PC Wanderlust

"I'm the king of the world!"

Hello everybody! I hope everyone is doing fine. I’ve been having a busy few days lately. This past weekend all of the trainees in my group traveled all over Bangladesh to visit current volunteers to see how they are living, what their work is like, etc. I went WAY down to the south west with one other boy to visit a female Youth and Community Development worker. The trip took 10 hours! We took a pretty decent bus (no AC, but fans that were turned on whenever we were stopped and open windows otherwise). There are a lot of rivers in the South, and we had to cross five of them! Our bus just drove onto the ferry and slllloooowwwwlllly we would float across. Let me tell you though, traveling in Bangladesh is just not the same. We didn’t stop for food or restroom breaks, and even if we had, there aren’t really public restrooms anywhere. So, we basically fasted for the whole ten hours and made it successfully. Didn’t even get puked on in the bus or anything! (Yes, the ride can be that bad. Passengers get sick pretty often.)
The visit was pretty nice. It was so good to see how current volunteers live. It sounds like most of them have pretty decent, comfortable apartments and are integrated into the community well. I think all of us trainees have been worrying way too much about living on our own, not speaking Bangla very well, etc. Apparently we are receiving way better language training than any of the previous volunteer groups, and already know more after just 3 weeks than some people had in the full 3 months of training. It will all be ok!
Coming back to our training site was really fun. We decided not to take the bus again, and instead took a night ferry all the way back to Dhaka! We got on the ferry in Portacally (no idea how that is spelled). There were four trainees that got on there, and when we left the volunteers we had been visiting, we asked how we would know which ferry to get on. They gave us knowing looks and said we would be able to tell. As soon as we walked through the gate, we saw the ferries. There were tons of people hanging off the sides and on the pier, laughing, clapping, jumping around and chanting the names of the boats. It was like a competition for them to get as many passengers on to their ferry, even though everyone had already booked tickets already! It was such a festive atmosphere. After we all got on and put our bags away, we went up to the top deck and just watched all the other passengers being ushered onto the boats. It was great. After we took off, the four of us just stayed on the top deck for hours and hours. Not very many Bengalis were on top like that, so we were almost by ourselves and could just talk. The landscape was beautiful, with neon green rice paddies, banana and coconut trees, cute little huts, and apparently watching a ferry go by is a huge daily event for a lot of the village children because they would all run out and wave to the ferry. Seeing four whities must have been an added bonus!! We stayed up and watched the sunset, and the stars come out. It was awesome. When it finally got too dark, we went to one of our cabins and watched a Hindi film that we couldn’t understand at all. We also saw an ad for the very same ferry that we were on, and the background music on the commercial was from the movie “Titanic!” Bengalis seem to LOVE this movie. Hilarious. Anyway, we got to Dhaka early in the morning and basically spent the day walking around the more western part of the city where all the embassies are. Saw a couple good book stores, enjoyed some air conditioning, and ate at the Pizza Hut! Mmmmmm, cheese! It’s nice to have a break every once and a while.
Anyway, that’s all my excitement for now. Thanks again for your thoughts, emails, and letters (I’ve received one from Grandma B anyway!) Until next time, ~Kathryn

posted by Kathryn @ 9/02/2005 01:50:00 AM