Fame

I couldn’t go past a bit of Bowie when picking the song title for this blog post. Ah, fame, who doesn’t want a piece of it? And while I’m tempted to launch right into the very middle of my story which features me as Angelina Jolie (without the lips and the hair and with a bit more meat on my bones and the kids. Oh, and Brad), I’ll resist the temptation and start at the beginning.

Sonargaon, otherwise known as ‘Panam City’, is one of the oldest capitals of Bengal, dating back to the 13^th Century according to a few unreliable sources. It’s about 30kms out of Dhaka and the Lonely Planet says it is where ‘families go for fresh air on Fridays’.

Being the type of people who perk up at the prospect of ‘fresh air’, a group of us packed a picnic and battled with the local bus (won’t go on about it but was an experience all on it’s own where the irony of me attempting to read a chapter of Cultural Amnesia by Clive James was not lost) in hopes of catching this ancient capital, some fresh air, and a ‘folk art museum’ (or two) while we were at it.

As we payed our 10 taka and picked our patch of grass to set up our picnic on, it became quite apparent that between us we’d patched together a masterpiece of a feast! We had bread and tomatoes and cucumbers and mandarins and an apple and some digestive biscuits, a few carrots and even some fake dairy milk chocolate. I know, I know, I can see you all salivating, but really, this represents a comprehensive effort on all parts in Bangladesh – see how yummy it looks:

Question: were you focusing on our fabulous food then, or looking at all the people who were looking at us while we were looking at them looking at us?

I thought so.

So, yes, fame, here it is, right here. Being a bideshi or foreigner in Bangladesh automatically elevates you to the status of ‘main attraction’ no matter where you are or what you are doing. With the wonderful advent of cameras in mobile phones, it has also meant that everyone with a phone has the power to take happy snaps of you doing anything from buying vegetables (she eats!) and sitting in a rickshaw (and goes out!) to strolling down the street (and walks!) and waiting for a bus (and queues!) and…

To every celebrity out there, I apologise for the tabloid press which harass and harangue and humiliate you when all you're trying to do is have a quiet cafe breakfast after a big night out*. I shudder to think at the truly horrific photos of me doing the picture messaging rounds among teenage boys here (oh, not to mention the text that would go with it given the reputation we western women have…).

But really, it’s a truly crazy feeling being asked to stand and smile among a group of people you’ve never met before, and pose with props like getting you to wear their sunglasses, or hold their flower, or even weirder - parents seem to have this bizarre habit of forcing their very concerned looking children onto our laps or into our arms and then demanding smiles from the pair of us who are left bewildered by the whole thing. 

Maybe it’s all worth it just so I can draw parallels between myself and BrAngelina (see – I managed to sneak some kids in to make it even more authentic) … But I don’t think so. I just think it’s a bit weird and a bit creepy and on the days when I’m going through a Get Me Off This Island phase, downright annoying. I mean, at the very least people, ASK!!!

On the upside, I’ve had so many photos taken of me in the past three months I’ve completely given up on even half-heartedly attempting to look good in my own photos. In fact, as time goes on I’ve noticed I’m appearing less and less and less in photos of my own life. Perhaps soon I’ll disappear completely, and will only be found in the photo albums of South Asians I’ll never meet again?

And that’s enough on that. Now on to the actual old capital city itself. Dude, it was cool! One of the great things about being here is that no other foreigners are (Yossarian cries “Catch 22” in the distance) which also means that you see ruins and really old important stuff looking like, well, ruins and really old important stuff that people haven’t bothered to put fences around or restore or in the case of Panam City even care much that it’s even there.

A comparatively quiet streetscape

As I wandered down the main street I felt like I was either on a set for an old Western, or … in the middle of one of the most densely populated countries in the world watching a cow tied to a stake in the ground eat grass in front of a really old building decorated with pretty mosaics with very few other people around to notice my smiling face.

Ahhh, the serenity.

Mosaic tiles and a cow in the old capital

*Except to the celebrities who actually like this, of course, to them I suggest you heed F. Scott Fitzgerald’s advice; when it all boils down to it, no one wants to be Gatsby. 

Try (just a little bit harder)

A billboard I pass every day on my way to work in Chittagong.

A Little Ramblin' Blues for Any Hour

A definition of ‘direction sense’:

Noun 1. sense of direction - an awareness of your orientation in space

Or so says the online free dictionary, which is surely a ‘source of truth’ if ever there was one. I could go a few steps further and really interrogate the obscurity of this definition which I find about as precise and clear and unambiguous as the ‘mixed vegetables’ option on a Bangladeshi menu, but won’t for fear of becoming even more obtuse than the definition itself.

Having said that, the very ambiguity of the definition seems to fit me perfectly because, whatever this mysterious ‘sense of direction’ is – it is beyond me. As I get older, meet more people, travel, drive, and basically move beyond the geographical boundaries of my youth (home, school, places that were not home or school that I liked to think my parent’s never knew about and so on) it becomes absurdly and abundantly clear – I just don’t have a sense of direction.

(And here comes the story about the underground foot tunnel, as promised, for those of you who skipped over the earnest part of my previous post)

Last week I had to work in the Dhaka head office for two days. Having reasonably useful language skills by now and being fairly adept at catching local transport meant this shouldn’t have been a problem.

Day One – I catch a CNG (mini cab thing) and arrive at the office door 10 minutes early, but get charged a ridiculously exorbitant amount by the driver despite my best bargaining powers.

Which brings me to Day Two where I decided I knew well enough where I needed to go that I can share a rickshaw with Casey, another AYAD who works in a similar area, and walk the remaining five minutes to my office thereby saving a staggering, oh, $2.50.

Now, being well aware of my deficiencies when it comes to directions, Casey and I went over the city map the night before. All good. All simple. On the actual morning as we went our separate ways, I had her stop and point out again exactly where I needed to go very clearly. Fine, all good, my head nods up and down enthusiastically with comprehension and confidence, and off I go…

…until about 15 minutes later when I get the feeling that something isn’t quite right as I’d been walking for a while now and nothing was looking familiar enough. Another few minutes another few steps and I suddenly (yes, I swear it was suddenly) find myself heading down this tiny dirt lane way with no professional looking people around, lots of street people, and some shady looking characters who take an interest in me I don’t like the look of. Right – time for Plan B.

Turning back didn’t seem like a great option considering the shadiness of my followers and the sensation I was causing, so instead I continued walking confidently in the same direction until the end of the lane where I decided to hail a rickshaw and try again.

Rickshaw takes me back down shady laneway, much to everyone’s amusement (but mine). We get to the end of the lane and the rickshaw wallah explains that I have to cross the road using an underground foot tunnel which would take me to the market where my office is. I take a look at the tunnel and the only people who appear to be using it are men in lungis (and nothing else) with huge baskets of vegetables on their heads. At this point I remember how very white and very female and very well dressed I am in comparison to everyone else, but descend into the tunnel anyway.

Cue moment in film where everyone says “No!!!!!!” to Drew Barrymore in Scream when she puts down the phone (or not, since I’m alive to tell the tale and I’m pretty sure Drew’s character didn’t make it past the first 10 minutes).

So, here I am descending into complete darkness, pushing and shoving my way past the waves of people coming at me. Of course I’m going against the flow of people. All I can see are vague shapes coming at me, but I can feel hands and feet and arms and shoulders and backs and all sorts all over me as people scramble about inside the tunnel. I now know that the tunnel is a throughway used by market sellers who transport their fruit and veg to their stalls under here. This makes it a very attractive place for beggars to hang out in the hopes of grabbing some of the food that falls from the baskets. It also means the men rush through at lightning pace as they know beggars have this very idea in mind. Now I come to the steps up (still in the dark here) and somewhere near the top of the stairs someone had just dropped their entire basket load of potatoes and carrots which were now rolling down the stairs.

As soon as people realise this, it’s on for one and all as a mad rush is made to scoop up the fallen veggies. Meanwhile I’m desperately trying to weave a path through the madness by pulling myself up the stairs using the handrail, shoving people aside while trying not to trip on a potato. Finally I make it to the top of the tunnel and am gratefully spat out back into the sunlight and out of the madness only to find myself in the dead center of the chicken slaughtering section of the market. And I don’t use the term ‘slaughter’ lightly. There was blood and guts everywhere, and it absolutely stank.

Since I had yet to gather my bearings, I moved straight ahead to get as far away from this scene as possible while trying to avoid the trajectories of chicken blood flying through the air and rid thoughts of the recent avian bird flu case found in Bangladesh from my mind and end up in the chilli frying section. Whilst this is a vast improvement on the street side abattoir, the smell of chilli frying in the air combined with chicken gut smell combined with the adrenalin pumping through me from the underground adventure meant that by the time I found the office I was an hour late and a sweaty, watery-eyed mess from the sensory overload.

When at the front door of the office I took a moment to compose myself and glanced across the street only to realise… this is virtually where I got off the rickshaw in the first place. Brilliant.

Was There Anything I Could Do?

Another week in Bangladesh and I’ve collected a pocketful of stories like shells from the beach only they’re not as shiny and I’m sure if I put them to my ear I won’t be hearing the sounds of waves crashing. Especially not since it’s the noise from inside your ear you’re hearing reflected back at you from the inside the shell. What a disappointing day it was when I found that out – the idea of having a little bit of the sea in a shell in the palm of my hand was very romantic to me at the age of seven. And still is, really.

And while I could tell some of these stories, I think I'll tell the story of:

What it is I actually do here

I’ve been avoiding posting about this directly since, well, to be honest I wasn’t even sure what it is I do apart from get stared at and dress in primary colours and wander around villages asking children if they like school while taking photos of their parents doing crazy things like…watering their vegetable patch.

As I near the three-month mark, and since I’ve had this conversation almost as many times as I’ve responded to the question “what is your country?” I’m probably as prepared as I’ll ever be. And without further ado, here is

Job Description of a Development Communications Assistant in Bangladesh

(Slightly abridged and edited version)

- Walk to work while refusing rides from rickshaw wallahs to arrive at 8am trying not to laugh at all the people wrapped up in beanies and scarves at 15 degrees

- Have cha (tea) and ‘discuss’ with colleagues

- Check e mails, of which there will be about 800, 750 of which will be all of office e mails saying variations of: “I will be out of the office on a field visit”, or “I am back from my diseases”, or “remember to fill out this form today which was due four years ago”…

- Knuckle down (after chuckling at above) and get knee deep in researching my next visit to the field which will focus on one, or all, of my program’s areas:
* Income generation and food security
* Women’s empowerment
* Natural disaster risk reduction
* Health and education

And here comes the serious bit (feel free to tune out and skip on to the next story which will invariably be about me getting lost in an underground foot tunnel in the dark trying to avoid the mess of limbs created by people scrambling for potatoes rolling down the stairs…)

Serious bit...

But, for those who are still tuned in: more specifically, at the moment my focus at work has been making a documentary on the excavation of a canal in an extremely poor region of Bangladesh, which has solved water logging problems in the area. It has been fascinating, and is a great example of aid work - well, working - as it has led to improvements in all of the above areas.

The canal before excavation

See, the ‘buzz word’ in aid these days is ‘sustainability’. There’s an age-old adage that goes something like “you can give a man a fish and feed him for a day…etc.”, and essentially that is at the heart of the program I am working in. It aims to not only feed our beneficiaries, or send their children to school, or disaster-proof their house; but do all of this at once and in a way which can continue long after our funding has run out.

Fishing in the canal - after excavation

Which is really bloody hard when you get down to it, for many reasons, but I guess the reason that sticks out most to me is that once you start ‘meddling’ in a community (be it a village, a slum, a union, whatever), you automatically start fiddling with the power dynamics of the place. And once that happens it’s a bit like the butterfly wings flapping idea that winds up causing a tsunami somewhere else (so glad other people have come up with snappy metaphors for me).

You see (adopt wise professor type voice) when people don’t have enough food, can’t afford to or access education, can’t earn any money, and have all their assets (and possibly their lives) washed away by fairly regular natural disasters, you can imagine how much power and representation they have in their local community. And, as uncomfortable as it is to talk about, there are a lot of people who benefit (intentionally or not) from a large proportion of the community not having any power, or much of a voice.

So, when well-meaning people (like my very eager self) wander into a village and start messing around with things like mother and child nutrition, agricultural training, education, sanitation, and empowerment, and all at the one time, you can start to see what ripple effects that may have. And why it has the potential to cause quite a mess if you go at it like a bull at a gate (I can borrow them till the cows come home).

Eager little me

In a country like Bangladesh where an overwhelming proportion of the population teeter precariously on the edge of subsistence poverty, there can be quite a lot of resentment in a community when only the poorest of the poor receive aid. On a wider scale, as people spend less time just trying to survive, they have more time for things like demanding to participate in the local community, demand government services, become aware of things like local unions and local elections, and at an even more basic level they start living as opposed to dying, or being well enough to attend school and work as opposed to having constant diarrhea etc. Which makes a very big difference in the community on a small scale, and when you start multiplying this across the 400,000 households my program works directly with, starts to make my eyes boggle at the rate and scale of change we are causing.

Another view of the same canal after excavation

As I type this, I know I am teetering precariously myself on the edge of trying too simplistically to explain what I am learning on a daily basis here and will insert the disclaimer that I’ve still got my training wheels on when it comes to development work.

But, I guess at the heart of what I am trying to say is that my ‘day job’ is to capture the personal stories of the impacts of my program’s interventions across the country, and I’m only just beginning to understand what these impacts are. And I love it.

A Day In The Life

As I stumbled off the plane in Dhaka, trying to stash my duty free liquor in a non see-through bag while shoving my pillow and blanket from the plane into my back pack (thank you Malaysian Airlines) I was a bit nervous as to how I would feel living once again in Bangladesh.

Lucky for me there are psychologists with expensive degrees out there who have come up with a cultural bell-curve thingy which AusAID gave us to help prepare us for the ups and downs that go hand in hand with moving to a new culture. The journey goes something like this:

1. Kid In A Candy Store amazement at all the sights, sounds, colours, smells and ‘newness’ of your new home which progresses to:

2. First Day At School jitters as some of the shininess wears off and you realise you can’t speak the language, don’t know how to buy a bus ticket, or where to leave your household rubbish let alone find your office and start an actual job. Which sneaks you to:

3. Cool Cat Confidence mode as you learn how to say: “not that tomato, this one, and do a better price while you’re at it”; find out that the people at the bus ticket window enjoy playing charades and will often give you a ticket in return for cash; and discover that if you hand your household rubbish bag straight to the street people you can avoid the nasty business of watching them climb into the dumpster to get it after you throw it in. But alas, CCC doesn’t last and becomes:

4. Get Me Off This Bloody Island: and NOW! Because the whole damn place is broken, everything stinks, the food is crap and makes you sick, it takes seven hundred man hours to change a light bulb let alone a tyre, the toilet (if there is one) doesn’t flush, everyone is either scamming you, trying to steal from you, or trying to convince you to marry them/their son/their cousin’s cousin’s cousin and all the while you realise no one, and I mean no one, loves you here. Ouch.

5. I’m Gonna Get A New Tattoo: thankfully, does come along next and as you contemplate whether the fresh ink will emblazon your left shoulder blade or you’re right, you know it’s going to be your link forever to this place which is your home man, and this permanent thing is exactly the right thing to do because this place is under my skin and no one will ever really get it but you… until you come full circle and preparing to go home makes you feel once again like…

1. A Kid In A Candy Store.

As I near the three month mark of my time here in Bangladesh, I think the dudes with degrees got it mostly right, only they forgot to add the bit which says this can be a DAILY cycle in Bangladesh (and I think most Bangladeshi AYADs would agree with me).

Of course the next bit of this post would be the bit where I say which stage I’m at now, wouldn’t it?

Electioneering

After all the hype and hypersensitivity - Bangladesh has a new democratically elected government! 

In an (acknowledged) rare move I will refrain from giving my personal opinion on the election and the winning party for the dual reasons of following AYAD policy in keeping our noses out of politics, and because I spent 99% of the election period inside my apartment in excellent company with virtually no connections to the outside world so I'm only just coming up to speed myself. 

But I will let others do the talking for me - here's a snippet from BBC World News. 

01:19 GMT, Tuesday, 30 December 2008

Bangladesh stunned by Awami victory

By Sabir Mustafa
BBC News, Dhaka

Bangladesh is set for a government with the biggest parliamentary majority since 1973, following Monday's general elections designed to bring an end to two years of military-backed rule.

In an election marked by high turnout and few incidents, the centre-left Awami League - headed by former prime minister Sheikh Hasina - and its allies pulled off a stunning victory, winning a two-thirds majority in the single-chamber national assembly.