PC Wanderlust

One of These Things is Not Like the Others

Here I am, watching a soccer game with the local children. I do stand out in a crowd.

posted by Kathryn @ 10/28/2005 02:39:00 PM 2 comments

Swearing in ceremony on Sunday!

Sorry it has been so long since I’ve posted. It has been a crazy couple of weeks. Training is coming to an end this week though, and on Sunday we will have our swearing in ceremony in Dhaka! It will be held at the US Embassy in Dhaka, and everyone is psyched for it. Nearly all the girls in my training group are going to dress up in saris. My host mother bought me an absolutely gorgeous one to wear. Seriously it is the most beautiful thing I own in Bangladesh or the US! Technically I think it is a wedding sari, dark red with gold gilt embroidery throughout the entire thing. I will post pictures as soon as possible (aka probably a long time from now, but I’ll try!). We are all going to Dhaka on Friday and spending a few days living it up at a nice hotel that actually has air conditioning, hot water, and foam mattresses. I’m so excited! I’m also looking forward to doing a bit of souvenir and American food shopping. I do really like Bengali food, but I have to say I really miss the variety that I am used to in the States. I’m the type of person that doesn’t like to have spaghetti twice in a month; I like that much variety! The curries are all kind of tasting the same by now, and I really can’t wait to be able to cook for myself. The training staff at our hubsite cook special Americanish foods for us every once in a while, and I have been to the Pizza Hut in Dhaka a couple of times.
We are in about the 3rd week of Ramadan, which in case you don’t know is a month of fasting that Muslims observe. On the first day, you wake up at around 4am and eat your dinner. Then you do not eat, drink, or smoke anything all day. You are not even supposed to swallow your saliva, so you see quite a bit of spitting on the street. Towards about 4pm people get pretty antsy and irritable because they know the time to break the fast is nearing. At around 5:30pm (although every day it changes by a few minutes because it depends on the lunar calendar) you hear the call to prayer and are allowed to eat. This is “Iftar” time. Iftar food is so good! Usually you get orange drink, dates, puffed rice (like Rice Krispies but plain), spiced chickpeas, fried eggplant, fried potato and lentil mixture, cucumbers, grapes, jilapi (think small funnel cake soaked in syrup – it is amazing how much liquid these things can hold!), and doi (sweet yogurt). Sometimes the Bengalis will eat a normal meal of rice and curry right after eating the Iftar feast, or sometimes they will wait until 10pm or 12am to eat. Then the women get up at 3am to cook, and start the whole day over again around 4am. At 4am sometimes you hear what sounds like air raid sirens going off, or in some areas they have someone come on the loudspeakers at the mosques and say something to the effect of “wake up and eat your rice.”
No one in my family is fasting though. Among our group of trainees, there are some families that are fasting very devoutly, and some couldn’t be bothered. Even though my family isn’t fasting, we still eat the Iftar food everyday (along with normal breakfast, lunch, and dinner!) I have tried to tell my host mom that I can eat either Iftar or dinner, but not both. So, she just tries to give me both at the same time! I think it is ironic for the month where everyone is supposed to learn what it is like for poor people to not get enough food everyday, I have been gaining weight.
Speaking of gaining weight, Iftar, and Pizza Hut, would you believe that the Pizza Hut in Dhaka has an Iftar special? They don’t serve food all day, but people begin filing in around 4pm everyday to get a table. It really fills up! Around 5pm the staff starts filling people’s glasses with water or soda. You can’t drink yet though! Then around 5:10 they bring out plates of dates. Wait for it! 5:15 here comes the garlic bread. Ok, how important is it really to be culturally appropriate and not eat in front of Muslims?? 5:25 hot gooey cheesy pizza fresh out of the oven. You put that on my plate and seriously expect me to not eat it yet??? I have to admit, I almost made it. They really shouldn’t have given me the pizza though. I took a bite and about two minutes later the call to prayer sounded. So close!! The way they had it set up, the waiters just kept bringing out more and more pizza; whenever they saw your plate was empty, they gave you another slice or two. I don’t think I’ve ever had so much pizza in one sitting before. I think I had 8 slices! All this for the low buffet price of 350 Taka (about $5). Did I mention I miss cheese??
After the month of Ramadan is a holiday called Eid. This also depends on the moon, but will probably be on November 5 this year. This is when everyone can finally break the fast for good, and I hear there is tons of really tasty food. This is also the gift giving equivalent of Christmas in the States: everyone is going crazy buying presents at the moment. The most common present to give is clothing (actually I think the sari my host mom gave me is more for Eid than my swearing in ceremony.) The tailors are absolutely swamped right now. My host mom owns a tailor shop, so I have barely seen her for the past few weeks.
Right after Eid I will be moving to my new site. Last week we had our site visit. It has just a two-day visit for us to meet our host families, see the city, meet our supervisor’s and see our schools. I hardly saw anything of the city because it is rather large, but from what I saw, I love it already!! I feel like I got the best of both worlds – the amenities that come along with a big city, but also the nice small town feel in the more residential areas. It’s going to be really strange moving to a new city away from the rest of the training group. I’m glad I have a site mate, but from here on out, I’m pretty much on my own. I’ll spend about the next three months getting to know the city and all the people I will be living and working with, finding out about NGOs I can do secondary projects with, etc. I’m not quite sure when I’ll actually begin teaching at my college.
The weather is starting to change. Every once in a while we’ll have a period of a few days when it just RAINS and nothing will dry. I haven’t had much of a problem with it, but some people have had problems with their backpacks, clothes, paper, and whatever else molding. I have one leather luggage tag that got covered in fine white mold, but that’s it. Sometimes my clothes feel a little damp, but not too bad. I’ve been being extremely careful about all my electronics whenever we have a really rainy or humid day. On those days I just don’t get my laptop or electronics out. I always leave them in plastic bags with silica gel packets. I was worried that my laptop might die on me because before I came all I heard about were people’s laptops breaking. We only heard from the people who had problems, not the ones who didn’t. I think as long as I’m careful I’ll be ok. (Same goes for the whole harassment issue actually. We all got so scared before we came because we only heard the bad things without seeing it in context. It’s really not so bad.) Anyway, in general, it is getting a little cooler. There was actually one day when it was downright cold! Seriously we all had sweatshirts on and had goosebumps all day. Care to guess what the temp was? 75 degrees! I can’t believe we’ve gotten so acclimated that 75 feels cold. As far as I can tell from my little alarm clock that can tell temp indoors, it’s been between 75 and 85 since we arrived in Bangladesh.
So that’s all I have for now. I really appreciate the emails recently! I tried to answer the questions people asked in this blog.
P.S. Thanks to my mom, who has been able to post a few photos on here for me. Eventually when I get to the faster internet at the Peace Corps office in Dhaka I may be able to put a few more on!

posted by Kathryn @ 10/28/2005 12:17:00 AM 2 comments

Earthquake and shopping

I’m sure you have all heard about the earthquake in Pakistan, and might have heard about tremors in Bangladesh. I just want to let you know that I am ok, and as far as I know there have not been any deaths or even injuries in Bangladesh. I did not even feel anything, and seeing as how far out of touch with current events I am right now (never watch TV, don’t have a radio, only see an English newspaper every few days) I didn’t even find out about the quake until after you guys probably did. Don’t worry; everything is fine here, although people are upset about it obviously. Peace Corps does an excellent job of letting all of us know as soon as there is something there we should be concerned about (aka when there were those bombings in August we all got text messages telling us exactly what to do and what was going on). So no fear!
Today was our last day of formal language class. We have less than a month of training left, and I think it is going to fly by. Today we conducted a community activity, for practice really so that we would have experience in trying to set an activity up since pretty much everything is a lot more difficult the first time you try it in this country. Our activity went off really well though actually. Five of us girls got together and led a session for a few Bangladeshi girls on nutrition. Two of us talked about food, two about sports, and then one of us led a half hour yoga session. I thought it was great, and the girls who came all seemed to really enjoy themselves. I don’t claim to be an expert on healthy living, but all the information that we take almost for granted about knowing about the food pyramid, the importance of variety and moderation, complete proteins, getting the heart rate up, various exercises you can do around the house,…all these are not common knowledge here.
So yesterday I went to the city fabric market by myself (well not completely, I went with two other American girls, but “by myself” in the sense that no Bangladeshis came with me!). I have to say, I think it was a success! I found a few saris I really liked in the first shop we went into, but the man would NOT come down on the price. I ended up paying 500 taka for one of them, which really isn’t that bad, but I really wanted to bargain him down more! At a second shop, this time I sat next to two Hindu women looking at the same types of saris and tried to chat with them a little to see what a good price would be. Ended up getting another for just 230 taka. (66 taka is 1 dollar.) When another one of the employees talked to the man who had been helping me just after I agreed to buy, he shook the guy’s hand, so I was very suspicious that I had paid too much. We went to another shop upstairs and I saw a few more saris that I was interested in (am buying presents for family and friends back home to send back in November), but they were more expensive, so I wasn’t sure about buying them. The man there was very nice, and even gave us some 7-Up – I’m sure he thought he would get a sale. I probably still will! I talked to my host mom, and she will take me on Friday. I am not sure about what is good quality fabric here. It is all so thin it is practically see-through. Normally that would not be good, but here it is better if the fabric is thin so it is not so hot. After that shop, we ventured off the main road and into the labyrinth of smaller stores on smaller streets. We found ourselves in the spices area, with huge waist-high bags of coriander, garlic, onions, ginger, who knows what all! It smelled absolutely wonderful. We immediately noticed the difference in number of stares we were getting. In the area with all the fabric shops, they are obviously used to seeing a bunch of the Americans there, because that’s were we all go for clothes shopping, but I’m sure very few go into the smaller streets. Next we went to another upstairs shopping part, and Rose found a shop where she got a beautiful Indian sari. The man there was the most friendly shopkeeper we had met. After Rose bought the sari, he insisted on us having tea and biscuits, even though he couldn’t even have any with us since he was fasting! We felt awkward, but it would have been worse to refuse his hospitality. We said we would recommend his shop to all our friends and left happy. Megan found a sari from a small corner shop on the main street that she managed to decide on and pay for in just a few minutes. Normally it takes so long to decide and bargain!
When I got home, I told my host mom about buying the saris. She was surprised that I had gone without her and worried that I got ripped off. I told her I wanted to test if I had, so I showed her each of the saris and asked what she would have paid before telling her. She said 400-450 for the first, and 220 for the second. She was a bit disappointed, but I was thrilled that it hadn’t been much at all! The more I look at the saris the more I love them too. All three of us got something from the bajar (as opposed to going and being just too overwhelmed to buy anything) so we considered it a huge success.
Like I said before, the first time is always the hardest, so now that I have conquered going to the market almost by myself, who knows what I will be able to do next time!

posted by Kathryn @ 10/11/2005 02:08:00 AM 0 comments

Site announcement

I have finally found out where I am going to be living in Bangladesh for the next two years. I don’t want to put the city’s name on here for my privacy and safety, but if you are a friend or family member and haven’t gotten an email from me telling you what the actual site is, email me and I’ll tell you. You should be emailing me anyway!! If you don’t have my email address, just get in touch with my parents, and they’ll let you know. I’ll just tell you that I am REALLY happy with my placement. I will have two sitemates – one boy who has been living there for a year and will remain for one more, and another boy who is in my same training group. He is a Youth and Community Development worker, whereas I am Teaching English as a Foreign Language. He is incredibly enthusiastic, and I’m really glad to have been placed with him. He’ll be a good person to have around when I need a boost of confidence or inspiration. I’m looking forward to getting a lot done! There are about 5 other people in a 2-3 hour radius of my site too, so it will be nice to be able to visit other sites for fun or for collaborating on secondary projects.
This past week we had a Non-Governmental Organization fair, and the director of US-AID in Bangladesh came to speak to our group. Both these events have gotten me really excited about all the opportunities it sounds like we will have in Bangladesh. There are SO many NGOs that I am looking forward to working with.
Now for the anecdote of the week. So the other day I was laying in bed under my mosquito net trying to fall asleep when I thought I felt something brush my foot. I turned on my head lamp and looked around, thinking maybe a cockroach or beetle had gotten inside the net, but I couldn’t see anything. I figured I must have imagined it in my sleepy state, so I turned off the light and tried to fall asleep again. About two minutes later, I felt something run across the top of my head by my hair, and it definitely felt bigger than a cockroach. I scrambled around for my headlamp, and when I turned it on found that it was a mouse in my bed!! It was absolutely frantic running all around my bed trying to get out of the net. I jumped up, and it started climbing up the side of the net! I flung the net out, and the mouse dropped down, disappearing to who knows where. I stood there for a little while trying to figure out how in the heck it had gotten in my net, if there was a hole in it or what. Then I realized that on the side of the bed that is against the wall, the mattress was pushed up against the wall and looked like the net was still tucked in, but when I pulled the mattress back, the net had at some point come untucked and fallen to the floor. The mouse must have climbed up the net and squeezed its way through the wall and mattress. I was so shaken (I HATE mice) that I couldn’t sleep for two hours after that. When I told this story to one of the other trainees, he told me that he had found a scorpion in his room (and I have heard about other people finding them too). So the moral of the story is to always check to make sure your mosquito net is tucked in all the way, because it’s not just mosquitoes you are keeping out!!
I know I have not been very good with keeping in touch with everybody since I’ve been here, but please remember that they are keeping us VERY busy with training, and it is very difficult to get to an internet café or the post office. All this doesn’t mean that I don’t want to hear from you though! I miss you guys!! All of you! PLEASE write to me! I can’t tell you how good an old-fashioned snail mail letter feels to receive. Write me!!! Once I get out to site in the beginning of November, I will be out of training and not have so much work, so I will try to respond more then. Thanks guys!

posted by Kathryn @ 10/10/2005 02:02:00 AM 0 comments

Picture of me in Bangaldeshi sari

posted by Kathryn @ 10/01/2005 10:35:00 PM 4 comments