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?