Bangladesh: Round 4

 I arrived back in Bangladesh last night to begin my fourth and possibly (yes, I'm still being non-committal) final ‘round’ in Bangladesh (or fifth, depending on how I count).  I have a new contract until June with GTZ to continue the work I was doing in the fall on gender and urban governance. 

 

It felt strange somehow to arrive back to Dhaka last night. I suppose I expected it to feel more familiar than it did. But, during my three weeks at home, I quickly became used to living the life of Western Canadian in the company of friends and family.  So arriving at an airport that was in total chaos (they decided at one point to have two baggage belts running, which left an already chaotic crowd rushing between the two belts trying to figure out where on earth their bags were) and stepping out into the fog and noise of Dhaka was a bit of a shock. 

 

By this morning, I felt more at home. It was nice to wake up in my own space with the understanding that this is where my life is at the moment. I opened the fridge to find homemade date bars that my roommate had left me, and made a cup of coffee from Columbian beans given to me by a friend whose work recently brought him from Columbia to Dhaka. 

 

Before the date bars and the coffee, I was woken up by a phone call from my – for lack of a better word – maid, Hena, who was eager to know if I had arrived and how my visit with my family was.  An hour later, I received a phone call from my adopted family, the Ripons. When I worked at the Aga Khan Foundation the security guard and I became friends and I have visited his village in South Western Bangladesh a couple of times.  He now calls me Rabeya 2, after his only sister Rabeya who died a few years back, and when I speak to his mother and father I call them Ama and Baba.  Baba was the one to call this morning. I was surprised, because I hadn’t told them when I planned to arrive back in Dhaka, which makes me wonder if they might have been trying to call me everyday since January 1st… Our conversations are very basic, given that they are in Bangla, but they are always cheery and leave me feeling happy, if not a little guilty for not getting down to visit them more often.

 

On my rickshaw ride to work (I did bring my old bicycle back to Dhaka with me, but haven’t had a chance to put it back together yet), I passed a policeman wearing a sleeping mask upside down over his mouth like a dust mask.  Whether it was ingenuity or misunderstanding, I’m not sure, but I couldn’t help but laugh. Next to him was a murghiwallah, a chicken salesman, with a basket of live chickens on his head that were literally (and silently) spilling over its edge.  I then passed a woman walking down the street with a thermos of tea and a treasure trove of cigarettes, beetle nut and miscellaneous sweets.  Traveling tea salesmen are typical here, but traveling tea saleswomen are not – I was shocked and delighted to see that things are indeed changing. Outside my office there was a man with a turtle neck pulled up over his head like a hood; it must have been 20+ degrees out, but I will admit, cold is relative.

 

After lunch I got stuck in a preposterous traffic jam, and was reminded of how dreadfully difficult daily life here can be.  The only other annoyance I have had to endure since returning was a phone call at midnight last night from a strange man who, after I hung up on him, texted me twice to say that he had overheard me speaking Bangla somewhere and that he was so shocked and touched by how good my Bangla was that he had simply wanted to call to compliment me.  On the one hand, it’s a sweet gesture, but on the other hand, I’m simply not okay with people stealing my phone number (from where I can’t imagine) and calling me in the middle of the night!

 

Bangladesh finally held their long-awaited elections while I was away.  The Awami League, still headed by Sheik Hasina, one of the country’s two leading ladies, won by a landslide.  So far, things seem to be running just the same as they have been for the last two years, but I’m sure that there is a lot of surface that must be scratched before I could possibly understand what changes might be afoot.  Regardless, I was happy to hear that the elections were considered (more or less) fair and that the violence normally associated with democracy in Bangladesh was largely absent. 

 

Tonight I attended a farewell dinner for a colleague. Life here seems to include at least one of these every couple of weeks.  One of the joys of being an expat is getting to meet so many interesting people from around the world, and one of the sorrows is having to constantly say goodbye to them.  But at each farewell, I inevitably meet another fascinating person, as I did tonight, and the cycle regenerates itself.

 

Unfortunately, if I don’t get to sleep, I may not be able to regenerate myself in the morning… So, from Dhaka once again, goodnight!