শুভ নববর্ষ !

এসো হে বৈসাক !

It was Bengali New Year two days ago: the year 1422.  Traditional garb is red and white so we dressed up and went to Lake Park to join in the festivities.  These two young ladies accompanied us.

I wasn't too surprised when a couple of strangers wanted to snap photos of them.

   

M & A were good sports about it and enjoyed it at first.

    

But pretty soon it became evident that we were a bit of a spectacle.

After a while...   Phew.      

    

I don't think we'll do that again anytime soon.  :)

No title

I’ve been mulling this over for some time: it’s a first draft of my thoughts.  To contextualize it for the USA:

Imagine you meet someone in a coffee shop, a friendly person with whom you easily envision striking up a friendship.  The conversation ranges all over and doesn’t just skim the surface either.  They’re interested in your life and it feels … as though there’s real connection.  You even realize you’ll be late for another appointment because you’ve been so engrossed in conversation! Then, your new acquaintance, calling you by an affectionate name, mentions some recent financial difficulties and rather heavily hints that they could use a loan of $1000 and directly asks you to lean on a friend to get them a job.  A salary of at least $55,000/year would be acceptable. 

Whoah!  Where did that come from?  How do you feel?

Did they chat you up just for a job?  Is there a giant dollar sign hanging directly over your head?  Do you look like a walking wallet?   Ugh.  All of a sudden, what you took to be genuine interest takes on a less charitable hue.  

This has happened to me, more or less, three times.  I had been told, before I arrived in this country, that this was common.  I was told, as a westerner, what my visceral response would be: it was exactly as predicted.  Now I have to work on the other half of what I was taught: seeing it from another perspective.

It was explained to me, by someone with nearly 30 yrs experience in this part of the world, that all relationships involve money.  “So try to look beyond your American prejudice.”  It is the currency of relationship.  Another ‘older & wiser’ told me the most common relational dynamic here is ‘patron-beneficiary’; there are certain expectations that someone who is wealthy (and every westerner is ‘wealthy’) will help others.  It’s a societal norm – to be otherwise is to be ‘cheap’ or a miser.  People and loyalty are what matter here.  Efficiency matters less than relationship.

Maybe it will help to tell the story from another perspective.

Imagine you meet someone at a coffee shop, a friendly person with whom you easily envision striking up a friendship.  The conversation ranges all over and doesn’t just skim the surface either.  Unlike so many others, they seem genuinely interested in your life and it feels … as though there’s a real connection.  In fact, you perceive real affection – as though they’re offering close friendship.  You make a snap decision to risk your honor and show the weakness of your true situation – your desperate need for a job and your financial straits.  This person seems like they could be a real friend and potentially help the way true friends do.  You make the leap and … you watch their eyes glaze and the almost imperceptible recoil.  Did you misread them? What is wrong?  Could they really be that selfish and hung up on money?

Don’t imagine I really know what someone from this culture is thinking, nor that my gut response was wrong, but you get the idea that there can be another perspective.   This is currently the single most challenging thing I’m learning to navigate.  I don't know how the pieces will fall nor quite what to think.  It'll be a work in progress for some time, I hope

.

A few things I have learned so far

1. No matter the trash around you, you can find beauty virtually anywhere.  Often by looking up.

2. Mosquitoes can become invisible at will.

3. Just because you understand each word individually does not mean you understand what someone is saying.

4. Even if you understand what someone is saying,  you do not necessarily understand what they mean by it or why they are saying it.

5. Mosquitoes are evil.

6. I, until now, didn't really know what 'hot' meant.  And apparently I still don't, yet.

7. Social cues and expectations are different in different places.  This I am learning by experience.

8. "Experience is that thing that you get immediately after you need it."

9. When contemplating infinity, if you take something away, even a large number, there's still infinity more left over.  This applies to mosquitoes.

You have to make a million mistakes.

In learning a new language you have to make a million mistakes, so you'd best wake early and get started.
Keep in mind the following conversation was in Bangla.

Our language tutor came on Thursday and noticed Mary playing with a new game.
We said, "It's Mary's Birthday!"

"Oh I didn't know!"

"That's OK, you didn't have to know that."

silence

"Ah. Because you're bideshi (foreigner) I understand.  But you shouldn't say that to a bangladeshi, they'll get angry."

"Why?"

"Because they will think that you had a party and they were not invited!"

"Oh!" consternation  "What should we say?"

pause

"Hmmm...Say, 'That's OK, we didn't tell anybody'."

That way they know they weren't excluded and can just chalk it up to us crazy bideshis who never seem to do anything normal (like throw an all-day party for absolutely everyone on your daughter's 8th birthday).

Goromkal

Goromkal means the warm season.

The weather report says it's 37degF back home.

Currently it's 37degC here - or about 98degF in the shade.

We all feel like butter.   :)

Entertainment

Legos are great and all....

But, honestly, when you have cardboard and duct tape...

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.  :)