The Hierarchy of Bengali Roads

In Bangladesh the rules of the road, or lack there of, are quite different than those of North America. This is obvious at first glance, however, has never been quite so prevalent as when our group went our separate ways in Dhaka on Thursday, June 5th. My (Eva)'s group, which included Sean, Annika, Becca and Steven left for the Dhaka bus terminal early in the morning to make our way to a a mission in Northern Bangladesh called Balucharra. Our first vehicle of the day was a very nice MCC truck, driven by trusty Mujibar. Mujibar has mad skills let me tell you. In Bangladesh, you do not let people go ahead of you on the road, at least not intentionally. Mujibar put some cool tunes in the CD player and could fit the MCC truck into the most unlikely and small openings of traffic, while employing his horn accordingly of course. We finally arrived at the bus station and found the bus leaving for Birishiri. By leaving, I mean it was starting to pull away while Steven tried to get us seat together. Someone took my bag through it in the bottom of the bus and as we jumped onto the bus stairs, it began to move! Now, during this bus ride, adventures were around every corner. The large vehicles do not like to give up their monopoly on the road which results in games of chicken. Each driver does not give the other vehicle room until the very last moment when they miss each other by inches. Our bus would also fly by rickshaws at speeds of 100 km an hour and I often felt bad for their passengers. Another passenger on our bus was also motion sick and was continuously leaning out the window to throw up. This would not have been a problem if she weren't doing this INTO the wind, which caused chunks to blow back into the windows of the bus and many landed on poor Annika in the seat directly behind her.... Driving here is a noisy affair, and when on rickshaw, traffic jams abound, with goats, cows, chickens, children, and merchants competing for rule of the road. When all is said and done however, it is the buses or transport trucks that are Kings of the Bengali roads, and us Badeshis (foreigners) are only the lowly subjects. ;), Eva.

In search of CoConut milk!

hello there, well today it seemed that we had to go all the way into Old Dhaka to find coconut milk for our group to try ( mainly Andrew :P) so we headed out in search of these treasures, once found, on the side of a crowed street the size of a hallway, with carts , rickshaws and cars trying to get by, we stopped and slurped fresh coconut milk. we must have caused a spectical, as we do everywhere we go because we end up causing a roadblock of on-lookers who would like to practice their English and have their picture taken.
Another interesting tid-bit of information, today while touring at the "pink palace" we spotted something quite unusual, white people! you could see them from a mile away, and there were only two of them. they were from Hamburg, Germany. It was quite evident after seeing how out of place they looked, why we get so much attention.!
All for now!
Annika

the smell of bengali streets.

my feet smell like bengali streets. yummy.

it is GREAT here! today we went all around Old Dhaka and saw horse drawn wagons, many many people and everybody simply marvels at you. it is beautiful. these people are so genuine. they love getting to test out their english on you. i’ve never had anyone stare at me as much as i have now. some of them have never seen white people and apparently, the whole city is now talking about this group of ‘bedeshi’ (white people). this is poverty. quite really. there are toddlers carrying naked infants, begging for money. there is human waste in the gutters. there are 14 million people in Dhaka. there are 5 million in Toronto. It is totally different.

we ate in a completely culturally appropriate bengali restaurant today with unsafe water and smelly surroundings. the air is thick with people. absolutely thick. wow. i wish i could explain it to you and show you, but it is hard. the pictures won’t even do it any justice at all.

the food is hot! at the restaurnant, a man in barefeet wiped down the table, then threw the cloth on the ground that was, effectively covered in dirt, flies and old newspaper. i can only laugh, because i am not used to this lifestyle, but i really love it. so much. there are geckos on the walls and last night a crab sized beetle that could fly like a bat whizzed by our room. we killed it and named it godzilla. we have mosquito nets for bed and eat spicy curry for breakfast! a man today told me i was a ‘beautiful girl’ after a broken conversation of my homeland and him prodding then group to come to his shop. we drank green coconut (andrew’s favourite) and visited the pink palace. i wish i could include everything. there is so much!

the culture is very relaxed and so laid back. if we plan to leave at 9 am, we may not get around to it until 10:25. it is pretty cool. we met the country reps the other day, and i get to wear gorgeous salwar kameez all the time!

today we went to the Liberation War Museum. It is a very profound experience. I was so overcome with emotion because some of the non-violent resistance stories were so moving while the atrocities were absolutely horrific to read about. It was a neat experience and I never want to lose that feeling of passion for social justice and peace.

wow. i love it here. tomorrow we leave for the missions in baromari and boluchaura. that will be a whole other experience in itself, i’m quite sure. so far, we’ve been living in a posh area, for bengali standards, but oh so soon will that change.

-becca

Our Arival, + Sean and Andrew's Fiasco.

We arrived in Bangladesh this morning at 6:15 am local time, with very little sleep it felt much more like 3 in the afternoon. Having a head space that is rational and intelligent is rather difficult after flying for a broken up 15 hours. None the less we decided to continue with our day and proceed with planned events. One of our goals today was to visit a place where the ladies on the trip would have a chance to find clothing that better suited them for the situated culture. To get to the shopping centre we rode by Rikshaw (a 3 wheel bicycle that holds one or two people plus the driver of the Rikshaw).

Stepping into a Rikshaw for the first time was an experience in itself. Since most of the Bangali population are smaller than ourselves, we had to "slouch and cuddle" to even stay on the Rikshaw. It felt like i was on a Disney Land ride for 5 year olds; not that we minded it because it was an experience that we feel everyone should live. Another surprising element of Rikshaw riding for the first time was the chaos of Dhaka's traffic. Maybe chaos is not the best word to describe it because everyone seemed to find a way to avoid each other, even if it meant driving in opposite directions and cutting across crowds as well vehicles. There seemed to be some kind of hegemonic relationship that everyone shared on the road that allowed the movement to balance.
On the way back from the shopping centre we hitched another ride on a Rikshaw and were back off to procrtee (the Mennonite Central Committee building where we will be staying while in Dhaka for the first week of Shikka). Our group organizer; Steve gave directions to each of the Rikshaws that would be taking us back and we were off. We were able to stay relatively close on the Rikshaws for most of the trip, until...oh yeah... rain lots of it! It began to pour from the skies with little more than 5 seconds from the first rain drop on our heads to our clothing being soaked right through to the skin. The thunder began with a spark of lightning off in the distance. with the downpour we began to separate from the rest of the group, probably having something to do with the rather large White dudes in the back. "Do you know where they went" said Andrew as we tried to keep our purchases dry. "umm... no I thought they were right there but when we turned the corner they were gone" Sean replied. Oh shoot... our worst nightmare has just come true, were stuck in a country where we don't know the language, don't know where we are, were soaked to the bone and the locals can't keep from laughing at us.

To be honest, it was one of the scarier moments of our lives, but through our mutual choice to play it cool and just live in the moment, we paused, regrouped, and collected our thoughts. After Sean said a prayer both for our protection and our appreciation for being in a new place, we decided to ask for directions, knowing fully that most Bangali's do not speak English. Instead of going backwards we started walking in the direction that felt right. Thankfully we saw Steve off in the distance soon after we started walking. He helped us get back to the rest of the group and dry off.

Moral of the story: Don't go to a foreign country without writing down the address, phone #, or intersection of the location you are staying in

also.......

Live in the moment, don't take any experience for granted, there is always something positive to come out of the unknown.


peace,
Sean and Andrew

A Wet Departure

Greetings friends!

We are all here together as you can see (except there is one person missing from our group...can you guess?) We'll be meeting Annika at the airport.

From left to right (bottom row)
Maddie, Andrew, Eva
(top row) Becca, Dana, Sean, Annika.

It's pouring right now; this is a sign of what is to come as we are heading to Dhaka during monsoon season.

Andrew has been most generous in lending his home to him; we've had a great time here. We are about to take a dip in the pool, eat together once more in North America. Then we will head off to the airport! We can hear a djembe somewhere in the house, the rain's loud falling fills our ears and is smells so refreshing!

We all send our love to each of you! Here we go on a new and exciting adventure!
It is kind of neat because we are so excited, although we have no idea of the world we are about to become a small part of.

There is a rainbow now. We are going to dance in the rain!
Shalom, Shikka 2008

our imminent departure

hello family and friends!

today is a lot of packing and organization of last minute details.
we, as the group shikka, are very excited! after all the anticipation, our flight is leaving very soon. we take off at 11:15 pm saturday night.

for those of you who don't know, we are traveling to bangladesh for 3 weeks on a learning and service trip with mennonite central committee. we will be volunteering in a school, playing with children, doing art with them, teaching them some english, but mostly learning from their bengali point of view.

we hope to keep you updated as much as our internet connection and access allows. while this is going to be very experiential and we don't want to miss any second of it due to the feeling of needing to blog, we still want to share with you what we are experiencing.

we have been overwhelmed with your generous support and we want to thank you so much again for it. prayers are muchly appreciated as we dive into this new adventure!

singing with excitement,
rebecca steiner