Bangers Installment No. 2

I had the opportunity to meet with my supervisor, Mirja,  the other day.  One thing is certain.  I am DEFINITELY going to have to learn Bangla, and I am DEFINITELY going to have major communication issues once I arrive in Shahrasti.  Having said that, the supervisor is a lovley man, who speaks some English, and he is as determined to brush up on his English skills as I am to learn Bangla.

After having a chat, we travelled to the BACE (Bangladesh Association for Community Education - the organisation I will be working for) "Head Office" in Dhaka.  This was an extremely bizarre experience.  The office was a very run-down and quite unfriendly looking place - dirty and dingy - something you might expect to see in the backstreets of Bangkok (or even Dhaka, as I discovered). I met Mr Azizul Haq, the director of BACE, whom I had spoken to on the phone in Australia.  He, unlike his office, was an extremely colourful character, 70-odd years of age, and he welcomed me with a lovely smile which put me right at ease.  We had a little chat (his English was better than Mirja's), and then he led me into a room with a huge table in it - a sort of board room, I suppose.  He sat me down at the head of the table, and as I looked up, I was horrified to see his entire staff - about 12 people - walking in behind me.  They sat down with expectation in their eyes.

Mr Haq asked me to give them a little speech about who I was and what I would be doing in Shahrasti.  I was hoping that my little speel would fool them, even though I, myself, really didn't have any idea of what I was going on about.  I was met with 12 blank expressions, which I discovered later were more a result of the language barrier as opposed to harsh judgment.  I was feeling a little uneasy.  Once I had finished, each staff member then introduced him or herself to me, stating their name and position in the office.  As lunch was served, Mr Haq asked his staff to ask me any questions they liked.  These included "Do you like Bangladesh?", "Have you ever been to Bangladesh before?" and "Are you married?", among others.  We ended up having a bit of a laugh, and the tension eventually eased.  I asked about whether there were any other "Bideshis" (westerners) in Shahrasti, and one of the men said that once, 25 years ago, there was a lady from England who came to Shahrasti, and she received a lot of attention, but, he said, that was probably because she was tall and fat and she stood out a lot.   

As I went to leave, I was handed some flowers, and the women came up to me and fixed my "orna" (the traditional scarf I was wearing).  One of them took my hand and commented about my white skin, saying, "It's so soft!".  A guard at the front door saluted me as I walked out.  I had a little giggle to myself as I got in the car to head back to the guesthouse.

It was such an unusual couple of hours, but I was so warmly welcomed by everyone that I left with a really positive feeling about everything.

I leave for Shahrasti on Saturday morning.  I will be travelling on the bus with Mirja, which is good, because we can practice our Bangla/English and hopefully he can help carry my (now, extremely full and heavy) suitcase.  I have bought a whole new wardrobe full of the traditional attire, although I have managed to find clothes that also have a little bit of "me" in them, so I don't feel completely uncomfortable.

I am off to the Australian Embassy tonight for Thursday Night Drinks (Friday is the weekend here).  It will be my first drink since the plane trip from Singapore, so you can imagine how that first beer is going to go down, especially in this heat!

 I had an interesting taste sensation today.  It's called "Paan" and it is beetle leaves filled with all sorts of interesting things, including perfume and spices and cherries and saffron and salt and honey and weird and colourful things, and to eat it, they wrap it up in foil and you have to put the WHOLE thing in your mouth (including the foil) to get the taste sensation.  It was so weird.