Failure, Mutiny, and Foreigners...

Sorry this is late, but I’ve had an interesting weekend so far and that has delayed my writing of this. This week I hit a wall in my research. I finished reading all the massive reports that my boss sent me, so I have a fairly decent idea of what our situation is now. I then started reading the available books in the library here at the office only to find out that they are all either outdated themselves or largely use outdated information in their research. I even found a book published in 2006 that was using data mostly from the 80’s or farther back in time. A lot has changed in the past 25-30 years and that is why even at an undergraduate level we were trained to try to keep our references within the past 10 years if at all possible. Faced with this dilemma I decided to take a different approach to my work. Instead of doing a ton of research that in the end could prove to be totally useless, I’m going to work through the information from the top to the bottom. This should give me a clue as to what I should be looking for as well as make the things we aren’t doing well stand out.

This week there was also a mutiny in Dhaka. Apparently (as far as I can understand the situation), the border protection part of the military here revolted against their superiors. Essentially what they were saying is that they do almost all the same things as the regular army but they don’t get paid as well and they don’t command themselves. It seems that they tried to get their army officers to address these issues and when the officers refused they revolted. It ended in two days of fighting and wasn’t finished until the Prime Minister brought in tanks and threatened to use them after a more peaceful resolution failed. Bear in mind that this information is not meant to influence your thoughts for either side. I am trying to withhold any opinions on the matter because this is an issue that I have no part in. I have found in this past week that if you mix reports from the BBC, Aljazeera, and CNN together you get a pretty accurate picture of what is going on. Nothing interesting happened in Bogra, (where I am) as a result of any of this. Life here went on like it normally does other than people talking about what was going on.

I read a book this past week. The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective was the book. It was quite interesting and I learned a lot about myself. It turns out that I’m a 5. You can find a general description of what that supposedly means at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fives_(Enneagram_of_Personality). This description is moderately different from Richard Rohr’s description in the book but this is understandable because he is describing the experiences from a Christian perspective (hence the title). The title of 5 doesn’t fit all aspects of my life but when I look at my basic reactions and how I deal with life, it rings exactly true. When I’m at my best I’m decisive and able to give some moderately wise consol. When I’m at my worst I distance myself and retreat into a crazy fantasy world that exists in my head where I play out all sorts of scenarios all the time (usually negatives). I can’t tell that I have a relatively stronger 4 or 6 wing to my personality. I dip into each of them a little but not really strongly that I can tell. I would also advise that you not base your opinions of your type off of the internet descriptions that you read. Read the book, it will most likely click with you what you are in a way that amazes you. The reason is that the same reactions could come from several different types of people but be motivated by completely different reasons. You could even be really great at hiding those motivations from yourself which is why I advise you not to take the tests online.

This weekend has been pretty much the Bideshi weekend for me. After months of wondering when I might finally meet some Ex-pats that weren’t part of MCC I ran into almost all of them this weekend. First, we ran into some Koreans living here in Bogra. We exchanged numbers and as it turns out, at least one of them is a Christian and he is probably going to start joining us for our weekly worship times. Then we ran into those we refer to as “the English girls.” They invited us over to their place for supper and we ended up hanging out with them for the evening. There were two British girls in their 20’s who live in Bogra but also joining us was another French girl who was in town on business and a French guy who works for the local Dannon yogurt factory. They usually spend their weekends in Dhaka so we probably won’t hang out too often but we might get together for some weeknights every once in awhile. So yeah, I now know some Bideshis in Bogra.

I have more to write but this is long enough so I’ll take the time to write the rest in another post in the middle of this week. Stay Tuned!

Retreat...

We had our Ex-pat staff retreat this past couple of days. I learned a few things over the course of it.

Bangladesh does indeed actually have a tourist spot for ex-pats. Up until this point I had doubted it's existence, but the tea gardens are a nice get away. Unfortunately they still prove to not have post-cards to send to my mother.

I really like being outdoors in nature. In fact, so much so that I am willing to give up naps that I should probably have taken. In other news, I feel kind of like a kid again. It seemed like no matter what we did I had tons of energy left over to do more. Except that one afternoon where I sat and played a card game with the ladies.

I am still a Birkey man. We were playing a game where you had to get the others to guess the emotion you were trying to portray out of 10 options. You had to read set words off of a card. Normally I would feel real confident in my odds at this game but I think I was doing pretty bad. I got a card that said, "stop in the name of love" and I was supposed to act it out as if I was "in love." I failed miserably, no one even guessed right, the most picked answer was "tense," and I was made of fun of for the rest of the trip. I found it quite humorous that I messed that up so badly but not very surprising. I mean, I feel like we Birkey men aren't known for being the traditional version of romantic. If any of my brothers or dad take objection to this statement, I feel like you should take another long hard look at your life.

Overall I thought the time spent was indeed very relaxing. It was a great break from all the intense reading I've been doing over the past 2 weeks. I did some evaluating of where I am with God and changed some thought patterns. Maybe I'll talk about those later but for right now I'm a little sick and have lots of work to do.

Valentine's day

Happy Valentine's day everybody!

I started my day off by sleeping in. Then after some phone calls it was decided that I want to go to the store. So Dave and I grabbed bikes and rode to the store. We found floss! So far that has been an elusive item here. Man this was shaping up to be a good day. After getting some other needs and a few wants we headed back to my place. It was about lunchtime and we needed to head over to Jodi's house. Unfortunately someone else needed the bike I had ridden to the store. Fortunately, Dave is willing to be a little daring, so we rode two people on one bike over. I'm the more experienced rider so I got to take the driver's seat. It actually went well and Dave managed to stifle his horror during the only moment when things almost went terribly wrong. After lunch I got on the computer for awhile and took a nice nap. Then we had a nice candlelight dinner of veggi-burgers. This was because the power went out and we had veggi-burgers because I wanted french fries so I thought the burgers would be a good excuse to have them. Unfortunately, they forgot to make us the french fries. It was ok though, we had ice cream with fruit and Hershey's chocolate syrup for dessert. We then headed up to the conference room and for the second night in a row watched a movie. This time we even managed to have popcorn! Tonight's movie was Dumb and Dumber. What? Were you expecting a group of single ex-pats all living thousands of miles from home to watch a romantic movie on valentine's day? In our defense it does have a little bit of a love theme to it.

Afterward I came down to type this post and listen to last weeks sermon from church. I'm not sure what it is, but it seems like there is just something about these sermon's in 2009 that is different. I don't know what is up with it all but I do know I'm heading to bed tonight feeling loved in a way that I haven't felt in awhile.

Work

Just screwing around with the mirror.

What!?
Apnar somosa ki?

I started "real" work this week. After a meeting with the powers that be it has been decided that I should focus on a few things first. My overall goal and the reason I was hired was to put together an analysis program for the REAP program. While that is the top priority it is recognized that I need to get my feet wet to do a good job on that. So I am switching over to immediately working on a few other smaller projects first. One project in particular is the Monga project. This is a side project that the REAP program took up a couple of years ago due the demand for something to be done. The people in the Monga area are largely seasonal farmers who face large issues during the non-season. In cooperation with the CFGB (http://www.foodgrainsbank.ca/) we have put together a program to help local laborers by providing them animals and knowledge to raise those animals. The hope is that with intensive raising techniques, that these farmers can get a more diverse diet and have year round work as well as increase their income. It works kind of like Heifer International in that they agree to give us back an offspring. I first get to review and reassess the current data that we have established. I then get to come back and make suggestions for the future. To accomplish this I will be doing a lot of studying over the next while. I will also be talking to a couple of the older Bengali MCC workers who are now consultants for us and various other organizations. They are going to give me some pointers and a more thorough background on the situation. They are also going to get me connected with some other organizations that do analysis work in Bangladesh. On the side I will be keeping data for another research project that we have on the side which I will describe in another post later. I will also be preparing to assess another project that has yet to come. All of this will be with the goal of giving me the experience that I need to do a good job on the larger REAP program evaluations. This should keep me really busy for the next while.

On a typical office day I start working at approxiamately 8 and work until sometime between 5 and 6. I really appreciate that the office here is pretty laid back and like a big family. My co-workers often come to the office 7 days a week for reasons that I will discuss in another post. The real beauty is that I can work at the pace that suits me. If I'm just having a really bad day I don't feel pressured to force myself to work myself miserable. If I'm having a good day in which I'm really enjoying what I'm researching I can work past 6 if I like (though I'm sure my co-workers will drop by to try to get me to play badminton on their way out). It probably also doesn't hurt that people are often in and out of the office all the time here, so keeping an American style office setting would be very hard.

Next week we Ex-pats have our in-country retreat. I'll be gone from Wednesday through Saturday. I'm not really exactly sure where yet to be honest. I know what section of Bangladesh we will be in and that I am supposed to be in Dhaka by Tuesday night because we are leaving early Wednesday. You now know as much as I do about this retreat.

We made grilled cheese sandwiches for supper tonight and then watched The Simpsons Movie. I even managed to get shocked multiple times by a piece of electronics. It's almost like home. :-)

Random things...literally

This past week I finished up language study. That means this next week I'll start in doing the job I was hired to do. So next week I'll probably let you know more details about what I'll actually be doing. This past week was a good one. I had a lot of good connections with friends and family. I even got to watch the Superbowl via skype on my Steven's 13" tv. The quality was horrible but beggars can't be choosers. I even found out that a good friend got engaged. So all in all a great week.

I can't think of anything real interesting to talk about beyond those couple of things so here is the promised randomness.

25 random things about me, because it's going around facebook and I can't resist this sort of thing.

1. I have stood on top of a barn just to get better cell phone reception.
2. My best time to complete a 5 mile run is 47:28.
3. Thanks to what I call, “the Bangladesh diet” I now weigh less than I have since entering high school. I was also a couple inches shorter then. The only problem with this is that I now have a bunch of pants that barely fit.
4. I have cried twice over goats. Once in an argument with my mom. The other time was when my 2nd favorite goat died suddenly after having been third in her class (out of like 40) at the National show earlier in the year.
5. I’m pretty sure that my fingernails got painted at least once in all four of my years in college for one reason or another.
6. Despite my often crazy demeanor, I have never had a broken bone or had stitches.
7. I just realized that I have lots of bad experiences with excesses of foods. Immediately in my mind I remember, 11 shots of Frank’s Red Hot Sauce, 8 glasses of milk, an attempt at a 3 lb. pizza, and all you can eat shrimp. Only one of them ended with me throwing up though.
8. I once thought it was a lot of fun to hit rocks up in the air with a tennis racket bought at Goodwill. Then I broke the back window of my older brother’s car with one of those rocks. I didn’t find it as fun to pay for the window.
9. I try to be as honest as I feel I can be with people.
10. The only irrational fear I can remember from my childhood was my fear of raccoons after dark in the barn. No fear of them during the day, just at night and only in the barn.
11. Unless I’m really desperate, I will only eat cookies if they are fresh out of the oven.
12. I’m a certified lifeguard.
13. I often dream of wandering the world. I also often dream of going home and living in the same place for the rest of my life.
14. I butchered a goat for a school project once.
15. I once bought a pair of pants thinking I would, “shrink into them.” My co-workers at the time laughed at me. It took me two years but I finally fit in them, lol.
16. In a recent trip I ate local food many times and on several occasions only realized it was spicy when my nose was runny at the finish.
17. I have been part of the blowing up of a microwave.
18. I am super loyal. If you have ever been my friend, you are still my friend regardless of whether I have talked to you in a really long time or not.
19. At one point in time, my niece would listen to me over my sister (her mother). During that time my niece did a lot of, “Arrrrrrrrr”ing like a pirate and gave a lot of bear hugs.
20. I have been a major factor in a youth sponsor having his Achilles tendon torn, a professor breaking his wrist, and a classmate dislocating her shoulder.
21. Many of my current fears revolve around hair. For instance, I fear that my beard will grow into my eyebrows.
22. I once slept on the balcony of a hotel room for a week straight.
23. I learned to do a cartwheel at the age of 23.
24. I don’t typically kill spiders if I see them. They don’t usually bother me and they eat many other bugs that I hate far more than them.
25. I was once Santa Claus in the 5th grade Christmas concert. My only lines were, “Rudolph with your nose so bright, won’t you guide my sleigh tonight?” I forgot them.