Allergic in the throat....quote of the week

I realize this is pretty long, so if you just want the goods I put $$ by the money stories...otherwise enjoy...

The weeks run down:
Saturday: Travel to Kurigram, meet staff and visit the Dhorola Bank (river bank)
Sunday: Travel to Chars, visit sanitation seminar for boys from the Chars on the way,
visit two schools on the Chars (one funded, one not funded)
Monday: Visit Chars 4 livelihood development programs (microfinance based
community programs mostly) and make a home visit to a health worker
Tuesday: Travel back to Kurigram and have a rest day since it is a Holiday in
Bangladesh
Wednesday: Visit the Antor Sanggeet Center and a Disaster Risk Reduction program
Thursday: Visit a VGDUP program at Rajarhat and then back to Rangpur

We all look forward to the times that we return to Rangpur for a chance to write home and to write our blogs but after supper last night the internet stopped working so I think today (Friday the 20th) everyone is pretty frustrated. We have had pretty bad luck with the blogging it seems lol, last week the blogger website was down for repairs for the majority of our time in Rangpur and this week the internet is out. Otherwise, we love coming to Rangpur where Aslam (guest house manager) and his staff take ridiculously good care of us !!

I know this week looks a little bare, but in reality it was a pretty crazy week. Generally, when we arrive at a new RDRS post we are introduced to the staff, but at Kurigram we were completely debriefed by what seemed like the entire staff there. It was a lot of information all at once, but very helpful to give us an understanding of the challenges the area is facing. We learned that the Kurigram area (including the Chars) and the Lalmonirhat area are the two most at risk areas in the country. This is largely a result of the fact that they face a lot of natural disasters. Most commonly, they face immense flooding during the monsoon season, which previously had been June to August, but due to global warming is becoming increasingly sporadic. We learned a lot more about the area from the many managers we spoke to, but also got an unexpected lesson in love, aka: the single life vs. the married life, from one of the managers. It was pretty funny, one minute you are talking about disaster awareness and then all of a sudden the manager is asking us philosophical questions about being single and being married, very random. This specific manager, liked to drop in at the guest house and have philosophical conversations about other things, like feelings and the eternal as well throughout the week, pretty funny.

Everyone had warned us coming into the program that our time at the Chars would be the most challenging, as well as the most rewarding part of our trip. So in preparation, our group decided to buy an entire box of Kit Kat bars. Although they are about 2/3s the size of North American Kit Kat Bars, we bought a box of around 20 bars for 700 takka=$10!! This was easily the best decision we have made all trip. 

The trip to the Chars involved an hour drive from Kurigram , followed by an hourish boat ride to the Chars islands. Since we left Dhaka we have had the same faithful driver Jakial, who has been a pretty solid guy who loves to play crazy eights. He may not speak very much English, but he sure loves/knows how to say: “pick up 8!” and “miss a turn!” lol As we were boarding our boat to the Chars, which was just like the wooden boats with the little huts on them that you see in Thailand but longer, we realized that he wasn’t coming with us. Up until this point, he had sorta been our “safety blanket” and we were all very sad he wasn’t coming with us. As usual, our funny luck continued on this trip. During the car ride, we had popped another tire, this time on a train bridge that was being used as a car bridge while another one was being constructed. This sketchy train bridge was just wide enough for one way traffic and we had a number of the psycho bus drivers behind us. We though that we were going to be in for some serious angry honking while Jakial fixed our tire, but people actually got off the bus and helped us fix our tire. Then on the boat, we were about half way to the Chars and the engine broke. So we just hung out while the men worked to fix it up. We all contemplated swimming until Lindsey informed us that fresh water swims would likely lead to parasites, which the team decided was a souvenir none of us wanted. After this, we arrived safely at the chars where we were greeted by a fleet of motor cycles and drivers. This was the best part of the trip. We all got to hop on the back of a motor cycle and ride to our guest house.

The Chars are a pretty incredible place. They have all the culture, color and friendly people that I love about Bangladesh, without the speed, overpopulation and pollution that taints the main land. When we got to our guest house, it was definitely not the amazing towers we had been lucky enough to stay in up until this point. It was essentially a U shaped tin hut facility with around 4 bed rooms, 3 offices, a kitchen a dining room, and a super sketch “washroom.” The Chars has very little electricity, but we were lucky to have a light in our room….but not in the washroom. I am so so so so so grateful that since I have been taking my malaria pills at night I have been feeling much better. The washroom on the chars was a back room with three sections. The first is a T water pump, then a closet type space for bucket showers and finally a closet space with a porcelain whole in the ground, and a bucket. To put it simply, it was a very interesting experience! 

We had 4 mosquito netted beds for 5 people, so for the 2 nights we were there, two people shared a bed, but they were pretty wide so this wasn’t a big deal. Our walls were tin, and we had barred windows with curtains and metal shutters. Unless our shutters were closed, and sometimes even then, we generally had a mob (mostly children but some adults) outside and hanging on our windows at all hours.

Going to the two schools that night was a very interesting. When we got to the first schools there was a pretty large group of adults there waiting outside the school. As soon as we were inside the doors of the classroom it was clear that the teacher and our interpreter were on a mission. We would as the classroom different questions, but instead the answers we would get back were all centered about how hard it was to finance the school and how hot the classroom was, ect. Then we left the classroom to talk to the parents outside and again the same sorts of answers no matter our questions: pay/ sponsor our school. This set me back a little. I wondered again, what had people told these people we were coming here to do? We also knew that groups prior to us had sent funds to sponsor a school for the next 5 years. When we asked about these funds, it sounded like they were tied up in administration but should be on their way. We then continued onto a school sponsored by a Japanese organization and were surprised to see that the only real differences were that the students were in uniforms and the teacher was actually paid less than the teacher in the unfunded school (3000 takka vs 2300takka a month (72 takka=1 Canadian dollar)). Both classrooms had desks around the outside of the classroom, both classrooms were tin with a thatch style roof, and similar classroom sizes. I realize that if this was a school in Canada there would be outrage, but this is Bangladesh and these were actually the classroom we had seen with actual desks in them for the students and the teacher. This made me a little skeptical of the school begging us to fund them. During our discussion we had come to the conclusion that it cost parents 100 takka a month, plus supplies which worked out to about 3000 per year including supplies ( about 42 dollars Canadian). I am not saying I don’t think that this school deserves schooling, I am just saying it left me really thinking about this school compared to some of the other schools that we had been to that were also parent paid for.

We ended our first night on the Chars with an amazing culture show from the village. There were instruments, singing and men dancing (apparently there is something wrong with women dancing in public :S ). Once again, we were asked to sing and dance for them and once again our attempts to return the favor were pretty weak. Beginning with a group O Canada followed by me singing Grundy County Auction (which went pretty well considering I rarely sing in public lol) and then a couple verses of a number of different songs and ending with Good Old Hockey game. During the last verse of which, Lindsay and I did a Pokka, and the crowd went pretty crazy for it :P During the evenings events we also got to see some pretty impressive bats the size of large pigeons in the sky. After a Kit Kat party, we went to bed and got all tucked in with our mosquito netting. During both nights we were there, there were intense rain storms during the night, which we were very grateful for since they helped drop the temperature dramatically.

The next day we visited a number of community finance and educational programs in the morning, during one a women invited us to visit her home in the afternoon. After lunch, we played with our mob of children outside our window with a Frisbee. It was a ridiculous amount of fun. Since we had first arrived we had made a friend with one of the little local boys. When the interpreter saw us with this boy he told us he was “Abnormal” and expected us to shoe the boy away. Instead, we played games with him, he loved clapping or drumming on our hands and meowing. He was very cute and friendly, but we all knew that after adolescence that there would be no social/ government help for this young boy and he would likely fall into begging for money. During our time with the children, I played with the boy with a learning disabilities younger brother. This little boy had always followed his older brother around, but was very shy. During our games he got a little more adventurous and he and I took turns scaring each other! Probably the highlight of my day!!

$$That evening, supper was a pretty dramatic affair lol. After the culture event we went to the dining room for dinner. It was the 5 of us and 2 RDRS managers. We were warned not to eat the prawns so when prawns were served there were a few glances around the room and we tried to politely refuse. Delaney was trying to explain that she was allergic (not wanting to explain the real reason was that were told they were a good way to get parasites) however, the non-English speaking host continued to try putting them on her plate. Everything was going just fine until Kaitlan and I noticed a few rather large bugs flying around the room. At first we thought they were moths – or butterflies of the night as we liked to call them. Bilan really doesn’t like bugs so it just makes it sound better. However, then we noticed that they were landing on the beams and crawling around. They were cockroaches, I have never seen cockroaches fly that much, I was trying to contain my horror. So we continued to say they were ‘butterflies of the night’, until Kaitlan said “if by ‘butterflies of the night you mean cockroaches” the blood drained from Bilan’s face. I tried to contain the situation by saying Kaitlan was kidding and they really were butterflies of the night. Lindsay still confused about what they were brought her knees up on the bench and covered her head still trying to figure out what was going on. Bilan wanting to believe they were not cockroaches hesitantly accepted that Kaitlan was just kidding they were cockroaches. This worked until one zipped over our heads Bilan screamed and Delaney threw the banana she was about to peel. Bilan was panicked so we told her to leave as Delaney, Kaitlan, Lindsay and I tried to remain polite (however Lindsay still had her knees to her chest and was now covering her head with her arms. Delaney tried to keep us calm by repeating “reign it in” – I’m not sure why, but we managed to remain calm – until cockroach zoomed by the manager sitting next to me and he swatted it. I looked down and saw the satanic bug crawling on my leg. I jumped up on the bench and started swatting at my leg, Kaitlan in the confusion jumped up on the bench to thinking there must be something crawling on the ground. There was a combination of screaming and laughing… dinner was pretty much over after that. We retreated to our rooms. We sat on the beds laughing and brought out the box of kit kat bars we brought and then crawled into our bed, tucked in our mosquito nets (extra tight this time) and went to sleep.

Leaving the Chars the next day was very sad. I really fell in love with the place, regardless of the bathroom facilities. I know it would be difficult to live in such a place after living in a developed country, but it also had a very calming effect. There was poverty there, but of a different, more manageable sort. The sense of community was obvious to everyone and as a group, they worked to make sure that everyone had enough. They were poor, but had almost everything they needed to survive, unlike the poor people we had seen in Dhaka or Rangpur. The Chars also reminds me of English class lol and pastoral poetry. How people romanticize the rural, pastoral life. When I talk about how much I love the Chars, I am not trying to cover up its roughness, just appreciating the wonderful parts of it.

When we arrived at the boat to leave it had an extra passenger, JAKIAL!!! When we saw him we all cheered and shouted his name with big waves and smiles. I would think he was likely very surprised by our reaction lol. He then drove us back to Kurigram where we had our rest day, due to the holiday.

The next day there was some confusion at the office because we were suppose to go to a school feeding program, but school was apparently in summer break so that was clearly not possible. After some scurrying, we traveled to a small village and had some really great conversations with the community federation people. The most interesting fact we learned from the meeting was that during floods the use floating gardens, which I found super interesting. This community also had a goat program for the ultra poor in the village. Ten extreme poor villagers were given a goat. They had this goat for 2 years free of charge, then they were expected to share the profits from the goat 40/60(60 for the Fed.) with the federation to pay off the goat. After the goat was paid off the federation would give another goat to a new extreme poor villager. I liked how self sustaining the villages programs were. For instance, they also had a program where they paid villagers who could not find work to raise up houses so that they would be safe during the flood season. The houses they chose for these programs were the homes of people who were unable to financially or physically build up their houses. The house we visited was of a woman in her 60s who had inherited some land from her father. It was great to see how such a program could help so many people in the village all at once.


$$After we left the village another storm started up. All the roads were very small and dirt, so driving began to be a little dicey. The sketchiest part was right before a bridge. We are all pretty confident and trusting of Jakial, so none of us was really paying attention until we started sliding and then Jakial started to shout at our interpreter beside him. I looked ahead and saw we were sliding straight for a steep sided fish pond (about 10- 15 ft to the water then no idea how deep the pond was). Up until this moment, Jakial had always been calm, even when it seemed like a bus might be coming straight at us so it was pretty intense to hear him start freaking our for about thirty seconds, but then thankfully we stopped just in time. The interpreter got out first with the manager who was with us and then after they looked at the situation they made us get out of the van. The van had stopped about half a meter from the edge, no wonder Jakial was freaking out. Then they made us watch Jakial drive the rest of the skinny path till we were back to a safer road. This was probably the scariest moment of the trip this far, but we still have complete faith in our favorite driver Jakial.

The next morning it was Delaney’s birthday and she woke up to both the cooks and Jakial giving her flowers. It was pretty exciting. Then after saying good bye to the staff at Kurigram we headed back to Rangpur to see Aslam and staff. They also had flowers for Delaney!! We spent our afternoon shopping to get our sari tops and bottoms made. Finally at dinner, Aslam had made Delaney a birthday upside down pineapple cake. She had a very spoiled international birthday!!

This week has been a pretty exciting one and has made me thing a lot about teaching and different ways I can integrate the things I have learned and seen. This makes me feel pretty nerdy lol. After our Thursday night, and entire Saturday without internet we are lucky again to have computer access With internet, and will have access till Monday morning here, so I will blog about my experiences at the sex trade center today later on.

I hope everyone is doing well at home and that the weather is warming up!!
-Kaitlan