Heading out on Safari

Hey hey hey – were heading out on “safari” tomorrow AM. That means we’ll be at an unusually remote worksite where we’ll actually stay for a week as opposed to commuting back and forth more than an hour each way every day. Advantage: we get to stay in a cyclone shelter, something like the one pictured. That means we’ll be isolated a bit from the crowds of locals that tend to form around wherever westerners stay in small towns, which is a good thing. The shelter is essentially a concrete bunker raised on stilts; the bunker is to protect occupants from rain, wind, and flying debris; the stilts keep the whole affair up and out of the flood waters.

Fortunately, cyclone season is 8 months away. We’ll have challenge enough dealing with the lack of electricity and “rudimentary” bathroom and bathing facilities – yikes! But, were going with a good crew, and we’ve got enough chocolate bars (courtesy of the chocolate pimp), biscuits, and treats to keep ourselves motivated. Were also having a charging frenzy right now – ipods, cellphones, laptops, and cameras are plugged into every available outlet. Yes – I am bringing my laptop, with the expectation of getting one solid Cyclone Shelter Movie Night out of the battery – continuing my grand tradition of excessive technology in inappropriate locations.

Anyway – point is, we’ll be more or less out of touch for the next 5 days… so we’ll be slow to reply to email or correspondence, apologies in advance!r

Alright, Stop: Bangla Time!

Wow – it turns out weve been here one month as of today (having arrived Feb. 19th) – crazy how the time flies by. As it turns out, today we also figured out our departure plans: March 26th (next Wednesday) we’ll start our way back to Dhaka (hopefully by Rocket steamer), and then onto Singapore for a few days, and then to Malaysia for a month or two.

Its been a great month – every day is full of adventure and weirdness. If your curious, our days go something like this, starting with…

Bed Time

In true Bangla style, I’ll do this backwards, starting with bed. To be honest, the depths of night are one of the most fascinating times of day in Bangladesh. Anyway – bed time is a great social affair, which depending on the exhaustion factor and the availability of electricity, starts around 9:30. Electricity is a big factor: without, most everything becomes a pain in the ass. Working on a laptop, for example, becomes a battle of tenacity between you, trying to do anything, and the bugs – clinging to your screen, flying in your hair, nose, ears, clothes, etc. Similar story for reading a book: a headlamp or flashlight functions as a colosal beacon, attracting all manner of awful: giant flying cockroaches, the previously mentioned winged nasal invasion squad, moths (some of which are quite large), whatever. Oh hell, Tim and Mark are just talking about the number of scorpions they’ve kicked out of the living room – great. Very passive, they claim.

The darkness and bugs do provide some entertainment, in the form of the gecko brigade which aggressively chases and eats moths. These little dudes skitter along the walls and ceilings and pounce on bugs repeatedly, until their belly area is visibly swollen. The other neat thing they do is chirp at each other – its a stattaco, high pitched, cheeping noise – something like a frog call, but of course coming from your bedroom ceiling.

The best thing you can do is retreat to the sanctity of your mosquito net enclosed bunk – but, that generally leads to sleep as the combination of horizontality and exhaustion knocks you out pretty quickly. Also, if you retreat early, you’ll have to emerge later to deal with tooth brushing and other bathroom tasks. Dental hygiene is of course a major concern. Bangla cuisine includes a stunningly high amount of sugar: the tea (“Cha”), for example, is served in a syrupy consistency (a blend of tea, sweetened condensed milk, and then some surgar for flavor). Similarly, the common desert here is “mishti” – a dough ball made of flour and sugar, coated in sugar, then soaked in liquid sugar before being sugared and served in a puddle of sugar syrup. Even without getting into the traditional deserts, we consistently find ways to sugar ourselves, and justify it on the basis of the hard work we’ve put in during the day. One common method is smearing roti (the bangla burrito shells we have with dinner) with Nocilla (the spanish Nutella knock off that’s available here for some bizarre reason). Optionally, if you’re out of Nocilla, I find the roti quite good just covered in sugar and rolled up like crepe. Mmm… sugary goodness.

Anyway – dental hygiene is important. Personally, I find brushing my teeth on the deck to be the best option. In the evening the deck is the nicest place to be, if you can ignore the bugs – its cool, and between 7:00 and 9:00, there’s usually a nice breeze (which consistently trails off by 10:00). For tooth brushing its perfect – all you need to do is lean over the deck and put some force into your expectoration to clear the walk way and get your toothpaste foam onto the trash pile in the yard. Tooth brushing aside, the deck is great for hanging out, and best of all, movie night.

Movie nights are a tradition I’m proud to have introduced. A laptop and someone’s speakers provide the A/V hardware, and a coffee table surrounded by rows of plastic chairs provides the theater. Bangladesh is blessed with two types of DVD’s: crazy Bangla DVD’s which consistently feature angry men with mustaches and shotguns on the cover, and pirated western movies. The western ones are great: you usually get 4 or 6 movies on a single DVD – for example, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, along with Spiderman 1 and 2. The quality isn’t exactly Blu-ray, but for 90 taka ($1.50), that’s a pretty kick ass DVD. Actually, there is a third category of movie: Bangla-packaged western movies. Our best movie night experience so far has been “Terminator 4.” For those in the know, there is no Terminator 4 (three was the last one made). The disc inside turned out to be “American Cyborg” or “Cyborg Cop” (the title was ambiguous) – it featured cyborgs (named Quincy and Phillip, I kid you not), but had nothing to do with Terminators, the end of the world, or finding Sarah Connor.

Before evening kick-back relax begins… Oh oh, this post is going to be continued later, as Zoolander will be starting on the deck in about 20 minutes. Another note: I’m not posting any more photos while I’m here as the bandwidth makes it really painful.

Tin Man and the Chocolate Pimp

One funny thing about living in Bangladesh is the names you come up with for folks you deal with regularly, but have never (by virtue of language gap or unpronouceability) actually figured out their names.

Tin Man: This is the guy that sells Hands On the tin sheets that we use for roofing and siding homes. No one knows his name, and we’ve all even actually been over to his house for dinner. The Tin Man had all 22 of the volunteers over for a big “thank-you” dinner – I think our non-stop orders have made him pretty wealthy. Dinner that night was good; Rod (me) ate lightly for fear of fish (which was about), but had a good time nonetheless. The highlight of the evening was the brief appearance before dinner of a mysterious musical instrument which lingered on the table for 5 minutes before being taken away. It was a small wooden box (maybe 2ft long, by 1 ft high), with piano keys. A few weeks later we found out what it actually was when the “Save The Children” training seminar we were at trotted one out – its a crazy accordion-powered mini-piano, basically, which sounds like a spastic accordio-harpsichord (for lack of a better description).

Anyway – the Tin Man is a cool dude. One final thing about that night: Bangla dinner events don’t include social time after dinner. One literally gets up shortly after eating, says “thank-you” (doh-nah-bad) and head’s out. Sort of anticlimatic, but whatever works!

The Chocolate Pimp: The Bangla experience in many ways can be summarized by looking at their chocolate. Its as if someone, several years ago, travelled to a 7-11 in Kansas and tried some chocolate bars. They then returned to Bangladesh after several years and tried to reconstruct a variety from vague recollections; the result is packages that look more or less right, chocolate bars that often look the part, and a taste and texture that’s best described as “lacking.” Its seriously a bizarre and flavour-less experience.

After a hard day of digging pits, nailing tin, or whatever, chocolate is luxury you feel entirely justified in desiring. There’s three solutions to getting ahold of it:

1. Horde it: Get ahold of real Cadbury chocolate in expat grocery stores in Dhaka or Khulna and keep a stash on hand.
2. Nocilla: If your stash is empty, and no-one’s willing to share, you can get “Nocilla” – that’s a quasi-Nutella substance which when spread on Roti (flatbread) is quite tasty. Beware: you need to get the Nocilla imported from Spain, not the Malaysian stuff. Why the town of Rayenda (which doesn’t even has anti-perspirant, or many homes with electricity) has affordable and tasty Nutella-equivalent imported from Spain, I’ll never know.
3. Visit the Chocolate Pimp: The CP is a near legendary figure in Rayenda, who has *good* Bangla chocolate. I’ve never even seem him or his store myself – but others have passed along goods from him to me. I think Connie may have been there. Anyway, this dude has 20 varieties of sketchy Bangla chocolate, which Kirsty, Emma, and a few others bravely sampled until they discovered “Checkers,” “Jupiter,” and “Lake Bar” – the three palatable Bangla-bars. Hurray!

Alright – enough of the names. A quick recap: were working on a playground installation right now, which is the most intense one weve had yet. Its big and complicated, and being built on an exposed 1 acre mud plain, which means its HOT (35 degrees today), and crowded with HUNDREDS of locals staring at us in fascination. I don’t think too many of them actually know what it is were building – which provides us with great amusement.

The build is about a half-hour bus ride from our base; getting too and from is no simple task here. In the mornings, the buses are perpetually late – this morning, we gave up after 40 minutes, and hitched a ride with a passing military troop transport (in a bitchin’ Toyota Land Cruiser). Coming home, the 5:00 PM bus usually leaves our build-site town by about 5:30 – if were lucky, we’ll get room on the rooftop, so we can enjoy the terror of dodging low-hanging trees and powerlines, while being mercilessly camera-phoned by the pack of teenagers that immediately flocks to the roof when we get up there. If were unlucky, its into the bus with about 100 other people packed beside, on top, and underneath of you – 50 women in burkas, and 50 guys watching you.

Next week, were taking a 4 day break after 3 weeks on; were heading up to Khulna to stay in a western hotel (conveniently called “The Western Hotel”) with TV, A/C, room service, cheeseburgers, normal toilets and so on. Can’t wait! It is the place that everyone goes to take a break from working and from living in the base; fortunately, there’s nothing to see or do in or around Khulna, so you can just soak up the luxury – which we intend to do!

Later dudes…!

Heading to Bangladesh

(This is excerpted from an email I sent to Dave, so if it sounds familiar Dave, that’s why!)

Were on our way shortly to Bangladesh – leaving within hours! A bit of nerves building, but I think were pretty well set up. Were flying “Biman” – the Bangladesh national carrier – from Singapore direct. Its actually a four hour flight – the distances around Asia can be deceiving (or the planes are slow!). We’ll arrive likely around 1:00AM, when we’ll (hopefully) get picked up by our B&B – the Green House. Were splurging – will be around 40-50 USD per night, but the airport pickup makes it worth it. Additionally, it comes recommended by another volunteer who just shipped out to Rayenda (the town where our volunteer group is based) – apparently the b&b staff were instrumental in getting transporation, mobile internet access, and everything else – so we don’t mind paying a bit for the help.

So – Saturday, we’ll figure out how quickly we can get on the road for Rayenda. We’ll do the first leg of the journey (24 hours!) on a Rocket Steamer – which is essentially like the Paddlewheel queen with private sleeper cabins. When we get into our transfer point the next day, its either a bus or a tramp steamer to get to our final destination. Then – a 20 minute walk across town, and were home for the next two months! That walk should be interesting – apparently foreigners attract large crowds wherever they go once you’re outside of Dhaka. However disconcerting the crowds may be at first, they’re just friendly and curious, and apparently one becomes used to them very quickly.

Below is a map of Bangladesh – see Barisal? Apparently Rayenda (which is too small at 50,000 people to show up on the map) is somewhere around there:

View Larger Map

The weather in Rayenda is surprisingly cool – it seems to be topping out around 25 in the day, going down to 10 at night. Believe it or not, I’ve actually packed long johns to sleep in – not ordinarily something one packs for south east Asia!

Anyway – if you’d like to know more about what we’ll be up to in Bangladesh, you can read all about it on the Hands On Disaster Response website, and check out their Flickr stream.

Alrighty – there’s packing to finish, so I’m off – next writing from Bangladesh!