Using English

A page from from our Bangla workbook.  I understand the Bangla portion.

The only formal learning settings (school) for learning Bangla are in English and we have a diverse expat community here.  If you are Korean, or German, or Dutch, you must speak or learn English first and then you can learn Bangla.  But imagine learning a language via a second language.  I can't imagine.  

Pair o' ducks

Which duck is the yay duck, do you think?

Thanks to our friends Tim & Christa, we planned to attend a training program in CO.  Then we found out it was already mandatory with our company!

Our training told us that living overseas is like a pair o' ducks (paradox) - some days are a 'yay duck', some are a 'yuck duck' and, paradoxically, some can be both.

They also taught us that the distance between expectations and reality is like a rubber band: the further apart the two ends of the rubber band are pulled, the sharper the 'twang' when you snap it (and boy can a  rubber band smart!).  The solution, of course, is to alter expectations.

The Front Stoop

These are two of our guards who take wonderful care of us.  Mustafa (in the hat) is 58 and Mohammed (in the lungi) is 26.  They have played a large role in teaching me Bangla, providing me with daily conversation that has had a marked effect on my speech.  My teachers don't entirely approve of the accent I'm developing (a shade too low-brow for their taste), but I love sitting and chatting with them as I wait for the school bus.

Mohammed is an example of a fairly typical family situation.  His bari (home) is quite far away - "in the village" they say here.  There he has a wife and a 5 month old daughter.  However, there's little or no work there, so he works in Dhaka, earning about $78 a month to support the family.  He gets 4-6 days off every 2 months or so to go visit his family.   The rest of the time he works here.

All the world's a window sill

When you are five, all you need is a tape dispenser, a small plastic figurine and a window sill on which to enact the world's drama.

Cabin Fever

If it's been a long day and we've been indoors for most of it, we all feel like climbing the walls.

The Simple Life

In the last post we wrote that we are living a fairly simple life, and that's true, to some extent. We have no vehicle of any kind, we have no hobbies to take us outside the house, and the biggest excitement in the last month was when a valve let go in the bathroom and Laura shouted, "BEN! PLUMBING EMERGENCY!"  I live for such excitement.

Last night I was walking home in the twilight, stepping over sewers, dodging cars and smelling the tang of cooking fires and burning trash.  Due to a thermal inversion the smoke was remaining near the ground and it served as reminder of what could be called a truly simple life, without any of the wistful overtones of some imagined golden age.

The two blue tarps you see are each a family's house.  In the evening they prop up the bottom near the edge of the sidewalk and sleep under it beside the snarling nighttime traffic.  Some of the nicer set-ups have a small slatted bamboo platform about 6 inches off the sidewalk. They cook over a small mud stove and use any wood or leaves they've managed to collect from the neighborhood during the day.  I've noticed the grandfather sitting on a bucket reading a newspaper in a dignified manner, but the grandmother has a mental illness: she'll often be amidst a rant to the empty air when I pass by.  The rest of the family returns in the evening; they have nothing except a pot, a tarp, a few sheets, a mud stove and a bucket.

There were about 20 of these sidewalk-houses eight weeks ago, but one morning they were all gone.  We asked and were told the police had driven them off, but that they would slowly return.  Now there are about seven families back along this street in a semi-permanent settlement on the sidewalk.