Colleague: We want to go to the field, and you have to come, but you are a bideshi (foreigner)
Me: Ah, yes, I am, is that a problem?
Colleague: I don’t know, what do you think? Do you think it is a problem?
Me: [quizzical tone] why would it be a problem this time? It wasn’t last week, or the week before that, or…
Colleague: Because this field needs a boat. Maybe it is not comfortable for you?
Me: Oh, right, a boat. [relieved] No, no, that’s no problem. I have been on a boat before. It’s ok.
Colleague: [beaming] Excellent! You are a strong girl!
Pause
What about a speed boat? Is that a problem?
Me: Speed boat? No. No problem. I have no problem going on a speed boat. So, no problem then, we can go to the field.
……
Before I knew it I found myself sitting in a tin shack on a plastic chair doing what I do a lot of in Bangladesh. Waiting. Bangladeshi’s, it seems, have an extreme aversion to planning that leaves even me, someone well renowned for my distaste for planning, packing, and preparation in general, astounded. A consequence of this relaxed approach to field trips means we turned up at the boat harbour just in time to see the last tickets on the next speed boat being sold.
At first this was no issue for me. I was content enough taking happy snaps of the absurdity of a sea port with no water complete with a huge tug boat surreally sticking out of the sand looking like a beached environmental hazard waiting to happen.
While not photographing the next Exxon Valdez, I busied myself by trying to sound out the pamphlets stuck on the tin walls, much to the amusement of the crowd that had inevitably started to gather. “U-un- uni-unio-union. U-up-upc-upco-upcom-upcomi-upcomin-upcoming. E-el-ele-elec-elect-electi-election-elections…” Yes, fascinating stuff. For all my boasting, my language skills hover somewhere around that of a clever 14month old. Eventually enough time passed and we were being motioned outside.
Colleague: Ok, it is time to endure many hardship on the journey Lyrian,
What? What hardship? Nothing in the words ‘speed boat’ says ‘hardship’ to me unless you add the alarming verb ‘to sink’, which I had no intention of doing.
Me: What hardships?
Colleague: Oh it will be rough and there will be lots of mud and a long walk and it will be very tougher for you I think
Me: (Looking down at my overnight bag on wheels which is awkward as hell to carry) How far do we have to walk?
Colleague: I’m not sure, but it will be tough. You are so strong!
Me: (wary smile) …Yes…
Hangin' out by the 'sea'
And with that we were off, me trailing my bag feebly behind me, trying to keep it from toppling over on the uneven concrete blocks we were walking over that soon turned into separate concrete blocks which turned into rocks rendering the wheels on my bag completely useless. One glance across the expanse of mud as far as the eye could see very quickly told me this was one trip for which a backpack would have been necessary. Key piece of missing information #1. (And yes, I felt every inch the stupid, precious white tourist that I looked).
Key piece of missing information #2. No water at the ship port means somehow getting out across the muddy river bed to where the water actually is. At a guess I’d say it was about 1.5kms out. That’s 1.5kms of knee deep mud. As I processed this information, I could feel myself tense up at the prospect of tying my shoes to my bag, rolling up my jeans and hoisting everything onto my shoulders to wade out across the expanse. I casually asked my colleague how we were going to get to the speed boat. I was fairly confident that no middle class Bangladeshi would willingly get themselves dirty or walk even half a kilometre let alone wade out through 2kms of knee-deep mud, and hey presto, before she had time to answer I noticed we were heading towards a wooden fishing boat that was waiting at the point where the dry mud became wet mud. Which was great, as far as I was concerned, except for the slight issue of the missing water. In my world the two go hand in hand.
Not in Bangladesh they don’t! No, no! As is the case everywhere in Bangladesh, if you’ve got the money there is always someone willing to do your dirty work for you. Without further ado my colleagues and I climbed into the fishing boat, careful to avoid the sticky mud, and made ourselves comfortable while nine men spread themselves around the outside of the boat and…pushed. Yep, they pushed us the whole two kilometres out across the mud, right past the monstrous boat, and down to the lapping waves.
Being a child of television, I began scripting an episode of The Biggest Loser, complete with the Red Team swearing loudly at the Blue team as they inched ever so slowly along, the sun beating down their backs, multiplying the sweat running down their faces and dripping down into the squelching mud swallowing their feet. Cringe worthy, I know, but I assure you it was much more amusing for me than calculating the daily wages of my ‘pushers’. Being ‘heave’ho’d’ over a muddy expanse rates pretty high on the I Feel Like A Slave Labour Supporting Scum Bag Right Now metre.
"Push!," I say, "Push! Push!"
But, back to the task at hand. The speed boat. That would be the speed boat which was quite obviously not at the water’s edge. So, again we wait. And we wait. We wait for half an hour, sitting in the fishing boat in the mud, while every Bangladeshi around with a phone took turns to take happy snaps of me as I took happy snaps of the absurd situation, the big tug looming in the background.
After half an hour, the speedboat turned up and we transferred over to our new transport. A quick scan of the situation brought on more waves of anxiety as I noted the condition of the speedboat, and the distinct absence of a life jacket. Cue that pesky voiceover in my head which comes in the concerning mix of my father and Morgan Freeman, Shawshank Redemption style, every time I ask a foolish question, “Well, Lyrian, what do you think you should do?” The answer, of course, is admit defeat, turn around, hitch up my pants and head back trailing off mumbled excuses to my colleagues “I’ll see you next week, have a good trip. Turns out I don’t much like speedboats after all…”. But no, no, no.
By now my heart rate is accelerating noticeably. I started picturing our capsized boat spilling people and their packages out both sides, me desperately trying to swim away from everyone else to avoid being dragged down to the bottom. I know from The Titanic that my best hope was trying to hang on to something that floats. Lucky for me I didn’t have to worry about the cold, or trying to accommodate anyone else which gave me an instant edge over Kate and Leo. Quite obviously though, this was not very helpful for my heart rate. It didn’t help to the point that I text messaged my sister with the three songs I want played at my funeral (sorry Kara, that must have been fun!). It’s safe to say I was acutely aware of my mortality.
Before I had the chance to take back my previous assurances that a boat would be no problem, we were off. We were off so fast that I was left in no doubt of the ‘speed’ part of the term ‘speedboat’. The driver was quite calm, though, so I took my cues from him and sat back, practising the deep breathing techniques I learnt in pilates, being generally thankful for the sunglasses hiding the fear in my eyes while channelling all the Easy Rider ‘it’s all cool’ nonchalance I could muster.
Twenty minutes later we cruised into shore and I was left wondering what all the fuss was about. We’d made it, unscathed, and I even had a nice dose of sunburn to show for it. The next step was repeating the heave-ho action, only this time the action was all uphill. [What genius! This would make a much better episode!]. While the distance was about the same, it took double the amount of time and double the amount of uber-fit, muscly, tiny little men to push our lazy, precious arses all the way up.
By about 1pm we were back on dry land and I was eager to get to our hotel, dump my foolishly packed luggage, and find out what it was we’d come to see. Ha! Hotel? To (sort of) quote, 'Tell her she’s dreamin!'.
My room in Zaman’s Guest House
Oh how I love sleeping in other people’s unlaundered sheets! Especially given the conversations my family have had in the past concerning hotel bedlinen which involves blue lights and unsightly stains of, well, I’m sure you know what I’m talking about [CSI, I totally blame you for this]. I do a quick memory scan to see what I think I’ve packed and am relieved to recall packing both my sleep sheet and mosquito net. And Rid. And my head torch, which was looking like the best thing ever since I'd just been told the island had no electricity (!!), just the odd generator here and there.
Cue missing piece of information #3. No electricity? Now that's all fine and well when I'm pretending to be Indiana Jones in the middle of Katherine Gorge National Park, but not when I'm on a work trip. Not when I brought my laptop to work on. Not when it gets dark at 6pm and not light again until 6am and there are bugs everywhere in my room and I'm all alone and... Oh grow up, I told myself, you love this stuff. You can even picture yourself right now, Anne Frank style, typing it up in your, er, blog one day for people to stumble across in the future when this is all done and dusted and Bangladesh is a first world nation leading the way in Best Practice Environmentalism... or something. [Did I just compare myself to a Anne Fank? Hmmm, one reality check to be delivered straight to Chittagong, please. As soon as possible...]
After coming to terms with the reality that I was stuck sleeping in this shithole (apologies, but sometimes crass language is called for) for the next two nights, it was time to deal with the next issue. The 16 year old boy who was now in my room demanding my phone number while picking up my things including my pyjamas and toiletries. By now I’m starting to realise this is all actually one big elaborate joke to see just how far I could be pushed – right? Because really, it’s not actually possible that I’m being bullied and intimidated by a 16 year old boy on an island with no electricity in a filthy hotel room with no windowpanes or flyscreens in the height of mosquito season, am I? This is not me, I’m not afraid of a boy who can’t even grow chin fluff yet, am I? Am I?
Yes, actually, it turns out I am. Especially this 16 year old boy with the smooth chin and the KEY TO MY ROOM! And while I would like to turn this bit into a funny anecdote that I could guffaw over, I can’t just yet because the only thing I feel now (and at the time too) is infuriated at how screwed up the power dynamics were. Thankfully my colleague stepped up to the plate and made it clear, in no uncertain terms I, and my room, were completely off limits. This didn’t stop me from sleeping with a fork (yep, I’m so tough) and with my overnight bag up against the door so I could hear if anyone got any funny ideas. Which, thankfully, they didn’t.
If by now you’re thinking it’s the time in the story where you need some happy stuff to come back into the picture to keep you interested, then it’s your time in the sun. Yay for the good bits – yay for there even being any good bits! It was certainly more than I expected, kind of like when you get a box of nondescript dodgy chocolates and just as you’re about to give up nibbling a corner of every one to try and find a good one, your teeth come in contact with a nut hidden inside, and all you’d been searching for was a nut, and now, finally, after persevering through fifteen or twenty or maybe thirty other disappointing pieces of choc… [No, really, I’m totally coping with not eating chocolate. I barely even notice it].
But yes, the good bits, and they were really good. Basically, the work side of things was brilliant. I got to meet a feisty group of women who are taking matters into their own hands, tackling domestic abuse head on, building roads so their children could keep going to school during the monsoon, saving money in a collective bank account, and attending literacy and numeracy lessons every week just to list a few of their exciting achievements.
Literacy poster in the village
As if that wasn’t enough, the next day I got to meet the best early childhood teacher I’ve ever meet, and sit amongst a group of children who loved coming to school. I got to watch this group of 3 to 5 year olds eagerly jump up to sing songs about brushing their teeth and washing their hands and then sit amongst their parents and hear how much the village now valued education with four children from this preschool going on to graduate in the top of their classes once they progressed to primary school.
I had so much fun there, in fact, that as I sat on the back of the motorbike, sans helmet (though my driver was sporting a rather dashing red one), slipping and sliding on the dirt and muddy roads, wind rushing through my hair and making my orna wave behind me, I was too busy smiling to even consider what would happen if the driver was to lose control. I didn’t even start to panic when he kept taking his eyes off the road so he could turn ask me such crucial questions as “Do you have any brothers and sisters?”, or “What is your subject?” or “Where is your husband?” Nor did my mood dampen when he asked if I would prefer to sit side saddle ‘for your modesty’ (on a motorbike, without a helmet, that is slip sliding all over the place – I think not, buddy). In fact, I was still smiling as we sailed back into town and I got dropped off back at my dirty digs for the night.
And just like that I was listening to the first call to prayer at 5:30am, waiting for the sun to rise, before packing up and preparing for the journey back... To be continued...
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