Vision

    There's a story of a man who was born blind but had his sight miraculously restored.  He says afterward, "Why this is an amazing thing!.....Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind".  This is interesting on a number of levels.  The first interesting bit is something called the 'critical period hypothesis'.

    There is evidence in developmental biology of something called the 'critical period'.  This is a period in development during which, if a certain event/stimulus doesn't occur, something else essential is not learned or fails to occur which afterward cannot occur.  There's a structural basis for this and an example will make it clearer.

    Slightly simplified, if a kitten does not see during its critical period (age 0-3 months), the 'wires' between its eyes and brain don't properly develop.  If afterward it is exposed to light, it can't even learn to see.  The wires just don't exist to carry the signals, and now they can no longer grow.  The critical period is over.

    Something similar occurs in humans.  So in the story, not only did the man's eyes not work, but even if you'd given him him new eyes, his brain could not learn to use them.  Although the man in the story didn't know why,  he knew it couldn't happen.
So the second interesting bit is this - in order to have his sight restored, 'wires' that didn't even exist inside the skull would have had to have been grown.  This shouldn't be possible.

    Yet, sometimes in my life there have been times when my eyes were opened to something that until then I could not have seen.  It should not even be possible - the 'wires' don't exist.  And yet there I am, able to see.  And I say, "Why this is an amazing thing!...."

Banglapalooza

For the last few nights we've been treated to a concert that's about a mile away, but loud enough that we can hear every word.  The sky is lit by flashing searchlights & the music is distinctly western: there's been a lot of 1990's-style bands reminiscent of Foo-Fighters, Gin Blossoms and Blues Traveller - but all in Bangla.  A few songs have even evoked mid-1980's U2, but last night we were treated to something I really didn't expect: Bangla Death Metal.  At least, I thought it was Bangla: I really couldn't tell because people screaming over driving drums and distortion-ridden guitars all sound unintelligible.

Press

This is a post I planned from some time ago that I'm just getting around to.

Dhaka.

Technically, within the city limits, there are 7 million people, but in the greater metropolitan area there are over 15 million, and it's growing at about 4% per year (0.6 million/year).  It's nearly impossible for the infrastructure to keep up.

Traffic congestion is worsening, with a growing middle class who want cars, scooters and motorcycles.  There are about a 1/2 million bicycle rickshaws that ply the streets every day.  Any time I think about how nice it would be to have our own way to get around, I think about driving in traffic where traffic laws are a suggestion and there are no traffic lights.

With this many people in one place, clean water is a major issue - the water table is steadily dropping by about 6 - 9 feet each year.  The nearest groundwater is now almost 200' down, and has dropped to there from 30' over the last 40 years.

Human waste disposal is a problem of enormous proportions.  Handled in a variety of ways, the primary way near us is a series of sewers mostly under the sidewalks that drain directly into lake Banani.

This many people is one place creates a pressure on the mind that is extraordinary.  Every square foot of land is being purchased and an apartment building built on it. density of humanity.
 It presses in on you, and threatens to overwhelm you, well, at least if you're an introvert like me.  Actually, I think even the most inveterate extrovert might might feel the press faced with this

Rainy day

It's an unusually quiet day - kids are home from school due to an unexpected day off, so I'm home too. Let me see if I can paint the image for you.

I'm sitting on the dusty tiled balcony of our 4th floor apartment, overlooking lake Banani.  The grey-green water looks cleaner than usual because the surface is disturbed by the steady cool rain.  From where I'm sitting I can't see the trash on the near shore and the rain has cleared out the smell of its burning.  The tree across the street has died, so it's leaves are reddish-brown and falling; this, combined with the unseasonable breeze and rain is lending the morning a bit of the feel and smell of an early autumn morning in Maine.  It's a peculiar feeling, here.

But then, looking down, I watch workmen across the street tossing bamboo poles (used to hold up concrete forms) from the third story of a partially finished building, and watch two calfs cavorting in the drizzle - they are young enough to likely not have seen rain before.  Usually they live down the street with some goats, but today they are playing on the sidewalk down on our end.

I look up and there are concrete apartment buildings in every direction, in varying stages of construction, a huge coconut palm about 20 feet from me, and I hear the sounds of the city in the rain.  There's distant honking, motorcycles  the crash and rumble of construction next door, car tires through puddles, rickshawwallahs (drivers) yelling, and many many different birds.  And it doesn't feel so much like Maine.

The children have the ambitious plan of doing nothing at all today.  So here they are playing on the balcony.  Seems like a good day for that level of ambition.  :)

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.