Photo fun - A look at what I see

About 2 blocks from my house, there is a rickshaw stand. Rickshaws generally travel a distance that would take a bit too long to walk, if you need to get somewhere without being covered in grit and sweat, but that an auto-rickshaw will not go, because it is too close. Transportation in Bangladesh could be a topic all on its own. Below are two pictures of the "roads" in one of the rural areas I visited for work last week. Note the fact that if you veer off the road, you also go off the embankment the road is built on. The muddy road is a result of one night's rain. Imagine what the road must look like during the monsoon.





I exhibit a very strange fascination for transport. I wish that I could explain it, but alas - not even searching into visions of previous lives allows for an explanation. Nevertheless, I could easily put together an amateur photography exhibit of all of the photos I have taken of vehicles. Here, transport runs the gamut. It is dictated by budget and travel conditions. In Dhaka city, short distances can be covered on foot, or by cycle rickshaw. Longer distances can be traversed by bus (I will not try it, as I cannot read the route names or numbers), a "Laguna" which is a converted pick-up, that seats 10 in the back, and a few more hanging on the outside, a "Maxi" which is slightly larger than a Laguna, seating 15, CNG - the compressed natural gas 3 wheeled auto-rickshaws, a non-A/C taxi car, or an A/C taxi car. Of course, those who have their own car and driver need not worry about such things. Imagine, now, all of these types of vehicles, as well as bicycle carts and human pulled carts carrying various random items (from steel pipes and 30 foot bamboo to refrigerators and chickens) on the same thoroughfare.

Elsewhere, one may choose between a flat bed cycle cart (multipurpose for human, animal or grain transport), boat or the most trustworthy bipedal option.


Walking through and around these quiet, vast rice paddies and fields is a very welcome change from Dhaka's noise and pollution. Now, if only I didn't have to risk life and limb during the journey there...

Tribulations

14 hours; the abridged version

Yes, I boarded the bus for Kolkata. And, to my dismay, the trip took 14 hours. I departed from my house around 8pm, to catch an auto rickshaw to the bus station. This endeavor, a distance of perhaps 3-4 miles, took 1.5 hours. So, my bus journey began after I had inhaled a great deal of exhaust. No worries, though - the bus was a luxury bus. Large, imposing, with clean, assigned seats and no evident rust. I was worried that as a woman travelling alone at night, maybe I'd be harrassed. So I learned how to say : "Hey. Don't touch me" but it was not necessary.
(In case you are curious, you can say: Hey. Amake dhoro na.)
It was a very comfortable ride...except that at midnight, they began a movie very loudly. At 2 am, we were in line to board a ferry, which took us and the bus across a river. Around 4:30 am, we reached somewhere near the Bangladesh-India border at Benapole. Then began the excitement.

• 4:30 am -- Arrive at the Green Line office. Exit bus sleepily. Look confused. Watch others stretch out to sleep, wash for prayer, or go in search of tea.
• 4:50 am -- Receive a boxed snack, containing 2 suspicious sweets, a cold and rubbery roti, and a plastic baggie filled with some oily spicy vegetable. Proceed to drink coffee instead.
• 5:20 am -- Still confused, decide that it might be good to wash face and brush teeth. Go to ladies room.
• 5:24 am -- Exit ladies room, and find that my bus companions are no longer in the office. Get a little afraid, grab my bag and wander outside.
• 5:25 am -- see people getting on the platforms of cycle rickshaws with their bags. As I am travelling alone, I don't merit 1 whole rickshaw, but they are quickly pulling away as I decide what is happening. I ask 2 men if I can just sit on the platform with them...they ask me if I have a confirmed ticket. I say yes. They say that I have to go in the car. I turn to look for the car, see none, but then they are gone. A van pulls up, I get in, and wait. I am attacked by the most vicious mosquitos you've ever imagined.
• 5:30 am -- Drive 1 kilometer down a road, pull up to the actual border near lots of large trucks, and get out of van. Am herded into a line in front of the immigration office. Get in line, and am then told that I must go to the ladies line.
• 5:30 - 6:00 am -- Stand in line, fending off 10 beggars who have materialized out of no where. Watch women fight about cutting in line. Hear some guy shout...my interpretation: "If you need taka, go stand in line over there." Well, I didn't need money, so I stayed put. Realize that I need to fill a border tax, and go stand in another line.
• 6:00 am -- Attach myself to a family so that people don't cut infront of me. Am told to go stand in the (much shorter) ladies line. Do that, while being viciously attacked by pre-dawn mosquito monsters. A door opens in front of the men's line. Men barrel forward shouting and waving money. Men blocade the door, so people can't exit and make space for more people. Someone asks if the door infront of the ladies line will open. It turns out there is no seperate ladies line. Men decide to let us in. The the ladies push and shove each other. I am sandwiched between the door and 2 people. I get into the little hot room, where people are waving passports and money. I join in, pay my money, and get a piece of paper. Fight my way out of room.
• 6:15 am -- Go back to ladies line, which is longer now. Am still holding passport. There is a 3rd line forming, for people with Indian passports. Then, someone tells me to stand in it...it is a multipurpose foreigners line, and is not segregated.
• 6:30 am -- Immigration office opens. Ladies are told to go one way, men another and foreigners to follow ladies. Go into a building that says "Arrivals". Am confused. Give passport to some official. He walks away with it. Wait for him to return with passport, while being shoved.
• 6:45 am -- Go stand in another line for customs. Am near front of line. Watch despondently as people just walk up to the front of line and push others aside. Watch angrily as people claim that their family member is waiting in line for them, and then insert 5 people. Attach myself to another family. Literally. We are now standing so close together, no one can enter the line. I am pressed up against strangers. The beggers come to harrass us.
• 7:30 am -- Customs officials FINALLY arrive. All thought of lines are erased as people begin mad dash for door. I push forward, give tax form to a man who puts a (very official) 2 inch tear in it. Go in another direction. Get another tear in form...very officially perpendicular to the first.
• 7:45 am -- Look confused again. Go through a gate with a machine gun toting guy in wierd blue and yellow fatigues. Stand in an immensly long line to enter into India. Watch dejectedly as 1 solitary Indian official checks each person's passport and visa maddeningly slowly.
• 8:10 am -- enter India. Go wait in a Green Line office.
• 8:30 am -- Finally get on an Indian Green Line bus, headed for Kolkata. Traverse 85 kilometers in 4 hours. Decide to fly back.

Potato Farms

Yesterday, I went to observe one of my teams of interviewers. They were working in Chainpara village near the Malkhanagar health center, in Munshiganj district. I was to meet Shahinur, team supervisor, at the Chainpara primary school.

I reached the school first, so I got to be an object of show and tell. The kids could not sit still in their rooms, and kept wandering out to peek at me. Some random guy who spoke english decided he wanted to ask me lots of questions. He had no apparent affiliation with the school. Then a teacher paraded me from class to class, telling me to speak english, so that the kids could hear what it sounded like. How do you respond to such a request? I thought about saying the pledge of allegiance or singing a song, but decided instead on: "What are you studying? Do you like school?" and received in return blank little smiling faces.

This area is currently in the midst of a potato harvest. Hundreds of people are involved in harvesting potatoes. Some are turning over the earth to reveal the tubers. Others are on their hands and knees, putting each tuber in a basket. Others still are moving them from basket to sack, and then their are chains of men with bicycles, loading 2 or 3 sacks onto each bike, and then very slowly walking the bikes to the potato depot. I have never seen so many potatoes. I was flabbergasted.

A potato depot is a large 5 story building, about the size of 1/2 a city block. It is where the potatoes are stored, until they are needed around the country. I saw at least 3 such buildings in and around this village. We walked from the school to a house where one of the interviewers was working. There aren't really roads... so we walked on a dirt path, which lead to a 3 bamboo pole wide bridge over one of many gullies (treacherous for the unaccustomed!), to a 2 person wide embankment between 2 fields (lower than the road, so that roads stay drier in the monsoons), over another bamboo pole bridge (this one had a railing on 1 side, thankfully), past mounds of potatoes, to a 1 person wide embankment around another field, ... over the hill and through the woods... to a 1 shoe wide embankment where missteps would land you in a nasty green pond, and finally up a steep slope to the house. Process repeated several times throughout day. Remain in awe of potato mountains. I am clearly not a farm kid.

Peace TV and Empathy

There is a Bangladeshi tv channel called Peace TV. It comes right after CNN in my line-up. Peace TV is often entertaining for 30 seconds or so, because it often has small children re-enacting islamic parables, or giving speeches to a room full of bearded and topi-ed men. Yesterday, however, it grabbed my attention for much longer than that.

The program's name was:

Should Rushdie Die
The Judeo-Christian Verdict

And, the man giving the lecture, to a large room full of bearded men and ladies with their heads covered, was, I believe, a South Asian muslim who grew up in South Africa. His principle argument rested on the prevalence of the word F*(%ing in The Satanic Verses. According the Ahmed Deebar, who has offered to give $50,000 to any charity if PBS or ABC will give him 5 minutes to tell the real story about Rushdie, this word is used in conjunction with 55 other words, one from every letter of the alphabet.

But, it isn't enough that the word is used, it is how it is used. See, if the phrase read "fucking women", then this man would very animatedly say:

Father Uncle Cousin King - ING women

So, throughout the program, he kept on saying Father Uncle Cousin King ING americans and

Father Uncle Cousin King - ING barbarians. And then, he would go on to make some convoluted argument about how Rushdie should die.

Didn't we put that argument to bed years ago?


Riding a Camel
No, there are no camels in Bangladesh. But yesterday, I took a cycle rickshaw from the "Diarrhea Hospital" towards my home...and was quickly reminded of the careful balancing act needed when riding a camel. The rickshaw chose to travel through some back alleys, an extremely narrow market where 2 rickshaws could not pass, and men being bullheaded, we had a standoff, over brick paved roads (Really Bumpy!) and other choice locales. The upside to this ride was that we avoided the polluted major roads, where the buses are blowing black soot at you. And, I got to see how they sell fish... basically, on a burlap sack, with a boy half-heartedly waving at the flies.

Empathy towards aliens
It has taken many years, but I finally have some grasp over the tribulations experienced by my many green, web-footed friends. :) I mean, of course, the aliens, who have to contend with our Immigration system.

In a few hours, I will depart on an overnight bus for Calcutta. This trip out of the country has been made necessary because some surly visa officer at the Bangladeshi embassy in DC chose to give me a visa that allows me to stay only 30 days at a time. I thought I was on top of things...I approached someone at the ICDDR,B who is used to helping the many foreigners who pass through there with their visa issues. He first thought I was Indian...and very kindly told me that although the countries pretend to be friendly, it will be very hard for anything to happen. I then said - well, I have an American passport. His demeanor changed instantly. He said "No Problem. We will get you an extension for 2 months. You must pay me 7000 taka for the visa fee, and 3000 taka for miscellaneous expenses. You won't get a receipt for the miscellaneous expenses, but I have to manage the police, when they come to make an inquiry. "

Then, 2 days later, he tells me that the visa fee has been raised to $130, so I have to pay him an additional 2100 taka. I do, and he returns my passport to me, with a copy of a receipt that he says is from the government, indicating that the extension has been filed for. Then he tells me that I can't leave the country until I get the permit. And my old visa, which allows for multiple entries to Bangladesh, is void. So, I'm basically hostage here, because my return flight to the US is from Dhaka... if I want to see family in India, then I'll have to apply for a new visa to return to Dhaka.

Why didn't he tell me such things initially? Alas, the best solution appears to be that I leave the country every 30 days for 24 hours at least. So, I'm off to Calcutta tonight, since tomorrow will be my 30th day in Bangladesh.

warp speed and eating local

Why is it that technically, I've been in Dhaka for 3 weeks. But to me, it feels like it's been at least 2 months already? Does time move faster when you are surrounded by more people? This is a very good segue to one of my favorite books. Alan Lightman didn't think of this story, but I think there is good potential that the weight of the 150 million people of Bangladesh, in a area the size of (have to go check the CIA factbook...) IOWA !! creates a gravitational pull that makes time move much faster. And then, consider that 1/3 of the country is water. I will ignore the fact that the 'boats' here carry 3000 people at a time when they make the journey from Dhaka south to Chittagong, Barisal or other ports in creating my theory. So really, we are talking about 150 million people in, Pennsylvania? 2600 people per square mile. Gravitational pull, baby.

There is an alternative theory I'd like to test out as well. Perhaps the overwhelming quantity of rice that I've been consuming has slowed me down, so that it feels as though there is always activity going on around me. Oh - Wait. There IS always activity. As I sit in the living room , there is some kind of ridiculous pounding occurring upstairs, car horns, cycle bells, a man selling tea, and the really strong smell of spicy cooking.

But I digress. A few days ago, I very vehemently wrote a post that was gobbled by google. The feelings still exist, but the vehemence is not coming right now. Never mind. What is that pounding?

Some people have tried to convince me that we need to eat local. Visit the market, count your food miles, things of this nature. I have decided that the only places where one can eat local and be happy with the results are California, the Mediterranean, and cruise ships. This is because my diet has involved a great deal of Dal (but there are only 4 types here, and they add the same spices to all of them), very little meat, and a polite dance with fish. Since the diet is quite repetitive, people are very protective of the 'variety' inherent in the 4 major foods. So, there are hundreds of fish (some look like anchovies, or those things that we used to get really excited to catch in the local pond with our fake bait and kiddie poles), several names of rice, and too many green leafy things for me to keep track of. One would think that I'm doing my degree in nutrition with the attention that has been devoted to food in my research.

The fish frighten me, however. I shop at a grocery store. It is hygienic looking, and there are many people to help you, and you don't have to bargain over the price of a KG of bananas. But nevertheless, seeing eels and big toothy fish and small spiky fish and 'bait' fish on ice is enough to convince me to only eat when not doing so would insult the cook. And even then, I cannot do so to the satisfaction of the many critical eyes watching my 'technique'. Since it is hygienic looking, they have stopped selling eggs for 2 weeks now. Apparently, they are under the misconception that bird flu lives inside the eggs. So, no eggs, unless I want to bargain for the ones that are all dirty and sold on the roadside, and probably did expose some 4 year old child to bird flu while he was out collecting them. Cheese has also not made its way to this country. Nor have any of the neighboring international cuisines. There is a sushi restaurant here though. Can you imagine...eating raw fish in Dhaka?

A food historian would have a field day here. If there is such a thing. Maybe I'll invite Elton Brown to come and do an expose. Obviously there is a great deal of poverty here. But even among those who are not poor, they insist on eating watery Dal over copious quantities of rice. They can afford to add more bulk to their food. They can certainly afford to grind the rice and make some rice flour. And I'm sure that they can get fish that aren't so darn bony. Alas, tradition prevails.

Send me an email. And have an alcoholic beverage with your pepperoni pizza and your eggs Benedict. On my behalf. Please?