Farming in Feni

The idea of working on a farm as compensation for food and lodging, while all the while getting to experience a new way of life and a new country, has been a tantalizing one for me for quite some time. An organization called WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) provides such opportunities, and I've been interested in participating in it since I first heard about it.  There are seemingly hundreds of locations in India that participate in WWOOFing, but Bangladesh sports a fledgling one or two, having only been started 2 years ago.  I've tried to engage in farming-related activities in Bangladesh before, especially that time last year when I went off to a random village in the West to try to help with the mango harvest.  In general though, when I as a foreigner try to do work, I'm met with huge resistance.  Guests are not supposed to work.  They are to be shuffled around in plastic chairs, kept in the shade, stuffed with food, and shown places to photograph.  You can guess that I'm not one to abide by such a prescription.  Perhaps going through an organization where the premise was that I would actually be working would fare differently.  It was no easy task getting things set up; the organizer would respond to emails up to a week after I had sent them, he couldn't seem to understand that I lived in Bangladesh and therefore could not Western Union the money needed for the registration fee (despite my repeated reminders), and I needed to make a day long trip through the city to pay that 25 dollar fee in person.  When I was discussing with him about what could be set up, I was surprised to find out that it was customary to pay an additional 3 dollars a day for food and such.  Maybe for a foreigner who is new to Bangladesh and who would brush off such a fee as minimal compared to the cost of living in the West (and hey, it would help those poor Bangladeshi farmers anyway, right?), this is no big deal.  It didn't take much time wrestling with my ethics before I decided that if I had to pay something daily, this opportunity was not for me.  Two thousand taka for registration was enough, and I'm going to work; ideally this work and the effort it would take would be my payment for whatever cost my living there would incur.  Plus, 3 dollars per day is actually too much per day for food (especially because I wasn't expecting to eat meat), I wouldn't know how that money is actually going to be spent (it could just be hoarded by some guy), and lastly, I'm not interested in propagating the largely false notion that Westerners have money to freely dispose of.  After explaining this to them, adding the fact that I could simply on my own hop on a bus going to any random place and attempt to do the same thing without all these charges, the truth started to emerge.  They had had foreigners in the past come to the farm and live like "kings" (so he spoke), eating, touring, and soaking in the village life experience without contributing much.  Well, in that case, fine, you should have to pay.  But that was not what I was going to do.  Evidently I still needed to battle the conception that foreigners won't or can't work.  After some discussion, it was decided that I didn't have to pay and that it wouldn't be a problem.  It's funny how I would have never argued about it if I were going to some other country I didn't know.  But here in Bangladesh, there was no major question in my mind about what I wanted to have transpire, even if it meant going against the customs of a well-known international organization.  Because of the upcoming Eid holidays, there was some delay in finding a host what was available, but eventually I was on my way to some guy's village in Feni.

The fact that I could easily get a bus ticket from Dhaka did not reflect the sheer quantity of people involved in an exodus from Dhaka to their native village homes.  This chaotic push out of the city during the Eid holidays is notorious for being time consuming.  Two years ago when I went to Barisal, it took 4 hours by bus simply to get across the city to the docks.  The journey to Feni is usually around 3-4 hours by bus from Dhaka, but my trip took 9, with constant traffic, many times paused bumper to bumper.  Because I got in late (maybe around 1 am), I slept at the bus station and went to the village the next morning.  I wasn't too keen on paying the 100-150 taka CNG (auto-rickshaw) ride out of Feni to the village, so I scouted for the local CNGs that would go to a nearby area with multiple passengers.  After finding one, the guy sitting next to me was excited to hear that we were going to the exact same area (I think he was a nephew of the owner of the farm), and he hopped out and beckoned me to do the same so that we could split a reserved CNG.  So hard to know what to do in situations like this.  I hate CNG rides that are reserved.  They are overly expensive and unnecessary.  It makes the difference between private and public transportation.  In a knee-jerk reaction to avoid giving in to comforts offered to me (perhaps he thought it would be more suitable for a foreigner to ride in a private one rather than a local one), I stayed put and requested that he come back in the local CNG and wait for more people to fill it.  The driver got angry that he had jumped out trying to find a different CNG (these local CNG drivers at this particular stop I was at were tough cookies, later on that week I saw one of them get in a fist fight with a passenger.  I don't know what it was about, but it was the only physical altercation that I think I've ever seen in Bangladesh).  In the blink of an eye, to spite my potential companion who had gotten out, the driver sped off.  Well, now I definitely couldn't get out even if I had changed my mind.  This was not what I had expected, and I was angry.  He must have been thinking that he can prove a point to that other guy by leaving him behind (don't mess with me, man) and also thinking that as a foreigner it would be no problem for me to pay a reserved fee.  I explained to him that I wanted him to collect more people because I could not afford the private fee.  He didn't respond.  Fuming, I reasoned that I simply would get out and pay the local fare of 20 taka even if he asked for more.  I craftily took out all the money in my wallet except for 32 taka.  When we reached the farm, he asked for 100.  Putting on my reprimanding teacher face, I told him that I explained that I didn't want a private CNG and that he didn't listen.  The excuse was that he didn't understand my words.  Bull shit.   I emptied the contents of my wallet for him (yes this was working out just as I had planned), and then Sumon came (the owner of the farm), and gave him another 30 (not what I had wanted, but whatever).  All this commotion over a dollar, but I hate the argument that it doesn't matter because it's such a small amount anyway.  It's the principle of the thing.  Sumon was a hefty, bubbly, energetic man with a gaze that could convince you his viewpoint was completely indisputable.  He must have gotten that attribute through practice.  I was going to find out that arguing for not only CNG fares but also any other purchased product was going to be commonplace.  As a matter of fact, on one of our trips into Feni city (which took 15-20 minutes) to get something, Sumon instigated a debate about CNG fares during Eid time that involved every single one of the 6 members stuffed inside.  Well, excluding me, I actually can't really understand their informal language at all.  This fiery exchange lasted for the entire journey.  It was all over 5 taka.  Such exchanges, although competitive in nature, demonstrate a larger interest in debate as a subtle form of entertainment.  Many people make the claim that Bengalis debate one other all the time.  I'd agree.  The tone they take with one another could instantly ignite an uncontrollable fist fight in the US, coupled with the side effect of permanent grudges afterward.  However, after the yelling and interrupting and commotion is through, all parties involved usually seem cordially at ease, even amused, and even if they've "lost."  During that CNG ride when everyone was stirred up in their yelling, I chuckled as one of the passengers who was getting off, as he handed the driver his fare, apologized for all the discussion and very earnestly said that he hoped it didn't cause him too much trouble.  A few days later, I was buying a poster in Feni.  The shop keeper asked for thirty.  Sumon rushes over to me.  "Wait, Matt, you want to buy this right?"  As soon as I nod, he throws his full attention on the shop keeper and demands in a low-tone, very serious voice that he should ask for only 10.  I knew he was giving him his stare of intent, his stare that suggested that there was no there other option.  The shop keeper an him went back and forth a bit.  I was fine to pay 20; Sumon kept up his demand for 10.  The shopkeeper actually started giggling a little bit.  I handed over something like 17 taka, and he took it as he was smiling, as if he was enjoying this little exchange as much as I could tell Sumon was.  It's like a game, with winners and losers.  The shop keeper knew he could not contend with Sumon's brute power.  He probably even lost money through my purchase, but in the end, it was a good time and we all walk away with a smug look on our faces.  Granted, not always is it this easy, but I've definitely got that hint from shop keepers before...a face like "ok, ok, you can have it, no profit for me, but hey, what's the big deal, that was fun." 

Sumon's farm was not much larger than others that I've seen: an area for rice, an area for vegetables, scattered fruit trees, a few ponds to raise fish, and about a dozen cows.  His single house had many rooms and was concrete instead of mud, wood, and tin.  I never really went in there.  I never really spoke with any of the women who were there either (there were many visiting for Eid).  I could tell right off the bat that a more conservative separation between the genders was in place; the area where the women would wash dishes and clothes was in the corner of the pond and sectioned off with tin so others in the pond wouldn't see.  Sumon hinted that I probably should not go there, and I should check the area by the house to see if there were women before going.  Sumon is a playful character though; these weren't demands, they were just recommendations, and really not even his.  You could tell it was for the women.  His eyes would get big in his explanation..."well, they'll quickly become unsettled to have a male around they don't know."  Sure enough, when I was in the vicinity, usually the women could cover up their heads, turn, and maybe go away.  So suffice it to say, I never met his wife, but after a few days there was no anxiety when I would go near the house to dry my clothes on the line or meet Sumon or something, just usually silence.  I stayed in a room that was built into the "barn" for the cows, a tin/concrete structure that housed them and their straw for food (their troughs were filled with a mixture dominated by straw, but complimented by cut green grass and stewed together with water and ground up mustard seeds, rice grain, and wheat grain).  I had a door that went right into where the cows stayed and even a small window to see how they were doing.  It didn't always smell the best there, but it was mostly unnoticeable.  The setup was actually really great; I was out of their house and not bound by customs that go along with it, especially the stifling hospitality that people usually feel the need to inflict upon you.  Instead, it was just me and the cows.  And the mosquitoes.  I've never seen so many when they come out at dusk.  But I had my mosquito net, and after crawling inside with only the light from my cell phone to see with and hearing the chirping and humming of various jungle-like life outside, it felt just like camping.  I got used to no running water very easily.  The water I'd drink came from a tube well.  The bathroom I would use was basically an outhouse, and I'd collect the water I needed to use from the pond in two small buckets before I went.  That pond (right in front of the cow house as well as Sumon's house) was so multipurpose.  The dishes were washed there (with straw and ash), the clothes were washed there, people would bathe there, and sometimes you'd even toss your garbage in there too.  I was against that one.  Many days I'd swim around and collect the plastic I could find, stack it up on the concrete steps in front of the dozen or so kids that would be inevitably watching me, and claim to them that the pond and this trash do not mix, sometimes with more frustration, sometimes with less.  Once when I did this a kid said to me that this was Bangladesh, and this is just what we do here (you usually get this rationale when someone in the street is surprised to see you tick a wrapper away in your pocket instead of tossing it onto the road).  I told him that this is not Bangladesh, this is trash, and this is a pond, and they do not belong together.  Sometimes you just cannot shake that habit though.  Once, I was swimming back to the steps with some styrofoam and was slightly enraged to see the chip bag wrapper that I had just placed there a few moments ago floating in the water.  It had been tossed back in after having been examined by some of the kids.  "Oh my God," I said,"didn't I just explain to you that I'm collecting this garbage so that it's taken away from the pond?! (all this was of course in Bangla)"  The tiny faces mostly just stared at me.  Perhaps some things just don't change that quickly.  After I'd collect this trash though, our problems weren't solved.  The custom was to go out away from the house and toss it amongst the trees.  All that plastic.  I very intently explained that it wasn't good for their environment, but a slightly disabling notion crept up in the back of my mind.  How does any person get rid of this plastic?  Trucks haul it away from you when you live in the city, but that doesn't mean that it all disappears.  Perhaps it would even be better for this relatively small quantity to be absorbed into the relative vastness of this village open space rather than collected into an ever-growing common heap.  I've heard Staten Island's is visible from space.  Becoming unaware of the right course of action, I maintained that the pond needed to be kept free from garbage, but then it just accumulated in a tin bucket by the house, and I don't know what they did with it after I left a week and a half later. 

My first day there started with Sumon telling me that I should just rest and watch Sunil, a hired helping hand, take care of the cows.  I was hoping that this wasn't going to turn into a battle with me insisting that I work, but of course it's best not to jump into things too quickly.  Later that day we went to a site closer to Feni where Sumon's relative was building an apartment building.  Despite the action taking place (shoveling brick pieces and sand for the concrete, getting water from the well for the concrete, putting the concrete in buckets, carrying them up the steps to the top floor, etc.) and despite my insistence that I at least do something, I spent most of my time, right where a guest "should" be, sitting in the shade in a plastic chair.  I guess it was for the best.  Even though I tried inserting myself into their system of work, I was rather quickly pushed out, maybe because I was too slow, or more likely because they really did have things set up just right with the dozen-and-a-half or so workers there such that everything was working like a well-oiled machine.  And work it did.  They kept up their sweaty, grueling pace all day.  That kind of work is just what I would like to do from time to time.  Really letting off steam, that repetitive activity soothing the mind's focus, a tangible result, worn-out muscles...just the sort of thing that teaching English lacks.  Bus alas, that was not my role for the day.  My role, to my dismay, may have actually been simply to be there as a foreigner, boosting Sumon's credibility and reputation perhaps, and acting as a notable taskmaster pair of eyes to keep prodding the workers on, because look, there is a foreigner watching and you wouldn't want to disappoint him with a lack of progress.  Maybe that's just my pessimistic outlook, but whatever the case, I eventually got into a daily routine at the farm that certainly involved effort.  

Waking up around eight-ish, I'd tie on a lungi (cloth around the legs) and a gamcha (thin towel) on my head and accompany Sunil as we cleaned the cow pen.  This was a dirty job, to say the least.  After an entire night of urinating and defecting,  the entire concrete floor was covered in dung of various consistencies and needed to be shoveled up.  In order to get it onto the codal (a shovel with the blade at a right angle to the wooden handle), you needed to push it onto the blade with your foot.  After your tarp-lined basket was full, you lifted it up and set it on your head to then walk out behind the pen and trust it all forward like a catapult onto the heaping mound.  This was actually much easier than carrying the basket below your head; it's funny you don't see anyone carrying stuff on their head in the US.  Cow dung surprisingly doesn't have much of a smell involved (thank heavens), but this humbling first-thing-in-the-morning activity was still one of the grossest things I've done.  

Sunil would spray the floor down with water after it was clear, and (depending on how messy I was with dung from head to foot) afterward I may or may not take a swim in the pond.  At about that time Sumon would call me with breakfast, usually bread (a really fluffy variety from Feni that I totally loved) or tortilla-like pancakes made from rice flower with bananas and maybe a fried egg if I had bought them recently.  Tea or milk might work it's way in there too.  Despite being on a cow farm, I only got milk a handful of times.  Milk is actually very expensive, so perhaps they usually sold all it.  When the tea was made with the cow milk, oh my, that was a treat.  It much more tasty than the usual tea you get at tea stalls made with sweetened condensed milk and added sugar.  The rest of the morning I'd usually cut straw.  This was the main name of the game for me during my stay.  Straw always needed to be cut for the cows, and it took quite a while, so it was the perfect thing for me to do.  Set up in the corner of the pen where the straw is heaped and the warm lighting reminds me of the inside of Will Turner's sword shop in Pirates of the Caribbean, I would toil away for hours bunching up the straw and thrusting it forward and downward onto the stationary vertical blade that I would keep in place with my right foot.  My lower back would grow painful if I would sit like that for too long, and my hands would be quite weak afterward, having been squeezing the straw bunches for so long.  My right foot, on which I'd bunch up the straw before cutting it, grew a bit raw and even bled a bit just from the sheer volume of straw that would come across it.  It was a pretty meditative task because of it's repetition, and I found myself drifting off into memories while I cut away.  Despite the pain it would sometimes cause, I was most comfortable doing that work and eventually identified with that role, such that it would be my default task if there was nothing else going on.  By my second to last day, I had finished all of the straw in the pen.  That evening though, Sumon bought enough of a straw stock to fill the pen storage area to the brim.  It took Sunil and another worker hours to move the truckloads of it from the from the home's gate to the cow pen.  They moved it by placing quantities on their heads that were so large, straw practically the size of a mini van would shield most of their bodies from view, so that the massive clump seemed to simply float along above the ground.  It was daunting to see the towering amount of straw pack the pen's storage area that evening.  That's ok though, it would last for maybe 2 months, and I didn't need to cut it all.  Still, I had a staggering conceptualization of how long it would take to do so. 

I would experiment with different styles of cutting it too.  Sometimes I'd twist the bundle so it was tight before I cut; I'd vary the amount to straw too.  Eventually to became proud of my technique, but Sunil came by and claimed that I could do more.  He sat down on the small plank propped up with 4 bricks and blew me out of the water, the straw being bunched up each time in a heap I would have not previously considered possible and being completely cut in only 2-3 strokes, compared to my usual 4-6.  Sunil was a small man with small hands.  Evidently that didn't make a difference.  He had been working for Sumon, doing cow care work everyday, for the past 2 years, getting paid 3 dollars a day, an amount manageable for his food, his rented room for about $8.50 a month, and some savings he'd send to his wife and children living at their home.  He didn't like living away from his family.  One day he grew very silent and I saw him tearing up a bit.  Sumon said it was because he was thinking about how much he missed his wife and children.  I ended up becoming fast friends with Sunil.  We'd work together, buy each other tea, biscuits, and bananas during our breaks (which would come frequently enough so that work never lasted more than about 2 unbroken hours), and sometimes walk around the small nearby town in the evening after work was finished.  Sunil wouldn't say much, and when he would speak I truly only grasped about 15% of it.  Village language is so different.  That's ok though, he'd repeat when I'd ask him too, I'd smile and nod the rest of the time when I didn't get it, and with tasks anyway it's best to observe.  He'd understand everything I'd say though.  It was a funny sort of communication. 

I'd swim and bathe before lunchtime, which was around 2.  Bathing in public has always been something I've been envious of other people for, because when I try it, I'm so awkward and clumsy.  After a few days though, it became quite simple, the trick is to keep yourself covered from the waist down the lungi or towel you're wearing, even though you need to need to use soap down in that area and even though you need to remove the lungi you've been swimming with while you dry.  As you can imagine, that situation doesn't become any easier when you have dozens of pairs of curious eyes, sometimes including females, staring at you the whole time.  I liked swimming in the pond.  It was kindof scary having the fish nibble at me from time to time, but it was relaxing nonetheless.  After swimming and bathing, I'd wash my shirt and lungi with the same bar of soap.  I'd hang them up to dry, and they'd only take a few hours in the beaming sunlight to be finished.  Around 1-3 or 3:30 there was a bit of a lull in the day where all the shops would close and most people would be resting (Sunil would have gone back to his room too).  Sumon would bring my food in metal tiffin containers, and I'd eat somewhere.  The food was good, but constantly had a backdrop flavor of shrimp or dried fish.  By the way (vegetarians beware), those fishy additions do not make a vegetable dish (in Bangladeshi understanding) anything else than still just a vegetable dish.  

I got out of the habit of eating in my room because of the incessant ants.  By the time you'd finish eating, the grains of rice you would have dropped would already have been carried halfway across the floor.  I think there was a mouse too; one morning I was surprised to find that one of the bananas I had hanging from the ceiling had been halfway nibbled away.  After resting/eating/reading I'd meander my way back into some form of work when Sunil would return and we'd work for another 2 hours or so until dusk.  At that time, maybe I'd swim, maybe Sumon and his nephews and I would sit in my mosquito-ridden room and have conversations, or maybe we'd go wandering up and down the town road, chatting with various people.  Invitations to have tea would be ceaseless no matter how late it was.  Once at around 9 pm Sunil offered an energy drink (people basically consider it to be tasty soda) to me so incessantly that I couldn't do any better than compromise to drink only half.  Sometimes conversations with shopkeepers would be amusing, sometimes problematic.  I never appreciate the request for me to take someone to the US, especially if it's asked over an over again.  If someone believes that I can actually do this, no matter how many times I claim that I can't, it just seems like I'm being selfish and lying and I actually do possess some secret power to admit people to the US and afford their plane tickets.  Something else that ended up inching me higher and higher up the irritability scale was how people would sometimes communicate with a major lack of specificity.  You'd see this a lot when people would ask questions.  For instance, I could be walking down the street and someone might shout "Where!" in my direction.  This might be the basis for several different possible questions I can think of, including "Where are you from?" "Where are you going?" and "Where have you been?"  Although I usually don't respond to people to shout in my direction (like that one old man who would shout "Bangla!" at me whenever I'd pass him...I never really figured out what he was trying to say), even if I were to respond, do you expect me to take a guess as to what you're asking, or shall I try to figure it out by asking you back another?  A similar situation I remember when I was coming out of the cow pen and Sumon scurried up to me and said "vegetables!"  Are you asking for my opinion, or perhaps voicing the lunch menu?  Usually I'd just take the snooty teacher route and in such cases reply with "well, what's you're question?"  Oh, and another thing, I hate it when kids scramble around me and shout "what's your name?!" and "how are you?!" or even mimic the entire possible exchange by saying "Hello, what's your name? how are you? I'm fine!" in one long memorized string.  Does this aversion make me a bad foreigner, or perhaps a bad English teacher?  I'm annoyed because they'll say it over and over and over again, and even if I reply, they'll keep asking, as if they like the sound of their own voices.  Much of the time, if you try to respond to their calls by engaging them in an actual conversation, not in English, in Bangla, they'll simply remain silent.  Then maybe I'll be like "why did you ask me these questions if you don't want to talk with me?"  Then more silence and then I'll bubble on the inside and stomp away in an air of frustration.  I remember once being mortified when many many years ago I tried to practice my beginning Spanish with a Spanish speaker by asking a question and not understanding their response.  I hope I wasn't doing the same to them when I would make such pleasantries so tense and critical.  Needless to say, my patience did wear thin due to all these things, and although it's fun to be able to actually speak in Bangla, this next hurdle of remaining level-headed is an even more difficult one than learning to speak in the first place.  

It was Eid during my time in the village.  I don't like Eid.  It combines my least favorite parts of both Thanksgiving and Christmas by being focused on slaughtering cows and buying lots of gifts (especially clothing) for family members (well we eat turkey, not beef, but you get the idea).  Perhaps I shouldn't be so critical, but I'm not fond of mass killings and I'm not fond of focusing on purchases, as if buying things really is the key to a happy occasion.  Consumption is what this holiday is all about.  Well, and family gathering and time off to relax too.  The Hindus also had their Durga Puja during about the same time.  Colorful displays of long-haired gods were set up in bamboo-propped scenery.  It didn't take long for me to lose interest as the whole crowd of people stood mesmerized watching the children dance around in circles in front of the scenery to energetic bell jingles and drum beats.  The incense brought back memories though, and the massively intense use of way more than enough lasers to amplify the experience was wowing.  In general I try to stay away from religious events, mainly because it's another perfect opportunity for Bangladeshis to try to service my experience in an attempt to give me the time of my life.  I'd rather just watch than be the center of attention.  It's funny for me to notice all these complaints come up.  I never had so many when I first started traveling.  Perhaps this is what it means to be jaded.  So for Eid we ended up buying a cow from the market place in Feni.  Forty-five thousand taka: $540.  Those cow bazars crop up everywhere, even in the roads, and congest things even more than the worst traffic jams.  We had to walk that cow back to the house, which took several hours.  The whole time on the way back, people who would notice us in shops and stuff would shout "how much??" intent on finding out how much we paid.  This sort of behavior is excitedly rampant during the cow commerce at Eid, but in general is rather ever-present, as most any random Bangladeshi who you might be speaking with will likely not only be interested in what you've bought, but how much you've paid for it.  I think it's along the same sort of lines that I talked about before when we think of buying things as a game.  How low can you go?  I remember walking back to my house with a jackfruit in my hands last summer.  Every two minutes, another person in the street would inquire its price.  Whatever the reason, it's surely a good way to keep up to speed on the season's prices as they fluctuate.  So we bought a cow and also sold a cow at another bazaar.  We waited there the better part of the day, and our asking price of 60,000 taka eventually was reduced to a comparatively meager 36,000.  Most of that time I would go just out of the bazaar to where I could collect green grass for our one to eat.  A last meal sort of thing.  When you gaze upon the vastness of a cow bazaar, you can get a grip on just how many animals are going to be killed for this event.  There must have been thousands, just in that small town.  I wondered what others thought about when the cows tried to fornicate, which happened waaaay much more than I expected.  Well, I hadn't expected it at all; they are all males.  You could visibly see the exchange take place, one cow moving its rear in the face of another, the second jumping on the first, both appearing visibly frustrated and upset when they were shouted at, whipped with sticks or rope, and forced apart.  What would a Muslim think of such behavior occurring in the wild?  I hadn't thought about that one before.  It seemed that for the most part they would laugh it off.  The cow bazaar day ended up being a good one; we'd get tea every so often, we'd all chat as we waited for another prospective buyer to stop by, I'd argue with the children as to whether or not a cow would drink tea, I'd meander off and pick grass, the late afternoon sun through the trees and leaves and straw on the ground reminded me of fall, almost as if we were at a pumpkin patch.  Sunil and I walked back as night fell.  I'd ask what the lightening bugs were called and he'd go off on some monologue about something I couldn't understand, but I could tell it was something positive, so I agreed and smiled and giggled, then he'd talk more.  Then I'd ask about the fog, and the same thing would happen.  I loved the fog, cooling everything way down, and dissolving the far-reaching rice paddies into white in the distance.  Maybe by the time we reached home we also talked about the moon cycles, what we eat for lunch, his room rent, and my thoughts about Halloween. 

For Eid day itself, I was not at 100%.  In defiance, I decided to fast the whole day and hastily mentioned my dislike of animal slaughter (especially halal slaughter where the animal's neck is slicked open and left to bleed to death rather than killed outright by beheading) to anyone that came up to me and brought up the holiday.  As I was cutting straw that morning, I couldn't figure out whether or not to watch the slaughter take place.  Maybe if I were the cow, I would want another to witness my pain.  Then again, if the others saw me watching, they might think I was enjoying myself and supporting the event like they were.  Sunil, a Hindu, wasn't going to watch, so I wasn't either.  We went to a tea stall and waited it out.  Everyone in the area started the morning with a massive prayer at the mosque, then proceeded in their killing at around 9-10 am.  As we were off to get tea, I glimpsed a victim through the trees.  It was on its side in a pool of blood and an alien gasping sound struggled out of the gash in its neck.  I hated this.  At the tea stall, I was visibly downtrodden as well as angry, and I didn't really recover for the next day and a half or two.  This was not my comfort zone.  Despite how many cows were killed, the morning was relatively silent, and you couldn't hear desperate mooing or struggle.  Sumon brought me lunch (vegetables) but I said I wouldn't eat.  He continued to badger me about it until I said that I was fasting.  His eyes widened.  "Ooooh, wow...good for you!!"  He put his hands together in praise.  Fasting during Ramadan is a key component of Islam, and the fact that I was fasting then was therefore an act of piousness instead of defiance.  With great interest, he took my food away and asked me lots of questions about whether or not I was drinking water or tea, whether or not I could eat paan leaf and betel nut for energy, and when I would break the fast.  By that evening, everyone in the area seemed to be aware that I was fasting, even the kids at the pond.  The next morning, he and the nephews anxiously awaited 10 am when I would eat again.  They had bought me a new jar orange jam, which they referred to as orange gel.  A nephew actually tried to give it to me the night before through my window.  I think they're used to breaking fasts with something sweet, maybe for energy.  I didn't have any; I didn't want to attract ants, I had nothing to eat it with, I wasn't really interested in the first place, and hey, my waywardly defiant mood was still as strong as it gets.  Whenever Sumon would offer to treat me to tea or say that food was ready, if I was cutting straw, I'd say that I'd come later.  Once, he had cut up a jambura fruit from a tree for me and Sunil to share.  Jambura is very similar to grapefruit, but it's a bit bigger.  It took him several beckons before I finally relented and stepped out of the cow pen.  In my mind, I remember the storm of negativity..."I don't even like this fruit, and how do you expect me to eat an entire half...an entire half is huge...I'm so tired of following along with your misguided thoughts about what I would like.."  (This would be a good time to reaffirm that although my experience in Bangladesh has brought beautiful things to me, it has indeed also brought out my worst sides.)  Those fumes clouding my mentality slackened after a few bites.  I ate the whole half, as well as a portion of Sunil's.  I remember becoming captivated by the fruit, its refreshing crisp taste (especially after having been working with the dry straw, it's appealing vibrant pink shades of color.  Looking up from my sticky fingers, I realized that that was one of the most comforting culinary experiences I've had in a long time.  I stood for a moment, puzzled.  Why had I been so pessimistic about this fruit?  For the rest of my stay, I'd be slyly hinting at people that I'd love it if they could cut me up a jambura to eat.  Interestingly, they wouldn't consider jambura a possibility to eat during the late afternoon and evening, so I'd ask in the late morning.  Once, I felt so tempted to get another fix of jambura, that I went about picking one of my own from a tree.  I asked Sunil where I might find one in arm's reach, and he pointed to one that was hanging out a bit over the pond.  Licking my lips, I climbed a bit up the tree, held on with one hand, and dangled most of my body out over the pond to just barely reach a jambura, wrap my hand around it, and pluck it from its stem like a monkey.  Sunil and I started cutting it with a grass knife when Sumon hurriedly came over and said something both urgent and reprimanding to Sunil.  I asked what the matter was, and Sumon turned to me with that intent gaze, his eyes wide.  "That is grandmother's jambura tree, and grandmother is crazy.  She has a very bad temper, and she will be very, very angry."  The part of me that was like "Oh, pleease, it's just a fruit" was much louder than the part that repented "What have we done?!  What will grandmother do now that we have picked her precious grapefruit without permission??"  Sumon started glancing around, saying that he would come up with a story that might get us out of trouble.  Grandmother must have been very, very hot-headed.  I think our alibi was that it fell off the tree of it's own will and we fished it out of the water and I unknowingly ate it instead of giving it to grandmother.  I don't think anything actually came of it though.  Grandmother stayed in the house.  She wouldn't have known that one of her forbidden fruit was picked from her tree.  

Christine was fond of jambura too.  She was another American staying there with me also through the WWOOFing program.  She was supposed to have gotten there about when I did, but poor organization on the part of the office in Dhaka had rendered her a few days late.  I had just had a conversation with Sumon a day or two before she came about how even though so many people suspect that a foreigner will not be able to tolerate the food in Bangladesh because of its spice, lack of palatability is just as likely, if not more likely, to be caused by the high amount of oil they use when they cook.  I've heard that complaint from my friends at least as much as anything having to do with spice.  Bangladeshi food actually is not that spicy.  You know that presupposition that I as a Westerner cannot tolerate spice really grinds my gears.  There is a subtle implication of weakness involved.  It is very different for someone (perhaps a Bangladeshi) to go somewhere else (say the West) and dislike the food because it's bland and boring than for someone (say a Westerner) to go to a place (Bangladesh) and dislike the food there because it gives them pain.  In public, I try to eat green chilies very visibly with my food if I'm in the mood to counter this idea.  In any case, it's confusing why no Bangladeshi has brought up this difference of oil content when so many of my western friends have.  I don't know if Sumon really understood or not, but lo and behold, Christine shows up, and when I offer her a fried doughnut hole-like morsel from the tea stall, she declines because there is too much oil involved.  HA!  She said that once she threw up in Romania because they were cooking with too much oil.  I was eager to share this news with Sumon to prove my point.  Christine is a very interesting women.  Having semi-retired from the restaurant business (at an age between my mother and grandmother's), she has traveled the world WWOOFing and offering service/aid in various countries.  She told me stories about how she was aiding disaster relief in Thailand after the tsunami came.  She also told me about how she had been farming in places like Nepal and throughout Europe.  It was so comforting to have a character like her in the midst of the village, another who was just as intent on working as I was and someone to bounce ideas off of about our experiences.  She stayed in the house because she was a woman.  She told me I was lucky to be living out of the house; so many people would come into her room and look through her things and such, that sort of experience service and lack of privacy that I was so familiar with.  They probably expected certain things about her that weren't true too; she had told me when she first came that she was afraid they wouldn't give her any actual work to do because she was a woman, and she didn't want to have all this way just to look after small children or cook.  I told one of the nephews about how we need to figure out what work she can do, and he said rather matter-of-factly, "Oh, don't worry, there's a baby in the house."  I chuckled..."That is exactly what she does NOT want to be responsible for!"  They soon got the point and told her she could to weed if she wanted.  After I left I'm sure she took up straw cutting.  Maybe she'll also get to do odd jobs like I had gotten to do too, like going with Sunil to cut grass with a knife in the rice paddy for the cows or moving wood around so it can dry in the sunlight.  

Christine may have claimed that it was better for me to be out with the cows, but that environment did have it's downsides.  One night, Sunil had separated one of the mothers from her calf so it wouldn't drink all her milk and we could get some the next day.  Not a good idea.  When she wants to nurse, you know it.  The mooing.  The mooing.  She does that too during the day when her calf is outside and she wants to nurse.  The mooing was actually incredibly loud, especially when you're that close to it.  It's as annoying as a baby's incessant cry, something that tells you that you have to do something to fix this situation now.  It was about 11:30 pm.  I hollered at her to stop a few times, and she'd quiet down a little, but the start right back up again.  I was curled up in my clean bed and the last thing I wanted to do was fully wake up, open my carefully-tucked mosquito net, and go stomping around in cow dung to try to fix the situation.  My hopes were irrelevant, and my hollering eventually did nothing to calm her down.  The mooing grew in volume and frequency until I blew up in a frenzy, hastily exploded out of bed, threw on my sandals, and stampeded into the cow pen, practically falling on my face from slipping and sliding around in shit.  I spotted her in the far corner with my cell phone light and charged over there.  Her mooing continued.  Falling over myself, I reached her, wound up, and in boiling frustration smacked her on the bottom part of her back as hard as I could.  I had seen Sunil do that (less fervently of course) when he wanted them to get out of the way or stop misbehaving or something.  My hand stung.  Seemingly prompted to amplify her proclamations of disease, her mooing grew even louder.  Freaking out, I fumed over to the tin that was tied up to separate the two of them and clawed at the rope that was propping it up until it moved enough for the calf to get through.  Once that was finished, so was the mooing.  She may have not given as much milk the next day, but at least I got to sleep after that.  It took me a number of minutes to cool myself down after that.  Trigger-happy vehicle drivers on the roads of Dhaka, beware.  You see what happens.  If you shove loud noises into my space with your horn-blowing, you run the risk of me attacking you.  Do not suffer from the same fate that Betsy did.  

In another more positive but equally unconventional instance, Sunil shows up at my door around midnight and asks to be let in to see the cows.  He turns to me and says that one of them will give birth tonight and asks if there is enough space on my bed for two people so he could be here when she delivers.  How he knew was beyond me.  I figured we would have heard signs of the mothers discomfort before the delivery, but nope, just some grunting and a wet thud as the calf spilled out at about 4 am.  The mother continued to grunt as she licked her new-born.  By the light of cell phone, Sunil initiated the calf by pinching off the soft bottoms of his hoofs so he'd be able to stand, tying some straw around his head and through his mouth (I asked him about this and I think he said that the calf needed to get the taste of straw or something), and blowing in his ears (I guess to clear them out).  Within about 2 hours, the calf was able to stand a bit and stumbling around.  Sunil had to work pretty hard to get it to nurse, but by the next day it was no issue.  I was surprised at how painless and quick the whole process was.  Suddenly the next day, there you go, a new cow.  The mother's placenta fell out the next morning in a heap on the floor.  She started eating it, and I was totally unaware of what to do, so I sort of turned a blind eye.  After a few moments, Sunil noticed and rushed over to her, hollering.  He took it away and scooped it up in the poop basket.  The bloody gooey mess filled most of it.  I wondered what he'd do with it.  I guess I was expecting something a bit more unique (I don't know, stem cell research, make a shampoo, something) than burying it in the mound of dung behind the pen, but hey, he's the expert.  

So, with a sore but satisfied body, I return to Dhaka.  Perhaps I'll go back when it's rice harvesting time.   No matter how busy I would be with harvesting rice, and even if it's just for a weekend, I'm sure I'd find a few moments to at least relive the familiar straw cutting, a refreshing pond swim, and another relaxing evening walk through the winding moonlit foggy path to the town where I will practice yet again in conversation with others the virtue of patience.  Skills like that take time and effort, at least as much devotion as cows require.