrance of the town. With a heartfelt goodbye to a few of the locals that I had been conversing with, we were off. Within minutes we were in the soothing calmness of dark leafy forests and rice paddies. The hour-and-a-half or so journey back to Barisal was eventless aside from our recollections of the village, and aside from the exhilarating ride we were able to hitch in the back of a truck that rocketed down the road, jarring us back and forth on our benches with sudden breaking if a pedestrian tred to closely.

That evening I had dinner at Shukhen’s home. His family is Hindu and vegetarian, so the meal consisted of rice, fried eggplant, dal, and various vegetable dishes. The next day, however, was Eid, and I was invited into Emon’s home to have lunch. That whole morning all the cows I mentioned before were being sacrificed. Walking through town in the afternoon, you could see the carcasses being skinned, gutted and chopped on large straw mats on the sides of the road and in garages. I had been preparing myself for such gore. Initially I had reacted strongly against the holiday’s violent nature. Then I started thinking about Thanksgiving in the US. And also Keith had mentioned that he imagined more cows were slaughtered in Texas slaughterhouses daily than during the whole of Eid Holiday here in Bangladesh. I suppose I believe it, I mean, although Bangladesh is a heavily populated country and there are lots of families to buy cows, there are sure a lot of cow eaters in the US, and many of such eaters consume excessive portions. Or the restaurants serve excessive portions and said cow eater may or may not consume the whole thing. My point is that how can we put a negative value judgment on exposed cow slaughter when we slaughter to a greater degree and just aren’t as aware about it? So in terms of cow volume consumption perhaps an objective comparison between countries can be made. And what of exposure? Is THAT where my uneasiness directed at Eid lies? What does that have to do with such uneasiness exactly? Am I concerned about sanitation? No, not really, that’s not what it feels like. The cow is consumed readily and cooked thoroughly anyway; I feel uneasy about the gore, not about the prospect of people becoming sick. But, do I really not think that such gore and blood is not inevitable in the process of cow slaughter? Why don’t I have the same reactive feelings, and to a greater degree, every day in the US, where only God knows how many cows are processed in those slaughterhouses? Is it really just that I don’t see it? Does that mean that I’m not aware of it? No, not really, I mean I know about it. Does it mean that I’m not AS aware about it as I would be if such slaughter volume were occurring out in public, say, in the streets of Manhattan? Does it really require shoving something like that in my face to make me realize its nature? Hmm. Two answers. 1) Maybe not: It’d like to believe that I can understand that a cow was slaughtered for my access to, say, a hamburger. 2) Maybe: Perhaps the distance that exists between me and the cow that produced my meal in the US—how removed I am from the system of food process—does indeed determine how I feel about the food. If I had to kill a cow to eat a hamburger, would I do it? And if I did, what would the hamburger mean to me? Compare that sentiment with what I’d feel if I walked into a McDonald’s for a quick bite before hurrying off to some friend’s house or an afternoon class or something. In the two scenarios, when would I be more likely to finish my hamburger? And when would I be more thankful for the hamburger? We call turkey day Thanksgiving. Is it possible to be completely thankful for that turkey I’m eating if I’m not experientially aware of the process that preceded its display on the dinner table? And yes, the process extends farther back than the drive to the grocery store.

In any case, perhaps the thought experiment and questioning put me more at ease with the holiday. Or maybe less at ease with the food system in the US? Lunch at Emon’s house consisted of rice, dal, cucumber tomato salad, and of course, beef curry. More and more they kept adding to my plate, even though before every time they would serve I would claim I didn’t need it. In fact, লাগবে না (‘lagbe na’, I don’t need; literally, it doesn’t strike me) became one of the most frequent things I would say in a host’s home. Rampant hospitality. I quickly learned that not whether or not I said I didn’t need more, but the degree of force behind it, determined how much more I’d be served. The force needed behind a লাগবে না that would actually keep the food of my plate necessitated wild waving hand movements. I guess they sure did have the cow to give anyway, a cow indeed has a lot of beef on it. The entire meat load on the cow is consumed, and the load is divided like this: 1/3 to the household, 1/3 to extended family, and 1/3 to beggars and other poor who come to the home in search of it. As the price of a cow is anywhere around $500 to $1,500 USD, getting a heap of beef must elicit quite the excitement for someone living in poverty.

That evening I was invited to another friend’s home for dinner, consisting of a similar food spread. From what I can tell, Hindus don’t observe the holiday. Not only does it have its religious origins from a story in the Koran (the same story, with a few key twists, is in the Bible…was it Abraham that was told by God to sacrifice his son? The son turned into a goat or cow I think; he was tested but didn’t actually end up with the consequence of his son’s death like he thought), but also, as you might be aware, cows are held in a higher esteem in the Hindu custom. Although I could imagine a strong reaction from Hindus against such slaughter, I didn’t sense any aside from the benign acknowledgement that customs between the faiths are disparate. Although I don’t claim to know how members of each faith actually feel about each other, I suppose it’s worth mentioning that from my experience the friendships between Hindus and Muslims and amongst their families were just as strong as any other; literally and metaphorically speaking, let’s just say that despite creed, they play on the same cricket field.

The next day in the late afternoon Emon and his family took me to their relative’s ‘gai holud’ (meaning ‘yellow body’) which is a ceremony for the bride the day before her wedding. Her body is yellow because turmeric paste is smeared on her face which is thought to improve beauty and complexion. A large area was partitioned off by colorful bedsheet-like cloth and the bride sat on a canopied raised surface at one end. Maybe 150-200 family members sat in plastic chairs around the area, the space in the middle open so people could walk around and dance (really only the kids would do that though). Upon entering the area I was swept into a frenzy, arguably completely the result of my presence. “MATT eat this sweet! MATT eat another!! Matt smear this thick yellow paste on the brides face!! MATT SIT” ‘ No thanks’ “NO NO, SIT!! MATT have another sweet! MATT IT’S TIME TO DANCE!” Ke$ha’s Tik Tok started blasting from a sound system and a circle of people formed around me. Three girls incolorful sparkley dresses emerged in front of me and started dancing, their hands and fingers moving deliberately as if to tell a story. And thus went the gai holud.

I was really not into the whole play guest thing at the beginning, not only because it was somewhat overwhelming but also because I had intercultural concerns. Was it ok that I was taking just about all the attention away from the bride? Why was it expected that I dance? Because somehow it’s understood that ‘Americans’ dance more than Bangladeshis or what? I mean, no Bangladeshi over my age was dancing there, and anyone I’d try to get to dance would smile and refuse. In America, I indeed don’t dance often, at least I don’t think. And what if somehow my dancing came across as sexualized? Through a perspective (Bangladeshi) that has been tempered with media to understand the American as a sexually loose individual, such looseness would be readily projected onto me, as if perspectives see exactly what they want to see. I mean, I didn’t grow up learning to dance with the artistic wavy arm motions that the girls did, nor did I simply jump up and down like the children. For so many there, their only impression of this American was this center-of-attention dancing fool. I mean who knows, maybe it wasn’t an issue, and by the end of the night I realized that I was having a lot of fun. Nonetheless, the felt that the space for cultural misinterpretation was wide.

Everyone there was inviting me by the end of the night to the actual wedding the day after. I had planned to go with Shukhen however to his village that day. In the evening back at Emon’s house, the family would literally not accept that I would not come to the wedding. Hmm, rock and a hard place. I wish Emon had told me about the wedding before, I had made plans already. Yet the begging that Emon’s 2 aunts projected at me was massive. I called Shukhen’s brother, Sujen, to see if we could go the day after. What I got out of the phone conversation was relatively unclear. I have learned to accept more readily an unclear social environment, they happen all the time due to so many barriers and disparate ways of interpretation. See that’s one interesting thing about an unclear social environment, and one reason that I imagine is a rationale for this kind of travel. Although it’s incredibly frustrating, it can also be so informative. When you scrape away the familiarity that you have from a social context, what is left? If we communicate in English here, you certainly can’t phrase things the way you would in America. If I communicate i ‘Bangla, I certainly can’t directly translate my speech into Bangla the way it’s most effectively used by native speakers. Rather it’s about how to communicate, and that’s a relative method steeped in colloquialisms that are propagated by familiarity. Take ‘I don’t need’. That doesn’t translate 1:1. But you can communicate this through ‘it doesn’t strike me’. Suddenly, you realize you can’t hide behind familiar social fluidity. You need to become more and more direct, more and more honest, more and more simple in order to communicate. That changes your conceptualization of yourself and the world in a way. If anything, you realize that it can be so jarring to have the familiar rug of mutually understood social conventions pulled out from under you. Two ways to look at this, at least the two that I’ve understood. 1) This is a massive inconvenience and I feel horribly uncomfortable. 2) In a new way I see that the bulk of who I think I am and how I understand things around me is not an objective measurement, but assembled though a uni-dimensional system of social conventions that is relative to and separate from others around it. So then, again, the question becomes…what is left? To clarify, I am not asking to suggest that there is nothing; and really, it’s the question itself rather than any answers I’ve found that has been so informative. So, when I take away the conventions that have defined me and my perspective, when I take away the social system that has become invisibilized by day-after-day familiarity…what of me, and of how I understand what’s around me, is left?

In any case, eventually I ‘understood’ that we would leave tomorrow morning for Sujen’s village and would be back in the evening for the wedding. Good, have my cake and eat it too. Into the night, Emon’s aunts insisted that I keep dancing at their house, I’m not exactly sure why, maybe they liked to see their kids so happy dancing too. Emon’s aunts are a bubbly giggly couple to say the least. I probably got fed at their house that evening too, I can’t remember. Emon was living up his role as host by incessantly asking if I had any problems or if I was bored. What an annoying question. Few things made my hair stand on end with rage than “Matt, are you feel boring?” I’m not exaggerating my anger. First of all, this leads me to believe that I’m coming across as bored, and that this is read as a problem that the host takes responsibility for. I question my behavior and the motivations behind it. Am I bored? Is my frustration with being forced to sit, dance, or eat being read as boredom? The Bangladeshi host seems to take it upon him/herself to ensure that boredom does not arise. There is incredible anxiety about how the guest’s experience is going. In fact, I got the question asked all the time about whether or not I was feeling good or bad. And then, after answering ‘good’ for obvious reasons, the question that followed was ‘how good?’ What the hell am I supposed to do with this? Do you expect me to answer with incredibly amazingly fantastic blow-my-mind ecstasy every time you ask? And if I don’t, do you really think that there is some *problem* that you need to fix so that I can get there? I hate qualifying my experience so rudimentarily, as simply as, for instance, having money or not having money. Because of such anxiety about my experience though, there is no way to avoid the probing, there is no way to avoid having to communicate your experience all the time, and continually re-evaluate it rather than simply living it. So then you realize this anxiety and you take it upon yourself to feel anxious too. I mean, if it’s such a big deal, then I guess I need to at least look happy. But all the time? I mean, I need to stop smiling at some point. I need to sit and think at some point, rather than interact and party it up the whole time. So then I feel coerced into putting on a happy face and demeanor whether or not the inside reflects it. In my quest for what genuineness is, this appears to be a step in the opposite direction. Who knows, maybe it’s my American individualism, but I don’t like having the quality of my experience taken responsibility for by another. My experience comes from me, not you. A bored time, an angry time, is my job to deal with, not yours. I don’t even know what I want or know what kinds of experiences will be pleasing for me or lead me in the right direction most of the time, so how can you? AND why does my experience have to be about having a “good time”?? I did not come to Bangladesh to have a *good time* a *comfortable and enjoyable* experience. Go to a resort in the Caribbean for that. I came to learn, grow, see, participate, question…these arguably enough involve more often than not UNcomforability. But this is the system, you’re the host, and I’m the guest. In the eyes of my Bangladeshi hosts, it’s their job to make me as comfortable as possible, and the more happy I am, the better host you are. So. Now double the frustration, because there is no way that I can possibly communicate all of this. The question is asked. In an instant, you flush with this whole problematic narrative at the tip of your tongue and consciousness. And then you reply. “No, I’m fine, thank you.” Because that’s just the way it goes.

Ok, next day. I was off to Sujen’s house at 4:30 am so we could leave by launch boat for the village. At the house I again asked if we’d be back by evening so I could go to Emon’s family member’s wedding. My heart sank at the answer I knew I was going to get. Of course there was miscommunication last night about exactly when we’d be at the village, having things work out the way you think they will is too perfect. It would indeed be impossible to return in time, but we decided that Sujen would write directions for me, and I’d meet him, Shukhen, and their family there the next day. Sujen was incredibly reluctant about it, well, anxious I suppose. How would I be able to navigate the buses and rickshaws alone? Of course it helps to have someone with you to show you the way. But then, you don’t learn the way. And I navigate transportation systems based on solely asking around all the time. I guess it took a while for Sujen to realize that I wasn’t like his idea of foreigners, although he’s befriended many through the NGO he had worked for. Sujan also was concerned for my sake that there was no Western style toilet at the village. Ha.

After Sujen and his family left their home, I was all dressed up with nowhere to go, so I decided to head to the cricket field to see the morning game my friends had invited me to. Cricket is such a big deal here that usually people are really surprised when I tell them it’s not played in the US. At the cricket field I met a 12 year old who didn’t speak English but talked in a captivating way nonetheless, especially about the Hare Krishnas and his Hindu faith. Also his vegetarianism. Although I didn’t pick up most of what he said during our interactions, our communication encapsulates how during my time at Barisal, there was little to no way for me to use English. Sujen was really the only person (aside from one student who had lived in the US before) that I met during my time there who could have a conversation with me in English. Over the week, by speaking capacity in Bangla grew tremendously. The perfect environment to put the material in Bangla class to work. No way does language capacity grow in the confinement of a classroom. The boy showed me around a part of Barisal and we visited several temples. He also took me to his house to meet his family and of course have some homemade snacks.

Emon’s family asked that I wear new clothes to the wedding. Evidently the cleanliness of clothing rather than the actual content of clothing was what mattered most; Emon was wearing jeans, black boots, and a black t-shirt that had a cartoon of a green monster killing something, maybe a zombie. Jeans, interestingly enough, seem to be perceived as more formal than I’m used to, maybe because of how they are ‘cool’ being associated with Western culture. “Affliction” was written across the chest of Emon’sshirt in bloody letters. Must have been some band. Adolescent and young-mid age Bangladeshis seem to be in to heavy metal death…rock moshpit whatever. In fact, when I gave a seminar a few weeks ago about music education in the US at the public affairs section of the US embassy in Dhaka, someone had specifically come just to ask me whether or not I could clarify the difference between…what was it…sadistic metal and heavy metal? That question was probably prompted by me discussing something like the Candlelight Carols Advent lessons and carols service that is held at Muhlenberg. Yes, we come from different places. Anyway, Emon also wore oversized sunglasses and loved having pictures taken of him with a mocho look on his face. His hair was bulked in the back to form a pseudo mullet. I’m not sure what style to call this. No wait, that’s right, wedding…it’s wedding attire.

You can imagine the extended family I was with yesterday for gai holud was ecstatic that I had come to the wedding. The wedding was held in a large concrete wedding hall. Several hundred people attended. Many tables filled the main area. In a smaller room to the side the bride sat on her platform, dressed beautifully but slouching and looking down, her face expressionless, kindof like yesterday too. I was surprised to see that even during photos she was simply gazing at the ground. The groom sat on a platform that was centered and visible from the main hall. We all had pulao (amazing rice), beef, chicken, dal, sweets and stuff for dinner. I fed the groom some beef. With my hand. Dancing followed, mostly it was just me and those girls. Although the groom’s siblings—or were they friends—took the spotlight for a few songs, their dancing erupting with such ferocious energy that anyone in the way of their whipping arms and legs would have immediately been toppled over. The groom sat by the bride at the end. Everyone was taking pictures. The bride started crying loudly, nestling her head on her father’s shoulder beside her, hugging him tightly as if she didn’t want to let go. From this day onward, she was now living in a new home. I spent most of my time with Emon’s younger cousins, Rafi and Tisham (9 and 11). I had grown quite fond of our company over the past few days. Not only did we have fun dancing together, but they didn’t monopolize my time and experience like their older family members. In a way, I felt that we were friends on a more even level despite our age difference. I sensed that they liked me as a person rather than as a foreigner. Who knows. However, I do know that Emon’s aunts were basically constantly piddling the whole time when I was in their presence. Would they be that excited for any old Bangladeshi guest? The wedding was over in about 2 hours, and that was fine because I wanted to make it an early night; the next day I would travel to Sujen and Shukhen’s village.

Sujen had me up at the crack of dawn with a new plan he texted me. Instead of coming by slow launch from Barisal to Bhola, I could take a series of buses and speedboats to reach Bhola faster. Hey, I was up for an adventure. Backpack in hand, having checked out of the guest house room, I headed to Barisal’s port river as the sky grew brighter blue with the approach of dawn and the misty dampness in the streets from the chilly night before started to thin. At the river I took a small boat across to the other side, a rural area. Dodging some muddy spots in the dirt road, I asked around for the bus stop and waited there for the bus that would take me to the edge of the island I was on, to a small port called Laharhat. The bus ride took about half an hour and went straight through rice cultivation land. At Laharhat, consisting of a few tin huts selling chips, tea, and biscuits, the island dropped off and the winding riverways began. The price for the speedboat would be least per person if I waited until there were 10 going, so as I waited, I gave the parents a call. Mom and Dad were at a ski house in the mountains in Pennsylvania where the temperature was freezing and where the time was night. I was stepping into a speedboat at sea level not only on the other side of the world but also at the opposite time of day. And yet, our conversation was held as if in person.

The speedboat was an amazing trip, although only lasting about 20-30 minutes. I had no idea how our steerer knew where to go, I mean, obviously there are no signs, and the riversways are sometimes wide enough to hide the far coast, sometimes not, sometimes straight and sometimes branching. We passed several fishermen and several villages. I realized that this was more along the lines of what ‘Bangladesh’ is. There is all this anxiety and contention about what a real or genuine experience is in travel, and it’s easy to make the argument that being held up in a well-off area of Dhaka is not the ‘real’ Dhaka. Well, then you get to the old city, and we can call this the ‘real’ Dhaka. But then, you realize that this is not how the majority of the city lives. So is it really the ‘real’ Dhaka, or is it just the fantasized and exoticised quaintness that we prioritize in travel experience, somehow qualifying our travel in a more distinct way simply because we visited a place that was so different? Additionally, you can make the argument that even in Dhaka, no matter where you are, you aren’t experiencing the ‘real’ Bangladesh. Again, there is this exoticism that is seemingly at work here, understanding—or maybe consuming—the quaintness of a simple and pure lifestyle as a more ‘authentic’ experience. I asked myself, was I finally here? Did it require an overnight launch and a bus and a rickshaw and a speedboat? When was my experience authentic *enough* or reflective *enough* of what ‘Bangladesh’ is. I don’t claim to know the answers to these questions, but I do know now that my following village experience turned out to be something that will permanently influence what Bangladesh means to me as well as the mental framework I build over time to understand the country.

So, after the speedboat I was in Bheduria, where I could catch a bus to go to the Bhola bus station. I had thought that Sujen would meet me at Bhola, but unfortunately we crossed paths and he was approaching Bheduria as I was leaving, Another communication issue, you know how it goes. I guess I wasn’t surprised, Sujen had been calling me every ten minutes to make sure I was ok and to check on where I was, it makes sense that he would keep pushing back the location of our meeting so we could travel together the maximum amount of time. Indeed, at least after the Bhola bus station, his guidance would be crucial to locate the village.

Anyway, at the Bhola bus station I had about 15 minutes to spend before Sujen would arrive. I tried to make my way to a small tea stall for some chips or something, but was stopped by some curious onlookers. Quickly a crowd formed. It was evident that foreigners didn’t frequent this area. In no time, the head person for the bus stand had invited me to sit in his office area. So, the crowd of about 30-40 and me relocated. The bus manager sat me down right across from his desk, people surrounding us in the large room as if we were in the ring of a wrestling match or something. The conversation we had I remember being really enjoyable. Good combination of English and Bangla. I noticed his red-stained lips and teeth and asked if he enjoyed paan. Paan is cultivated in this area, Sujen was telling me. Must be very fresh here. He let out a hearty laugh when I said that I also sometimes have paan (although hopefully not ever enough to stain my teeth like I’ve seen some people have). Paan in India had been loaded with all kinds of powders and accessories and sweet things and bells and whistles like that, producing a juicy explosion of flavor. Paan in Bangladesh has been comparatively extremely plain, simply consisting of the essential ingredients: the deep green paan leaf, crushed supari nut, and some white lime paste if wanted. During this trip I’ve finally grown to appreciate such simplicity. The manager had someone bring in not only tea but also biscuits and a whole plate of paan leaves/supari nut/lime paste/tobacco. I left the tobacco and lime paste for another day (the lime feels like it dissolves my skin away, leaving areas so sensitive that it’s hard to eat for days afterward). The leaf itself has a strong kicking bite to its taste, as if the flavonoids are so concentrated that it’s spicy. The supari nut leaves the mouth with a chalky, rubbery feeling that’s also cleansing somehow. The combination of the two produces not only redness but also narcotic and digestive effects.

Usually I can’t ‘feel’ the effects of paan, but today I had had nothing to eat before, and perhaps the freshness of the leaf here increased its potency. I realized my awareness flickering around a bit, and dizziness set in. Sujen showed up soon after, surprised to see the huge crowd around me. It was good he was here, I didn’t really want to talk more, just use my energy to make sure I wasn’t going to throw up or anything. Additionally, Sujen’s bilingual-ness prompted the conversation to take much deeper levels. He could say things to them that I couldn’t say in Bangla and he could translate what I couldn’t understand of their reply. How comparatively insubstantial the conversation would have been without his valuable help, a capacity that I came across in no one else in my week of travel. There were periods of 5 minutes or so when they were all conversing in Bangla; I was fine to observe though, picking out words here and there. When I see conversations taking place in Bangla, more often than not I understand the conversation as taking angry turns and folding in frustrated yelling. I think that’s more just how the language is communicated rather than actual mal-intent. It’s fun to watch. Then afterwards I’ll be like, hey, Sujen, what did you guys talk about? Maybe he’ll be like “Oh, our families, yeah, he mentioned his brother’s job and stuff.”

Sujen and I were excited to get to the village, so after about 20 minutes of conversation, we piled onto another bus that would take us an hour away to another town. Along the way Sujen and I discussed different words in different languages that we know, like how they compared in sound and meaning. He loves learning new things about other cultures. At the town we would get off (stares increasing, no head would not turn in my direction) and take a mini-bus (like an auto rickshaw for about a dozen people) another half hour. From there we would take a cycle rickshaw. And then another cycle rickshaw, making a stop or two along the say so Sujen could introduce me to a family member or two. The dirt path weaved along a creek, palm trees all around, punctuated by bamboo, supari nut trees, and other fruit trees. The forest never got extremely dense but remained refreshingly spacious yet completely green with vegetation all around. Every once in a while a rice paddy would open up to our side and extend just about as far as you could see. We’d also pass small neighborhoods and a few small roadside shops. Eventually we made it to a temple where Sukhen and his parents were in the process of holding a ritual to honor Sukhen’s grandmother, who had passed away exactly a year ago. Although about a dozen were participating in the ritual (mostly repeating chants, burning candles and incense, and tossing flower pedals and flicks of water this way and that) there were about a hundred in the general area for the function. Sujan introduced me to an English teacher and several of his family members. I explored over to a large pond off the side, then struck up a conversation—of course solely in Bangla—with a guy my age who took me to his house. The houses in the village neighborhoods have hardened clay floors (raised above the ground 1-3 feet to mitigate flood damage), usually have roofs and walls made of rippled tin panels, and usually consist of 3-5 rooms. The kitchen is my favorite. The ‘stove’ is made out of hardened clay like the floor, but molded into a hole with three prongs poking up the rim of the hole. A fire is burned in the hole while a pot sits above. The roof in the kitchen is straw which somehow is waterproof yet lets out the smoke from the fire. From the outside, it looks like these straw roofs are on fire when food is being cooked inside, as smoke arises from it just as thickly as it is produced by the stick/coconut shell fire underneath. There is usually electricity present in the household in the form of a few light bulbs or maybe a fan. Sometimes there was also a television.

Back at the main area, after the ritual was completed, it was time to eat. Suddenly there were like quadruple the initial number of people and long mats were laid down on the ground for sitting. Sujan had tried to arrange a place for me to sit at a table, but I declined up and down. Plates were brought around to what must have been the 500 guests. I got a ceramic one, others got plastic. When the food started coming around and Sujen was altering my portions based on what he thought I could and couldn’t handle, it was time to explain a few things. No, I do not *need* to sit at a table. Yes, I have eaten on the ground before. Yes, I would like the same portions as others. Yes, I have had that before. Yes, I do like spicy food. These kinds of things. I put it frankly, he needed to stop treating me like a child. Although it was only out of concern for my comfort, it made me feel handicapped and immature. I think that by the end of the trip Sujen would realize that I didn’t need him to play host the way he may have though necessary with foreigners.

Anyway, with that settled for now, the food came around. First, we were given rice and fried eggplant, then a delicious apple fruit salad, followed by dal and a vegetable curry, then a spinach dish, then another type of dal and vegetable, then finally sour curd and chunks of sugarcane sugar. Quite possibly one of the most satisfying and wholesome meals I’ve ever had. Not only was I with hundreds of others, but we were all eating on the floor of a forest with his breathtaking scenery all around. And the food, the food. The rice in the village was different, so fresh, so hearty; it had a smell about it that reminded me of sourdough bread. The spinach dish we had quickly became written on my list of all-time favorite foods; it was a type of spinach I hadn’t had before, it was thick, not stringy get not homogenous, not deep green but a lighter avocado color, and its taste was mellow and full-bodied, as well as filling, so much substance there.

That evening Sujen, his cousin, and I ventured to the village bazaar for snacks and food the house needed. The attention directed at me was extreme. I could feel the crowd accumulate behind me and follow as I stepped down the street. If I were stopped with a question, usually I would also stop and have a quick conversation. Within 10 seconds, the humanity around me assembled all around. Sujen would start recommending that I break away after he noticed the crowd becoming too thick. Sujen’s face was bright with excitement and amusement; despite having been here so much, he had never witnessed such a stir. When we stopped in a shop to sit and meet one of Sujen’s relatives, the whole of the visible street was filled with people staring. Although I had a few conversations with some, people largely wouldn’t talk to me even if I asked them in Bangla if they had questions. I guess they simply wanted to stare. Largely though, once a conversation was struck up between me and someone else, it could continue and continue, as if once they realized that they could talk to me just like they talk to each other; I guess they also realized how cool it felt to actually talk to someone so different and take advantage of the rare opportunity. There was so much curiosity directed at me, I felt it unfair for me not to explain myself to more than just a few. Sujen and I went to this town meeting place and people accumulated all around. I gave an introduction of myself in Bangla. I also sang “Little Boxes” (made of ticky tacky) when someone asked for me to sing. People ask me to sing a lot actually. Although there were hundreds huddled all around, no one had any questions for me. Despite all the attention I’ve received for my foreign nationality in the past in my travels though India and Bangladesh, this experience tops the list of most curiosity directed at me in one place.

On the way back we stopped at a few tea/shop stands along the road. We worked at a leisurely pace, as I usually would get wrapped up in some conversation or something. At the shop by Sujen’s house, I poked my head in farther than usual and surveyed all the products inside. Mostly bags of biscuits, laundry detergent, soap, stuff like that. There were also these bottles of blue power which was used as a means to clean teeth. Instead of using a brush and paste with water, all you needed was to rub the powder in your teeth with your finger. If you get the finger really in there and scrub, it felt just about as effective as using a brush. Then afterwards you can rinse and if you rub your teeth more, they squeak loudly as if scrubbing a window clean or something. The squeak was so loud that I couldn’t stop laughing. Then I’d squeak my teeth some more and laugh again. The locals must have thought it strange. I never imagined hearing a sound like that come from teeth.

At the house that night over apples and jilebi (syruped funnel cake) Sujen, his family, and I had discussions at his house. I found myself actually being able to talk about things like economic situations in America in Bangla. During this trip, my Bangla speaking ability grew incredibly. For the first time, I felt like I had developed some kind of grasp on the language. This week occurred at just the right time; I had enough classroom Bangla to at least have a toolbox to work with, but now things had become solidified enough for me to be comfortable taking another step forward with class-style Bangla in our final month. That night, on the thin bed under the mosquito net, with the faint forest chirping leaking though the wooden windows, I slept beautifully.

The next morning Sujen was beckoning me to get up so that we could eat breakfast and visit some other family members before heading back to Barisal. It was easy to make up my mind that I hadn’t seen enough of the village, and even though it meant that I would miss a day of class, I decided to stay another day. Sujen’s family was staying anyway too. Plus, Bangla class was for learning the language, right? Well, my capacity with the language was soaring now that I was in an all-Bangla environment. I explained though that if I stayed another day, I wanted to help out somehow around the house. Hopefully I would be able to help cook or wash dishes or something. Sujen refused up and down. When we went to the pond that morning to wash up for the day, I spotted Sujen’s cousin, Adi, washing dishes, and scurried over to help. She seemed to be fine with me helping, but Sujen with a surprised tone kept insisting that I step away from the pond. I’d get muddy, I might fall in, Adi can take care of it, I’ll get soot on my hands, etc etc. It’s so hard to know when to ignore the host and when to obey. I wasn’t going to do nothing for this house, yet I didn’t want to put Sujen in a complicated position. For instance, perhaps if the village noticed me working, they would judge Sujen negatively, maybe under the assumption that he was making me work. In either case, Sujen would be acting this same way, namely, wanting me to put the pan down and relax. There is all this assumption of departure from honesty in a guest-host relationship. If Sujen requests that I sit or relax etc, I assume that he’s just trying to get me to relax. That may be the case, but who knows, I mean, it’s also tied into his upholding of a host’s role and the fulfillment of ‘good’ treatment that the village and family would pressure him about. This larger network of motivation extends well beyond simply me. Also, if I say I want to work, Sujen might think that I say this because I feel obligated or want to be nice. In reality, I don’t feel obligated or simply want to be nice, I want to become a closer part of the family and understand more fully their daily required work. How can you understand someone else if you don’t even know what they do? I mean, I’m not going to know Adi by letting her serve me food. At least, I know Adi in a different way by scrubbing the same pots with the same handfuls of straw in the same pond water that she is.

So, basically, in order to contribute in any way, I had to outright disobey Sujen. At the same time, I walked away from the pond that day with Sujen giggling behind me and calling me peculiar. I didn’t get the sense that he was insulted, or took offense, or was hurt. Again, who knows. I guess when you have just about no idea what’s going around you, you’re left with what simply feels right.

That morning Adi took us to a distant neighborhood to visit some people there. It took about an hour to talk there, though shaded paths, cows grazing on mounds of straw, and long-stretching rice fields. On the way back, I stopped to observe a machine (similar in appearance to that machine that devours tree branches and stuff) which ate harvested rice stalks, dropped the rice kernels underneath, and spat out the straw in a long arching shower. It was perfect, the harvest went in, and the both people food and cow food came out. Everything used. After returning back to our side of the village, Sujen and I walked down the shaded main village road. Every once in a while, a cycle rickshaw or mini-bus (really the only way in and out of the village) would roll past. The sun flickered through overhead branches from palm trees. From time to time a pond or rice field extending hundreds of yards into the distance would emerge off the side of the road. Sujen’s uncle had his own paan garden, with leafy vines growing up thousands of vertical support sticks about 7 feet high. We also chopped open some green coconuts to drink the water and eat the soft flesh inside. A farmer my age, Emon, had joined us after we stopped at a small road-side medicine store to meet another one of Sujen’s family members. We all talked and joked and stuff over our coconuts, and then Emon took me to his home and showed me the fields that his family works in. The fields extended what must have been for miles, a thick green forest marking the field’s edge, only really visible if you tried really hard and squinted.

Back at the house we had a lunch of rice, dal, and various vegetable dishes, including this spongy soybean-ball one. That evening I helped out some by rolling naru—a delicious sweet made of coconut and sugarcane sugar—into small balls. I also watched Sujen’s mom make food with those small clay fire holes that I’ve always wanted to see in action. Somewhere in there I think I got some water from the nearby well too. Despite no bottled water and no filters, I never felt sick once. I guess it’s the big city that stews in the sickening bacteria that travelers fear. However, the world isn’t perfect outside of the city either. Many tube wells in Bangladesh are actually contaminated with arsenic from the ground. From what I understand, affected wells are known and marked; the problem now is digging clean wells for areas that need them and getting people to use the clean wells more than the contaminated ones. My German friend, Christoph, is working on this. As a psychology student, his work is trying to determine the reasons why people continue to use arsenic-laden well water if they know the location of clean water. Reasons include distance and time. I guess even in the villages time is of the essence and there is work to be done.

That night Sujan’s family had a puja in their home. The same elder who conducted the grandmother-remembrance ceremony came and did his chanting amongst incense, plates and plates of food offerings, and flower pedals. I was called away from observing the puja to greet about a dozen guests that had come to visit me. We sat in the front room and talked a great deal, again getting into the economic and political situations in the US. I always feel obligated to make whoever I’m talking with aware that not everyone in the US is as wealthy as they assume. Usually people come right out and say these things, how everyone has jobs in the US and is wealthy and how they are poor and would like to go to the US to find work and make money. Usually they also ask me if I can help with this process, getting to America that is. I explain how helpless I am for this, I explain how economic disparity exists in the US, I explain how work is hard to find now. It’s tiring. And most of the time I don’t think they really *hear* my words, although they might be listening. We hear what we want to. If you’ve been shaped so strongly to understand a country in a certain way, any interaction you have with that country is fit into such a framework. You see the same with Americans coming to a South Asia. Whether it’s projecting a heightened spiritual presence onto places and customs, whether poverty disproportionately jumps out at you as you observe road-side activity, whatever, we’re all guilty. We see not only what we’re shaped to see but also what we want to see. It makes you wonder if we are more steeped in subjectivity than we realize.

Adi brought us all out sweets from the puja. Our plates were full with naru (coconut/sugarcane), apple slices, halwa (cream of wheat pudding), puri (fried bread), and grapefruit pieces. After some more conversation, becoming even more interesting after they started talking about their own work and families, our guests left and Sujen and I went to another family member’s home to say hello. Outside in the neighborhood’s courtyard there was a weekly Hindu event being held. We sat for a while on the fringes of the few dozen people there and watched the back-and-forth chanting, energetic drumming, and bell chiming, smelling the thick incense all the while. I ran into the guy that showed me his home at the remembrance ceremony my first day. After Sujen and I returned back home, we had dinner. One of my favorite parts of any meal there was smelling the plain rice on my plate even before any vegetables came. So full-bodied, sweet, and hearty.

See, now let’s take a minute to pause. Please take my language and writings with a grain of salt and realize its context. It’s easy for me to get wrapped up in the beauty of a place like that, and it’s probably easy for you to be enchanted by it too. There are so many contextual influences though that leak through the language here if you just look for it. Notice how I call the rice ‘hearty’. Yes that’s what it smelled like, but one of the reasons I think to describe it that way is because I associate the village lifestyle with hard work and raw strength. The question is, if I had the same rice at a restaurant in Dhaka, would I really call it the same? Would I just think it tasted and smelled different instead of placing a delicious taste on it? In fact, perhaps I’d think the rice were fermented and old, completely reversing my experience of the rice. The point is that contextual parameters completely influence a personal experience. Before in this blog I may have mentioned how I am understanding things more and more from a relativistic perspective, where we live in a subjective world, communicating and relating to others with language and other methods that aren’t objective but rather inter-subjectivities. A conflict does not arise when I claim how readily contextual/external parameters determine the quality of our subjectivity. The reason for this is that any external context is solely understood through my own aspirations, perspective, and assumptions. The form of environment, the content of a subjective perspective. I mean think about it, what the village means to me is obviously not what it means to those who live there. I want to be there, and some of them want to be in the US for instance. Also, if we even just consider just one person, for example my ideas and opinions about the place would change and evolve dynamically as I stay longer. Really, what is it about the village itself that determined my experience, rather than my projections onto it? What I take away is my response, not the village, although I speak of the village. In reality, this whole story isn’t about the village, it’s about my subjectivity in the village, my experience. I’m not in a place where I acknowledge the new age ideal that suggests we can have control over our perspective and craft our responses to anything that happens around us—independent of what it is—the way we choose. Maybe it doesn’t exist or maybe I’m just not there yet. I mean sometimes I get just plain furious, and by the same token totally enchanted. Whether or not I want these things to happen, they do. Yet I realize—at least conceptually—that such qualities are not of what’s around me, they are of my own subjectivity. Pristine-ness and natural-ness are not born out of a remote village, they are born out of a mind that has been shaped to find them in specific ways.

The next morning began with a swim in the nearby pond. I didn’t quite bathe the day before, but now it was time to go for the real deal with the soap and the shampoo and everything. I don’t think I’ve bathed in a pond before. Very refreshing. I swam around a bit. A few people gathered around, but it wasn’t a big deal, I had my underwear on. We were planning on leaving in a few hours, so we went back to the house and packed up our things. When I saw Adi walk out the back with pots and pans I snuck away from Sujen to go help wash too. Sujen called out to me a few seconds after I left as I was still catching up to Adi. I mostly didn’t answer but mumbled something to the effect of “oh, just going over there.” I didn’t feel like having the conversation about how I should relax as a guest rather than help out. He followed me to the pond but didn’t retaliate, mostly just standing and smiling. I guess he came to terms with my “peculiarity”.

That afternoon for lunch we had the staple rice, vegetables, dal, etc., but most importantly, my favorite spinach. They knew I liked it. Sujen, his parents, a housemaid, Sujen’s brother, and I gathered our things and said goodbye to the family members that live there. On our way to catch a mini-bus I picked up a bottle of that blue tooth powder, my only souvenir. We piled into the mini-bus, squeezing in on tiny benches with our backs facing the outside; about a dozen of us filled the space. The roof was low enough that I had to duck even when sitting. I glanced over to Sujen’s mom as we started moving. I could see tears emerging from her eyes; I’m not entirely sure why. Sujen’s father also seemed to be in a thoughtful mood. Perhaps they were sorry to say goodbye to their family in the village. I guess we got to work though. And their job is in Barisal.

Job. Money. I guess that’s the system we play into. And I guess it’s easier for me to make a value judgment against it from my position of privilege. If I had no money, perhaps I wouldn’t criticize the search for money I see so much here. Perhaps I wouldn’t be on some sort of search for something more than that, for something that somehow contributes to my quality of life or is revelatory somehow. It’s easy to say that I came to Bangladesh to teach English, or to learn Bangla. But really these answers are to different questions, namely, *how* I have come and *what* I am doing here. I’ve been able to come here through the opportunity to do these things provided through the scholarship. *Why* I am here is a tad more complicated, and it’s something I continue to ask myself, and continue to gain greater insight about as I think about it. Hmm. Money. I know that’s not the reason. Although, it is the means by which I am here. Hmm.

So, we returned to Barisal by launch. It took a good deal of time, but it was worth it because of the great scenery, and I also had a great conversation with this fruit seller my age, thanks to Sujen’s translating capabilities when needed. Sujen and I also of course talked a bit. When we were back in Barisal I went to visit Emon’s family; they had been calling quite a bit while I was in the village. So much in fact that I had to silence my phone. Did I mention about monopolization of time? Energetic family. I hope they aren’t insulted if I don’t answer their calls. But it’s too much to deal with, and I can’t understand Bangla well over the phone, and it’s disturbing for my experience to have so many interruptions. I knew it would be that way too when I returned to Dhaka, being involved in other things like work and reading and writing this blog for instance, without the time for a conversation at random times during the day.

I had been planning on leaving Barisal that evening, so Sujen and I went over to their house to say goodbye. Emon’s aunt was critical of me that I had spent so much time in Sujen’s village. She thought it was unfair; but I was sick of such a competition for my time. Emon’s criticism would also eventually be directed at Sujen, perhaps out of jealousy. I hid my anger, which boiled especially when she asked me to compare my experiences and compare whether or not *their* food was as good as *hers* was. Over and over Emon’s aunt’s told me how they felt so bad. So sad. That I was leaving. Evidently we couldn’t enjoy the time we actually have together, we have to lament my departure, which hasn’t even happened yet. Shukhen (Sujan’s brother) was already at the ghat (dock); we were going to take the launch back to Dhaka together; he is a student at a school near Dhaka. Despite our predictions about when the launch boats would leave, Sujen said that Shukhen called and claimed that they had already left for Dhaka; the extra people during the Eid holiday meant that the launches filled up too fast, so they left when they were full. I wasn’t going to deal with trying to get a bus, it was already late. Emon’s family cheered and cheered that I was going to stay another day. Emon’s aunts and Emon’s mother prepared a massive meal. I had only asked for spinach, so naturally they prepared pulao rice, spinach, dal, vegetable, cow brain curry, egg curry, and an olive relish. I ate a massive amount; just like before, the food kept on coming and coming. And then it was time to dance. Was I overwhelmed? No, not really. I knew all this would go on, and you grow used to it, all the stimulation. Plus the music was some of my favorites, and I have grown really fond of Emon’s younger cousins. I like our simple conversations, and carefree dancing.

Another one of Emon’s relatives came, very interested in me, wide eyed. The conversations went normally, but then I was bored enough and curious enough to ask a new question. Why did he think *I* was here? Especially if he speaks of America so fondly, why had I left? His response crushed me. He shrugged his shoulders, but said very frankly “For money.” I tried to explain myself. I don’t think he was taking in what I was saying. Practically in the middle of one of my sentences, he asked if I knew Bangladeshis in America, or something totally off topic like that. Feeling defeated, I just stopped. I mean why even try. Despite the frustration that must have leaked out through my voice, either he didn’t pick up on it or he didn’t care, because he remained happy to be in my presence and said goodbye with the same wide eyes and smile that he came in with. It was as if there was nothing I could do which would alter these people’s perceptions of me, that would alter their understanding of who I was or what America is like.

Money. Materialism is a current in South Asia that is developing a mighty force. The uni-dimensional make more money make more money live more comfortably live more comfortably initiative leaks out of so many people, especially in Dhaka. Cars cars cars. “My car. Now I can go where I want. Nice car, expensive car. Better than my neighbor’s. Let’s buy another car. My car. Ugh the traffic in this city is terrible. At least I have my car. UGH traffic in this city SUCKS.” Yes, materialistic businessman, the traffic in Dhaka is regrettable. Now businessman, answer me, why do you think this is? And as such the side effects of materialism go. Yet, the appeal is so high, this lifestyle, and aspiration of such a lifestyle, is not going anywhere. I wish that Bangladesh could embrace a more unique way of development. Hey, actually, Barisal is a good example, those electric rickshaws are awesome, and there are so many less cars there than in Dhaka. I hesitate to make overarching claims, but aspirations of individuality and consumption and economic gain have shaped Bangladesh through its relationship to the West. Such ideas are not inherent to a developing country, such Ideas are exported to a country through an economic order dominated by massive corporations and countries already in power. The boom of business in South Asia only really started after India opened up its trading policy in the 90s. At that time, business in South Asia realized the market it could participate in. Ever since then, it’s been about striving for more, more money, more possessions, more comfort than the others around me. Too bad we’re not on the same playing field. Western-centered corporations that dominate the global economic order purposefully keep countries like Bangladesh in positions of economic and political deprivation. Talk about a frustrated position to be in. And yet, despite the traffic in Dhaka and the mental pressure of competition, despite the garment worker’s unfair work environment and the perpetuation of a lower class to feed the privileged class (namely, the continuation of poverty itself), the motivation of economic gain and materialism continue, having us convinced that through this we can be happy. And evidently that Americans are better people simply because they have work and money. (Need I mention here depression and obesity rates in the US). And finally, if only, if only, I could have more, then…THEN I could be in a better place. But this narrative never ends, just like first grade’s silly circle stories that leave you at the end back at the beginning. And with this fueled cycle, we have the order being controlled by those few at the top, and everyone else vying for a leg up underneath them. The point is happiness, the problem is impossibility. There is always more to be had. And there is no way for everyone to get enough. Because as soon as I get more, you get less.

The front page of Dhaka’s Daily Star newspaper on November 27 is half cover stories and half one big massive advertisement. It shows a clean-shaven man reaching for a suit on a hanger in a closet. The caption reads: “Everything depends on my mood, or maybe my mood depends on everything.” Bold face included. Here, the media is being used to convince us explicitly that our happiness is a direct function of what I own, and that any agency we have over our own subjective experience solely depends on whether or not I have the means to buy what I want. The company’s title is underneath, and next to it reads “feel special.” Feeling special sounds like such a good idea until you realize that specialness cannot exist without the disadvantaged. The rich only exist because the poor do to. And if the rich have the power, which our economic order operates by, how would it ever be in their interest to alleviate poverty? Equality is threatening. Funny how we champion that ideal in the US, as well as equal opportunity. So, how do we keep the machine alive? With the simple notion that we can ‘feel special’ if we could just….if we could just. The grass is always greener on the other side.

The next day we ate, I went to a shop to get a shave, Emon, another friend, and I enjoyed the scenery from their apartment building’s roof, things like that. Eventually seemingly out of nowhere Emon beckoned me to come with him. Only after extensive prying did I eventually find out that we were going to visit a mosque outside the city. It was as if it didn’t matter where we were going, because we were just going to enjoy and have a good time. We took a rickshaw to the bus stand. Along the side of the road we stood, buses coming, buses going. Emon, what are we waiting for? Doesn’t matter. I can’t be concerned with the plan, all I’m to do is to relax and enjoy. Although I’d rather know what’s going on. No worries, I’ll go talk to those people looking at me at that nearby chai stand. And then visit the street magic act encircled by a crowd of onlookers. Suddenly Emon’s entire family shows up. Ok, guess we’ll all go to this place! Emon, I need to be back in an hour and a half, I need to be sure I get the launch back to Dhaka this evening. Sure, no problem. Ok this is the bus, round up the whole dozen of us and pile in! Matt! Here you sit up at the front. (That was really cool actually, my face was literally at the windshield) Matt! There’s a village over there! Ok. Matt! Are you having a good time?! Yes. How much of a good time?! ….

The bus ride took quite a while but drove through some nice places. Finally we arrived at this massive mosque with a towering minaret. Grassy flowery gardens all around, and a large pond. “This is really nice, Emon, thanks, but I need to go back to Barisal now, sorry we’ve only been able to stay here for about 10 minutes.” *We have lots of time* “No, sorry, I need to head back” *The launch leave 9 o’clock* “Nope, we thought that yesterday and then heard they all left by 7:30” *No problem, we will arrange* “Emon, what does that mean? I need to be sure I get to the launch, I can’t take the risk of losing another day of classes” *No problem, we just go this way, lots of time* “Emon, I will go back by myself if you don’t want to, and I’ll leave in 10 minutes, if you’d like to go too, we need to get the family together” I had a similar, but more prolonged argument with Emon’s aunts. It was indeed pretty silly for us to only be there for 15 minutes after the 45 minute bus ride, but we should have realized this when I said I needed to be back at a certain time for a launch. I guess plans matter differently between us?

Despite the family’s pleas, I didn’t budge from my decision to return, plus I imagined that there was a possibility of them thinking if I missed the launch again, I’d stay another day and it would be another party. Nope, not happening. The whirling night air on the bus was chilly, I would have worn a sweater if I had one. Got back home later than I thought; packed up my things; said some quick goodbyes. No, Emon’s aunt’s, I don’t have time to hear about how bad and sad you feel that I’m leaving. Thanks for everything, especially the delicious meals, see you again when I return. Emon was still on his way back in a rickshaw, but I didn’t know where he was nor did I want to risk missing the launch, so I figured I’d give him a call later, although my phone at that time was dead.

I high-tailed it over to Sujen’s home and said a quick goodbye there, along with a farewell to my cricket-player friends hanging out in the courtyard of the Hindu temple next to Sujen’s house. Emon’s uncle drove me on his motorcycle to the launch ghat and came with me on the launch, trying to talk the launch attendants into giving me a cabin or a couch to lie down on. I explained over and over it was fine for me to sleep on the deck, and I appreciated the low cost of it too. Eventually he shrugged his shoulders about the matter, we had a quick cup of tea together, he gave me a handshake goodbye, and then he was off. I sat down in a chair by the railing and watched the water outside. This launch was bigger than the one I came on. It must have been the biggest boat I’ve ever been on, with about 5 stories and maybe 50 to 100 cabins per floor. The night was cool, and I knew I was going to get colder especially after finding a place to lie down (fortunately more of a possibility this time than when I came, there was actually space on the deck…whoever thought I’d be so thankful to have some cold steel to lay down on?). I slipped on my other pair of pants over the one I was wearing, and put on the other 3 shirts I had in my backpack too, just about the only thing in the backpack now was a book and some toothpaste. I pulled out the book and started reading, somewhat distracted by the numerous memories rapidly jumping around in my mind. I couldn’t even think of the week chronologically; families, friends, places, the village, they all would surface randomly. It was weird to be alone after such prolonged commotion and attention. A deep feeling of warm comfortableness settled in my chest when I thought about Barisal and what went on the past week. The friendliness, the curiosity, the tastiness, the struggles, the smiles, the independence, the refreshment. My sentiment quickly started adopting a flavor of nostalgia. Not only was the content of the week a bewildering experience, but the form was so new; it was the first time I had traveled without an idea of where I’d go and what I’d do. It was about getting to know a place and its people by intuition rather than through the pages of a guide book.

I felt someone looking at the pages of my book over my shoulder. It was Emon and one of our good friends, Monu. They were out of breath, having scurried around the launch looking for me amongst all these people. I couldn’t wipe the astonishment off my face; we exchanged hugs and goodbyes and our strong wills to meet again someday in the future. And just like that they were gone again, making toward the exit so they wouldn’t be stuck on a boat to Dhaka; the launch’s sirens were sounding, signaling that it was leaving soon.

After we were in open water and I had read a few pages, I broke out my blue village tooth powder and started scrubbing away. I couldn’t tell exactly what the Bangladeshi guy sitting in a chair looking at me was thinking. I entertained myself by audibly squeaking my teeth with my finger, giggling. …Jeez…what a strange foreigner that guy is.

I wasn’t quite sleepy yet, so I explored around the launch. On the first and second floors instead of cabins they have just a massive open hall that spans the space of the whole launch floor. Thousands of people huddled together chatting, playing cards, or lying down. Eventually I found myself in the steerage of the launch admiring the massive engine room, the diesel-powered engines making such a loud rumble that you wouldn’t be able to hear even someone next to you yelling in your ear. At the very back of the boat was a restaurant. I watched the water churn and foam out the tail of the boat from the deck only a foot or so above the water’s surface. The restaurant owner had leftover food, it was late. Free rice, dal, vegetable, and my favorite fish, whose bones you can eat because they are so soft. A student my age struck up a conversation with me, we made our way to the top of the launch to explore more. Climbing up a latter, we found ourselves on top of the roof, a flat steel surface as massive as a football field. Only a few people were sleeping up there, it was pretty cold so exposed to the wind. Several others joined us and we sat in a circle and chatted for a good while. And sang too. Eventually we relocated on the deck downstairs and kindof feel asleep, yet not for long because we coasted into Dhaka’s ghat at 4:30 am. Eventually I found a bus that was heading up to the US embassy, from where I could walk home. Must have been the earliest bus, and it was still dark even. The streets were mostly bare from other cars, and we made it all the way up north to Baridhara in less than half an hour, a ride which took 4 hours the week before. My apartment felt foreign to me. The week must have been so incredibly different of an environment for me that it undermined my familiarity with the way life was before Eid break. I knew that exciting alien feeling wouldn’t last. The elation from the past week would settle; I would fall back into the routine. Life would simplify itself down to a pace that churned methodically, predicting more easily what would follow in the next moment and the one after that.

Halloween Baking

So after our cat Durga got better, things plummeted. Maybe it was eating the kitty litter, maybe it was lack of nutrition, maybe a loss of motivation to live. She quickly fell into a state of such profound weakness that standing was an impossibility and keeping her head upright at all was a challenge. The vet seemed to think this was caused by not having access to a mother’s milk. Even with steady attention and sugar water/milk as often as she had the strength to eat, within a day and a half she was thinner and weaker than I had ever seen.

The day after her weakness set in, I had been accepted into Commissary (a grocery store for US embassy members) membership. Eager to see what all was there, I made a run and picked up some foods that people had been craving. That evening, over wine, cheese, beef jerky, Bluebell ice cream, and saltines, Laule’a, Keith, and I happily chatted away in our living room. By our reminiscing about food from home, the heaviness of Durga’s condition swiftly lifted. After an hour or so, Laule’a had stepped over to Durga’s box to say goodnight. She calmly told Keith and I (sitting on the couch) that she didn’t think she was breathing anymore. Keith went over and lifted her up; her head hung backward and her mouth stiffly gaped open slightly. We called the other Fulbrighters to let them know of Durga’s death. Even within two weeks, we all had enjoyed Durga’s company, and one of us even made a movie of her with footage from a video-camera. We all felt sorry for Keith the most; he had become the closest to the tiny alleycat. Even for such a short-lived amount of time, the comfortable life that we were able to provide her for 2 weeks must have included some of her most enjoyable moments. We could at least feel good about that. The contrast between the grungy crowded old-city alley street we found her in and her wide-open, air-conditioned, fed-everyday lifestyle here in the nicest part of the city is actually pretty comical. Such a tiny cat, and such a brief amount of time. Yet her presence here has strengthened the Fulbrighter’s relationships, given Keith the powerful experience of nurturing a creature in need and feeling the purrs of thankfulness in return, and lastly forced us all to ask ourselves deep and important questions such as What is life? How do we assess quality of life? Who do we chose to help, and who do we ignore in our lives? Does it make a difference to invest so much time in such a small animal, when many of us don’t even give money to beggars on the street? What does life mean in the dirt of a city street versus in the attention of a caregiver in a comfortable environment? What difference does it make, for us to save a cat like that? What does it mean for us? And what does it mean for Durga herself? A few days later, I was surprised to hear our door open and a kitten’s ‘meow’ drift into my room. The absence of a cat in our Fulbright group was short-lived. Christy had found a cat on the street next to a tea shop.

Throughout Durga’s last day the scratching feeling in my left eye grew. I had first noticed it that afternoon at the end of class. Although it felt as if there were a foreign object in there, I tried whatever I could do to get it out but to no avail. Mucus started leaking from the eye’s tear duct and accumulating. Before bed, Keith diagnosed me with pink eye and happily recounted his experience with pink eye while driving his auto-rickshaw to Calcutta. “It spread to both eyes, I could barely see out of them! Basically I just kept my eyes pried open and bit the bullet though, I mean I had to get to Dhaka somehow, there was no time to sit and rest. It must have looked so strange, seeing this foreigner driving around in an auto, with puffy, red, mucus-leaking eyes. Here, I got these gentamicin eye drops from a pharmacy. It cleared it all right up.” Even after having put in drops before bed, I woke up the next morning with my eye completely swelled shut. Having to pry it open not just because of swelling but also because of dried mucus gluing my eyelashes together, I could barely get in some more drops. The eye underneath looked alien and appalling. Deep redness stained everything except for the harshly-contrasting blue iris, left fortunately intact. Brown, wrinkled tissue surrounded the iris, as if the eye were decaying. Alarmed, I consulted John (war veteran and military nurse, we all go to John for health-related questions) to see what his recommendations would be. Skipping out on class, I headed down the street to the hospital, box of tissues in hand in case seepage got out of control. At the hospital I scheduled an appointment during the eye-doctor’s office hours. My classmates were afraid of my contagiousness and recommended I stay out of class the rest of the day. No problem, I always can use more sleep. At lunch I was so conscious of making sure I didn’t put anyone else at risk that I had Laule’a serve me. A fascinating feeling of being handicapped, coupled with a lack of confidence, fell over me (especially because I didn’t want to horrify people by making eye-contact). That afternoon the doctor checked for foreign objects (none) and loaded me up on a regiment of antibiotic eye drops, an anti-inflammatory medicine, antibiotic hand wash, and eye ointment. Yes ointment. Before bed I needed to spread it over the eyeball. I guess you got to do what you got to do. After the first day of treatment I could already tell that things were getting much better, although the next day I woke up with the infection in both eyes. Within 5 days or do I was back to normal, but fortunately not too soon; I kept my red devil eyes for our Halloween party.

I was psyched to celebrate Halloween, and we had been planning on the party for weeks. Keith was in charge of inviting everyone he could think of, as well as procuring alcohol. I was much more interested in the food and decoration. As you could guess, Halloween-specific decorations are hard to find here in Dhaka. Not hard to find, nonexistent. Fortunately my Commissary membership came through a few days before the party, and I was able to pick up a truckload of food supplies. I don’t know how the store clerk and I got all that food to fit in two boxes, but if we hadn’t been able to, I have no idea how I would have gotten it all back. Not only did I get lots of candy, but also foods for the other Fulbrighters and baking supplies. My German friend, Jan, lives two doors down and has an oven. It was an outlandish prospect, but I was hoping on baking pumpkin pie and apple dumplings. Many of the ingredients could be found in the market, but a few items were exclusively available at the Commissary, and a few of the spices I needed were available at neither. This is one reason why I was so joyful when my Mom’s package arrived. We had schemed up some things that would be good for a Halloween party, my Mom and I, and she sent a package filled with decorations and spices. As the days wore on closer and closer to the party, I was pretty sure that I’d have to cope with the disappointment of receiving the festive package after the show was over. When I saw Keith walk into our apartment TWO days before the party with a package addressed to me (having picked it up at the American Center – public affairs section of the embassy), well, overjoyed is an understatement. As I went through decoration after decoration, my room smelling of spices, I was overtaken with past Halloween memories and became filled with energy to make our apartment as spooky as possible. I don’t know, Halloween is a big deal to me. It’s about the feelings of sinking into another school year, of the seasons changing, of excitement for colored leaves and frosts, of fall foods like pumpkin and apple, of the thrill of being frightened, of allowing yourself the space to experience a range of emotions that are completely absent in the celebratory holidays like Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter. And now—armed with decorations and the actual possibility of baking foods that I so fondly crave—I felt as if my distance to such Halloween-associated excitement and memories had been lifted. Granted, much of my alone thoughts have been qualified by nostalgia for a time that has passed in my life, be it high school, college, or home life with all the friends present. Now, it wasn’t only about remembering past times fondly, but living them as well. Buzzing, I haunted our apartment with decorations, shuffled furniture around with Keith, and assembled a playlist of music we could play.

I spent most of Friday, the day of the party, at Jan’s baking. Combining the ingredients I remembered to get at the Commissary, those that I had scraped together from the market and from our apartment kitchen, and lastly a few items filling in the gaps that Jan had, we went to town rolling out dough, mixing ingredients, wrapping apples, washing dishes, and baking for hours on end. The pumpkin ‘pie’ we made was in the shape of a large square tray, made to be cut into bars. We had to bake the crust before adding the pumpkin. We burned the crust. I feared that a flame oven without temperature settings would render the operation impossible, let alone getting the ingredient balance correct without measuring cups and measuring spoons. No worries, we started over and ate the burned crust anyway, which tasted like toasted cookies. With watchful eyes, we basically simply took it out whenever we ‘thought’ it was done. Despite how sure I was that things would be underdone or burnt, the pumpkin and nearly 40 apple dumplings turned out simply beautifully. As the first people came for the party, I was just about finished setting all the food up.

I guess the 2 day preparation period was just enough. At one end of our apartment we had a few chairs and a couch facing a television playing Saw (I had intended on showing The Ring, but the DVD actually inside the case that I bought was Bob the Builder; no problem, it was only about 50 cents anyway), in the middle of the apartment was a good deal of open space for people to stand, near both the food table and the music speakers. In the other corner of the apartment we arranged the drink table and several couches for people to sit. Along with several bottles of alcohol (which I bet was an exciting sight for our Bangladeshi guests), my contribution was a pot of spiced warm apple cider. The food table was basically the size of a single bed and was completely filled, orange plastic spiders occupying any open black space. We had bowls of chocolate bars, pretzels, Skittles, Reese’s pieces, Oreos, Starbursts, and Twizzlers. I also covered lollipops with tissue and drew on ghost faces with marker; the stem of the lollipop was a plastic skeleton limb. My language partner was eating one while introducing himself to my friend; I wondered if he looked at all crazy with a small skeleton hand creeping out slightly from between his lips (along with a cigarette) as he ate the lollipop. We had a heaping bowl of Oreo dirt pudding. We had cups, plates, and silverware. We had the entire pumpkin custard tray out, and one of two pots of apple dumplings. Lastly, several Bangladeshis that came added ice cream and other sweets to the mix. Above the table we hung a shredded cloth/net. Next to the table we taped up a Frankenstein wall figure. On the inside of the front door we taped up a paper skeleton balancing himself with one foot on the lock and one hand gripping the top of the door. Cob webs garnished an entire cabinet built into the wall, along with our wall lights outfitted to hold candles. All cobwebs were complete with black plastic spiders. Candles lit the entire apartment. Orange and black streamers, orange and black balloons, the list continues. The food and candy was well-received by everyone, including our Bangladeshi class teachers and language partners who hadn’t tried such baked goods before. Keith fashioned the remaining cobwebs into a white beard; he dressed up as a celebrated Bangali poet and writer, Rabindranath Tagore.

Conversation, music, good food, laughs, new and old faces, the party went like this until about 4 am. And who says Dhaka has no night life? Well, actually, yes, Dhaka has no night life. Before going to bed, Keith and I needed to move back all the furniture we had borrowed from the upstairs apartment before the cook came at 7 am to start breakfast. Somehow I bet our cook, Suranjan, would notice two couches, 4 chairs, and the entire dining room table missing. The apartment remained in its aftermath-party-destruction-yet-still-festively-decorated state for about 3 weeks. Finally, this morning Rasel (a housekeeper) and I dusted the floors and chipped off the solidified candlewax from the floors and shelves. And mopped and beat the rugs and washed the dishes etc etc. It put a smile on my face to see Rasel brush the corner where the ceiling meets the wall to get rid of spider webs, the light just underneath decked out with blatant thick artificial cobwebs. It must seem strange to decorate a home with what you actually clean out of it.

Last weekend BLI sponsored a trip for the students. We went to Srimangal, destination in the east of Bangladesh famous for its tea gardens. Keith decided to stay in Dhaka because he had come down with a cold the day before and wanted to celebrate Kali Puja in the city over the weekend anyway; Christy decided to stay because she had already been there and had work to do; Biz was concerned about carsickness; the group that was left was me, Laule’a, Olinda, John, Razima (BLI director), and Atif (a Bangla teacher). We left very early on Friday morning to beat traffic, and it was a good idea too because on the way back in traffic the journey took twice as long. I sat in the front of our van, eager to soak in the more nature-related sights that one misses in the thick of urban Dhaka. After two CNG fuel refills, one stop for lunch, and 5 hours of napping, conversation, and music listening, we had arrived at our ‘resort’, a compound of family-sized bungalows. Don’t ask me to define bungalow. It was like being in a small house. ‘Bungalow’ and ‘resort’ make the place sound a bit more enchanting than it was; don’t get me wrong though, the brick roads weaved around green wooded areas, rolling tea gardens could be seen in the distance, and there were tennis courts, a pool, and a ping pong table.

During our time there we visited tea gardens, a tea research institute, a small village (although I was rather disenchanted, our experience somehow flavored for visitors), and a guided tour through a thick state forest. We walked through the dense green foliage by following narrow soft sandy beds that run with water during rain. Massive spiders rested on webs that were strung between whole trees. Many times such webs would be weaved directly in our path. I kept a vigilant eye out for the critters, my height certainly increasing my likelihood of running into one of them, which happened once or twice. I dropped to the ground so quick and flung around so fast though that soon enough all the web would be off of me. The forest is known for a type of monkey but we didn’t see any. Olinda was terrified of the spiders and critter wildlife. As we existed the forest an hour later she turned to me with a crooked look on her face and asked what was on her ankle. She asked me again, with urgency and anxiety. As I looked down to where her shoe ended, I spotted blood and mentioned it was a leach. She started flipping out. Laule’a tried to calm her and removed the leach, bandaging her up after. It was evident Olinda was traumatized; tears could be seen on her face. We all though it strange, or rather comical, that she was the one to get a leach. Laule’a was also slightly jealous, she had wanted the experience to happen to her, maybe as a rite of passage or something; everyone who had visited the forest before had said that we’d get leaches.

Before leaving Srimongal, we were sure to stop at the famous tea stand in the area that brewed 7-layer tea. Somehow it was made with 7 different teas or flavors, each with a different density so it would separate into layers with visibly different colors. On the car ride home Laule’a realized she was struck with sicknes; I also wasn’t feeling too great. The car ride for Laule’a must have been excruciating, we needed to make 3 vomit stops. I was grateful I wasn’t feeling nauseous, but was having strong stomach pain, extreme bloating, and excessive nasty-tasting burps. Never quite had an illness like that before. And, by the next morning, I was fine, ready to face the next week.

In recent news, the political situation has started to heat up as we’re half way through the current prime minister’s term (year 3 of 5). As the opposing party (BNP, Bangladesh National Party) seeks to gain political momentum against the party in power (Awami League), it wouldn’t be surprising to receive word that they will declare a nationwide strike, or hartal, soon. I’m not sure with what frequency they occur, but we have had one already and there’s another tomorrow. Basically for us in Baridhara a hartal means that there’s no school and we don’t go in the city, mostly because transportation is offline and shops are closed. There is a concern for safety too, but at the same time my teachers have talked about how they loved hartals even as kids because they not only get off from school, but also get to watch exciting protests in the streets. You have a sense if the scene gets too heated and you need to leave. It’s an element of curiosity what the newspapers report the next day. What happened? Did the protests get out of control? Is there another strike tomorrow? Our first hartal was catalyzed by the BNP leader (also female) being ‘forced’ from her home because of legal land ownership reasons. Some articles say she was forced out without time to gather her things and her guards were slapped and she was treated so poorly. Other articles claim she was asked to leave after warnings from several days prior and then took hours packing her things and putting on makeup, yelling at the police when they asked her several hours later to hurry up. In any case, the opposing party was outraged and immediately declared the hartal the next day, sparking protests that rendered dozens of cars vandalized in the city as well as a few government-owned city buses set aflame. Not to worry, they get everyone off the bus before setting it on fire, it’s the government property they’re concerned about destroying, not people.

Perhaps I’ll give a brief overview of what happens during an average day. You’ll be happy to know that generally I don’t come across busses engulfed in flames. At about 8 I lazily wake up and shower, making it to class by 9 hopefully. My showerhead is at eye-level, it’s too hard for me to use being so tall. I bucket shower like I did in India, which I like better anyway. Since the weather has been getting colder, the cups of night-chilled water I pour over myself are quite shocking. Sometimes I wake up early and run for exercise on the path by the nearby small lake, maybe once a week. We have 4 classes in a day, being introduced to vocab, having conversations, translating readings, translating audio and video clips, things like that. We have small breaks in between classes and sometimes I’ll sneak downstairs to the girl’s apartment where Suranjan would be preparing lunch and make myself a piece or two of toast with honey. Laundryman comes on Wednesdays and Sundays and returns the clothes folded and packages a few days later, usually. At 1 we have lunch, I still love Suranjan’s cooking. More often than not, I have a ton of food at lunch and nothing the rest of the day. Sometimes our conversations (well, mostly just Keith and I) will last for some time after lunch, but on Mondays and Wednesdays we’re off into the city. On Mondays Keith and I go to the American Center, the public affairs section of the US embassy, to talk with prospective Bangladeshi college applicants seeking education in the US about our experience at our US undergraduate institutions. I find myself championing the small-school liberal arts background that I received, and Keith does too. Most of the Bangladeshi students we come across seem to be interested in big name schools, although one who I was revising a personal statement for was applying to Lafayette College in Easton, PA; she’s also interested in Neuroscience. On Wednesdays Keith and I go to a private university about an hour away by walking to help conduct an introductory English class. My first day, the professor had a meeting, so the class was mine to run (Keith has a different class). Hey, my first teaching experience, unqualified, and I’m thrown into an undergraduate classroom unprepared. No worries, we just had conversation about random things. That’s what they need really, just to develop and ear for American English and for me to help re-phrase their speech if their communication doesn’t come across. The rest of the evenings I will do different things. I spend a lot of time on my bed writing, listening to music, reading, studying, or reviewing vocab. I spend little time on the internet, partly because I’m busy doing other things and partly because there are periods of time when the internet is completely off, sometimes for a whole week. Also it’s off when the power goes out. The power goes out for hour long periods sever times in the evening hours; the city simply doesn’t have enough power to function. Our apartment has a diesel-powered generator in the first level garage that kicks in, powering our fluorescent lights and fans (although not the microwave!). Sometimes I just use candlelight though. Usually I don’t eat dinner because I’m still full from lunch and the days just fly by anyway. My water comes from one of those 5 gallon jug dispenser things that is replaced whenever needed. A few times a week my BLI-arranged language partner, Minhaj, a 26 year old business student, and I will meet up to have conversations and practice Bangla. He’s incredibly patient with me and loves to practice his English as well. Communicating in Bangla is usually stimulating, trying to mold your thoughts in a different way than usual. Minhaj lives close to my apartment so usually I’ll go over to his place to get out of the house. Plus his roommates and cook are fun people. Sometimes I walk to the nearby bazaar for sweets or just to explore; sometimes I go to Gulshan-2, the closest city hubbub nearby, a massive intersection at its center reminding me of a Time’s Square analogy; there’s even a massive display screen with TV advertisements and stuff like that. Around that area there are tea stands and places that sometimes I’ll meet Bangladeshi’s to chat with. Fridays are great to travel into the city, there is much less traffic then because that’s the weeks holiday. I just about never get into a mode of transport during any part of the work week. Anywhere you go the traffic is so severe that you might as well walk, no matter how far. If I’ve been out on the streets, I will usually irrigate my sinuses through my nostrils with a plastic ketchup bottle I bought (it’ll have to double as a netty pot); it’s refreshing to blow out blackened mucus afterward. John’s been having trouble with his sinuses lately, I wonder if pollution is why. So, the days go like this mostly, always more people to chat with, always more Bangla to learn, and always making the effort to relax amongst it all. Hopefully I’m asleep by 12 or 1. During the nights, on my half-inch thick bed cushion on the floor, I sleep beautifully.