PC Wanderlust

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