Thursday, September 20, 2007

Ramadan

it is ramadan this month. this is when muhammed received the quran. so, for the entire month, all muslims are supposed to observe religious laws strictly such as charity, good will towards others, abstaining from sin, and most importantly: fasting during the daylight hours. this is supposed to bring everybody closer to god and engender attitudes of serenity and peace. what i've discovered so far however is that everyone is just really grumpy. until sundown, when you eat iftar, which is the breaking of the fast. the entire city collectively stops what it is doing to chow down on fried food, and finally stop complaining about how hungry they are.

















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Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Future Plans

i just looked down at my shaking hand (presumably from my cofi 11 espresso) and decided it would not be prudent to leave just yet, until i come off my coffee high at least. some of you may have met my former-roommate-steve before, but for those who haven't, he is the guy who i'm visiting in bangladesh right now. his fulbright scholar grant finishes up within the next couple months and it couldn't be soon enough for him. he is burned out on the country, but more specifically on ngo's in the country. as a remedy for this, i have graciously offered to accompany him to a small island in the thai gulf, called koh tao, so we can learn to free dive for a few weeks. free diving involves learning to control your heart rate and breath so you can dive down to about 50 feet for several minutes on a single breath of air, like pearl divers. it's much safer than it sounds, really. steve and i will be beach-bums until sheena arrives in early november, when we will travel north to chiang mai university to take our t.e.f.l. class. she and i will then have to be respectable and get jobs teaching english. all this will probably go down early to mid october. my hand has finally stopped shaking, so farewell and good health to you all.



















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Coffee in Dhaka

for some odd reason, its impossible to get good coffee in all bangladesh. most places have the instant, nestle crystals, which don't seem very much like coffee at all. that is, until i was referred to cofi 11 but some other expats. apparently, it's one of the 3 places to get a good cup of (western) coffee in this whole gigantic city of 12 million. so here i sit in cofi 11, drinking an espresso and listening to john coltrane. normally, i dislike going to places i could go to very easily in the states. but bangladesh has proved more challenging than i had originally thought. the constant stares really get to you. and these aren't stares of curiosity. they're the kind of stares you get when you were in 2nd grade and the teacher calls for attention but you didn't hear because you were too busy talking to your friend, until you look up and the whole class is staring. just like the coffee shop staff are trained on me right now, intently wondering what i am writing, i am able to tune them out because of the espresso in front of me, jazz in my ears, and the distinctly western aesthetic environment i'm surrounded by.


















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The State of Bangladesh

it has been about 2 and a half weeks now since i arrived in dhaka, bangladesh. i think i finally have a pretty complete picture of what i think about the country. keep in mind that my opinion is heavily colored by the group of expat foreign nationals living in bangladesh ngo workers non-government organizations i hang out with. they are a bunch of incredibly brilliant folks all applying their ample brain power to the problems of the country. while some of them do get to see results, most of them have their efforts frustrated by hostile environmental, social, and political conditions. for instance, the government comes in a solid second place for corruption, with only congo taking the gold medal. environmentally, flooding is a very constant occurrence across the low lying country. there isn't enough space to grow all the food they need, and the infrastructure is under capacity and in disrepair. the bangladesh people have the odds stacked against them and are plagued with a broken government to boot. the country has a good deal of natural beauty, but even this is often choked with pollution and poverty. the only redeeming quality is the people themselves. and yet, depending on your perspective, it is the people (government mostly) who are the biggest problem. and finally, it's really difficult to get a good old fashioned beer since it's an islamic nation. ultimately, bangladesh is not a place you come unless you're working or have something to keep yourself occupied with. bear in mind, i have enjoyed* my time here, i just don't think that i'll be back unless it's in some sort of development context. note: i use the term enjoy loosely. hawaii is a place you enjoy. the carribean is a place you enjoy. bangladesh is not one of those places.




















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Dhaka, 1st Week

I arrive in Dhaka from new york and notice that the country is more or less sea mixed with land, in equal parts. from the ocean, skinny strips of land jut out to mix and tangle with other snakes of land. from the plane, these unruly strips eventually organize themselves into a gridlike pattern in order for farmers to use them for roads to get out to their rice paddies. the order slowly degenerates again as the buildings, slums, and streets of dhaka appear. i happened to fly in right during the middle of a student protest in which the caretaker government shut down all transportation and communications in the city. luckly my former-roomate-steve weasled his way through military checkpoints in the middle of a curfew, on a rickshaw no less. this was very good because i would've had no way to contact him or get to his house, not speaking bangla myself. as we pedaled safely home using our whiteness to get us through checkpoints, my senses were assailed by the great pitri-dish of dhaka. b.o., trash, human waste, and the illicit odor of hashish punched me in the nose. confronted with beggars at every corner, the eeriest were groups of lepers in a rhythmic, monotone chant of god's name--allah, allah, allah--with arms outstretched, asking with hungry eyes who would be the answer to their prayers. you wonder how much heartbreak you're supposed to feel. in the west, we forget that we're all fragile sacks of biology susceptible to disease and decay, an ever present reminder here.



















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Greetings from Bangladesh

I've decided to try an experiment. Rather than sending out mass e-mails updating my trip through Bangladesh and elsewhere, I'm going to include scans from my travel journal. This will help me continue writing even when I don't have internet access and be a little more personal than e-mail. The images are a little small, but you can click on them for a bigger version. And I've tried to keep my handwriting as legible as possible! You can also leave comments or ask questions for each post, and of course, there's always e-mail. Let me know what you think of this system. Thanks!
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