Adventures in Bangladesh

A rather sad acheivement

2012-01-13T19:34:00.000-08:00

I did something yesterday for the very first time in all my 26 years. I joined some friends to play softball in the morning before church. I had a great time despite our team getting obliterated. After the game, there was still about an hour to go until I needed to head to church, so I hung around with some friends and watched the next game. While we were chatting we started up a conversation with a lady who was managing the team playing after us. The conversation was about my brother Steven's favorite stomach bug giardhia (sp?). During the course of the conversation she talked about the fact that her husband and her are here with Chevron and the worker care they do for their employees. That morphed into a conversation about what they are doing with Chevron and that they had to work over Christmas because of a project. Then she said some words that I have never heard before. She said, "Working Christmas wasn't too big of a deal with us because we're Jewish."

I now for the first time ever in my life, know a Jewish person.

I feel like that is really pathetic to say at 26, but the truth of the matter is I grew up in rural Indiana and went to University in rural Ohio before coming to live in rural Bangladesh. There are very few Jewish people in any of those locations. I'm not surprised at all that she is just a normal person. I just wish I could remember her name!

Musings on Soup and Life.

2012-01-09T23:53:00.000-08:00

I'm finally coming down from the high that was Christmas and I'm finding that my patience is shorter than I would like at this point. It always saddens me a bit to realize that. Last night it was potato soup that threw me over the edge. Yes, that is right, potato soup. I love potato soup and was making a batch last night. I blend a portion of it to make the soup creamy and thick. I blended up the soup and when I picked up the container to pour it back in it all come pouring out the bottom. It went all over the blender, all over the counter, and all over the floor. It wasted a ton of my precious soup! Bear in mind that this stuff is thick and a pain to clean up. I was immediately very angry and did a bit of yelling at the soup while figuring out what I should do. I was angry at the house help (why would you not reattach the bottom to the blender after cleaning!) and myself (why would you be yelling at potato soup it was just an accident!). I took some time to cool down by eating what turned out to be some very mediocre potato soup. I went back and cleaned up which made me angry again but at something new. This time it was at old school engineers. You know the ones back in the day that made kitchen appliances really durable but did it without talking to their wives about what you actually need in a blender. There was a ton of vent holes on the blender that all of the soup had run down into (who doesn't plan on stuff falling down on the base of a blender!!!).

Ordinarily, I would blame this all on stress from my new role at work but I realized something that made me change my mind as I was reflecting afterwards. I've been in Bangladesh for 6 straight months now. If you recall, I have figured out that I start losing patience after about 5 months in Bangladesh. There is nothing in particular about Bangladesh that does this too me. After 3 years of acclimation to the environment, I am pretty used to most things and quite capable of handling them. Regardless, I've reached that point and the result is that I have to focus very hard on being me until I get a that needed break. It is coming up in February when I will be going to Nepal.

In the mean time, I saw something promising today. I was walking on the street and I saw a little boy that gave me hope for the future of Bangladesh. Instead of peeing on the wall like all the older men you see, he was peeing in a sewage drain! That is change that I can believe in!

Do you ever?

2011-12-30T07:01:00.000-08:00

Do you ever sit back and realize that your life has gotten a bit out of control? I find myself dealing with this lately. I got so busy this past month that I wasn't able to function in a way that I think does who I strive to be justice. I notice this in all areas of my life. Imbalance in my experience is rarely limited to one area of our lives. I've been very functional at most things I've done this past month but my heart and soul weren't truly fully there in my actions and thoughts. Without these being present, life becomes nothing more than a pale shadow of what it might be. I become a pale shadow of who I might be. In response to this, I'm trying to slow down and be the real me again. I guess you could call that my New Year's resolution but it is purely coincidence that it falls at this time and I'm actually starting a few days too early for that to be true.

Do you ever get the desire to do something? Every year, I have a very strong desire to play basketball at two points in the year. At the beginning of college basketball season and during March madness. Hearing me talk about this strong desire, one of my friends bought me a basketball for Christmas. I went out and shot hoops today by myself. Yeah it isn't as cool as doing it in a group but I didn't do it entirely alone. There was a group of teenage Bengali boys using the basketball court as a cricket field. We shared and chit chatted during breaks a bit. In other news, I'm really terrible at shooting now. I shot 100 free throws and only made 42 of them. It is a sad day when I'm unable to hit free throws at a rate better than Shaq used to.

Do you ever go to bed at 9 pm? That's what I'm about to do! Goodnight!

Christmas tree

2011-12-23T12:18:00.000-08:00

It may not seem like much but it is still better than Charlie Brown's...

Cold Hard Reality

2011-12-21T09:39:00.000-08:00

Earlier this week, Esther and I had the privilege of being invited to the house of a friend who has a considerable more cushy job than us. The evening was relaxed, we had grilled cheese, soup, and salad for dinner. We met a few people we had never previously met and ended up playing games until almost 11pm. Given that this friend was on the other side of town and I had to work in the morning I was thinking about my safety in getting back to my side of town and how I was going to feel at work in the morning. Little did I know as I stepped into the brisk chill of the night, I was going to get a reality check that night. I say the brisk chill because we are right in the middle of a cold snap in Bangladesh this week. I have to wear a fleece jacket and scarf at my desk while I work in the morning these days. Well on this particular night it was cold enough that I was even wearing my Carhartt sock cap which comes in handy when you add windchill while riding public transportation. I managed to find a local bus near his house which was a wonderful thing since local busses in my opinion are the safest mode of transport in the city. After getting this to one bus stand and switching to another bus, I finally arrived at the stop near my house. I got off and started walking the last quarter mile or so of my journey. That is when it hit me like a ton of bricks, there was a dozen or so people in dirty, tattered clothes sleeping on the sidewalk. If I was cold in my nice jacket, scarf, and sock cap...I can't imagine what they were under their thin blankets sleeping on cold cement. It flew right in the face of my association of Christmas with joyful times. It got me to think and made me want to do something. Like most people, I'm not sure exactly of what I should do but I know I'm not disappointed to have been reminded of the cold hard reality of life at times. It is something we can all use a good dose of occasionally.

I enjoy challenges...and talking loud.

2011-12-06T22:53:00.001-08:00

I've been in my new job for all of 3 work days now and so far, I love it. It has been really busy and at some points really daunting but I'm being challenged. Out of the challenge arises lots of learning and joy because of accomplishment. Most of my job is just to assist the experts in the planning of their jobs. I also get to help trouble shoot problems. That allows me to be creative. I don't even mind so far that I'm going to have to be incredibly organized for this job (something I have not been so great at in the past). It is a headache that I'm thrilled with so far.

Speaking of headaches, I was reminded this past week of something that I really enjoy about Bangladesh. Loud talking is not considered rude! In the course of a debate between many people, everyone starts talking really loud here and no one takes it as being out of anger. You can say something very forcefully without someone being worried about you being angry. Given that I have about zero control over my voice level, this is a perfect situation for me. That said, if you start yelling here, you are generally presumed to have lost the game as showing anger is generally considered inappropriate.

Common Law

2011-11-26T21:26:00.001-08:00

One of the interesting things that came up this last week in Bangladesh was in a discussion on gender issues. In Bangladesh, inheritance laws are based on religion. If you are a Muslim, then your estate gets broken up by the laws for Islamic people. If you are Hindu, your estate gets broken up by the laws that govern Hindus. If you are Christian, your estate gets broken up according to Catholic laws (sorry everyone else, they were the largest sect of Christianity when the laws were written). If you are Buddhist you get your estate broken up according to Buddhist traditions.

The interesting part from what I understand is that there are no provisions for any other religions or lack thereof. Good luck being an atheist here! For the common Bengali, that is not even a concept they comprehend.

Bangladesh is not like the US where there is a common law that governs and this division goes beyond just inheritance laws. For instance, Christians are not permitted to divorce since this goes against official Catholic church traditions.

Feel free to use this information to make yourself appear smart and cool at all your upcoming Christmas functions! I am allowed to mention Christmas now that Thanksgiving is over right?

Last week Dengue, this week a new job...

2011-11-22T03:52:00.001-08:00

So the reason I didn't post last week was because I had dengue. Dengue is a viral disease that you get from mosquitoes much in the same way you get malaria. It is nicknamed the "bone breaking" disease. They call it this because it makes your body ache all over. Luckily, my case was a seemingly mild one and I got away without too much pain. I didn't however get away from the energy sapping portions of it. There is no treatment or cure for dengue. You just have to wait it out and even now, 2.5 weeks after it started, I still feeling tired from it. I am slowly regaining energy but physically and mentally I'm drained by about 8 each night which is quite an improvement from a week ago when reading a book would exhaust me within minutes. That my friends is my excuse for not posting last week.

In other news, I have had a job change as well. I have been asked if I would be willing to take on the role of F&SS administrator. F&SS stands for Financial and Support Services. I have accepted this role and will be moving to Dhaka. I have a lot of mixed feelings about this job. On one hand, I hate to leave Bogra but recognize that I would be doing that in 7 months anyway as a result of getting married. It will also be more work and responsibility at the same pay! Lol, I find it amusing that I even think about pay. On the other hand, I recognize that there is a need for someone to do the job and it is a very good opportunity for me to get some management experience. The end result is this, I told the powers that be that to be the F&SS administrator is not my ambition in life and should such a time arise that I'm not needed in that role, they could feel free to ask me to step aside with zero hard feelings. The fact that my timeline should force me to choose a new direction in 1.5 years actually is one of the reasons I work out for this position to begin with. As far as I can tell, it is a match for both sides that has to do with taking advantage of opportune situations. I guess that's all most people really ever hope for in life...

Sacrifice Eid

2011-11-08T01:13:00.000-08:00

People aren't very good at following directions in Bangladesh...

The Eid sacrifice makes the lake run with blood. I thought of the biblical story of the Nile turning to blood in this situation. What you can't see clearly here is enormous amount of fish swimming around in the bloody water. They were having a hay day munching on whatever fish munch on in blood.

Trick or treat anyone? This lady was taking her two children around with bags to collect beef scraps from the local wealthy people who were able to sacrifice a cow. The street are filled with poorer people doing this on Eid afternoon. I've heard that rich people may even give out money with the meat.

This weekend was Eid-al-Adha. This is the sacrifice Eid. Everyone leaves to go to their village home and those who stay in Dhaka are either too poor to have a village home or rich enough to have a home in Dhaka. This creates a very empty Dhaka with what supposedly was 400,000 cows to be sacrificed. The cost of cows doubles or triples at this time of year and from my understanding wealthy families are expected to buy and sacrifice one if they are able. They are then to distribute 1/3 to the poor, 1/3 to their neighbors, and 1/3 goes to their extended family. It is kind of a big deal here.

Moments I Could Live in

2011-10-31T03:35:00.000-07:00

Do you ever have those little moments that just make you feel at peace? They are glorious things in my life and I never grow tired of them. I probably need to think back to them in the moments when I wish I had a baseball bat to take to someone on the street because they are doing something really annoying to me (seriously a reoccurring desire even if I have never come close to acting on it). I've had a few of these moments in this past week which I will indulge myself to share with you now.

This week I joined the guys from the office for lunch for the first time all month. After traveling for so long the joy of returning to what is essentially my "home" Bangla cooking is sensational. The smell when you walk in and the taste which is something comfortable and soothing that says to me, welcome home is a very relaxing experience. The company is pretty good too!

A sit down conversation with my boss Mokhles discussing what I need to do in the near future and what priority I should give everything is also a simple pleasure for me. I enjoy the result which is a peace about what my near future holds even if that is a lot of work.

Cooking something for the first time and having it turn out far better than you had anticipated was another wonder of the week. I had a bunch of vegetables in the fridge and decided to try making a cream sauce for them. Remembering that I had a bit of cheese that tasted pretty terrible in the freezer, I threw it in along with some left over ground pepper from the day before. The end result almost floored me with how fantastic it tasted in combination with bread, butter, and a chaser of iced tea!

I tried purchasing my tickets to go to Ireland for my wedding this week only to have the travel company contact me and say the price was going to be $190 more expensive than they quoted me. I cancelled my order only to realize that all the companies had raised their prices $200-300 since the previous day. You can imagine how great it felt when I found out that if I left a day later I could stay in Ireland an extra day longer than I had originally planned for a price that was cheaper than the ticket I originally tried to purchase! I don't know how the difference between Thursday and Friday is suddenly $350 but I'm not complaining one iota.

Prayer with a group of expats here in Bogra had to be by far the greatest moment of peace in my week. Saturday marked the first time since May that I was present for a gathering with a large portion of them all at once and just taking time to pray earnestly with them was such a blessing.

This has been a week of peace and blessings for me. What kinds of things have made you feel peace this past week?

Change happens all the time

2011-10-25T03:14:00.000-07:00

It isn't just over 3 years that change happens. This morning I woke up and was thinking about badminton since the staff asked me about it yesterday. In the Bogra office we have a tradition of playing badminton each year starting about this time. They were asking me if I had a racket since we are starting to gear up for it. I do have a racket. I bought it one year ago at about this time of the year. At the time, I figured I would be using it for just 2 months and then giving it away since I would leave before it was time to use it again. Extending wasn't a thought in my mind. Neither was Esther. Little did I know that I would have at least 2 more seasons to look forward to at that time.

When you think about it, this type of change happens all the time. I doubt that my dad would have thought that he would be using a cane to walk one year ago. My mother probably would have called my bluff if I had told her she would have a passport. One thing that is different though is that when you put yourself in a job like mine, change happens far more often and rapidly than if you were "settled" somewhere. As I mentioned in my previous post, 15 people have left MCC since I started working here. That isn't including the friends from other organizations that have done so as well. In fact, I have watched our expat friend group in Bogra go from 7 to 14 back to 6 in just 3 years. Changing life and friendships are just the name of the game here and you have to be able to adjust.

15

2011-10-25T03:00:00.000-07:00

Since I came to Bangladesh 3 years ago. 15 MCC expats have finished their time here. At the ripe old age of 26, I am now the expat who has spent the most time with MCC in Bangladesh. To be fair though, 4 of my current 5 expat coworkers have spent more time overall in Bangladesh than me.

I just find that interesting.

Food: A fascination

2011-10-24T03:05:00.001-07:00

Whew, it is nice to finally have a slight respite from the craziness oflife. Today I spent most of the day going through old emails that I hadn't hadthe time to pay much attention to since coming back in August. It is hard tobelieve that I left to come back almost 3 months ago already. Looking back itis even crazier to think that I was going through orientation at Akron at thistime 3 years ago. Much of life has changed and so have I since that time. Inlight of that, I'm going to spend this week posting comparisons between thenand now as I have time and thoughts to share.

First off today, I'm going to start off with an easy one. The availabilityof western foods in grocery stores in Bangladesh. It is weird to think this isa big deal but over time this has actually turned into a form of tourism forme. Every time I come to Dhaka I drop by the western grocery stores (there are3 main ones in Dhaka) to see what is new or changed. I often times won't evenspend any money, I just enjoy looking and make a point to know what I couldget. This is important for a couple of reasons. The first being that you knowwhen something rare hits the markets. I once found a 500g package of walnuts inthe grocery store. I immediately realized how incredibly rare any kind of nutsother than cashews and peanuts are available here and snatched it up. It was abit pricey but this was right before Thanksgiving and it made for a wonderfultouch in several dishes when a group of 12 of us gathered together for a meal.Another reason for knowing this information is similar to the first. I want toknow what I could make and serve people. I love baking and sharing food fromhome with friends and living on an MCC food budget allows me a few smallpurchases here and there for this purpose. For instance, this month I purchasedpizza sauce and invited everyone in our office over for pizza. Normally I wouldjust make the sauce myself from scratch but tomato is not really in seasonright now and pizza sauce goes a long way. It was a good treat and everyone hada good time. My final reason for watching these things is just my own personalfascination with how this has changed. Three years ago there was Mozzarellacheese, a few biscuits, a couple of sodas, lays potato chips, a few candy bars,instant coffee, and black tea available in a tiny crowded store. Today thereare 20-30 different cheeses from a half dozen countries, 100's of biscuits,20ish different sodas, a wide assortment of potato chips from a few countries,30+ different candy bars (along with gummies and dark chocolate which was anewcomer in the last 6 months!), 15+ different varieties of coffee (including areasonably priced local roaster of coffee), and 100's of herbal teas from allover the world in shops that have torn down walls and expanded numerous timesto accommodate their bulging stock. One store has even added a western standardbutchery where you can get everything from sausages to steaks (all halal ofcourse).

As I alluded to earlier though, all of this stuff is expensive. It is alsoimported and therefore someone spent a lot of fuel taking it a long distance.For instance, some of the tea is picked in India, packaged in the UK, shippedfor sale in Australia, and then imported to Bangladesh. It seems rather sillyto purchase something that is produced a few hundred miles away when it hastraveled thousands of miles to get here. It is a big waste of fuel and money.Sometimes I have to remind myself that these are luxury items and not reallythings I need. As the popular sesame street character cookie monster has takento saying, “cookie is sometimes food!” Sometimes the simple lessons we teachchildren are the lessons we have need to remember ourselves.

Crazy Busy

2011-10-15T19:01:00.000-07:00

Umm...I'm a bit swamped as I have Esther with me in Bogra and am co-leading some trainings at work so please check back later in the week for a blog update. I'm pretty sure it will be worth the wait people, so seriously, come back later.

Surprise Blog!

2011-10-12T22:11:00.000-07:00

That's right everyone, 2 days in a row! Bet you didn't see that coming.

I tried out a new bus route yesterday. Turns out that was a mistake for going but not so much for returning. I did however make a new friend. His name was Abdula. He is a military guy from Barisal though for some reason he didn't want to tell me he was working in the military at first. He was on his way to buy 4 plane tickets to Khulna which he informed me he could get for 1/2 price due to being in the military. Don't ask me how that works. He also mentioned something about being allowed to com-endear road transport if he wanted... Anyway, Abdula thought it was good of me to be marrying an Irish Teacher. He and the other passengers who took an active interest in our conversation were definitely looking out for me. They refused to give the bus conductor their fares until he gave me the 5 taka change that I was owed. People are very friendly here.

I find it interesting to ride the bus. I find that unlike when I'm walking on the street, most people will not talk to me unless I talk to them first. Even teenagers who are notorious for not caring about social norms and privacy seem to abide by this rule. Once I break through that barrier though I find that I have to be prepared for the normal barrage of questions and friendliness. Sometimes I just like to sit in silence and be just another passenger lost in my own thoughts starring idly at the world crawling by (crawling is a great descriptive word for Bangladesh as the bus goes very slow and the environment around it covered with swarms of people). Yesterday evening on the way home my thoughts turned towards running again. I wondered at the real possibility of running all the way to the office from Esther's side of town. It is 6 miles which is a decent distance but I have run 5 miles at a 10 minute mile pace before many times. With some effort I could get myself in really good shape and probably easily get myself down to a point where I could run a 6 mile distance in 45 minutes. For some insane reason I really want to do that now. Over the last couple of years I've often thought that I would love to run a half-marathon someday. 6 mile runs would be excellent for that. The office has showers in it so I could wash up on arrival. If I got too tired on the way I could just hop on a bus. At first I thought I was crazy for even thinking of it but the more I think the better I like the idea. Thoughts?

TIB

2011-10-12T03:09:00.000-07:00

I'm getting flaky with my posting again. I know this is late but I'll squeeze out a few musings for those who do check this occasionally.

This past week I saw a Bengali man wearing what was obviously a women's tank top. If that wasn't amusing enough, he had a big rice gut hanging out the underside of that tank top and was walking 20 small goats down the street in a residential highrise area. TIB (This Is Bangladesh)

I've been in Dhaka the last week or so. I've been working at using buses to move around the city. The last couple of nights, I've hung out with Esther until around 9pm over on her side of the city and then taken the bus back to where I stay. Unfortunately, taking the bus is a time consuming process. If you go at the wrong time (as happened to me several times this week) it takes 1-1.5 hours to cover just under 6 miles. I can literally run that distance in that time. TIB

Last night I took a CNG (basically like a 3 wheeled taxi based off a motorcycle sized engine) home. I often like to talk to the drivers of CNGs while we make the trip across town. I asked him if the national elections scheduled for two years from now will take place? He said, "no." I asked him if the Awami League who is the party currently in power would continue to rule at that time? He said, "no." I asked him if a caretaker government would take over for awhile like happened last time elections were supposed to occur? He said, "no." I asked him if the military would take over for awhile? He said, "yes." TIB

This article: http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=190564
Seriously, read the whole thing, I promise you it is worth it for the laughs that appear throughout. TIB

Bangladesh Toilet Paper...use liberally.

2011-10-02T01:10:00.000-07:00

Recently we celebrated world peace day in Bangladesh. I spent half of my day in a local officials' office as they had a number of activities planned for the event. At one point in time I used the restroom and laughed at this unique use of the toilet paper holder as a soap box. To be fair, it is the bengali equivalent since you use your left hand before washing that with soap. Think of all the trees we could save by switching to this system in the USA! ;-)

Reality vs. Perception

2011-09-27T18:41:00.000-07:00

Had an interesting conversation with a Bengali coworker this week. They were telling me that when a certain former coworker of ours left they told my Bengali coworker a lie which they believed and it made them despise MCC. Eventually my Bengali coworker over time came to realize that the former coworker had manipulated them and that MCC really is a good organization that wouldn't do the kind of thing they were accused of. They also told me that some of our other workers have perceptions of MCC that are probably wrong because of their limited knowledge of the same situation. For those of you who know me well, you know that I hate miscommunication of this nature. Unfortunately for my tastes, I was also raised by my father to bear in mind when privacy matters due to my position as an employee. It is hard sometimes but you've got to let perceptions be perceptions and hope that reality changes those over time. I mean, one thing I have learned and appreciate about MCC from my time spent with them thus far is how kind they are. I see the organization quietly live out that reality even if you can't always see that on the surface. It takes some time to notice sometimes but it is there if you stick around long enough.

Sorry, this blog post was all about relieving some stress. This has been a week of a lot of thinking and challenges for me. That hasn't stopped it from being a good week, just a week of a lot of thinking...

Our Moments

2011-09-20T03:11:00.000-07:00

Have you ever had moments that you will forever remember? Of course you do. It happens to all of us. Mostly it comes around times of tragedy (where were you when JFK was shot or on 9/11). Sometimes it comes at good times (like the memory of getting a new bike for Christmas!). This week I've had two "moments" to remember. One or both might be classified as tragedy or good times.

The first happened while I was getting a haircut on Saturday. I was sitting there as usual. The barber was working his way from the left side of my head where he always starts to the right side. Suddenly he stopped and began poking at the side of my head while staring quite intently at it. I asked him what was up? He responded, "paca." I thought he might have meant, "poca" which means bug. I thought, "oh great! now I have head lice!" He managed to catch it on his scissors and show it to me after a bit more poking. It was a white hair! It was only then that I understood he meant "paca" as in "spoiled" or "not good." Bengali people don't normally like white hair and will do anything to avoid it. This was my first gray hair.

The second happened on Sunday night. Again, I was at home doing my usual thing. Just whipping up a batch of frosting for some cake that I had made. All of the sudden my fridge starts shaking and I'm thinking to myself, "that stupid compressor motor is vibrating awfully hard." Then it gets worse and I notice that everything is shaking! Then I finally realize that this is an earthquake. You better believe I got my butt out of that house pretty quickly when I realized that. Buildings in Bangladesh aren't known for being well built and there is something about several tons of brick and concrete that I don't particularly care to be smashed under. I vividly remember walking pretty fast down the hallway leading to my front door while everything around my seemed to look like Jello. Those few moments as my landlord, neighbor, and I scrambled outside got my heart to pumping pretty good.

Those are a few moments I'll probably never forget. Have any you want to share with me?

Balance

2011-09-18T02:20:00.000-07:00

I just realized that I didn't post last week. Chalk that one up to having gone to Dhaka and back. I've come back to Bogra and have no intentions to leave again until October. I've done far too much traveling thus far since returning. To be fair, much of that was out of a desire to see Esther which is always there. Unfortunately for her, I really do need to stay in Bogra and rest sometimes. I'm a homebody. I find traveling enjoyable, but I also find it tiring. That may seem odd considering I now live abroad but it is true none-the-less. Some people get antsy after they have been in a place for awhile. They want to move on and do something else. The longer I'm in a place the more comfortable I get there. That also means that I have to be careful of a few things in life. I have to be mindful that settling down isn't always good for you and that change isn't something to fear. Growing comfortable often leads to a softness in oh so many ways. At the same time, change for the sake of change can be foolishness. As the old saying goes, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Maybe that is the ultimate challenge in life; telling the difference between when something is appropriately balanced and when something in our lives is broke. Sometimes, however, it is easy to tell. I was exhausted, so I'm resting in Bogra for the next couple of weeks. Praise the Lord for the easy to tell ones!

Poetic

2011-09-05T03:37:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I feel very poetic about Bangladesh. One instance in which this constantly happens for me is in crossing over the Jamuna bridge. Whenever I pass over the huge Jamuna river I am always in awe of how big and powerful it is. Yet despite all this might, there is a tiny village on an island in the middle right in sight of the bridge. Most islands are torn away and moved constantly by the violent and aggressive flow that comes with each rainy season but this island survives with its tiny village intact. To give you more scope and scale, in Bangladesh the cost of building a bridge across the big rivers is mostly in "taming" the rivers rather than in the bridges themselves. A monumental effort must be made to barricade the banks for miles just to keep the river from destroying the banks between which the river flows. If these barricades fail like one did in floods that happened in 2007, a half-mile square section of river bank can disappear in the matter of a few hours or days. What a mighty thing this earth that God created is. Unfortunately, the machines of man are no where near so powerful and that would be why my bus broke down when we got to the far side of the river. This did a pretty good job of killing my poetic mood. The hour long wait by the edge of the road for the next bus owned by the company I was traveling with finished it off.

Engaged!

2011-08-29T22:05:00.000-07:00

Just in case you hadn't heard. Esther and I got engaged this past weekend. In light of this fact, I'll spend this week's post relaying the story of how that went down since people always seem interested in such things and I don't have anything better to rant about given the heavy nature of the last two posts.

So last Friday was the 6 month anniversary of our first date. I've been thinking that would be a good day to propose for awhile now. To start off the day, I got up early and bought Esther flowers which I gave to her with a card which worked exactly as I planned. :-) I figured if I didn't get her anything other than a card she would be thinking that either I'm in idiot or I'm up to something. She loved the flowers and quickly devoured the card (as in read it, she didn't actually eat it). We then went to church as we usually do on Friday, spent the afternoon lounging around resting, went up to a worship time on the roof with friends, and finally went to dinner together. We went out to a nice Indian restaurant that we both like and just enjoyed dinner together. While at dinner we realized that in 6 months this was only our third dinner date by ourselves (though I just realized that it was actually our fourth since the picture above is of a dinner date which was not included in our count). I guess that is what happens when you have two extroverts. Anyways, I didn't do it there either. We went home to find that Esther's roommate had some friends over so we sat and chatted with them for a bit. Eventually they left and Esther went to turn the A/C on and get on her computer in her bedroom. I took this time to prepare by putting the ring in my pocket and getting out my second card that I had hid away. I went in to her and told her that I had another card for her. She thought that was sweet and as she went to open it I told her that she couldn't yet. I told her that I had one more small present to give her first. I then got down on one knee and proposed. In retrospect, her reaction was hilarious, at the time it was a bit scary. Every one of the thoughts she went through for the next 5-7 seconds was shown on her face. It started off with the "are you serious" thought which she actually muttered the words to as I got down on one knee and proceeded through a large amount of emotions before the ending, happy, yes came. My diversion worked, she had no clue I was even thinking about it all day. You could tell the whole thing had her pretty shocked which leads me to my pro tip of the day for all future proposing men: 11pm is a dumb time to propose, she is going to be incredibly wired right after the proposal and if she can't sleep, you can't either. I was dragging pretty bad come 3:30 am when we finally got all the people called that we absolutely had to call immediately so that she could announce it publicly. That was probably a good thing though as she probably would have had a hard time keeping it a secret as evidenced by the fact that she was in a daze for the next two days and kept muttering "were getting married" randomly throughout the day.

So yeah, I'm marrying a truly wonderful woman...eventually. No date set yet. Setting a date is a tricky balance of needing to save money to have a wedding and navigating MCC's policy on getting married on top of the usual challenges of doing this normally challenging enough activity. Prayers would be appreciated.

Our World

2011-08-22T22:43:00.000-07:00

One of the things that I really enjoy about living outside of the U.S. is the experience in general. I'm not talking about the oppressive things that I often joke about on here. I'm talking about the things that you would likely never realize if you don't travel. Last week I was sitting in a meeting and events put words to the thing I had been feeling for months. I realized that one of the difficulties and beauties of living in Bangladesh is that we understand things in different ways. I think we sometimes take the foundations of our understanding for granted. Actually, we probably almost always take the foundations of our understanding for granted. The environment in which you grow up drastically affects how you perceive the world around you. If you grow up in a hut on the edge of the desert in Botswana, the spiders in your house are no big deal but rain is a huge deal. If you grow up in the rigid school structure and hierarchical system of Bangladesh, patiently waiting for things to occur is not a big deal but abstract processing is a challenge. If you grow up in the wealth and prosperity of the U.S., giving is not a challenge but sacrificing is.

That last one is something I'm learning from a situation with some Bengali Christians I am currently dealing with. The wife is working as a cook/househelper, the husband is a blind guy who has a dream of running a center for the disabled. They have a faith that says that they can trust that the Lord will provide. I have a faith that says the Lord will provide but we also need to be good stewards of what God provides. They keep asking me for money. I keep telling them to be good stewards and telling them that I'm poor too. When I really think about it though, I'm not really poor. I'm just bad at sacrificing my ingrained american desires so that I might share. I rejoice though because I wouldn't be challenging myself like this if I didn't take a step away from home. I don't think we see ourselves as clearly in a mirror as we do in the eyes of someone different than us. If you look closely enough, that reflection in their eyes just may shake your foundations and from this, stronger ones may arrive.

Back in Bangladesh

2011-08-15T23:34:00.000-07:00

Now I'm truly back in Bangladesh. 7 hour bus rides, cockroaches, staring, rain, heat, crazy prices just because I'm white, and my first bout of sickness are the stories of the past week and part of the reason why I'm late in blogging this week. I am happy though that I haven't had too much trouble with mosquitoes just yet.

Ramadan is an interesting time of year. It is a month long lead up to the first Eid. The two Eids are essentially the equivalent of Christmas and Easter (in scale only) for the Muslim calendar. Ramadan is the month of fasting. My understanding is that this is meant to be a time of remembering the poor and hungry around them and a call to be generous. It is also a time to purify yourself of bad habits in the lead up to Eid. During this month, no one eats or drinks from sunrise to sunset. For me as a Christian westerner it has its ups and downs. One upside is that our office hours shorten by an hour each day. I much prefer this shortened day to long days that drag on even if you aren't overly busy. The downside is that all restaurants are closed and so you spend pretty much all month staying at home rather than meeting friends places. Another downside is that as a Christian, I may not be fasting, but I still need to respect that others around me are. This means no eating or drinking publicly for me. That makes long bus rides a drag.

In keeping with the thinking about poor people though, someone showed me an interesting video this past week and I would invite you to watch it if you have time. It's called The Story of Stuff and while I don't endorse everything it says (I think they badly over-dramatize), I do endorse the general concept. You can watch it here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLBE5QAYXp8).

The Return!

2011-08-06T23:13:00.000-07:00

Some of you may have noticed that I have been gone for the last two months. Your eyes did not deceive you, I really was gone. I gallivanted around the USA, UK, and surprisingly the UAE. Actually to tell you the truth, didn't do that much gallivanting in any of those countries. In the USA I took exactly two trips farther than a couple of hours from my parents house. I mostly just relaxed. In the UK I traveled a bit but it was mostly just going to 4-5 places to see people. Then there was my unexpected day in the UAE. On my return to Bangladesh I got to have some fun. I boarded my flight an hour early because that is when they were boarding us but then the two Malaysian pilots managed to screw up our paperwork so we had to wait until an hour after we were supposed to leave to get clearance to leave. We taxied out to the tarmac and then a nasty storm delayed us for another 1.5 hours. Of course when the storm finished we had to wait another half hour while all the planes that were circling landed. Eventually we got going though and by that time I knew the Catholic couple next to me and our stewardess pretty well. Unfortunately, all the time on the tarmac sitting with the engines running meant that we had to stop and refuel in Kuwait which eventually meant that we landed 2 hours after my plane to Dhaka left. Given the lack of a time machine in Abu Dhabi to transport me back and get me on the plane I missed; I had no alternative but to wait in line like everyone else who missed a flight to get rearranged. Unfortunately again, I had to wait 2.5 hours to get to the front of the line. Luckily, by the time I reached the front of the line I knew the Bengali American Professor standing next to me decently well. Since we both had American passports we could get free visas on arrival so they offered to put us up in a hotel and send us out on an Emirates flight later in the day. We said sure to that and they told us to go have a seat while they arranged the details. 30 minutes later they finally had it figured out and asked if we would mind sharing a room. Neither of us minded so they set us up with a room with two single beds. It then took us 2 more hours to get through customs, baggage, and getting a car to the hotel. By the time we reached the hotel we had 5 hours before the vehicle they had arranged for us take to Dubai for our Emirates flight came to pick us up. We decided that sleep would be silly so we both called our families, took showers, and perused the internet for a few hours. Then we went downstairs for our free breakfast at about 6:30 in the morning. We ate large amounts of food at the buffet since there were no arrangements for lunch and our flight left at 1pm. We had a great conversation over a long breakfast and by the time we got back up to our rooms and packed up, it was time to go. As my older brother predicted, there wasn't much other than sand in between Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Coming into Dubai was pretty cool, there are a ton of sky scrapers in that city and the Burj Khalifa is ridiculously tall. We got the airport 3 hours before our flight which was a good thing since we spent the next hour walking from counter to counter trying to figure out why no one could figure out our ticketing. The Dubai airport is insanely big. To give you an idea of scale, we walked in the front doors and the nearest desk area was over 100 yards away. The entrance and check in area alone had to have been 6 acres or more. Eventually one of the check in people figured out our problem and explained to us that Etihad had screwed up the paperwork. Once they realized this they were extremely helpful and nice to us. The flight went smoothly and I arrived in Dhaka about 16 hours later than originally planned.

I have now been back for a weekend and am getting back to regularly scheduled life. I've been surprised so far by how natural slipping right back into my life here has been thus far. My Bangla doesn't seem to have slipped too horribly and my patience is sky high right now. I slept great my first night back but have tossed and turned the last two nights. I would guess that is jet lag getting to me but it hasn't caused me too much trouble during the day. I went to church on Friday and got to see everyone I haven't seen for two months and meet a few new people. Then Esther made it back safely on Saturday morning so I went to pick her up from the airport and help her get home. We both took a nap in the afternoon for a short bit and then we got invited over to dinner by a friend which was a blessing because it created the kind of exciting atmosphere you need to keep you awake when you need to fight sleep like Esther was. On the way over we got our first good drenching as the rain poured out on us with a vengeful fury. Luckily our host had a bunch of dry clothes for people to change into!

So far, so good. Tomorrow morning I will head back to Bogra and settle into home. For the next month I'll be dealing with Ramadan and the shortened office hours and strange times that come with that (more details will be shared in next weeks blog). I'm excited to get back to work and feeling really good about how refreshed and energized I am to be productive.

Until next week,

Phil

Elephants

2011-05-29T21:22:00.000-07:00

This past weekend I was riding a motorcycle through town and got stuck behind a van. I had resigned myself to being stuck behind this van for a good distance because of the way traffic was at the time when as we rounded a slight bend in the road...an elephant appeared. You may wonder what this has to do with the van? Well in Bangladesh it isn't that uncommon for people with elephants to just wander around taking money from cars in exchange for not tearing up their car. It is just one more form of corruption. Fortunately for me, an elephant cannot hold up a motorcycle and I was able to pass the van just fine. I was in a truck once that was held up by an elephant but our driver saw it coming and managed to squeeze around the elephant quickly because the truck is more agile and quick than most vehicles in Bangladesh.

In other news, I'll be back in the US next week for a two month home leave. Maybe I'll see you there?

Desire to Rage

2011-05-24T18:34:00.000-07:00

One of the biggest challenges for me in being in Bangladesh is anger management. You are constantly bombarded by things that are just incredibly frustrating. In the last week alone I can think of 6 things that have made me very angry. When I was a child, I used to go into rages. I'd yell and do things like throw objects at the ground (sometimes breaking them). As I've gotten older I've realized the wisdom there is in controlling your anger through that initial storm of feeling but that isn't to say I'm perfect. I try to forgive when I calm down. I know I need to. Without further ado, the 6 things and my reactions.

1: One of my coworkers tells me about the trouble they are having getting government approval on something because the officials in various places want them to pay bribes. This annoys me so much and it happens everywhere here but I have no face to put on it so it just simmers with resentment inside of me. I take a deep breath and let it go as just something I can't control here.

2: Riding on rickshaw with one of my friends in Dhaka. Our peddler swerves at a young woman for absolutely no reason. He comes with a fraction of an inch of hitting her with a rickshaw axle (which hurts pretty darn bad). Before I know it, I've jabbed the rickshaw driver in the back with my umbrella (briefly forgot I was a pacifist). He turns to look at me and in the moment I realize how stupid I've just been. I apologize to him. Here in my anger I jabbed a poor oppressed guy for nearly hitting a poor oppressed woman. I felt like a real idiot for doing that.

3: Several CNG (local small 3 wheeled taxi) drivers asked for ridiculous prices just because I'm a foreigner at various times this past weekend. I tried to haggle them down or if the price was just way too crazy, I just walked away. I need to remember to not show my frustration with them when haggling. If you act cheerful, they are much more likely to continue bartering with you. If you show your anger in any way, they've won and it is impossible to barter a good price out of them.

4: I got home after a week and a half away to find a huge cockroach staring at me from the top of my bedpost. I grabbed the broom and went ballistic on him. I yelled all sorts of mean things as I repeatedly crushed him with that broom. I then grabbed a can of bug spray and killed a bunch of his family in the kitchen. It was not a good day to be a cockroach in my house. In this situation I was tired from a long week of traveling and realization that I have a lot of house cleaning to do. I still would have killed them regardless because I have guests coming this weekend who have made it very clear that they do not appreciate cockroaches. There was no need for me to do it with the anger with which I did that.

5: Yesterday morning a plan that we had to go to a partner fell apart at last second because one of the guys had to go to a meeting which they were supposed to have finished the previous evening. I got strait up out of my desk chair and went to his boss who had made the decision and we had a discussion about the merits of both decisions. I accepted that he really did need to go to the meeting but voiced my feelings about how I really need him to come on the partner trip. His boss suggested that we postpone our trip by a few hours if we could. After a few minutes of discussion about whether this was possible we arranged for this change. It all worked out fine in the end. I was still annoyed that it had happened but glad a solution could be found.

6: This morning I got up early to come into the office and use Skype to call my family. I've been so busy lately that I haven't had much of a chance to talk to any of them. I have a couple of issues I really need to talk to several people about. Unfortunately, the internet was down at the office and I ended up getting up early for nothing. I tried everything I could to get the internet going again. I was so angry, I slammed my fist down on my desk. This has happened to me several times now in the last couple of months since we switched internet providers. It is so frustrating when I have so little time to squeeze in these calls and just can't manage it. Then I get to thinking about the other things I could be getting done instead during the time that I wasted coming into the office early and that only makes me more upset. It makes me want to yell at my boss for making the decision to switch providers (even though I know and respect why he did that). It makes me want to break down into a fit of throwing things and has me on the verge of tears it is so frustrating. But eventually, I take some time to cool down and realize that stuff happens in life. This is beyond my control. Getting angry does nothing but make me feel terrible. So I calm down and try to forgive myself.

Missionary Midnight

2011-05-21T20:42:00.000-07:00

How many of you have ever heard of missionary midnight? It is a joke based on the idea that 10pm is a missionary's equivalent to midnight and therefore you are almost always in bed by then. Last night a group of my friends (a wonderful group of people) threw me an early birthday party. During the later stages of this party a new idea sprung forth. MISSIONARY TWISTER! Larry wanted to play twister but we didn't have a board. So we got some dry erase markers and labeled the tiles on the floor with Red, Yellow, Blue, and Green. Unfortunately, we didn't have colored markers, just black, so we just labeled them with letters. This lead to Dave's now famous comment, "Missionary Twister, we're so poor we can't even afford color!" We then skipped out on the spinner (because we didn't have one) and used four dutch blitz cards (just happen to be red, yellow, blue, and green!). Our designated caller, Gill, would pick a limb based off her random whim then draw a card for color. At times, it was very questionable whether these choices were random at all (they most definitely were not) but it was a good challenge and lots of fun. There are lots of pictures from this event that I hope never find their way to the internet! Esther threatened to send them directly to my mother but I assured her that no pictures of me doing anything silly would be surprising to my mother at this point.

Moral of the Story: Just like my childhood, in Bangladesh sometimes creating your own fun beats commercialized fun.

Vision and Values

2011-05-14T22:04:00.000-07:00

This past week I had the opportunity to sit in on a vision and values training that we have been giving to all our staff in Bangladesh. The training is an adaptation of a training that FH (Food for the Hungry) had developed. As I may have mentioned before, MCC Bangladesh has staff from many backgrounds. I work with people from Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Animist, and Christian backgrounds. Beyond that, the people are also from many different cultures. The Bengali people are the dominant culture of Bangladesh but we also have many other indigenous cultures represented in MCC here. The vision and values training brought all of those people together to share MCC's identity with them and to encourage them to reflect on how they relate to that. For many, portions of this were very challenging. My biggest challenge was that it was almost entirely in Bangla! With the help of a handy English outline of the events, I was able to follow the events but must lament that I didn't understand many of the nuances that happened in the many small group discussions. These were also very long days. A typical day would run from prayer at 8:30 in the morning until a Bangla film finished at 8pm. The first day, I had a horrible migraine by 4:30 in the afternoon as my brain overloaded on trying to process too much bangla. It was worth it in the end. I really enjoyed the conversations that were shared and look forward to going back over the bangla and adding it to my vocabulary permanently. I even got to hit a co-worker with a pot! (Meaning I accidentally hit her lightly on the shoulder during a skit about reconciliation which everyone found to be hilarious!) It was a long week but certainly a fun one.

Safety

2011-05-03T03:41:00.000-07:00

So I've had a few people wondering about our safety here in regards to the recent news about Osama Bin Laden.

I'd first like to take a moment to ask American Christians why they are celebrating his death so wildly? I'm no biblical scholar but I'm pretty sure that when Jesus says, "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you." he doesn't mean that you should be celebrating wildly at their death. Might I suggest solemn reflection on the fact that we live in a world that has gotten so violent and what we do that perpetuates this? It might also be worth reflecting on the fact that those celebrations often times end up leading to more violence which is why I'm getting questions about safety.

I've never felt threatened by people in Bangladesh. There have been times that I have felt threatened and unsafe on the roads but that was from buses and trucks not people. Despite warnings from various people before I left the States about not trusting Muslims, I have found the primarily Muslim Bengali people to way more hospitable and friendly than even American people are. It is part of their culture which has existed since before Islam came to the area. That said, I've heard rumors that there are conservative Islamic elements in Bengali society. The rumors are that they are sent money from elements in the middle east for fundamentalist schools. I guess it is possible that these groups could eventually do something to me but I doubt they will. These groups are being carefully scrutinized by the current government here and I would guess they are much more likely to be angry with the government of Bangladesh than me. I was just told the other day that someone heard that the people in my neighborhood really like MCC and its employees.

That said, no one here has talked much with me about what happened. Even the Muslim staff used to joke about Al Qaeda and the menace they are. Bengali people are a typically very open and direct about things involving politics so I'm kind of surprised by this. I'm not sure what to make of it. I have a couple of theories though. One theory is that I just haven't been talking to people enough that the subject has come up. Another is that they are talking about it but not around me because they aren't sure what is appropriate to say. They seem to be treating the news fairly calmly and solemnly. Maybe that means that they have mixed feelings? I imagine his death as a Muslim at the hands of a tactical strike team leaves Muslim Bengalis with all sorts of things to debate. No one here seemed to like Osama Bin Laden before this went down but I don't get the impression that they are happy this went down.

I've received the warnings about higher levels of danger for Americans from the US Embassy here in Bangladesh but their emails typically read as if you'll die if you step out your front door in Bangladesh. That makes it hard to read if there is any real threat out there. I doubt it, but I certainly feel a small bit less safe than I did a few days ago.

Phil vs. the Cockroach Horde!

2011-04-30T20:22:00.000-07:00

As some of you may know, in general, I harbor no ill will to cockroaches. When I first came to Bangladesh I would even let them live as long as they didn't run at me. Having your own place and meeting others' sensibilities has changed that for me. In my house I now kill on sight and yell out catchphrases like "BoOYeah!!!" or "How do you like me now!!!" every time. I've done a lot of cleaning in the last two days and that has led to killing of cockroaches. No case was as unique as me versus the cockroach horde.

It all started when I wanted to make a cake. I found a mixer in my cabinet that I hadn't been using up to this point and figured this would be a good time to see if it worked. When I picked it up it rattled a bunch and junk dropped out of it. I figured maybe a bunch of ants (very very common in my house) had made a nest in it at one time so I decided to open it up and clean it out. I got out my trusty screwdriver and dusted off my love for tearing things apart (this is legit, ask my parents). I got to work figuring out how my mixer was assembled and curious to see what was inside. It took about 5 minutes but I managed to peel the two halves of the mixer apart and inside was a bunch of gunk and a family of 5 cockroaches!!! One child scrambled out immediately which is what made me aware they were in there and I quickly grabbed a shoe to vanquish it. I thought it might have been the only one but when I looked down inside I could seen antenna poking out from under the motor. Over the next 20 minutes I tried various methods to get the cockroaches out from under that motor. I shook the thing, I poked the screwdriver down in after them, and I tried grabbing their exposed antennas with a clothes pin. Over time I was able to coax 3 out of 5 of them out. Of those 3 I single-handedly defeated 2 of them. The third one was taken out by a lizard living behind a piece of furniture in my house who chomped down on the thing before I could even react. He then proceeded to swallow the thing whole while I watched. It gave me a whole new love for those lizards! The 4th cockroach fell to my jabbing screwdriver. As I impaled him and pulled him out I was reminded of a time I had a raccoon up against a wall with a pitchfork. The raccoon escaped my grasp, the cockroach was not so lucky. The 5th cockroach was older and wiser than the rest. This was the boss cockroach!

All of my afore mentioned efforts to slay this beast failed miserably. He was safely tucked in under the motor and seemed to know I couldn't get to him there because of the tightness of the space. After about 5 minutes of toying with him, I finally decided I needed to pull the motor out. I giggled as I unscrewed the attachments and told him (literally) that this was going to be the most amazing/last thing he ever saw. I was right on both accounts. when I pulled the motor out he was so stunned that he just sat there. I flipped him with the screw driver over onto the floor which woke him from his stupor but it wasn't fast enough for him to escape the wrath of my size 9 shoes. The official final score of Phil vs. the Cockroach Horde! was:
Cockroaches 0
Lizard 1
Phil 4 (plus a clean working mixer!)

I'm back

2011-04-25T01:07:00.000-07:00

I'm back from my one week hiatus. I didn't mean to take it really, I just didn't have anything to write and was so busy I couldn't be bothered to make something up for you all. Sorry. I heard plenty about it from my mother but other than that you all seemed pretty relaxed about it (a good indication that she is the only one who reads these).

I just got back to Bogra from a 3 day weekend in Dhaka for Easter. Spent some time with Esther which was wonderful as always and led to a new experience. We got on a rickshaw to go back to Esther's from a friend's place and didn't think much of the fact that the rickshaw driver seemed to know Esther since she has red hair which stands out here. We quickly realized though once we got going that all was not normal. This guy was slow. Horribly horribly slow! It turns out he only had one leg!!! He would pedal a down stroke with his remaining left leg and then pull the pedal up so he could take another. Being the patient person I am, I eventually slid down and started pedaling the right one for him. We made a pretty good team once we got our rhythm down. Eventually though he stopped and said he was tired. Unfortunately we were not home yet. We paid the man and decided to walk the rest of the way on a nice lazy Easter afternoon.

Later that night we were recounting the story and our friends informed us that he is actually a bit of a scammer. He does work for money unlike most handicapped people in Bangladesh but he purposely picks up expats in that part of town and says he'll take them places despite knowing that he won't be able to go all the way. He goes really slow so you get there really late and often people give him big tips for even trying. I've got to hand it to him though. It's ingenious for a 1 legged man in Bangladesh.

Random info:

2011-04-09T23:58:00.000-07:00

Also, just in case you were curious. If you happen to be traveling to Dhaka and forget your toiletries and you just happen to prefer Crest toothpaste to the local stuff... It will cost you about $7 to buy a toothbrush, Crest toothpaste from Germany, and a stick of deodorant. Just for the record, in true German fashion, I am really impressed with that toothpaste. My mouth feels so fresh and clean after using it!

Motivation

2011-04-09T23:30:00.000-07:00

I have a confession to make. I struggle to get motivated to do certain things quite frequently. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one but this is my confession and I can't speak for everyone. If you hadn't guessed by now, this is on my mind because I've been doing a lot of tasks lately that I'm just not all that motivated to do. Currently that task is editing a 36 page project proposal. As my mother and father well know, give me a pitchfork or a fence post driver and I could be outside working all day long but hit me with paperwork and my joy dwindles rather rapidly. I look for any small task I can possibly come up with to distract me from the paperwork for a short time and then try to work on it in bursts. I should probably police myself more carefully.

I have noticed a few additional habits I have when I'm avoiding work that I'm not motivated to do. I find myself more inclined to play games like hearts on the computer (I love playing hearts but must admit that it makes me feel like yelling at the computer when I lose). I also have a habit of playing around with numbers. This morning I read the HMMC church bulletin like I always do but decided to calculate what the average salary of an attendee should be based off attendance and an assumption that offering is a 10% tithe. I didn't do that to announce numbers or try to shame anyone; I was just curious what number I would come up with.

Oddly enough, the same thing that makes me interested in doing random math can lead people to have the wrong impression of me. I have had a coworker who wasn't around me too often think that I was a very organized and detail oriented person. I love knowing all the details, I dislike managing them. The fact that I know them and am interested in the details themselves because they help me to understand the bigger picture doesn't translate into me wanting to work with them beyond just toying with them. Fortunately, I was raised to understand that sometimes you've got to do things you just don't like doing. That doesn't mean it is easy, but somehow I'll find the motivation to tackle this monster, somewhere...somehow...

Being Busy

2011-04-03T03:53:00.000-07:00

I really really like being busy sometimes. This past weekend a friend of Jon and Lindsay who has been in Bangladesh studying Bangla for the last several months took me up on an offer to come visit Bogra. She had been stuck in Dhaka the entire time she stayed here and this was an excuse to see some other parts of Bangladesh. I spent the weekend taking her around the area and just hanging out. Since it was entirely inappropriate for her to stay with me, I made arrangements for her to stay with some Brazilian friends of mine. I ended up having them and Nate over for 2 meals which I prepared. It was generally a great time but I started off the weekend with only 3 hours of sleep since I got in the mood to do housework the night before said friend arrived. I then spent the weekend going strong from roughly 6am to 12pm each day. I shouldn't complain though as what I did during those days was pleasant. I took her out for a couple of motorcycle rides around the countryside and we went on a walk through a few villages only to get ourselves invited into a home. They fed us snacks and she lied to them by telling them I was her older brother which was a good idea since we were out in the middle of nowhere which in general means it would be more scandalous for us to be walking together if we weren't married. In addition to that, when the neighbor lady had her arm and was dragging her towards the next house I could legitimately say that we were going to get us out of the situation (as the older brother she has to listen to me!). ;-) I do feel a bit bad about insulting that little old lady though by not going to her house. I knew if we did though that we were going to get pulled along to every house and I certainly didn't want to do that.

We also spent a fair amount of time hanging out with the Brazilians/Nate. I just like being busy sometimes even if I was mind numbingly tired by 10pm last night. I slept great and long. Now I just need to figure out how I'm going to watch the Butler game in a couple of days...

Luster

2011-03-27T01:49:00.000-07:00

Yet another week has passed and I'm remembering something. Details are fine in spurts for me but lose their luster over time. Therefore, I'm starting to notice that cleaning my house is becoming more difficult to convince myself to do. The fun part now is figuring out how to convince myself otherwise. One mistake I made this weekend was taking my computer home. I spent my entire Saturday watching movies when I should have been doing some cleaning. I am way too easily distracted. If I don't have a computer at home I still often get distracted by reading a book but that is a bit more productive than watching a movie in my opinion.

I'm also starting to wonder if I'm not starting to get near my burnout point again. I've noticed myself getting more pessimistic about certain things lately and I just realized I've been 3 straight months in Bangladesh. Usually the 4th or 5th month is when I really start to notice it. It makes me wonder how much we control these feelings and how much they control us. I mean, I'm normally a go with the flow kind of guy but I always find myself getting worn down after so many months in this country. If I had a lot of control over that, you would think I could just apply a positive attitude and do better for longer. By all means, things have gone really well in my life lately but that doesn't seem to be stopping this, if this is indeed the start of burnout. If I do accept that it is somewhat beyond my control; how does one come to grips with that? How do I deal with the fact that I know I'm going to slowly get more grumpy over the next two months until I leave for America? Right now I'm not doing so bad at all, I just suspect this is coming. Then again, maybe this is just another situation in which details lose their luster for me. Maybe the solution for my house cleaning is the same solution I need to figure out for my life in general. I'll try to let you know if I figure anything interesting out.

A Girlfriend?

2011-03-20T23:40:00.000-07:00

Some of you may be aware of recent events in my life and others may not be so I figure I'll tell this story once and get it all out of the way.

I now have a girlfriend. She is real and not a cat as my brother has suggested. Her name is Esther Clarke and she's a teacher at Grace International School in Dhaka. She is Irish with a lovely accent and a beautiful smile. We originally met at a party some friends were having and I assisted her to win a game of Settlers (meaning I lost badly). That didn't lead to anything other than an invite to the next party with that group of mutual friends which happened to be her birthday party. We didn't really talk much their either but I brought some cookies and cake that I had baked which led to us talking on facebook.

She seemed pretty cool on facebook so I asked if she wanted to get coffee the next time I was in Dhaka for a weekend. She obviously said yes. We met for what I thought would be 1-2 hours and a cup of coffee on a Saturday afternoon before I headed back to Bogra. It was 4.5 hours later when either of us bothered looking at a clock. She was late to make dinner for some friends and I was late to catch a bus to Bogra. I think both of us were pleasantly caught off guard.

Things have progressed from there smoothly even though I'm still not sure what she sees in me. ;-) As far as what I see in her...well I guess that is for another post but I will say one thing to calm any fears my family might have, she can take being the butt of a joke and that is really all it takes to fit in with us right? I look forward to seeing where God might lead Esther and I.

Almost forgot...

2011-03-14T02:30:00.000-07:00

I almost completely forgot to post this week!

I moved this past week. I now live in town in Jodi's old flat. It is about a 5 minute walk from the office. It is a two bedroom apartment. Unfortunately, it was filthy dirty when I moved in on Thursday so I spent my weekend cleaning it from top to bottom. I've never loved cleaning but I think I realized something this past weekend; I don't hate cleaning like I thought I did. I think I just dislike being told to do it. I treated it like a strategy game and it isn't so bad. I first concentrated on one room which became my "clean room" which nothing could go in unless it was cleaned first. I've now got it down to just my bedroom and the kitchen that need a good cleaning. Unfortunately, I'm heading to Dhaka tomorrow before I'm able to get it done.

Having your own place is a bit of work but I kind of like it. I get to set my own schedule and it is all my responsibility so I don't have anyone else to blame if it doesn't get done. I like a sense of ownership.

This month is also Cricket World Cup! I'm understanding the game more and more with each day and I must say, I think it is way more interesting than baseball. Mainly because every ball is live as compared to baseball in which pitchers spend so much time feeling around the plate trying to tempt the batter to swing. In cricket the batter must defend the wicket from the ball every single time and the catcher will for sure cost his team runs if he misses the ball. The pitcher is also free to throw the ball at the batter whenever he likes. I still agree with Jodi though, the silly hats that the referees wear look stupid. :-)

Bangladesh in the Fall?

2011-03-04T04:20:00.000-08:00

I've had an interesting experience a couple of times in the last week. I've walked out the front door of my house and just been struck by how much Bangladesh seems like fall back at home right now. I know this is a small window in time before it gets ridiculously hot but these experiences are wonderful. The first time it happened in the morning as I walked out into some cool crisp air. I could just close my eyes and see the combines running in the corn and bean fields in that moment. The funny thing is that the rice patty helps the illusion right now. The recently planted rice adds a smell and feel to the air that makes it feel so much more like home. The other time I experienced this feeling was this afternoon when I left my house at 5. It was the warmth of the sun which you knew would fade with it and the brownish faded green of the grass that did it this time. It reminded me of the slow death of foliage back at home. All this is to say, enjoy the simple pleasures in life everyone. They come and go; you only have them for a moment.

Joy springs forth

2011-02-26T20:00:00.000-08:00

This past 2 weeks were quite busy even by my standards. We had two different visitors at the same time doing two different things and I was supposed to be heavily involved in both. This type of thing is very exhausting since I was also responsible for entertaining them for dinner in the evening and breakfast in the morning. For a couple of days I was getting up at 4 in the morning to get some work done and going strong until 11 at night. The only problem I had with this is that it didn't actually exhaust me. It was energizing and refreshing. I had forgotten how these types of situations do that to me. The important thing was that I was excited to be doing what I was doing. If I'm excited about something, I can and will push my body to its limits and take great joy in doing it.

Day go by and Seasons Change

2011-02-13T06:39:00.000-08:00

This past week I have been in Dhaka doing some work and I took the opportunity to invite some friends over and make a full dinner for 8 by myself. Not something I would advise everyone doing but I really did enjoy it. I ended up making honey-mustard chicken, baked potatoes, coleslaw, rolls, deviled eggs, and cookies for dessert. I had hoped to do some of the things a few days ahead of time but ended up watching after some MCC A Common Place writers instead (not punishment by any means). So I ended up doing it all in two days. It worked out fine even if I lost out on some sleep and it was lovely having wonderful people over for the evening. I had an invitation to a birthday party the next night and someone at dinner suggested I take some of the cookies I had made the next evening. I didn't think I had enough of those, so I made some chocolate cupcakes to go with them. The cookies turned out to be quite popular, though I must say that they are my mother's recipe so I can't take any credit for them.

In other news, I had a great time at the birthday party and met some cool new people. I even met one person whom I found drawing a positive view of Bangladesh out of me. I don't think I've ever had anyone start with the positives of Bangladesh without at least joking about some of the negatives first. I thought that was pretty cool and it reminded me of how much my view of this place changes over time. Now it would help if I could just remember their name so I could add them as a friend on facebook.

The next day I went to the Dhaka office picnic. Highlights of the day included: getting to talk to Alison D'Silva on the phone after she called her dad whom I happened to be watching birds with, playing football (soccer) barefoot with the kids (even if I did manage to kick the ball into the river), a walk around the grounds of the picnic area that included the sights and smells of a cow barn, and good conversations with the staff. The only complaints of the day were that it was a bit hot and gotten eaten alive by mosquitoes on the way home (pretty average and anticipated terrible occurrences when you live in Bangladesh).

Life has really been pretty good this week.

Windows

2011-02-07T23:06:00.000-08:00

You may have noticed by now that I'm someone who likes to ponder. Sometimes they are worth sharing and sometimes they aren't. Recently I did some pondering in a conversation that I thought I might share here.

I'm not sure I'm ever going to understand why people worry about hurting my feelings or ruining a friendship with me. Do I seem like the type of person to blow up on people or harbor a grudge? My family knows that I have a temper but I would guess that they also know that if I am given a minute to think, I will cool off and apologize. As much time as I spend reflecting on life, being angry with someone is the worst feeling and always leads to the reminder that I am just as often guilty of causing that hurt in others. If I can't forgive others, I can't forgive myself (and can't hold out hope that they will forgive me) and if I can't forgive myself, I can't like who I am which is a really dark path that I've been down before and don't ever want to go down again. I recognize that this is a bit of a selfish rationalization but suspect that on some level we all have to be selfish and think this is probably a pretty healthy form of selfishness.

At the same time, people really do baffle me sometimes. They leave me wondering if how I act gives them the wrong impression about who I am and if maybe I am lying to the world, or myself for that matter, about who I am. I wonder how much of my inner dialogue and convictions really come out in people's interpretations of my actions. It isn't something I can ignore because I am convinced that who we are as people is shaped by both us and our environment. I am me but I think there is some real truth to the fact that who "me" is, is influenced by who you believe "me" is to some extent. I guess what I'm saying is that when things in the communication loop that is my communications with others don't match up, I begin to wonder if I'm bending the mirror that I view myself through.

...and that my friends, was window into my mind.

Motorcyle

2011-02-01T18:32:00.000-08:00

You ever have those moments where almost everything goes terribly wrong and yet you get invigorated when things end up all right? One of those occurred to me last night. I was driving the motorcycle home rather than the usual bicycle ride because I wanted to come into the office early this morning. Unfortunately, another motorcycle (I didn't see it because it was black and not in throttle so his lights were dimmed) tried crossing the road and cut me off. I couldn't go right because that is the direction he was coming from and I would have clipped him. I couldn't go left because there was a CNG (think steel cage on wheels) that he was corralling me towards. So I slammed on the brakes and started yelling to catch his attention. I had the back of the motorcycle sliding sideways but never locked up the front tire and never laid it down. By the time I reached him, he had stopped, I popped down a couple of gears, and slowly drove through the 3 foot gap he had left between him and the CNG while giving him a dirty look. That was when I realized that there were 15 or so people standing alongside the road mimicking my alarmed yell in what I think was an attempt to chide him (or maybe me?). I laughed at this and drove on without looking back at the guy again but feeling pretty darn good about my evasive maneuvering skills. That said, for my sake and my mother's sanity, I need to drive even more defensively than I already do here.

Reality

2011-01-30T19:31:00.000-08:00

I talked last time about how I'm writing goals going forward. Unfortunately, the reality that I see for the near future is that I'm going to be doing a fair amount of work that I find tedious and boring. I'm actually blogging right now because I don't feel like doing that work, but I will get back to it shortly and try to hammer away at it. I just have to keep in mind the larger picture of what I'm doing here. I think I might have mentioned before that many of the things that I end up doing here are either boring or are only interesting to me (meaning I can't tell others about them because they would find it boring). On top of that, most of the interesting stuff I do isn't stuff I feel is appropriate to share publicly. The big picture, as I have been realizing more and more lately, is that by helping out in getting the mundane things done, I am able to give our program here more and more ability to think about what it means to do things the "MCC way". That ends up meaning that we do more and more things in a way that is purposeful rather than just a way that gets tasks done. That, to me, is the ultimate excitement. I mean, we are already helping poor people who are very much worthy of being loved, which is exciting in and of itself, but as I've been reminded often lately, we need to be mindful that what we are doing isn't just vanity.

One of these days...

2011-01-28T01:22:00.000-08:00

This last week I was stuck in a meeting (one of several). Only in this meeting I did something abnormal; I made a list. On this list I started writing down things I wanted to do during my remaining time in Bangladesh. I'm not normally a list person but in recent months I've found that having a list helps me get stuff done. It gives me goals to achieve and that, I think, is something I really need to do in my life.

Then later in the week, we had some visitors from MCC here writing stories. I helped to take them around to a couple of our projects and got to see some new interesting stuff myself. As we walked around I reminisced about how much I love being around farming and sharing stories. I think that is why I still consider working at Weldon Mast's grain elevator my favorite job of all time but that is besides the point. Now that I'm back and reflecting on my time out in the field, I've been thinking about making goals for life beyond Bangladesh.

Given the week, I think it is only fair to myself to set my first goal as:

Be a successful farmer.

I don't know how long I'm going to make this list and I doubt much of it will be public. I'm also quite sure I'll pursue and achieve other goals before this one, but this is a beginning. My first, "one of these days..."

Choices

2011-01-22T19:16:00.000-08:00

I completely missed out on posting last week, sorry to those who check for updates regularly (probably just my parents).

Some of you may know that I've been considering an extension of my term her for the last several months. It has been a bit of a challenging process for me. When I was home this past summer I was pretty set on the fact that I didn't feel like I should extend even if that meant I didn't know what I would do when I got back. Unfortunately, when I was eventually offered an extension, I felt a leap in my gut saying, "take it!" I've been praying about what all this means and talking to family about it. I don't feel like I've received any particular feedback from God and my family has been nothing but understanding and supportive either way. All that has left me in limbo for awhile. I struggled with what it means since this is no small matter. Eventually I decided that maybe God wasn't giving more feedback because God already put that leap in my gut. Admittedly, I'm not Elizabeth and it wasn't John the baptist leaping down there, but I like to try and listen when I think God is speaking. With that in mind, I decided to do a one year extension on the end of my term which means I'll be here until Oct. 2012.

I'm actually happy about it. I am viewing this time as a transition time for me to take steps towards doing some things that I have been wanting to do but haven't committed myself to doing previously. I'm excited about the possibilities. At the same time, I doubt I'll be extending beyond the 1 year I already have. It could certainly happen, but I'm thinking it will take an act of God to make me believe I should. Speaking of which, those of you who would like to may contact my mother who will probably be organizing a committee to pray that such an act of God doesn't occur.

Elections

2011-01-09T19:18:00.000-08:00

It is local election time in Bangladesh and I figure that is worth a post. For national elections in Bangladesh you really do essentially have 2 main parties (or to be more precise, two main coalitions) much like in America but the real difference is in the local elections. I know this because it is everywhere and very obvious right now. I used to think that political advertisements in America were annoying (still do) but now I know how much more annoying they could be. In Bangladesh the 25 different parties (more or less, this is my rough estimate based on the posters I've seen) plaster black and white posters (color posters were made illegal by the last government to save politicians from wasting their money) everywhere. This isn't so bad, it almost feels like a ticker-tape parade as they hang over the street and being that it is just paper, they biodegrade eventually. What makes them worse than American politicians is the next step they take. All these political parties hire rickshaws to pull around loudspeakers blaring their slogans at levels that often hurt to hear. It ends up meaning that all afternoon and evening you hear one go by about every 15 minutes or so. You hear them coming, you hear them going but unlike the various American media mediums like tv, radio, and newspaper; you can't shut them off or close them. You just have to sit there and take it. Yesterday, I tried to convince my coworkers that they should revolt against this injustice that is being forced upon them by organizing an overthrow of these things but then they correctly pointed out that I was suggesting a violent response which they wanted no part in. Don't you hate it when things you preach get turned around on you?

Also, here is a list of all the political symbols I see on my way to and from work:
Apple
Thermos
Violin
Deer
Water pump
Fan
Bucket (this one has particularly loud and annoying loudspeaker advertisements)
Chicken
Light-bulb
Bus
Crescent
Soccer ball
Top (as in the children's toy)
Flower pot
TV (I thought this one was a microwave at first)
Water jug
Clock
Leaf
Flower
Drums
Kite
Anchor
Bird
Sewing machine
Camera

They certainly choose a much greater variety than elephants and donkeys.

India Part 2

2011-01-09T02:49:00.000-08:00

I think I left off with the week in Goa. After Goa, we took a two night train ride to Delhi. It was the same train for the entire duration and it was a total of about 40 hours.

The scenery was nice.

As you can imagine, that is a lot of time on a train. It really wasn't so bad though. Trains are not like planes where you are cramped up the whole way. You can get up and walk around. You can even get off at the stops and wait until the train starts moving to hop back on. We passed our time doing things like reading, talking, watching scenery, playing card games, sleeping, eating, listening to music, and trying to combine these activities.

Once we finally got to Delhi on the 2nd morning. We spent about half the day getting hotel rooms lined up and purchasing train tickets to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. We almost got swindled while attempting to get our train tickets but luckily we caught our mistake before it was too late. I did however manage to get yelled at by a very angry Indian travel agent in what was a rather embarrassing scene. After we got our stuff all lined up we decided to see a little bit of Old Delhi. To get there we decided to take the metro. For a small fee of 8 rupees (45 rupees to the dollar) we got to travel on a very nice but somewhat crowded subway. From the subway station we walked about 10 minutes to reach the Jama Masjid which was built by Shah Jahan who is the same guy who built the Taj Mahal. It is a giant Mosque which can accommodate 25,000 people for prayers. I got yelled at here as well (it wasn't a good day for me in this regards) but after I did a very over-the-top apology these guys seemed to genuinely like me. After the Jama Masjid we went to Karim's a famous Mughlai restaurant. We had nan and some various meat and vegetable dishes that were quite delicious. Afterward, we went for a walk through Old Delhi at night. Eventually we started asking for a metro station so we could get back to our hotel. We kept getting pointed along and when we finally got to the station we realized that we had walked all the way back to the part of town we were staying in! We settled in for a nice rest after two days of sleeping on the train dreaming of our adventures to the Taj Mahal soon to follow.

Jama Masjid

Explanations

2011-01-07T05:17:00.000-08:00

Sometimes my co-workers ask me to explain things to them. Oftentimes this ends up meaning that I'm making stuff up on the fly.

Today I was asked to explain the saying, "Absolute power corrupts absolutely."

In the end, I found the best way to communicate this concept was to use the example of a saint. My logic was that saintly people are incapable of gaining absolute power because by nature, being a saintly person means constantly giving up power to others. Therefore, the process of gaining absolute power inherently requires a selfishness that will corrupt you.

Thoughts? Criticisms? (Be nice I really was making this up as I went.)

Vacation Part 1: Goa

2011-01-02T05:02:00.000-08:00

There are a few things that I've slowly come to accept in my term with MCC in Bangladesh. One of those things is that I can only handle being in Bangladesh for roughly 5 months at a time before I get burned out. For various people that I talk to, the time frame is different but the feeling is the same. After a pretty predictable amount of time you start noticing that you no longer have the energy you once had and that you need to step away to be renewed. If you don't allow yourself to do this, you can become incredibly burned out and miserable (I once lasted 9 months). Our retreat to Goa was rather well timed for me since I was right on 6 months or so since I had come back from the states. Before the retreat I had felt all the telltale signs of burnout that I am accustomed to seeing at this point. The biggest sign being that of a lack of patience in life. I was worn out and needed this.

For our retreat this year we joined our colleagues from MCC Nepal and India for a trip to Goa. Normally Goa would be way out of our price range as MCC Service Workers but someone was friends with some Jesuit priests who have a retreat center there who gave us a really good deal. Our accommodations were simple but the location was absolutely stunning.

We stayed up in the building you see on that wooded ridge

A view from the retreat center itself.

A typical day involved worship in the morning followed by some sessions on various issues related to the work we do and taking care of ourselves as we go about doing that work. This usually lasted until mid-afternoon at which time we were free to go enjoy the beach or other various activities. I particularly loved jumping around on the rocks. Through this time we were also able to spend time getting to know our colleagues in a natural setting which is also quite useful since in our regular everyday lives, it seems that getting together is something you have to force yourself to do sometimes. Overall, this time in Goa was a week that I will treasure. I gained so much energy from it and found a lot of renewal in so many ways.

Back

2010-12-31T02:43:00.000-08:00

Hello, I'm back. Did you miss me?

I've been on vacation for the last several weeks and thus have not been writing if you hadn't noticed. I won't write much now but there will be a few longer posts coming soon with some interesting stories if you care to do all the reading. I'll try to add in some good pictures too so the deal is sweetened a bit. Unfortunately, you'll have to wait for those as I'm currently sick and unmotivated to write much. I had this for the last couple of days in India and I dismissed it as a minor something that would go away. It just keeps hanging around and today I have a slight fever with it. I'm not dead yet though, so stay tuned!

Correction

2010-12-06T02:10:00.000-08:00

I must apologize. Two posts ago I improperly quoted the side of the ambulance. It wasn't "property of" but rather "Courtesy" and I totally left out the word "Homage" which was just a big mistake on my part. Please enjoy the picture below to see the correct form the phrase.

This week I've been visiting partner organizations with some co-workers to do some paperwork and decision making with them. This invariably means that they serve us snacks twice in the morning and once in the afternoon because that is proper hospitality here. One afternoon this week they brought out half a dozen plates with nothing but deep fried foods. I was at a loss as to how they could manage to find the variety of deep fried foods that they did until I started eating them and realized that they pretty much just deep fried anything they could get their hands on. My favorites were the deep fried hard boiled egg and the deep fried onion (which I kid you not tasted exactly like a blooming onion). My least favorites were definitely the deep fried coriander leaves and the deep fried garlic which was every bit as strong tasting as you would imagine batter fried garlic would taste. Eat and smile....eat and smile. Sometimes you've just got to take one for the team.

Quote of the Day:

2010-11-30T00:02:00.000-08:00

This quote comes compliments of my co-worker Lokhon who likes to show off his English speaking skills when we eat lunch together.

"Your Bangla is getting much butter."

I just about died laughing.

Property of:

2010-11-27T04:33:00.000-08:00

I saw a black ambulance today. I thought that was odd until I read the side. "Property of Bogra Dead Person Collection Society" I'm still wondering why they had to form a society to collect dead people but consider the decision to paint the ambulance black very rational now. Now let's hope no one I know gets a ride in that ambulance.

This should be an interesting week in Bangladesh. The out of office party is calling for a strike on Tuesday. In the days leading up to that, I'll be traveling to a couple of different partner organizations with my boss for meetings. The strike should make for a nice quiet day at the office assuming that I come in early before the strike starts and leave late after it finishes. If it lasts longer than just the scheduled day they have, it might eventually get annoying. I haven't really thought through what I'll be doing the last two days after the strike but I'm sure I'll have plenty enough to do when they arrive.

I've been living "bachelor" for the last week or so. We haven't had our cook here this past week as he was off for holiday and we've been quite lazy. Last night I had mashed potatoes for supper. That might not seem all that odd unless you consider the fact that mashed potatoes were all I had. Tonight, I'm having mashed potatoes yet again. Tomorrow night Kalam will be back and that should mean a good meal. I have been eating fairly good at lunch this week though as I've been having lunch with the staff. This has typically meant that I get rice, dal, fish, some cooked spinach, and cauliflower (the in season vegetable right now). All the basics that your body needs and little more! It really is pretty good though.

Also, I should mention that I was pleasantly surprised at how my pies turned out. They were better than I would ever have imagined. Everyone thought that my cranberry pie was the best they've ever had (no one had ever had cranberry pie before).

In less than two weeks I'll be in India! I just thought I would mention that.

4 foreigners walk into a bar...

2010-11-24T00:32:00.000-08:00

Actually it wasn't a bar it was a toy store. This past week was a busy one and part of the activities of the week was showing a visiting American and Nepali person around Dhaka. One of my newer expat co-workers joined us since he hadn't seen the parts of Dhaka we were going to. The first place we visited was New Market which is a very large market in Dhaka. We spotted a toy store and expat co-worker decided he needed to check it out to buy a toy for his host family's 3 year old son. We went inside and had many laughs at the absurd nick-knacks that were available (most of which would be extremely terrible gifts for a 3 year old boy). Then it happened, expat co-worker and I discovered the most awesome thing ever. They had a magnetic dartboard! We had to try it out of course. The shopkeepers were more than willing to oblige our desires by telling us where to stand and holding up the board for us. The epic game began with us standing in a corner throwing magnetic darts at a board being held 4 feet away from us. Expat co-worker struck first with a 60 point shot to the third ring. I followed that up with a lot of luck when I hit a bulls-eye for 100 points on my first shot. Expat co-worker followed my luck up with a bulls-eye of his own to get the crowd of 4 (2 visitors and 2 shopkeepers) excited. I then fired the next two shots which ended up being a 40 pointer to the 4th ring and another bulls-eye. The suspense was in the air as expat co-worker said, "watch this" and proceeded to throw his third and final shot underhanded!!! Now, if you didn't catch it in the last sentence, I think it is time to point out that expat co-worker used the infamous last words that all men (and women?) have a knack for using right before they do something really stupid. In this situation, the dart flew up and over the board in a beautiful arch before coming back down to land on a glass shelf which promptly shattered dropping its load of snow globes and ceramic boxes onto a similarly loaded glass shelf below it which also shattered and dropped all off the previously mentioned objects on the tile floor where they joined in the fun by shattering themselves. What followed was a first for me. I've been in many crazy situations in Bangladesh, the one that stands out as the craziest was when I hit a child with my bicycle, but I've never seen something actually stun a Bengali person the way this did (though just seeing me in some villages does seem to stun quite a few people). Both shopkeepers just turned and stared drop-jawed at the mess on the floor. Visiting American and I clasped our hands to our mouths to keep ourselves from laughing out loud. I have no clue what visiting Nepali did since he was quiet and behind us the entire time this occurred. Poor expat co-worker had an "ah crap" moment of silence. After about 5 seconds the "ah crap" moment struck me as I realized that I'm the only one in our group that knows enough Bangla to sort out how much we owe these guys. It took about 20-30 minutes of haggling before we settled on paying the store manager about $45 for all the stuff we broke. Judging from the fact that he kept apologizing and saying that he wasn't the owner, I think he felt somewhat like we should be mad at him. Judging by the smile on his face when we paid, I think it was one of the best selling days he's had in awhile.

Moral of the story: never say, "watch this."

In another one of my adventures from this past week, I went to a tailoring shop last night to have some pants made. While I was there, a middle aged man puffing on a cigarette took special interest in me. He started asking all sorts of questions about who I am, where I'm from, and what I'm doing. Having nothing to hide and being in a good mood, I answered honestly. Eventually after they get done measuring me he motions me over and has me sit down next to him. After a few minutes of additional conversation he turned to me and said, "your country...(pauses to take a puff on his cigarette which he promptly blows in my face)...is sexy country." That was my opportunity to be stunned. How do you respond to that?!? I finally settled on telling him that this wasn't proper English and then scurrying along.

It has been an amusing week. Now I'm off to bake pie!

Beef, it's what's for Eid.

2010-11-13T22:43:00.000-08:00

This week is the week of the second Eid. It is my understanding that this Eid (Eid al-Adha), commemorates the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son Ishmael. God of course provided a ram instead. You might also notice that the Islamic version involves Ishmael instead of the Jewish and Christian version which had Abraham offering Isaac.

This is the sacrifice Eid. All those who can afford to purchase an animal to sacrifice are supposed to do so and then divide the meat into 3 equal parts. One third goes to the family who bought it, one third goes to friends, neighbors, and relatives, and the final third goes to the poor and needy. In Dhaka, this means the streets flow with blood in the morning because most people who own property can afford a cow or goat here. The sacrifice is followed by lots of visiting and the consumption of more meat than one should ever consider rational. The limited experience I've had with visiting a family on Eid involved every dish (including the rice) having some form of meat in it.

Eid is also the worst time for traffic in Bangladesh. Most of those who live in Dhaka are actually from various villages all over Bangladesh. Everyone wants or is expected to go home to their village for Eid. This makes the already terribly crowded roads in Bangladesh a big logjam. Today is an exceptionally bad example of how horrible things can really get. In reaction to some political issues, the opposition party to the ruling party of government called for a transportation strike. This essentially means that no motorized vehicles besides ambulances are allowed to go anywhere from dawn to dusk. Now, add in the fact that today is right smack dab in the middle of the busiest annual transportation jam and you have yourself a real difficult situation. Tomorrow you'll have all the people who wanted to go today as well as all those who want to go tomorrow. This is the kind of thing that leads to situations like last year. Last year the timing of Eid meant that everyone wanted to leave on the same day. It took some of our staff up to 26 hours to get home by bus. Think how far you could get in the US in a 26 hour time period now imagine what it would be like if it took 26 hours for you to get to another portion of the state you live in because Bangladesh is only about the size of Illinois or Iowa.

That is why we as expats stay put wherever we are when it comes to Eid time. It may make like a bit boring but we kind of prefer boring to nightmarish.

Insights or Reminders

2010-11-07T06:09:00.000-08:00

Ever have those days where you are reminded of how strong parts of your personality are? Today was one of those days for me. I had an all day meeting where 3 of us were working out a plan for a future project. I started off the morning tired since I didn't sleep well last night which totally killed my ability to be patient. That was reminder number 1 (I have a terrible time being patient when I'm tired). Then we started working together as a group to do our long tedious job. I personally like to work in spurts. Sometimes that means that I work with reckless abandon and other times that means I think far to thoroughly about something before I do it. Unfortunately, that isn't a working style that is conducive to good group work at all times. If I'm confident on the subject, I'll often times be really pushing the tempo but if I don't feel like I grasp the subject well, I might annoy people by asking all sorts of questions. It takes a lot of energy out of me either way. After several hours of group work I always have to have some time to myself to recoup. This is the part of my personality I might guess that most people don't really always understand. I'm an extroverted, carefree, go with the flow guy but I have to have time to sit back and process things later. When I'm processing things I often go over all the events and recognize all the dumb or awkward things I've done (yes I do indeed recognize that I've done it eventually). I also spend a lot of time pondering everyone's reactions to everything. Unfortunately, as you may have noticed, I don't always turn this reflection time into wisdom later on. I suspect that I might eventually get better at this since I do seem to be trending that direction. Let's hope that holds up, I say a lot of stupid things even at 25.

On a mildly related note (since I have no clue where I was heading with that last paragraph), I did some baking the other day and that was fun! I finally managed to bake something in my pyrex dish that didn't burn. It was a chocolate chip cookie bar recipe that I got offline. It wasn't all that great but I think if I added some peanut butter to it, then it might be kind of tasty. Oh, I should probably explain that the mild relation was that I find baking to be very relaxing and therapeutic. One thing you have to watch out for in Bangladesh though is that the power goes off a lot. This can make for a lot of frustration. I avoid this as much as possible by baking late at night or early in the morning when the electricity is the most consistent, which actually explains why I'm so tired today. That reminds me, I should go home so I can go to bed.

Norom (soft)

2010-10-31T02:33:00.000-07:00

Badminton season has returned! I love this time of the year because it is finally cooling down. In the morning it gets down to a very cold temperature of 68 or so degrees. It has however reminded me of a problem I've been having the last couple of months. I'm becoming soft. I've put a little weight back on since returning from America this summer and lost a lot of the muscle I had. This is likely due to the fact that I pretty much stopped exercising and started eating a bit too much. The last couple of nights of playing has seen me bruise my heel by playing barefoot, have sore arm muscles from swinging the racket, and my hamstring tightened up from all the squatting and lunging required. This is all combined with a bit of a nice round gut to motivate me to start taking care of myself like I was last year. Maybe I should go ahead and label this what it is, a new years resolution in October. I doubt I'll actually accomplish it but for at least the next couple of weeks I'll try.

In other news, lately I've been pondering values and ideals. As we look around us, there is reality in the present. As we look forward, I'm sure all of us could come up with visions of a better tomorrow and what we could do to get there. At the same time, these ideal futures rarely come and if we are honest with ourselves, we can probably come up with a halfway decent guess about what the future possibility really is. This guess, of course, comes from reflecting on our past experiences. The real question for me though is how does one decide what their values in the present (the only point in time you have control over) are in a way that balances the ideal visions and hope for a better tomorrow with the pragmatic realization that the dream you have is just a vague hope. (By the way, that is not meant to be a depressing thing to say since that vague hope sometimes does become reality.) For example, I'm a pacifist and I readily admit that I cling strongly to an ideal, a hope for the future that I really don't believe stands a chance at arriving before Christ returns. Should that pragmatic realization change the way I perceive my pacifist values in the present time? I try not to let it but in other areas in my life, I think there might be room for such a thing.

Physics...a tiny tidbit

2010-10-24T06:28:00.000-07:00

I've been meaning to write this post for a long time now but I keep forgetting to do so.

It has been my observation that Bengali people thoroughly understand that objects cannot occupy the same location in time and space. The thing that they also seem to understand that the American culture doesn't put so much focus on, is that objects can occupy the same location mere seconds (or less) apart. This is particularly true of buses. They have a dance worked out and it isn't one I like them to play at high speeds. Also, being that this is Bangladesh that dance ends badly at times. I've been lucky so far.

Another observation about Americans that was pointed out to me this week is that when asked where we are from we say our State rather than saying America. This is probably both because it is a learned thing from traveling within the USA and because there really is a big difference between various regions of the US.

Hope that's enough to tide you over until I have something more interesting to say.

Durga Puja

2010-10-17T21:06:00.000-07:00

This past weekend was the Hindu religious holiday of Durga Puja. Puja means worship. There are many different Pujas in the Hindu religion but Durga Puja is the most popular one for Bengali people. Since Durga is one of the gods of destruction and bay of Bengal is a place frequently ravaged by destruction, I think there is a correlation. It is also a reminder for us that there are more than 15 million Hindu people in Bangladesh and that while Muslims make up a vast majority, Hindus are a significant portion of the population. One of our Hindu staff invited us to come to visit his house during Durga Puja. This was just an evening visit since he lives just on the other side of Bogra.

We headed over to his house and ended up going to the local Hindu temple first. The narrow street outside the temple was draped with Christmas lights which were flashing and the sides of the street were lined with vendors selling an array of snacks and children's toys. There was loud music playing and tons of people all about. We got into the actual temple grounds where a large group of people were looking at the idols that they make fresh every year for the puja. Durga Puja lasts 5 days and they make an entire set of the idols every year. They are made from a mixture of clay and mud which are then painted with all sorts of bright colors. At the end of the 5 days of worship, the idols are then thrown into the river in a ceremony that I didn't get a chance to go see.

After being fed until we were almost bursting, we made our leave and decided to go see what some of the other idols looked like. Several of the temples that we found were quite old buildings and their idols were typically more elaborate than the ones we saw in our co-workers part of town. After seeing roughly 5 temples we decided that we were too tired to continue on and called it a night. It was definitely an interesting adventure though.

Beggars

2010-10-10T20:18:00.000-07:00

In Bangladesh there are many beggars. Many of them are professionals and many of those are organized by and give cuts to some sort of overlord. This creates many ethical problems. You want to help people who really need it but you don't want to perpetuate a system of oppression such as that run by the overlords. I guess I should also mention the massive volume of beggars that exist. It is truly disheartening. I've been here two years now and this is an issue that never gets easier to deal with.

For the last couple of months I've tried out a new strategy that I heard about from an ex-MCC worker. I keep a wad of small (but still large compared to what beggars normally get from an individual person here) bills in my pocket. Every time I have a beggar approach me, I always give them one. This comes from my tithing money. The thing about this that has shocked me is that I haven't even once come close to going through my entire tithe in a month of doing this. It's actually quite amazing how little I go through. Of course when I give to people I try to take the time to look them in the eye or ask them a few questions about themselves which also creates a bit of connection. I may not be doing anything about the overlord thing but I do feel better that I'm at least trying something. I do still feel bad though about not doing more to help these people out.

The other interesting thought I had this morning was about what beggars are. Beggars are just people asking for something which they've done nothing to earn and receive what they are asking for as an act of compassion from the one who gives. Remind you of anything? As Christians are we not all beggars desiring God's forgiveness and grace? Strangely enough, that thought came from reading Mark 9:33-37 in Jesus tells the disciples who the greatest amongst them is. His answer was that a child was the greatest and that whoever seeks to be the greatest must first submit to being the least. Which got me thinking of who the very least in the world is and the beggars came to mind.

Dancing for Joy

2010-10-02T22:32:00.000-07:00

Have you ever experienced the true joy of finishing a project that was complicated and taking up tons of your time? That is what I felt this past Wednesday evening at around 7pm as I finished up some paperwork and sent it as an attachment to an email. I didn't actually dance though, that part of the title is much more symbolic of the feeling in my heart at the time than the actions I took. I might have done a fist pump though (which, now that I think about it, is a habit I picked up from my father who does that when the Colts do something good like score a touchdown or get an interception...I imagine anything more overtly celebratory would draw our Mennoniteness into question).

Moving on though, I got to spend some good time with a co-worker Austin before he leaves permanently. After he is gone Nate and I will be the ones here the longest. That is just weird but I guess it has been 2 years as of the end of this month. That ends up meaning that I only have 1 year left but I'm trying not to think about that. I've got enough stuff on my plate for the next couple of months to keep me occupied. There is my milk cow study that I'm going to try to finish before the end of this month so I can give the report. Beyond that, my boss wants me to do a review of the way we measure the income of our farmers and try to come up with a better way. Since we are also starting a trial agriculture education program in a couple of schools next year, he also wants me to come up with a way to compare that to our normal activities. Those both need to be done by January which sounds like a long way away until you think about the fact that I'm going to be working on the milk cow survey for the next couple of weeks, then there are several major holidays in Bangladesh next month, and then I'll be vacationing in India in December.

The MCC Nepal/India/Afghanistan expats invited the MCC Bangladesh expats to join them for a retreat in India. It looks like we'll be somewhere in Goa, India in the middle of December and then it also sounds like I'll be getting together with some friends to head up to the Delhi area after that. I know a couple of the Nepal people and even went to college with one of the SALT workers, so it will be good to see familiar faces again. It is my plan to spend Christmas in India this year. Living in Bangladesh is tough sometimes (for instance I got sick again this week) but some parts of my job really should make everyone else jealous. I think a trip to India qualifies.

Back to Reality

2010-09-26T00:51:00.000-07:00

So it seems that last week's optimistic post was just a cruel joke. Remember that shaken part, well some of it shook off on me and I got sick. In the middle of this, all the work I was doing in Dhaka followed me back home. Not all was bad, I did get to work at the Cow data but even that was missing enough that I can't see any clear results yet. I should get the rest of that today. Then I hop on the bus to Dhaka tomorrow morning because the work that followed me home is dragging me back to Dhaka. Not all is bad in this because I'll get to see Austin for the first time in several months. Basically though, there is a lot on my plate and I'm feeling it. I caught myself actually getting stressed out this morning. The defining characteristics of this side of my personality are extremely short patience and a bit of a contentious nature. My family knows this side of me very well where as I probably do a decent job of hiding it from most of the rest of the world. It is typically brought on by a situation (that is urgent in my mind) in which I feel like I should have some amount of control. If it is absolute chaos, no problem, but if I've got a little bit of a sense of control I turn into a nut job at times. I've recovered as I'm apt to do and intend to apologize to someone I had a work related phone conversation with. They didn't do anything to deserve my crappy attitude. Now I'm on to working with urgency to solve the problem without the attitude in tow!

In other news, I saw a Bengali man with the funkiest looking teeth ever this morning on my ride to work. Imagine the "billy bob" teeth that you can buy for costumes, only his over bite was off-center which made it even more pronounced. To his credit though, he still had all of his teeth.

I'll be sleeping at the office tonight. This is partly because I have a 5:15 a.m. bus in the morning and partly so I can make sure to listen to both the Atlanta Braves game (Brandon Beachy is pitching!) and the Colts game (I don't know any of them but I'm a complete addict). I just need to make sure that I behave emotionally and production-wise tomorrow despite my lack of sleep. I really probably shouldn't put this kind of stress on myself each week but it's only for 16 weeks and it really does give me a sense of connection to home. Connection to home certainly trumps 3 hours of sleep right?

Back to Balance and Joy

2010-09-18T20:58:00.000-07:00

Oh the joys of being home! I get to sleep in my own bed and ride my bicycle. I also get to see my co-workers and hear about how someone in their family was sick at some point during the holidays. (Seriously, take 160 million people, shake violently aka. make them go home [where they will visit lots of friends and family] at the same time, add in 1 part of lots of rain to increase water born illness, and you get tons of sick people.) I also get to ride my bicycle by two dogs casually having "fun" on the road. This of course made me think of my brothers because all of us would have laughed at this random happenstance. It also brought back some good memories of the time when my brother and dad visited. Of course, I'm also back to having children scream at me as I ride my bicycle by and wondering if they'll ever realize that I can hear them just fine if they talk normally. Still, I like it much better here than in Dhaka. I have friends and am able to get exercise easily which are two things that really help me keep my life in balance. Now if I can just leverage that balance into getting additional work done...

Speaking of work, I've got a 2 inc thick stack of surveys sitting on my desk just waiting for me to parse through them and find out all the magical secrets that our dairy cow project holds. The several hours it will take to enter the data won't be all that fun but I am really looking forward to digging through the data afterward! I know that excitement may be somewhat strange on my part but if you think of the discoveries as an adventure to unravel the mysteries of the data, then you might start to understand. As an added bonus to the adventure, I get to help poor farmers! Yeah, my job is cool like that.

I'm proud to be an American?

2010-09-13T19:16:00.000-07:00

Ramadan is officially over now which means I can eat or drink whatever I want on the streets again! However, given the history of street food making me sick, I think I'll stick with being selective in that regard.

I'm still in Dhaka working on various bits of paperwork but am hoping to get back to Bogra this weekend. I spent a little time this weekend talking to our director about this and found out that it is going to take more work than I had originally anticipated. :-(

I had a realization the other day. That whole Qur'an burning idea really could have put me in danger. I don't hide the fact that I'm American when I'm traveling around and I'm sure a lot of people know at least that much about me. That said, everyone I have met has been incredibly nice. Unfortunately, it isn't the people that I have met that I worry about, it is the people who I haven't met who hear through the grape vine that there is an American around that worry me. The people I have met generally see me as a person and appreciate that I'm something different than what they hear about Americans in the news. I can't be so certain that others recognize this and have been warned by very kind people that I meet in various places that these people do exist. For the most part though, this has never crossed my mind because to be frank, it is one of the few problems that most people in Bangladesh seem to want to root out. The government is pouring extra scrutiny on NGO's like MCC to try and make sure we aren't being devious. Now, I never heard from anyone in MCC that the whole Qur'an burning idea might endanger me but everyone was certainly very aware of the issue for quite obvious reasons. The thing that I just don't think American Christians really have a good concept of in general is how sacred or vile certain things are. There are very few things in American culture that you could do that would be so disrespectful that they would incite universal rage from everyone in the culture. In an Islamic culture, any kind of disrespectful treatment of the Qur'an would do this. The closest explanation I can come up with as to why this is this way is to point out that the Qur'an is the word of god and as such it is god. As my co-workers were pointing out, if Americans burn a bunch of English translations of the Qur'an it would be insulting but because these are not the exact words of god, it would remain at just the "I'm going to protest for my faith" level. If Americans burn a Islamic version of the Qur'an, suddenly I get the impression that we've crossed into the, "I'm defending god" level. All of that said, I could be wrong. These are just my personal understandings and are based off of a limited experience of two years in Bangladesh. I have certainly never heard anyone within MCC advocate these ideas (I only wish to say this so that I might be clear that my personal views should not be correlated to those of MCC). The point I'm really trying to make is that we should think and be aware of what our actions mean. Others interpret them in completely different lights because they have different experiences and you can't just ignore that in our modern, globalized world.

Oh the Journeys

2010-09-05T01:11:00.000-07:00

I've talked about Ramadan quite a bit recently, but I don't recall if I mentioned what comes at the end of Ramadan. If I'm repeating myself, forgive me. At the end of Ramadan is Eid-ul-Fitre (pronounced more like Eed, ool, fit-ur). The two Eids are the some of the largest holidays in the Islamic calendar. Eid-ul-Fitre is when they celebrate and buy lots of new stuff. Eid-ul-Azha is when they sacrifice animals in the streets. Both are times when Bengali people take extended holidays to be with family. In the states, I've often heard the Memorial Day weekend is a big travel weekend in America, it has nothing on Bangladesh. Imagine somewhere around 10 million people trying to leave 1 city to return to various smaller towns throughout the country. Now imagine that combined with a transportation infrastructure that is already pretty bad. What you end up getting is gridlock in pretty much every town in Bangladesh but especially so within about 30 miles of the capital. At the same time, it also speaks volumes about families in Bangladesh. One could either argue that it is an amazing act of love for their family that people are willing to deal with all this trouble to see them or that it is an amazing act of power that their family exerts on them that the consequences of not joining their family is actually worse than the trouble the traffic causes. Either way, amongst the ex-pat crowd it is common sense that the "smart" people avoid the logjam.

I had planned to enjoy a nice peaceful stay out in the village for Eid but that plan changed today. I got a phone call asking me to meet with some people to get a report done. I mentioned that it should probably be finished before Eid. My boss agreed and told me to be in Dhaka tomorrow. Unfortunately as I realized later, that will essentially mean that I'm stuck there until after Eid because all the buses will be full leaving Dhaka in the lead up to Eid. After Eid, I should have no trouble getting back to Bogra though as all the buses will be full returning to Dhaka but not leaving it. So much for having a nice peaceful time in the village.

Speaking of peaceful times in the village, I went out to another village this morning. I'm trying to interview farmers and figure out what influences how much success they have. So far, I'm not sure how good my information is, but I'm getting a great tan.

In other news, I heard that we got the first of the approvals we've been seeking. That was exciting news since we had just been hearing promises of it's eventual occurrence up until now. Please keep praying that the others will come through so that we can get our service workers and other necessary approvals!

Joy and Sorrow

2010-08-29T19:31:00.001-07:00

But first, something that has nothing to do with the title. In continuing on with my series about Ramadan I managed to take a picture of my Iftar meal last night. That big mass of stuff in the middle is a mixture of puffed rice, lentils, and a crushed up fried thing that is pretty spicy. Along the top you'll see (from left to right) dried dates which are quite sweet, some fried thing which was somewhat akin to a fried bread, and last but not least, the jelapi which is basically some sort of deep fried sugar (incredibly tasty in my opinion). You eat this with your fingers and I was given a glass of lemonade with it. I get the idea that it is common for anyone with any kind of money to have some sort of fruit drink with the meal (the previous two nights it was mango juice). After you finish eating all of this, they bring out biriani, which is basically the greasiest rice you'll ever find with meat chunks in it. It is hands down the heaviest thing I've ever had in my life as far as how fast it fills you up. Basically, other than the lentils, dates, and puffed rice, the entire meal is nothing but grease. It is very heavy and I'm not sure how everyone's bodies can handle the shock of eating this to end a fast but somehow they manage

The joy in life lately was found upon arriving home last night. Roommate Nate was sitting outside with his guitar, singing to a group of neighbors. He's done this for the past couple of nights and they seem to love it. His broken hand is healing nicely and the return of guitar playing is a beautiful result of this. I stood out and listened to his song and then told him that if he picks a song from his book that I know, I'll sing along with him. I know I've mentioned this off hand a couple of times, but the singing is one thing I love about this culture. They could care less if you are really any good or not, just the fact that someone is willing to sing seems to always bring a smile to their faces. The other thing Nate and I agreed upon is that the best part of singing for the village is that they know incredibly little English so you can sing nonsensical things and they'll still think it was part of the song. I say all this to point out that those who know me best know that I love to sing but am quite confident that I'm not all that good at it. Suddenly, I have the option to sing in front of people and feel no pressure to perform well at all. This makes me very excited. I think I'll join Nate in the future, I can sing the melodies and he can harmonize to his hearts desire (something he is very good at). :-)

Unfortunately, with joy comes sorrow. One of our guards (a wonderful man) was telling us last night about his sick wife. From what I can gather, she had a large lump next to her eye. He called it a tumor but said the doctor pulled some sort of liquid out of it. He had to take her to Dhaka to find a doctor who could properly diagnose it and just that makes me very nervous about how bad of a situation she is in. He said they'll have an actual diagnosis of it by tonight but it is sounding like she'll need surgery which will cost about 30,000 taka which is roughly 4 months of wages for him. Basically, everything about the situation sounds horrible to me and I'm not sure I can do much to help. Please be keeping him in your prayers!

Ramadan

2010-08-21T23:38:00.000-07:00

A little explanation of my understanding of the purpose of Ramadan. It is intended to be a month of time in which Muslims focus extra effort into following the teachings of Islam. As a result, it is my understanding that people are more likely to be honest during this time because of the strong push for purity. It is also a time of greater generosity for Muslims because it is also meant to be a practice that teaches empathy for the less fortunate. Not everyone is required to hold the fast. A few exemptions are young children, the disabled, the chronically ill, the elderly, and women who are pregnant or nursing who think the fast will be harmful to them or their child. For some of these people, such as the elderly or the chronically ill, they are expected to feed others as a penance for their inability to fast. For others, such as the women, they are expected to make up the days at a later time. Even for those who are not typically very devout Muslims in Bangladesh, there is pressure to observe the fast as it is a very public thing. Those who refuse to keep the fast do lose respect in the eyes of their fellow Muslims.

As far as what the result of this is on my life, it does cause some issues. Being that I am not a Muslim, I am obviously not keeping the fast. I previously mentioned that I have to watch what I eat in public though as it is considered rude to eat in front of those who are fasting. I also learned this past week that at sundown when the daily fast ends, everything stops and people eat their Iftar meal. This becomes something that you have to plan your evening around. In our situation, we were hoping to stop by the A&W Rootbeer restaurant for dinner only to find out that they were not serving regular food until after the Iftar meal was over. So we went to look at shops until such a time as we could get this food. Unfortunately, they kicked us out of the shops so they could eat their Iftar meal which meant that we were stuck on that side of town with nothing to do while Iftar was being eaten. We did eventually find a coffee shop that was operating through the Iftar time and sat down for a chat while we waited for things to open up again. We eventually did get our nice frost mug of rootbeer but the process did open our eyes a bit to how much the month of Ramadan does change how society operates here.

Grace

2010-08-18T21:14:00.000-07:00

I'm a little bit late with this post, I hope you can forgive me. This past week was the start of Ramadan. For those who don't know, Ramadan is essentially the Islamic holy month of fasting. Everyone gets up at 4am, stuffs themselves full, and then don't eat or drink again until sundown (currently 6:30 or so). Some people don't keep the fast for various reasons but it is still considered very rude of them to eat or drink anything in front of others who are keeping the fast. During the day all of the street food vendors have curtains hanging up over the entrance to their shops so that people can come and eat without being seen. Other changes occur as well, our office hours are different during Ramadan. We are currently working on an 8:30-3:30 office schedule which is much shorter than the usual 8-5 schedule. This is both so that our workers are productive (you get very unproductive in the heat of the afternoon/evening when you are fasting) and so that they make it home in time for the breaking of the fast. I think I'll wait to share more in my next post.

A couple of mildly interesting things happened in my life in the most recent week. I passed my motorcycle test and will finally be driving motorcycle legally in Bangladesh once I get the actual license. They say that I should get it next month sometime. That will mean that I finally get it 11 months after I initially asked about getting it. I think that's a good indication of how fast paperwork moves around here. Speaking of motorcycles, driving motorcycle after dark is probably the scariest thing I have ever done in my life. In the dark the buses can no longer tell that I'm an expat and they treat me just like any other motorcycle, which means I get run off the road or at least onto the shoulder of the road frequently. This past week I drove my motorcycle home for some reason (not sure why, I normally choose to ride bicycle) and I saw a bus passing a truck coming at me. I didn't think much of this and just moved to the shoulder of the road like usual. The part I couldn't figure out though is that I saw another headlight coming at me on the shoulder of the road. I just couldn't fathom why a motorcycle would be trying to pass a bus that was passing a truck. Then once I got closer I realized that it wasn't a motorcycle but another bus trying to pass the other two vehicles. Luckily for me, he saw me with enough time to swerve back over behind the other bus before we reached each other but I was afraid for a second that I was going to have to into the ditch to avoid him. That would not be pleasant.

I also bought a phone. This was a very troubling decision for me. I try to live a somewhat simple lifestyle and like to limit the amount of money I spend on "toys" or frivolous things I don't actually need. I'm getting ready to do some research in a field area and it won't be with our regular farmers. It will be with whoever is available and I will need to return to these same people frequently for follow up surveys. The problem this creates is how to keep track of them and find them when I don't know the area well. The solution that came to my mind was GPS. Nathan and Daniel have this on their phones already and I've seen how convenient it is at mapping out roads as well as marking important points. I decided that this could provide extremely useful for this work but didn't want to throw a whole lot of money at the problem. I eventually decided that I could probably buy a simple GPS phone myself with the idea that I could continue using it after my MCC term is done. The only problem with this plan was that GPS phones are a little pricier than I would normally want to spend on a phone and come with other little gadgets and do-dads. I eventually found the one I would buy if I were going to buy one. It is nothing real fancy as far as phones go but it is a nice phone but I was still left deciding whether spending that much money on a phone fit with my values of simplicity. This lead to a good conversation with Nathan who brought up a couple of very good points. He pointed out to me that technology in general will usually not fit with the traditional concept of simplicity and if you start pushing the simplicity aspect really hard you start becoming legalistic with it (some might argue that the Amish are an example of this). I think his point was that we have to carefully give ourselves some grace when incorporating technology into a simple lifestyle because it will always be at odds with a "pure" simple life but is also capable of doing many wonderful things. So when the microphone on my old phone died yesterday, I didn't feel any anxiety over the decision to just go buy my new GPS phone.

Women, Men, and Bangladesh

2010-08-07T19:10:00.000-07:00

I'm going to ramble a little bit in this post, I hope you can forgive me.

I went to Dhaka once this past week. It was just a day trip. To achieve a day trip to Dhaka you do have to put yourself through some paces. For instance, I got on the 5:15 am bus from Bogra. This meant that I needed to get up at 4:00 to get ready and go. I overslept and woke up at 4:30. Needless to say, that woke me up rather quickly and I moved fast. I got to the bus stand itself about about 5:10. I figured I'd be there for a few minutes since the buses typically run at least 15 minutes late. I was right but I saw something while waiting that I've never seen before. Two women were out jogging. They were wearing full exercise jumpsuits (think late 80's early 90's running suits)and had head/face coverings. I must admit, I stared. I couldn't help myself, it just seemed so out of place. Besides, when Jodi used to run at 5 in the morning the landlord and all our coworkers told her it wasn't safe. Speaking of women here in Bangladesh, I don't normally look at them. This mostly pertains to when I'm riding my bike. I find that if I look at them and they are looking at me, it just becomes awkward for both of us. Then by social custom they are normally forced to look away when all they really want to do is stare at me. As a result, I typically stare at the road ahead of me and give them the freedom to stare. Maybe that gives them some small amount of joy in a world that treats them pretty poorly. I also typically try not to look at men when I'm riding my bicycle but that is for different reasons. If you look at men it gives them confidence to annoy you to no end. Don't get me wrong, they are usually fairly harmless and just curious but when you have thousands of them who want to be your best friend for the vanity and prestige of being the friend of a foreigner, you tend not to want to encourage them. On the other hand, I have learned the problems of being a celebrity without ever having become one. Sometimes it is nice to have your original assumptions proved correct, I didn't think I'd like being a celebrity and I don't like the attention that I draw here. Even in the village that I have now lived in for over a year has not gotten used to me. I ride my bicycle through the village and children come and yell at me. You would think that they would eventually tire of this since I ride in and out of the village pretty much every single day, but they haven't yet. It could be that this is just a foreshadowing of what parenthood is like.

I know what else was odd this past week. When I was in Dhaka waiting for my return bus, the guy working the bus counter had a ringtone on his phone that really creeped me out. Have you ever seen Charlie the Unicorn? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5im0Ssyyus It is a fairly harmless and bizarre youtube video that was popular when I was in college. This man's ringtone was the candy mountain song where they are trying to entice him to go into the cave. Every time I heard his phone ring while I waited, I got the creepiest feeling that I was about to go into a cave (the bus) and they were going to steal my kidney. Odd but true.

Also, when I got on the bus, it looked oddly familiar. Then I realized the afternoon bus that I took back to Bogra was the exact same one I had taken at 5:30 that morning. This was later verified by the bus conductor who took my ticket and made comment on the fact that I went to Dhaka just that morning.

On a final completely unrelated note, our electricity has been crazy for the last week. Crazy in a bad way. At night it consistently goes off for about half the night. During the day, Nate said that it's been off for about 6 hours a day pretty consistently. On Friday though it was worse than usual. It went off at 8 am and was still off when I gave up on it and decided to head into the office for a bit. Later when I returned, Daniel and Nate informed me that it was only on for about 1 hour between 8 am and 6 pm. That's an ugly day. I'm not sure if this is going to continue but the amount of time it is off each night is startling and somewhat disruptive of my sleep. I guess this is life in Bangladesh.

Reading

2010-08-01T23:04:00.000-07:00

One thing we all do quite a bit of here in Bangladesh is read. I don't know if I have mentioned this before, but Bogra isn't a place with much variety in the way of evening activities. This is more difficult for some people to get used to than others. Having grown up somewhat tied to the farm most evenings, this lack of variety doesn't feel terribly constraining to me. Most Bengali's deal with this same issue by spending massive amounts of time sitting around and shooting the bull (an expression that I have tried teaching some of our staff) with friends and family. I live with two introverts and since two other co-workers recently left, I have new openings for social time in the last several weeks. I've spent a chunk of that time making sure to chat with various members of the staff a little more. That doesn't fill up all the time though, so I've spent a lot more time reading lately.

I've finished off all of the Philip Gulley books my mother sent me. If you haven't read any of them, I recommend them highly as a humorous and insightful commentary on rural communities in the Mid-West. They are nice to have here because they're a connection to home. I've started a book given to me by a friend while I was home. So far it has been an excellent Christian perspective on suffering. I also started up re-reading my favorite book, "The Walking Drum" by Louis L'Amour. I had forgotten how much I love that book and have averaged close to 100 pages a day in it which means I'll probably finish it tonight. This doesn't include the reading I do at my computer before, during, and after work. It is actually quite pathetic how much I still follow sports. I also like to take breaks during the work day to read up on Bangladesh news. In addition to that I also do some reading on statistics, sociology, and agriculture. The best part about all this though, is that it seems from the collection of books MCC Bangladesh has, most people have shared this past time with me while they were here.

I remembered to put a title on this post!

2010-07-25T19:52:00.000-07:00

I might as well continue on my streak of confession posts. I'm from rural Indiana and it runs in my blood. That isn't the confession, but it is pertinent. The confession is that I (and I think everyone else along with me) am a finicky and fickle person at times. The rural Indiana thing becomes important when thinking about what ways these traits play out in my life. For instance, I often find myself being very slow to warm up to new things (like my roommate's Swedish butter knife)and I often find myself with a very strong opinion about the most correct way to do something (for instance how toast is toasted). The two examples I listed are a source of much amusement to my roommates as they seem silly and trivial to them. Funny thing is though, if you pay attention you can catch other people in the act as well. For instance, my one roommate returned home recently and the first words out of his mouth were, "Well that's not where I would have put the table." I find this very humorous because I saw it coming. He has an artistic eye and is always seeking to satisfy that part of his nature. I on the other hand am much more concerned with pure functionality and find some of his rants amusing. My other roommate is incredibly consistent in how he approaches life as viewed through his values, except occasionally he strays from those (in minor ways, not in the "let's go binge drinking and hire prostitutes" sort of way). In one such instance recently I asked him why he did something seemingly unpractical and he replied, "I was curious." If curiosity isn't a fickle thing, then I don't know what is. That said, I'm still the one who made a big fuss over toast and butter knives which even I recognize is quite silly.

In other news, this week I went to Dhaka for a couple of days to do some quick computer work that needed faster internet than I have here in Bogra. I then proceeded to ride a bus for 15 hours in a 48 hour time span. I caught a bus back to Bogra on Tuesday afternoon. I then took a bus up to Dimla the next morning and returned from Dimla on Thursday morning. Needless to say, I'm a bit tired of buses now but my work all went really well. I started up a bit of research in Dimla. We're trying to determine if farmers will really make more of a profit if they feed better quality feed to their milk cows. That will be going one for the next month or two. I returned early enough on Thursday to go over to a friends house to watch the movie "Elf". Our rationalization for that was that we were celebrating Christmas in July. I guess that concept qualifies as a joke about American culture. Sometimes the little grasps of home have their value even if they are silly. I guess that's kind of like how our little fickle and finicky characteristics are our grasps at being ourselves which is beautiful even if it is silly.

2010-07-19T03:07:00.000-07:00

First a bit of a progress note on my last post: I got a couple of emails from people too afraid (or wise, depending on your view) to comment on the actual post. I think I'll share a bit from one of their emails because I think they had a good point (I will leave them anonymous though).

Quote #1: My suggestion is to not think about it in terms of being right or wrong. It is your opinion. Don’t assume you are correct. There may be more than one good answer. On biblical differences, view it as an opportunity to examine your beliefs and why you believe that way. I think a lot of times we get caught up in trying to determine what is right and what is wrong on little things (although I would not necessarily call them trivial or insignificant), but we lose sight of what is really important. You quoted it, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind; love your neighbor as yourself.” Remember this always.

Quote #2: If you read the story of Jesus telling the rich man to give away all that he has, the rich man’s response is disappointment because he loves his possessions more than he loves God. There are many places in the Bible where rich men are also praised but not because they are rich but because they are faithful and lead good lives. Take the story of Job for instance. If we all lived paycheck to paycheck because we give everything beyond what we need to live to charity, who would have money to start small businesses and provide jobs for others? I heard someone say once that you are not giving enough to charity and the church until it causes you to sacrifice something in your life. I think this is a good measure of the minimum you should be doing.

I scream an "AMEN!!!" to the first quote and have a lot of respect for the second one. I guess the only thing I would have to say is not that I disagree with the second quote but rather that it is my opinion that it is the minimum. Unfortunately, it is also my opinion that I am not interested in minimums and would prefer to focus all of those financial resources towards the first quote. I must also provide a disclaimer though, I of all people have never been all that great at handling money. I all to often let it handle me. This is part of why I take such a hard line stance with myself on the issue.

Ok, enough of that though. I should move on to other things. This past week wasn't all that amazingly interesting. I did however have one part of the week that stood out to me. On Saturday, I went to our home church and Tim, our host this week, let me in the gate. Tim asked how I was, to which I responded, "I'm doing pretty good, how are you." He said that he was doing pretty well and then proceeded to say that he doesn't recollect me ever saying that I'm not having a good day. This reminded me something about myself. I am (and always have been) a generally happy person who has worries (and frustrations)but trusts that God will take care of me and uses that as an excuse to stay positive. Somehow, I think I have slowly started losing that aspect of me in my time in Bangladesh. I especially see that in my musings over the past month or two since returning to Bangladesh. I've lived too much of my life worrying and fretting over things. Thanks to Tim though, I remembered and it made my day. It's a good thing too, because that night I got all the way home before I realized that I had forgotten my house key. I did what Phil Birkey does best in response to such things, I laughed at my stupidity and enjoyed the extra 4 miles of bike riding I had back to the office. I don't know if you've had the chance to re-find yourself but let me tell you, it is a great feeling.

A Rant

2010-07-12T20:54:00.000-07:00

I realized something this morning. My anti-histamine pills for my allergy to my house are having some side effects, specifically, drowsiness. I knew that was a possible side effect but didn't think it was because I haven't noticed it during the day. This morning though as I struggled to get up at 6 despite going to bed at 9:30 the previous night, I realized that I've been doing that for several weeks now and it all came together in my mind. I had noticed it previously but assumed it was because the World cup games and power cuts were throwing off my sleep schedule. I'm not really sure what I can do about it though. I need the pills to not break out in hives but they are ruining my favorite part of the day. :-(

This past week I have also noticed something of an issue in my life. I am young and inexperienced. This hurts my confidence in standing up and making certain arguments. This is both in work and belief situations. (be prepared this next part gets a bit long but should be an interesting read for many of you)

For instance, this past week I had some friends over for dinner. These friends are from a more Baptist background and it shows. Since my background is economics, talk eventually got on the topic of money. I happened to mention that I fall closer to the beliefs of the emergent church on this topic and specifically that I don't believe in storing up safety nets of money for myself. This is when he pulled out Proverbs 13:22 (NIV) "A good man leaves an inheritance for his children's children..." I really wanted to go off on him for cherry picking on what I really feel is a pretty clear subject in the Bible. I didn't though because I can't quote sections of the Bible perfectly from memory and to counter-argue with him would have just pointed that out. When I read the Bible I remember concepts and flow much better than I remember phrases. Should I be so ashamed to admit that I can't (or maybe just don't) memorize it word for word? I wanted to point out to him the birds of the air and the lilies of the field who the Lord provides for or how Jesus told the rich man to give it all away or how hard it is for the camel to pass through the eye of the needle or how Jesus commanded the disciples to go and take NOTHING with them. I wanted to talk about how part of my belief comes from the fact that some of what I believe comes from the fact that when Jesus was asked about the greatest commandment he replied, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind; and love your neighbor as yourself." (I googled it and it comes from Luke 10:27) The important thing to notice here is that he didn't stop at the most important part, but also went to say that the thing that obviously must be there if you do this properly is to "love your neighbor as yourself". Jesus then responds to the question of who one's neighbor is by telling the story of the good Samaritan. Which along with his saying "Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?...whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother." (Matthew 12:48-50 looked that one up too) This along with the good Samaritan example have lead me to rethink what I consider family references in the Bible to mean. I also take note that an inheritance is not necessarily money. We all inherit traits (and in my case some craziness) from our family (and friends) as well as things like history and wisdom. For instance, my Grandma Birkey didn't leave any money behind when she died but one thing that I found obvious from stories of people who came to visit her in the hospital before her death was that she was leaving behind a legacy that changed quite a few lives. In short, I view the Proverbs verse about leaving an inheritance for my children's children to be about how I should live my life in relationship to others rather than about how God blesses those who save up money for their grandkids. But instead of saying all this, I sat there and mumbled something about disagreeing with that view but respecting it.

This behavior of mine carries over into my work as well. I've recently been reviewing a project proposal for my boss and one of my criticisms is that many of his numbers aren't based off anything other than speculation. I point out how we should be getting the information on these. He agrees and then talks about the thought process that went into determining the speculative number. Eventually, he still agrees with me but doesn't act on this at all, the plan continues forward unchanged. We recently had an expert on the subject pass through the office while doing some research and we asked for his opinion on our proposal. Low and behold, he points out the same thing I was just pointing out, and then tells them to completely drop it from the budget, which they promptly do. Que the rolling of my eyes.

I guess what I'm trying to point out with all of this is not that I'm right. I'm mostly trying to point out that even in situations where I may be right or just believe strongly that I'm right, I have very little confidence to push the issue. Part of this is probably because something about my mannerisms when pushing an issue makes me come across as arrogant (something I've had pointed out to me numerous times). Part of it is probably because I am to willing to admit that I'm not an expert and could be wrong (as I have also been countless times). In the end it seems to me that there are two solutions to this problem. I can either just push my opinions as truth until proven wrong (thus really going far into the arrogance spectrum) or I can just slowly work towards discerning when my opinions are worth pushing and when I should drop the issue because I'm being foolish (maybe underselling my potential contributions in the mean time). Is this an accurate perception of the options available to me? I've chosen the latter option for most of my life. Maybe I should pursue the first option more while looking for ways to make it sound less arrogant than it currently comes across? Also, how closely are arrogance and stubbornness to each other? I'm definitely pretty stubborn.

I should probably wrap this up, I've got more to write but I just went on a fairly long rant so I'll quit before I risk making myself look more the fool.

The Big Bang Strikes Again

2010-07-06T23:27:00.000-07:00

Forgot to post last week...oops. So this is a talk about the pondering and happenings of the past two weeks.

It has dried up considerably since my last post. The road is no longer inches of pure mud. It has rained the last two days in a row but they were morning showers and everything dries out fast after those. I'm still amazed at how much water this country can hold.

This past week we said goodbye to Jodi for the final time. That involved going to Dhaka and spending some time hanging out as a group. It's never a joyous occasion to see some one leave but since she lives in Ohio, I'm sure I'll see here again. That makes saying goodbye easier. Her leaving will definitely change the dynamic in Bogra. Social life has pretty much revolved around her for most of the last 2 years. Part of this is due to her jubilant personality and part of it is due to her house being strategically located. It will be interesting to see how we compensate for that. Bangladesh did give her a going away present. She got sick for the final days before she left.

Speaking of sickness, health has been a real issue around these parts. Ben was also sick last week and it seems I've got some sort of cold this week. Then on top of that, Nate had a motorcycle accident and broke his hand. He ended up having surgery on it to make sure it is set properly. I guess they told him that if he was 60 or a construction worker, it wouldn't need surgery, but because he is both young and a computer worker, he needed it. That makes me the only person in our household to have not broken an extremity in Bangladesh. I hope it stays that way.

I planned on having guests over for dinner last night but I had to postpone that due to electricity issues. As in, there wasn't any the night before. I got home in the evening and the power was off. I'm so used to this by now that I thought nothing of it, so I started mixing up brownies to pop in the oven when the power returned. Then I sat down to wait on the electricity to return. Only, it never did. I napped on the couch for awhile knowing that if the power came back on the lights and fans would wake me up. Then at about 12:30 the small battery powered fan I was using to make things bearable, died. So I grabbed Nate's battery powered fan and moved to my bed. At about 2:30 his fan also died. That left me sitting there sweating (literally and figuratively) with the knowledge that if the power hasn't come on in 5 hours, it isn't likely to do so soon. So I moved my sheet to the floor and slept on the concrete for the rest of the night because it is cooler than my bed. They said the electricity finally came back on sometime late yesterday morning but by then I had already rescheduled for fear that it wouldn't. I was finally able to bake my brownies last night. :-) I'm still working on the timing when using my new pyrex dish though and I might have burned them a bit.

Mud, rashes, and English

2010-06-19T21:46:00.000-07:00

This past week has been an interesting one from my perspective.

I finally settled back down into my normal work in my normal office and slept in my own bed. Unfortunately, it seems that my own bed is causing me some sort of allergic reaction. It started with itchy arms. Then my legs and body joined in. Finally, I woke up yesterday morning and the right side of my mouth was puffy (fun fact for you, I almost always sleep facing my left). I wasn't too concerned until the lips started puffing up. Today it was the same problem. We are pretty sure it is a reaction to something in our house because many people who have stayed at our place recently have gotten itchy. The most recent suspicion is that maybe some sort of chemical in our roof or ceiling is floating down in dust and slowly builds up over time. All I know is that if it gets any worse, this guy will be refusing to stay in my own home because puffy lips is a really freaky feeling.

I've also been editing a project proposal. This has led me to an insight. When you don't grow up with English as a first language, the simple words are sometimes the hardest to understand the complexities of. For instance, how do decide whether to use "in" or "on"? For example, we would say that you use pesticides on vegetables but also say that you use pesticides in vegetable cultivation. It is a little thing but it applies to a lot of different words and different situations. I've also noticed that filler words like "the" and "a" are difficult as well. Just an observation.

Finally, it rained a bunch here the past couple of days. That means that our dirt road has turned into a mud one. This is especially true near our house where it is very difficult to keep my bicycle upright in several inches of mud. So far I have managed to navigate it successfully but keep posted, if I do fall I'm sure I'll have a nice muddy picture of me to share!

Prayer Requests

2010-06-13T20:53:00.000-07:00

This is a new thing for my blog and I hope to make it something you'll find regularly. My goal is to be a little more connected to those who would like to know what things could use prayer in the lives of those I interact with here. This comes out of being reminded while I was at home that each of us has different gifts and unless we open ourselves up to allowing others to use their gifts, we won't see them.

One thing that could be prayed for is the upcoming Vision and Values Training that a couple of co-workers are partnering with an organization called Food for the Hungry to give to our staff.

I'd also ask for prayers for both MCC's ex-pat workers and many of our ex-pat friends. Many of our workers are finishing up the final month or so of their term with MCC and that means a big transition is coming for them. I also add our friends to that list because it seems like all of them are traveling a lot lately and one in particular is back in the USA right now having hip replacement surgery.

As always, prayers for the people of Bangladesh are appreciated. There are not a lot of crops in the fields right now as harvest just happened this past month but this is storm season and natural disasters that result in a loss of life are a real possibility.

I think I should probably end this with a prayer of thanksgiving. It sounds like all of the MCC staff in Bangladesh fared well while I was gone. One co-worker even celebrated the wedding of his daughter!

High Definition

2010-06-12T22:06:00.000-07:00

Ever since returning to Bangladesh a week ago, one thing has really stood out to me. It feels like when I left Bangladesh in April, everything was in analog TV mode but since returning it is like everything is in high definition. Maybe that is just the difference the rains make in cleaning up all the dust and dirt. Maybe it is just the result of having returned from the States where colors are very bland compared to Bengali tastes. Regardless, I find myself in just pure awe of it at times.

I also noticed that my Bangla pronunciations where terrible when I returned. A week later I'm starting to gain some of my confidence back again and finding that I'm able to start adding a bit more complexity to my sentences. It's all a good reminder that I need to practice and study Bangla more.

I've spent a grand total of about 15 minutes at my house since coming back. I spent most of the last week doing work in Dhaka and saying farewell to the Miller family. It is saddening to see them go but like I previously noted, I'm not one for being too caught up in such things. I trust God has a purpose for them and this move in their lives. I finally returned to Bogra last Thursday which is the end of the work week. I got back to the office in time to have a late lunch. After that I had an hour long talk with my boss. He then invited me to come with him to his parent's house for the weekend. Having vowed to do more of those types of things, I took him up on it. So I went home, threw my dirty clothes in the laundry, grabbed some clean clothes, and took off with him right after work.

He is from a part of Bangladesh that is famous for its mangoes and it happens to be mango harvest season. I had a great time hanging out with him and his family. The mangoes were everything they were billed to be (I didn't like mango last year but love them this year, funny how tastes change huh?). The only thing that didn't go so well was that they found out that a bunch of their mangoes got stolen. Having crops stolen is a real issue in Bangladesh which is why most people hire help to watch the crop as harvest nears. Fortunately, my boss, while sad and frustrated at this news, isn't some poor Bengali who will starve as a result of losing $15 worth of mangoes. I also had a new kind of flat bread while I was there. It was made from a brown rice flour, very delicious. His mother even made the best tasting beef dish I've had in Bangladesh. Overall, I think that part of Bangladesh is one of my favorites so far. We traveled through the 4th largest city in Bangladesh there and it felt more like a giant village than a city. That appeals to me.

I got back from this trip last night about 7 but since his wife and child were off visiting family and my roommates are both out of town right now, he invited me to his place to watch World Cup games for the night. I was hesitant to accept since I was out of clean clothes at this point but the draw of watching the England vs. USA game trumped those hesitations. In retrospect, it was very much worth losing sleep and wearing dirty clothes to work today. Seriously everyone, watch the World Cup games. They're amazing and kind of a big deal. I'll try to post later about how the Bengali people celebrate it all.

The Return

2010-06-06T22:02:00.000-07:00

I could probably write about 30 posts right now. I won't, but I could. :-)

I guess the place to start then is to talk about my return and highlight where I'm at.

I returned to Bangladesh yesterday morning. The airport was a friendly reminder that I was "home" as 5 flights came in around the same time and apparently only 1 of 3 baggage cart unloaders was in working condition. Seeing the familiar face of the driver as I walked out of the airport was pleasant. Then I on the drive back to the apartment I started feeling real excitement. I think for some reason most people expected me to feel some sort of sense of dread or sadness that I have returned but this isn't the case. I'm not really sure why this is. Perhaps it is because I am very aware of what I'm getting myself into. I get the impression that this is why people normally dread coming back to Bangladesh. For me, it actually is more comforting than scary though because there is direction and understand this time around. I know what 1.5 years in Bangladesh is like. I know approximately what I'll be doing. I know what things are going to bother me. I know what things I need to work on. I know that this will help me grow as a person.

Another perspective some might throw out is that one would expect that I'd be sad to leave my family and friends behind again. The biggest reason this isn't such an issue for me is that I know for sure at this point that distance is no match for a foundation of love. I have that foundation with many people back in America and, while being in Bangladesh definitely changes the buildings that are on those foundations, I know I can trust in those foundations to remain strong or even be stronger as a result of my being here. On top of that, I have a real sense that this is where I'm supposed to be. I don't talk about that too much, but it is something I have a lot of faith in. I feel like God placed this path in front of me for a reason and trusting in that is more comforting than I could have ever imagined.

That said, here I am starting up again. I know that in the coming days and months it will be easier for me to be excited about new challenges than to actually accomplish them. I think that is the real test I am facing at this point in my life. Can I be a detail oriented finisher at even an acceptable level? I must admit, I'm somewhat apprehensive to learn the answer to that question. Other than that, I view life as beautiful at this point.

To those of you in the States, thank you. Thank you for being wonderful.

The journey begins

2010-04-29T12:28:00.000-07:00

I'm on my way home for my younger brother's wedding!

A Shameless Plug

2010-04-25T06:26:00.000-07:00

Here in MCC we have a project that I like a lot. This project produces handmade natural soap bars. It's called Sacred Mark. The important thing about Sacred Mark isn't that it produces soap. The important thing about Sacred Mark is that it was developed to give women who were forced into prostitution a second chance at life (It reminds me very much of John 8: 1-11). The women who work for Sacred Mark have left behind their old life and are shown that they are a beautiful creation, loved by God. Making soap is more than just a way of life for these women. The crisp clean packaging along with the Sacred Mark signature thumb print seal which adorn every bar are wonderful reminders to me of how much a little cleaning from God can do.

I bring this up because I'm going to be bringing home some of this soap. My reasoning for this is two-fold; I want to support Sacred Mark in any way that I can and to help pay for some of my travels in the states (I figure most people can appreciate that I have no money). If anyone is interested or knows someone else who might be, I'll be doing this on a donation basis (for legal reasons which I have no clue about but someone told me to do). The suggested donation is $5 (buy 2, get 1 free) and I will be giving $2 of that towards Pobitra which is the MCC project which actually prepares the women for the transaction to a new life and a normal workplace.

For the purposes of even more disclosure, that I am aware of, Sacred Mark soap is already being distributed by two businesses in the US. Ten Thousand Village stores and Global Girlfriend (https://www.globalgirlfriend.com/gifts/item.do?itemId=36843&siteId=344). My intent is not to take business from these organizations but rather promote awareness that the soap is there.

Quote

2010-04-19T03:58:00.000-07:00

I like this quote by Francis Chan.

'But you know what? I didn't bother to ask if they would modify the rules for me so I could run less, and maybe do fewer push-ups. That would've been pointless and stupid, and I knew it. Everyone knows that if you sign up for the Marines, you have to do whatever they tell you. They own you.

Somehow this realization does not cross over to our thinking about the Christian life. Jesus didn't say that if you wanted to follow Him you could do it in a lukewarm manner. He said, “Take up your cross and follow me.”'

Additional culture talk...

2010-04-17T22:15:00.000-07:00

Speaking of culture. I've got an example of when things just don't combine well. Bengali's have worldwide renown for being the worst people as far as airplane etiquette. I've heard over and over that flights to and from Dhaka are considered the worst flight assignment a steward or stewardess could get. I was reminded of this when I flew back from Malaysia. As soon as you get to your boarding gate you are reminded that you are returning to Bangladesh by the fact that all the Bengali's are pushing and shoving to get to the front of the line. This is regardless of whether there is significance to being at the front of the line. They just seem to want to be there. We sat in our boarding area for about 20 minutes and a group of Bengali's stood the entire time at the door waiting to be allowed to get on a plane that they already had assigned seat for.

When we got on the plane there were all sorts of guys (oh and just for the record, you hardly ever see a woman on any of these flights) playing with cell phones and cameras despite the fact that they've been told to turn them off. While we were in the air the smoke alarm kept going off because people kept trying to smoke in the bathrooms. Finally, after about 5-6 times of this occurring, a Bengali man got up and really spelled it out clearly for them which seemed to mostly fix the problem. My favorites though were as we were landing. On our decent the guy across the aisle from us was trying to make phone calls and another guy about 4 rows ahead of us was literally standing up, leaning over his neighbor, looking out the window. I think he did manage to sit down before we actually hit the ground but I was just amazed at the fact that he was doing that. As we hit the tarmac there was the typical clicking of seat-belts coming unlatched immediately. Then about a half-a-dozen men stood up and tried getting their carry on luggage while we were still half a mile from the terminal. I was sitting in the middle seat and the guy on the window seat tried being one of these people, but I told him to sit down and refused to let him get past me. I didn't go to the bathroom during this flight but I've heard that is quite the experience on any of these flights as Bengali airplane bathroom etiquette is the worst of the worst. I might have to go on the way back from the states just to have a story to share myself.

Culture shock

2010-04-17T21:57:00.000-07:00

To be honest with you, I'm somewhat afraid to be going home. Culture shock is a very real thing that happens going both ways. I've heard it's actually worse going back to your own culture. I think most of this has to do with the fact that I don't know what to expect. I'd like to think that it will all feel natural being that I have spent far more of my life in the states than I have in Bangladesh but wonder if things will just feel awkward or off at times. I guess I'll find out soon enough. Less than two weeks from now to be exact.

A list of things I'm afraid I'll mess up:
-Driving of the wrong side of the road.
-Spitting in an inappropriate setting.
-Asking a question that it isn't culturally appropriate to ask.
-Messing up personal space distances.
-Responding "heh" instead of "yeah" on accident.

On the other hand, I'm extremely excited because I like meeting face to face with people. I'll get to do a whole lot of that while I'm in the states. I'm also really excited about who those faces will be. All you wonderful people make it worth the cultural issues.

Even more boring than usual...

2010-04-10T04:46:00.001-07:00

I don't have that much to say. Life is back to being its typical boring self this past week or so. I even managed to keep Easter low key because no one was in Bogra with me. The only thing interesting I did on Easter was take a 2.5 hour bike ride. I've got some interesting projects on my plate but they're all in the beginning stages and not really worth discussing yet. I guess it is worth noting that I'll be coming home in just 20 days now. I really should polish off my schedule a bit this next week.

I did start up exercising a bit this past week. I figure I want to be in good enough shape to play some sports while I'm back in the states. I say this only to point out that this is about the worst possible time to take up exercise in Bangladesh. On any given day it is generally in the upper 80's by 7:30 in the morning. By the afternoon it is in the mid-90's. Another thing that doesn't help is that the backup power supply at our house is broken, which means that, on any given day, we don't have electricity from about 6pm till about 9:30 or so. So pretty we pretty much just sit there and sweat for 3 hours in the dark. I've taken to going to bed with a towel over my pillow to soak up the sweat. I've also gone from being able to wear a pair of clothes for most of a week to having to change every day. I still haven't seen rain in Bangladesh in months. We got rained on in Cambodia and Malaysia but it hasn't come within miles of me in Bangladesh. I can't wait until the rain gets here and cools things off a bit.

I also went to Ben's house with Jodi tonight. We've been pestering him for months to have us over to meet his family and he finally got around to it. We're going to visit their neighbor tomorrow night as a result since many invitations come after the first. They seem like a really nice family. They have a small boy like Dave's family did but this one is much better behaved (I don't think he pees in the sink or wears girls clothing at all).

That last one is probably a good place to leave this.

Proof

2010-04-02T05:24:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I catch myself saying things and realize that they are exactly why many people view me as strange. Tonight I had one of those moments, it was in the context of telling someone about Cambodia and I said, "It's really quite beautiful and the people giggle in a really cute way."

Bicycle Tales

2010-03-30T21:25:00.000-07:00

I think I might make the thoughts I have while riding my bicycle a blog post more often (I love how Canadians pronounce the word often).

This morning my thoughts actually revolved around the bicycle and how it relates to people. When I got my bicycle this morning the guard pointed out that my front tire was flat. You may recall my last difficulties with a flat tire and how the experience was not so pleasant. So I prepared for the 2.5km walk to the nearest bicycle stand. On my way I passed through the village I live in and decided just to say hi to people as I passed. I saw one particularly old man and gave him a very respectful "A salam walaykum" which is a Muslim greeting which translates as "I wish you peace." He then asked me what was wrong with my bicycle. I told him the front tire was flat and showed him by pressing it down. He then told me to follow him and lead me to a house. They brought me a pump and I pumped my tire up. I then offered to pay the lady of the house for the use of the pump but she wouldn't take it. So put shortly, one polite greeting saved me a long walk and saved me 2 taka. I thanked both people profusely and then went on my way to work.

Later on my way to work I realized another fascinating thing about my bicycle. How cultures view their personal space changes how you ride a bicycle and how other people on the street treat you. In Bangladesh you constantly ride within a few feet or even inches (if at a slow speed) of people or other traffic. No one flinches or feels violated by this. If I tried doing this in the US I'd have people yelling at me for being crazy and trying to kill them even if it was at slow speeds people would at least flinch. It is recognized here that as long as you don't hit people, there is no harm done and all you are trying to do is get where you are going. Even more compelling for my argument is that often times people will purposely give you no more room than you need to get through here. It forces you to get somewhat comfortable with the system. I kind of like that aspect when I'm on a bicycle in Bangladesh but I must admit that I don't particularly like the fact that it applies for buses as well.

Cambodia

2010-03-28T19:08:00.000-07:00

I'm back. Did you miss me?

Cambodia is an interesting place. We flew in to Phnom Penh (the capital) on the afternoon of the 20th after a 1 night layover in Malaysia. We took off from there straight to Sihanoukville which is a city on the coast. The first things I noticed were how much people use motorcycles in Cambodia and that they drive on the same side of the road as Americans. It was also very obvious how few people live in Cambodia as compared to Bangladesh. I just looked up the numbers and it appears that about 15 million people live in Cambodia. That is just slightly more than the number of people who live in Dhaka alone. Cambodia is also slightly bigger than Bangladesh.

Our bus broke down on the way to Sihanoukville and so we had to wait 2 hours for another one to come get us. Andy and Lana (the leaders of MCC in Cambodia) joked with us about the fact that none of us even came close to complaining about this inconvenience. The said that we would probably have complained if things had actually gone as planned. What ended up happening was that once Daniel realized that there were Mangoes outside at the stands he went out and started bartering despite the fact that he didn't know the language or have any local currency. Somehow he still managed to work out a good deal and got some money from Any and Lana. Then of course he wanted to eat it but didn't have a knife. Luckily the shop people were really nice and cut it up for him. We ended up exchanging some language lessons with them before they brought us some chairs to sit in. We then spent the next bit of time chatting and enjoying the evening.

The next 4 days or so were spent at the Orchidee Guest House. The days started out with a continental breakfast at the guest house. This is complete with fresh baked bread every morning. That's a good way to start the morning. We followed that up with a worship time led by Nate. We then finished off the mornings with Andy and Lana leading us in a journey of reflection and learning. We talked about what experiences have shaped us and made us who we are. Then we talked about our Myers-Briggs types. This lead into how we deal with each other and how we deal with our environment around us. It was very helpful but also led us to some challenging questions. We followed up those sessions with a lunch of traditional Cambodian food. It turns out that Cambodians don't use much spice in their foods. Instead they tend to have a lot of fruit flavorings. Lots of lemon, pineapple, and coconut. This is mixed in with a variety of meats like pork, chicken, and all sorts of fish. I thought it was all pretty good but actually prefer spicy foods to fruity foods. In the afternoons we had free time to do as we please. For me this meant a trip to the market, kayaking, snorkeling around a coral reef, and some frisbee on the beach. Then each evening we got together for supper at local restaurants. We varied the foods up and had things like grilled seafood, pancakes, and local cuisine. The pancakes were absolutely amazing. Supper would usually last a couple of hours due to chatting and then we would all go back and hang out at the hotel for a bit before bed.

Finally we returned to Phnom Penh to see the MCC office and meet the staff. We had lunch with all the expats working in Cambodia. One of the older workers was a guy I took one look at and just knew he had to be from central Illinios. There was something about his ears and facial structure that I recognized. Of course I was right. He had even gone to Bluffton as well where he met his wife who was from Pandora, OH. After lunch we went to visit some of MCC Cambodia's handicrafts partners and a local marketplace. I bought some gifts for some people but I won't ruin the surprise by saying who or what. That evening we had supper at a nice Cambodian restaurant which served the meal in courses. They had a very interesting tea which I'll probably post a picture of me drinking later (it looks like I've got something other than tea but I promise you it is only tea).

The next day a group of us went to the Tuol Sleng genocide museum. I would rate that experience as even more of a gut check than the Holocaust museum in Washington DC was. I think the thing that put it over the top was the fact that our guide talked about how half her family was killed before she and her mother escaped to a refugee camp in Vietnam. This combined with their brutal methods was pretty intense. You can read a general talk about what happened here.

After the museum trip we all got drenched by a thunderstorm. We then had lunch at Andy and Lana's house before we broke up and went our separate ways. For me this meant that I began my journey back to Bangladesh.

Overall, I really enjoyed the trip. It was my first time outside of the Bangladesh, India, Nepal region in 17 months. It was interesting to get a glimpse of western culture and how I'll respond to it when I travel to the states next month. I have developed some habits in Bangladesh and they are amusing to combat in certain situations. I'll try to follow this up with some stories of individual events that happened on the trip but won't promise that I get around to it.

MIGHTY MOUSE!!!

2010-03-14T19:55:00.000-07:00

I finally got to go to the circus this past week. That has nothing to do with the title. It's just a statement of fact. Unfortunately, they did not have the tight rope walking goat. They did have a goat that walked up to a small platform and then turned around on it. Overall, it was worth the less than a dollar that we paid to for a 2.5 hour show but disappointed me because of its lack of use of animals. They had an elephant that kicked a soccer ball and they rolled out some cages with a small bear as well as some sort of cat for about 30 seconds. That was all the animals they ended up having. I'm pretty sure the amateur circus in Peru is better, but I can't say for sure because I've never been to it despite having grown up there.

I'll be going to Cambodia next week. I'll also be playing the Mennonite Game. It turns out that the couple who is coordinating with us to help lead our trip has family who goes to my brother's church. On top of that, the wife's mother is my brother's next door neighbor and her sister is in my brother's Sunday school class. I also have connections to meet up with Keith Graber-Miller who grew up in my home church. It should be a good time, lol. The trip itself is a 1 week retreat for those of us in Bangladesh with MCC. We are going to spend some needed time away from Bangladesh but also see a program that does some similar work. We will also do some things like swimming and probably getting sun burns as well. All this is to say, I don't know if I'll have a post up next week. I've gotten pretty irregular lately anyway so I suppose you won't be too put out.

Finally, what you've all been waiting for. Mighty Mouse. Reason #51 why I love Bangladesh. Because there are so many people here, you often see people who have faces that remind you of people you know back in the U.S. Well this morning on the way to work I saw a man who looked like Mighty Mouse. I was pretty amazed that such a man existed and thankful that I got to witness such a humorous thing. I also saw a man who slightly looked like Gomer Pyle but it wasn't as strong as Mighty Mouse was.

The simple pleasures, you need to cherish them sometimes.

Thoughts are an odd thing...

2010-03-06T18:17:00.000-08:00

I thought I had posted once about 9 days ago. It turns out I was wrong, it was more than 9 days ago, and so I got some healthy reminders from multiple sources telling me that I need to blog. Being an appeaser, I'll fill you in on the strange and unusual life I've lived in the past couple of weeks.

I've been reading a prayer book that a friend sent me. It's been wonderful having a short but poignant something to look forward to reading every day. It has also been a wonderful thing for giving me fodder to think about on my 25-30 minute bike rides to work. Ben (the Canadian SALT'er) and I were just having a conversation about how much time we have to think about odd things on that bike ride. We had both ended up writing poems. I didn't write mine down and I'm not going to as it wasn't very good unless you have the acting that goes along with selling like one of those beat poets (by the way, I just realized that I've never actually seen a beat poet unless you count Jeff Gundy at faculty follies or some similar event). My poem was about the lorry (sp?) trucks that you see all painted up and carrying ridiculous loads here. It came about because was riding past one as it parked on the side of the road and I could hear it creaking as it settled in under it's heavy load. As is often the case, the truck in my poem crashes and the driver flees/dies (depending on the version) but, because this is Bangladesh (and therefore nothing can go to waste) the owner fixes the truck up. It goes back on the road and the whole process starts again. In retrospect, my poem is mostly depressing and makes me feel bad for the trucks. That said, I've also pondered what would happen if you tried firing a shotgun while riding a bicycle as well as how accepting diminishing marginal utility would affect how we view indifference curves. All this is to say that what I ponder on that bicycle is a strange spectrum.

Speaking of that bicycle, I've had requests that I share a story of something that happened to me this past week while I was on it.

The moon wasn't out a couple of nights this past week and as a result I couldn't see to well on those nights. On this night in particular I was riding down a dark alley with brick houses on one side and a brick wall on the other (it was really a pretty creepy setting to begin with). I saw a group of adults on the right side and another group on the left side. There was about 6 of them and the gap between them was about 4-6ft. I decided to ride between them like normal but at last second my worst nightmares were realized. No, they didn't mug me if that is what you think I was about to say, no in my opinion mugging would have been less heart rendering and unbearable because at last second a toddler came bursting out of the group on the right running towards the group on the left right in front of me. I didn't have much reaction time and the best I was able to manage was to slam on the brakes. Unfortunately, my steel bike, my laden book bag, and myself all carry a lot of momentum on a bike (especially one with poor brakes to begin with). So I hit the kid. Not just tap mind you, I've done the rough math in my head, with all that gear I was probably 6-10 times as heavy as that kid so even a small amount of speed carries a significant transfer of energy as my momentum is slammed into his. I walloped that poor child pretty solid. I don't think I actually ran him over but somehow he ended up between my tires. That was about the moment when the "banshee" yells started. By "banshee" yells I'm of course talking about the child's mother or female relative that was supposed to be watching this kid. She was soon joined in by a chorus of about 30 people who materialized out of nowhere all of whom were screaming and shouting. I have never seen so many people appear out of no where so fast in my life. It took them about 20-30 seconds to assemble. The men grabbed me to keep me from fleeing the scene (this grabbing is a customary reaction as is the customary reaction of fleeing when you do hit someone). If you kill someone and the mob manages to grab you before you get away then they basically beat you immediately on the spot which is probably why the tradition of fleeing started. Luckily, I didn't kill this child but he was crying and they didn't know the extent of the injuries because we were in a dark alley with no lights on, so they took him to a house with a light. The mob moved along with them and I with the mob. I'm lucky that I am someone that is calm under pressure. I never freaked out during all of this. While they were looking at the kid I was explaining (with my poor but adequate Bangla) to those interviewing me what happened. Once they realized that it was an accident, I wasn't lying, I was concerned about the child, and that I was foreigner they began to get a lot less hostile. They told me to wait and once they had sufficiently checked out the child and ascertained that I apparently didn't do too much damage they let me go. I wanted to see if I'd done much damage but I figured I shouldn't push my luck with an angry mother whose child was still crying around. It has been my past learning that angry mothers don't always think about everything clearly when their child is crying so I did what they said and started riding.

Not more than 100 yards down the road I was overwhelmed with a surreal experience. I had just hit a small child in a dark alley, an angry mob had formed, and here I was less than 5 minutes later and no farther than 100 yards away in a well lit intersection with a bunch of people going about normal life with no clue what had just happened or more specifically what I had done. I could extrapolate on how this same thing happens to us all the time but it is not my intention to be philosophical with this so I won't.

I haven't been back to check on the child yet. I want to go but figure it is best to give the incident some time to mend itself before returning. My boss told me that they will likely try to extort money out of me if I do go back and he advised against it. I personally feel terrible about hitting the child and think going back would help my own mental stability while helping to foster a better understanding of western mindsets for the local people. I could be wrong though, maybe I'll go back and my boss will be right. Maybe they will just see this as a chance to try to pry some money out of me. I'm resolute about the fact that I'm not giving them money but I imagine that could be a situation in which dealing with their demands is mentally tasking. This is Bangladesh though and I would suspect that everyone here has their fair share of mental burdens to deal with.

Also in relevance to this situation, I've had several people tell me that I shouldn't be allowed around small children anymore. That would be terrible thing for me to deal with. I love small children. I'm terribly mean to them (usually I stick to torturing their minds) and they usually love it (with a few exceptions such as the one above). I guess what I'm trying to say is, please give me a little grace on this one. Your child and I want to torment each other with glee. ;-)

With that, I'll leave you to deal with your own odd thoughts.

Lamentations

2010-02-23T19:15:00.000-08:00

The past several days there have been plenty of frustrating things going on in my life. I'm going to tell you about them because I have nothing better to say this week and someone out there might find them interesting or amusing. Just for the record though, I'm not attempting to copy or imitate the book of Lamentations in the Bible. I just needed a good title and it seems to fit.

It all started with a bad headache a couple of nights ago. I was at the office and wanted to play some badminton with the staff but my headache was killing me so I decided to go home. I suspected I was coming down with something. Being that this is Bangladesh I had to go through all the formalities of explaining to the office staff why I wasn't sticking around to play badminton and where I was going. This was followed by the formality of them telling me how I should treat the headache and their speculations as to why I had it. Being that there are times when I'm a very impatient person, this was one of those moments where I wished I could just grab my bicycle and go. I couldn't do that though because that would be rude in Bangladesh and I get the idea that most of the time when I'm coming or going from a place, even my attempts at carrying out a moderately short yet polite conversation are still too rushed for their liking.

Then on the way home my front tire or tyre (if any of you are British or have a hankering for British spellings) got a leak and went flat fast. It was after dark and all the bicycle shops that are common on the sides of the street were closed, so I ended up walking my bike the last mile or so of my trip. The worst part was when I had to walk the dirt road. I was wearing sandals and because it was dark I was unable to see what was solid ground versus what was thick dust. As a result, I was constantly getting big wads of dust/dirt in between my feet and my sandals. This is the point where I tell you that I am one of those people who get sweaty feet. So then I had slippery, dirty, sandals on which is a pet peeve of mine. It drives me nuts when my sandals are wet and slippery. If they are dirty to boot, that just compounds the problem.

I eventually made it home and thought to prepare myself a quick healthy meal because I thought maybe I was getting sick. I put some tomato soup on the stove because that is what we had in the fridge and I thought it would be best to use it up. Then I threw some toast in the toaster because I figured I needed something to go with soup. Once I got the soup warmed up I realized that it wasn't soup but spaghetti sauce. At this point even that was enough to annoy me somewhat but being resourceful I just used toast as a substitution of pasta and ate enough to hold me over.

I ended up sleeping well that night and my headache went away. The next morning I still had to solve the problem of the flat tire (I speak American English not British English). I walked the distance to the nearest bicycle shop, which was thankfully open. I was even able to avoid the dust/dirt problem of the night before because it was light out and I could see where I was stepping with certainty. I had a good feeling about where the morning was going. That was before I went to the bicycle shop. To make a long story short, I got ripped off at the bicycle shop very badly. I somehow even let him trade out my tire with decent tread with one that was completely bald because the sides were cracked on mine (I had rode a little ways on the wheel rim before I realized that it really was flat which if you didn't know already, tears up the sidewalls of your tire something fierce). I rode away from the shop very angry and late for work. Luckily I was still a very long way from work and I'm still me. Over the course of my ride I convinced myself that it was silly to be mad because I had helped out a poor person who was just trying to make a living. I even rationalized that since I had been running late for work, that he had provided "emergency services" that would justify paying extra due to my dire need. I've even realized since then that the bald tire I now have actually helps me go through the sand in the thick dust better (sand and thick dust act like slush in that they whip your tire around but since my tire is bald it rides over the top of them rather than sinking down into them like my old tire did).

I've only got two woes left to go. The first is mosquitoes and the second is something that is at least remotely linked to them. Lately, farmers have been flooding their rice paddies for their next crop of rice which is welcome because it makes the countryside green and beautiful but unwelcome because it brings mosquitoes by the droves. Those stupid things make every situation annoying. They come at you when you are sitting at your desk, cooking, washing dishes, eating, and the worst of all, trying to sleep. I must have gotten woken up by mosquitoes about 4-5 times last night. I can think of nothing I hate more in this country than mosquitoes. The last thing is the situation with electricity here. I say it is related to mosquitoes because when the power goes out, all the mosquitoes seem to find me at a much more rapid rate than when it is on. Currently, the power has been going off several times a day. This is particularly scary because it hasn't even gotten hot to the point where I'm even running a fan yet. Last summer it would go off a couple of times a day during the hottest part of the summer. The problem is that many of the electricity plants in Bangladesh are run on CNG. Unfortunately, the countries' production of CNG is not able to keep up with the rising demand of CNG, so the government is starting to ration when this CNG out to power stations. With no solution in sight, my guess that this is going to be one very long summer in which electricity shortages are greater than ever.

End of my rant.

Have a nice day!

Desires

2010-02-15T00:40:00.000-08:00

It's funny how quickly things change, just yesterday I was talking about how I was looking forward to going to my home in Bogra. Now I find myself wishing to go to my home back in Indiana more. Life is like that sometimes, you wake up and find yourself with a different perception of reality that was created in some situation (usually these situations are earth rattling, small amounts of time) that you in your narrow focus in life didn't properly see before. To be fair though, I'm sure the rattle my earth felt was nothing compared to the rattle my older brother felt when his first daughter Emma was born yesterday on valentine's day.

Success, frustration, and a desire to go home...

2010-02-13T22:47:00.000-08:00

I should start off with the success, everyone likes those. This past week I've been in a flat with a freezer full of Marita Miller's cookies and I managed to not touch them. This was quite the feat for me but I figure it's better for my health (and wallet) if I avoid them. Maybe on future trips I will allow myself to have an occasional cookie but I really need to limit myself.

The frustration stems from why I was in that flat all week long. I'm in Dhaka for what is now the beginning of a third week doing database entry before MCC annual report deadline of February 15th. I've lost count of how many times I have been frustrated or angry at various aspects of this process in the past couple of weeks. I'm hoping we will be done with it all by our deadline but not exactly sure since a lot of my work revolves around when other people get me the information (I'm actually writing this because I'm waiting on people to get me more information)I need to enter and whether they actually get me the information that I need. I'm looking forward to Tuesday at this point because that will mean I can take a break from this task.

Which leads me to the third topic. I want to go home. Some of you may think I'm referring to Indiana with that statement but you are mistaken. I'm ok with being in Bangladesh. I look forward to my pending trip back to America in a couple of months but it's not like I'm counting down the days like my future sister-in-law is counting down the days to her wedding. In all reality, that trip to my Indiana home will require a fair amount of planning in the next couple of months. In the mean time, I'm looking forward to returning to my Bogra home. I've got a basketball rim to put up and friends to visit. It even looks like the Miller family will be coming for a visit this next weekend and I'm super excited for them to come. Like I said though, this all relies on getting done with the task at hand.

Realization of the day

2010-02-09T08:15:00.000-08:00

Today I realized something.

When I work at a computer all day long I drink lots of water.

I think it's because I get bored.

Regardless, it makes me have to go to the bathroom frequently.

Sometimes I wonder if people think I have a bladder control problem.

No one has ever commented about it to me.

So I just keep on working and drinking.

The birth of determination

2010-02-05T05:39:00.000-08:00

Thank you all for being patient with me in my blogging absence the past couple of weeks. As some of you know, I’ve been really busy with work and on top of that, my Grandmother died. For those of you who know me, you probably know that my grandmother meant a lot to me. I suppose that is putting it modestly since I consider her my greatest hero. In light of that, I figured I should make this post about my reflections on her in the last week or two.

Two songs have been stuck in my head since I learned of her death. The first, a hymn, is “My Hope is Built.” The chorus of this song goes, “On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand.” Grandma stood on a rock and she was also constantly encouraging us to stand on one as well. I don’t know how many times I trusted her of all people with a prayer because I knew she had a faith that could move mountains. To be honest with you, during my toughest times here in Bangladesh I have taken a lot of solace in the fact that I knew grandma was praying for me and God would hear her prayers. The other song that has stood out to me was “Shine” by the Newsboys. The chorus of this song goes, “Shine, make them wonder what you’ve got, make them wish that they were not on the outside looking bored. Shine, let it shine before all men, let them see good works and then let them glorify the Lord.” Anyone that knew grandma, knows that she had great love and she shared it with everyone. She never knew a stranger. Above and beyond all that though, she always put God in front of everything she did. She truly shined. The thing about these songs that has stood out to me the most though is that this person is gone from this world and they are things about her that will truly be missed unless something is done about that. In light of this I’ve decided that I can’t help but view her death as a challenge to step up and bear whatever small part of that burden I am able.

The other thing that really hit me was something I got when I arrived in the Dhaka office this past week. I got a couple of letters in the mail and one of them was from my grandma. That was like a punch to the gut in how shocking it was. I debated for about 15 minutes what to do with it. Do I open it right away? Do I wait until later on when I have more privacy to open? What can I expect when I open it? Eventually I just decided to open it right there since I was at a desk in a room by myself. What was inside was something beyond even what I could have imagined was inside. The card said, "Let us be glad and rejoice. Revelations 19:7" and she wrote, "Merry Christmas, I love you,
Grandma Birkey." I’ll tell you what I told my dad in light of that situation, “I wish I could describe the myriad of different emotions and thoughts those simple words have caused me but I'll have to settle for telling you two things: I'm hanging in there and the extent that God worked through that woman just blows my mind.” I imagine that’s how I’m going to feel for a long time yet to come and I wouldn’t want it any other way. It’s how a hero deserves to be remembered.

Beards: The Right Stuff.

2010-01-23T21:17:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I was riding my bicycle back to our house from town. A kid who was probably in his early teens rode up next to me and started chatting. His name was Mohammad, big surprise huh? He was on his way back from playing cricket in town and he had his cricket bat on the back of his bicycle. Cricket bats cost about $1.75 here but that isn't really important to this story. We talked a bit and eventually he asks what my religion is. I tell him I'm a Christian. He then asks me why I have a beard (it has been cold so I've refused to trim it until it warms up). I said that Christians in America have beards. He asked if all of them do. I said no, but then mentioned that not all Muslims in Bangladesh do either. He then said a bunch of stuff that I didn't understand. I did catch one particular word that he used a fair amount and so I looked it up when I got home. The word was, "pap" which means "sin". I don't know what he was saying about it but I get the feeling he thought I was doing a lot of it.

One other note of interest. I also noticed another word while looking in the dictionary. Just a heads up, if you are in Bangladesh and someone starts saying that you are a "papi", it isn't a term of endearment. It means you are a hardened sinner who is set in the ways of sin. Bengali people are much kinder than any other group of people I've ever met as a whole, but if they start calling me that, I think I'll be stepping up my awareness a couple of notches.

Speaking of my beard, I've decided to grow it for the next while. I will shave it off for my trip home but it's just too good of a conversation topic here to pass up growing it. That said, it isn't all that pretty so I'll probably not be going out of my way to post pictures, lol.

Meeting my mother's demands...

2010-01-16T00:49:00.000-08:00

My mother sent me the following in an email this week, "A suggestion for your blog. Why don't you tell us how you are coping with the cold. Do you have a hot shower? How do you deal with that. If you wear your overclothes long enough, do they need to be washed? How do you get thta done if you need to wear them all the time? Do you wear your blanket while you ride your motorcycle? Remember Larry and the bicycle if you do!!!" While I'm not sure why it needed three exclaimation points to end with, I will gladly use it since I lack anything better to say this week.

Over here it has been getting down around 50 degrees F most nights lately and some nights it has even dipped into the upper 40's. In the States I would think nothing of this, here it becomes miserably cold for me. It's not bad at all while you are sleeping at night, we do have nice heavy blankets that keep you toasty at night. What gets to you is that once you are out from under the covers, you are almost always touching wood, plastic, or concrete, all of which are things that never warm up. Materials in this country are made to be as cool as possible because for 9 months of the year that is important here. I deal with this by wearing all of the following while I work at my desk: undershirt, long-sleeve shirt, hoodie, coat, shawl, and sock cap. I find myself wishing dearly that I had thermal underwear for under my pants but I didn't anticipate that need and by the time someone could get them to me here winter would already be over so I just tough out having cold legs. I also wear socks and shoes during the winter which is something I don't normally do in Bangladesh. I don't have gloves but that has lead me to recognize something.

I've been badly wanting gloves for about a month now. This is especially the case on mornings when I ride motorcycle to work. On those days I get to work and my hands are just beet red from the cold winds. The sad thing is that they have gloves in the marketplace here and I've known that this entire time. I was reflecting upon the fact that I haven't gone and gotten them the other day when I had an epiphany. I realized that I had been saying for weeks that I would go get them after work but when it came time every day I wouldn't go after all which lead me to recognize that I have a fair bit of the mentality I picked up as a child still in me. It seems to me that growing up that there were always a bunch of tasks that needed done around the farm. More importantly, any number of those tasks might require the expense of money. Those kind of tasks normally get pushed aside (if they aren't desperate needs) until such a time when they become more or less important in the bigger scheme of things. This makes total sense when you are a poor farmer but not so much when gloves cost 45 cents. Anyways, after further reflection I decided not to buy gloves after all. I figure it's bound to warm up someday soon and it hasn't killed me yet to not have them. The moral of this story is that we often have learned ways of approaching things that we don't even notice we have most of the time.

Back to the story... I do have a hot water heater. This is not always the case though. Many houses still don't have this feature and so they have to heat water up on the stove top. That I have it is more as a result of me living with Nate than anything else. Nate weighs about 125lbs. which means he has very little to keep him warm and he thus values a hot shower very highly. He says that a hot shower is the last creature comfort he would be willing to give up. Speaking of showers, this also reminds me of my epiphany of the morning which was a rather odd one.

I normally take a shower in the morning. I've come to believe that this is another farming thing. It comes from the concept that when you go off the farm to someplace where you don't want to stink like farm, you take a shower right before you go. Growing up it didn't make sense to take a shower in the evening and then have to take another one in the morning after chores so I just developed the habit of showering in the morning. You may be wondering where this is going at this point and I'll tell you in a second. I had just finished taking my shower this morning and as I walked back into my room this morning, I noticed my bed. This jumped my thoughts to a lament of mine and an argument for taking a shower in the evening. If you take your shower in the morning your bed gets much dirtier much faster than if you take showers in the evening. That's about the time it hit me. If I ever get married I'll probably have to change my habits. It seems to me that not too many women like a man with a full day's stink built up or dirty beds for that matter. I imagine if I had a girlfriend I'd be forced to think more about this, but I don't, so I didn't.

Speaking of stinking, I have no clue how to respond to my mother's question about whether my coat starts smelling and needs washed. I work in an office where everyone goes out to work with farmers on a fairly regular basis. As a result, no one is going to care or notice smells. The only time I really notice if I smell or not is when I'm in the Dhaka office and that's because it is air conditioned.

I don't wear my blanket while riding motorcycle. I'm going to assume you are referring to my shawl. The shawl is a wool shawl which means it is super warm but not air tight at all which makes it super useless on a motorcycle. For those of you who don't know, Larry is my cousin who tried to ride a bicycle while carrying trash bags only to get them caught up in the tires and give himself a concussion. That made for an interesting family get together but is not all that likely to happen to me.

I think I've covered all the bases now and probably managed to throw in a pitcher's mound to boot. Hope this satisfies your curiosity and provides you with some amusement this week. Feel free to send other questions to me. I can't promise that they'll be used or have such odd tangents but I'll see what I can do.

Expectations...

2010-01-09T19:49:00.000-08:00

I'm sorry I haven't and won't meet your expectations of me actually writing my post when I say I'm going to. I'm on the Bangladesh time system now. You know, the one where I say I'm going to be ready in 5 minutes and no one is too surprised if that means 1 hour. I'm not sure how the adjustment back to the American time conscience is going to go for me when it does happen. I hate waiting around doing nothing myself but definitely see how nice it is when there is no stress caused by the timing of things. Anyways, I'll get you back to your previously scheduled programming.

Unfortunately, my computer's card reader is not working, so I can't show you the pictures I intended to show you. I'll let you use your imagination for the time being as a replacement. If you don't have a very good imagination, I suggest you draw the scenes out with stick figures.

Dimla trip:
The past week started off with a journey to Dimla. I think I've made mention of Dimla before but for those who might not know, Dimla is in the far north of Bangladesh. It's a 4 hour drive by truck from our office. I was told we were leaving at 8 am. We didn't leave until 9 of course. Along the way we stopped and had some nan with boot dal (chickpea curry) for breakfast. On this day a film crew for a tv station in Bangladesh followed us up so they could do a short segment on our work. This, of course, took precidence over all other work as they were our guests and guests always get precidence in this culture (something you have to learn to live with as a foreigner which results in you almost always being the most valued guest). This resulted in the head of the partner organization coming from his head office to assist in the hospitality and our project manager organizing lots of activities to happen on that day on very short notice so the guests could see what we do. The activities ended up being vaccination drives. We had the farmers gather their animals in a clearing so our workers could quickly give them vaccinations against anthrax. We did three seperate groupings. One for goats, one for cows, and one for sheep. The cows were by far the most impressive.

I think the camera crew was stunned by them. Imagine you are in a dusty clearing surrounded by trees that provide shade for bamboo houses. Out of the trees pours 400 cows kicking up dust like some sort of wild west cattle drive. Only these cows are being led by men in lungis and women in colorful saris. The clearing (about the size of a football field) is filled with with cows and colorful Bengali people all kicking up dust and mingling in caos. The camera crew ended up having to climb a tree like Zaccheus to take it all in. Then the staff went to work giving vaccinations. This was an impressive process itself. One guy was so fast and good at giving shots that he could literally be looking for the next cow as he in a fluid motion gave the shot without spilling any as the needle slid in and out. His perfection of this action brought to mind images of Benny Henn at one of his revivals knocking people down with "heals" to the head. As a result of all this the crowd dissapated quickly and smoothly within about 30 minutes.

One thing that also stood out to me as I watched this process, was how good the cows that MCC helped these people earn looked on average. It has been many months since I had been to this project. The last time I had come, we spent the entire day walking around diagnosing diseases and dealing with sick cows. This time the only visiting that we did after the camera crews left was to people whose cows had given birth so we could see how well the cow and calf were doing. In my job I spend a lot of time crunching numbers and writing/editing reports for these projects and a couple of hours of seeing how much these cows mean to these people along with how quickly they are learning makes it all worth it. I remember how many years it took our family to "figure out" how to raise goats well and am just amazed that these people (who don't have years to figure this out) are getting it to some extent in only months. I'd throw credit for this to a dedicated staff and my co-worker Jodi who has done a remarkable job of trying to teach the farmers proactively instead of just fighting the problems as they come.

The trip went well and there is more I could say but this is getting long so I'll move on to the wedding.

Catholic Wedding:
This adventure started off with a 9 hour car ride in a full vehicle. This time we went to a more southern part of Bangladesh. I think someone once mentioned that the Ocean is only about 10km from where we were but I can't be certain I'm correct on that one. We arrived the night before the wedding and relaxed at a guest house. The next morning at 9 was the wedding. As always in Bangladesh, things turned out totally different than what I expected. Apparently, going to the wedding itself is not a very Bengali thing to do, it's the reception that everyone goes to. There ended up only being about 50 people at the actual wedding. I had never met the bride and groom before, the bride was the daughter of our current Country representative and the groom was an American whom she met while she attended EMU. We arrived right before the procession to the church. I was promptly handed a video camera and told to film without much more detail. It turns out that my housemates and I played some pretty important roles in the service. Nate was designated as the official wedding photographer and Daniel got to be the best man in the wedding since none of the groom's family was able to make it. We were all more than happy to help them out.

We heard that the wedding was a little atypical. The Father preached for about 20 minutes on such subjects as: single people going crazy if they don't marry, the need to have lots of children, and death. Impressively, most of this was in English. I don't imagine the subjects of the message were very atypical, but would guess the short length was. There was communion, but the Father handled the exclusion of non-Catholics with great tact. The most peculiar thing to me was how during the important parts of the wedding people would crowd around them trying to get pictures and block everyone elses' view in the mean time. Bengalis have no concept of this being rude or disruptive at all. Other than that, there isn't much to report on the wedding itself. I have seen various parts of the rest of the wedding in weddings I've attended in the USA.

After the wedding we went to the bride's house and did some picture taking with the family and they cut the cake. Since Derek, our Country Representative, has two brothers living abroad, there were lots of family members around with very western mindsets. We had a good time talking with them and I finally met Allison (sp?) and Richard the bride and groom for the first time. Allison knew me and called me by my first name which was really freaky until she explained that she reads my blog. I didn't realize other people read my blog. I just figured it was a few family members and friends. It quickly became apparent that for all intents and purposes, they are very normal American people. After awhile of hanging out with them we all headed to the reception.

This is where things differed greatly from American weddings. Everyone and their brother comes, greats the bride, groom, and their family, then eats lots of food. During this time, the bride and groom sit on a stage in front of everyone eating and don't eat. They sit there and greet people for hours on end. There was seating for a couple of hundred people to eat and throughout the early afternoon it was generally full with a steady stream of people coming and going. There were also plenty of people standing outside chatting. The purpose of this all is to please the community. Rumor has it that they butchered 12 goats, a couple of cows, and a full flock of chickens for this meal. I think someone was speculating that in the end only about 1200 people showed up to this rather than 1500. Can you imagine having to greet and feed 1200 people!? After a bit it finally came time for us to leave and we missed out on any additional details of the post wedding activities. When we left at about 3pm the people were still coming. The final ending to all the activities was a 5 hour car ride in a van full of merry but tired people.

After the wedding we went back to the bride's house

Standby

2010-01-06T18:00:00.000-08:00

Standby for incoming post...2 days from now. I'm heading to a wedding and just got back from another trip the other day. Expect a post 2 days from now detailing both events. Can't you just feel the anticipation!!!

Christmas!

2009-12-27T18:50:00.000-08:00

It's not one of those fancy Christmas card pictures with my family and pets but I figured some of you might enjoy a Christmas picture of me. I got new glasses since my last publicly released photo but the lighting makes them hard to see.

This was my second Christmas in Bangladesh and my first in which I didn't have a trip planned (some of you may remember I joined some co-workers for a trip to Cox's Bazar and St. Martin's Island last Christmas). In a sense that made it much more awkward than last Christmas. The lead up to it didn't feel much at all like Christmas other than the cookie baking day at the Miller's flat, Nate's constant playing of Christmas tunes, and some Church services referencing Christmas' coming. I did have a tree thanks to my mother sending me one last year, but without everyone being in the spirit of Christmas is just doesn't feel the same. I also remembered how much I truly enjoy Howard-Miami Mennonite Church's Christmas eve service. In spite of all that, Christmas day was about as normal of a Christmas for me as I think I'll ever have in Bangladesh. A bunch of us gathered at Jodi's house where she had cooked up a storm and served us a nice brunch. We then read the story of Christ's birth and did some hymn singing. We followed that up by lounging around, talking, watching Christmas movies, and eating lots of snack foods. At the end of the day, I called home and found out that I was wrong in speculating that someone might be up by 7:30 (I figured they would at least be getting ready to do chores by then). They all managed to wake up and chat with me despite their sleepiness. That's really all there is to say about my Christmas. It was good to have friends to share it with but I think I might want to consider going on a trip for Christmas next year. It just works better that way in my opinion.

Today is some sort of holiday (Muslim I think?) so we've had a 5 day weekend here. Other than the Christmas activities, it's really been mostly boring. No one has even been at the office to play badminton with me. I've dealt with this extra time on my hands by taking my time when I'm traveling back and forth from the house. This allows me to gawk right back at those watching me as I ride by. It's really quite a fun game to play when you are bored because bengali's are doing all sorts of stuff everywhere.

I've also done a bit of free lance cooking. I made a dish that is a rice-a-roni like dish. Or at least what I imagine a rice-a-rone dish might be like because I've never actually had rice-a-roni. I basically did some vegetable and rice mixed in with some beef but flavored taco meat style where you boil off the water. Serve it with some fresh cabbage from the garden and some nan picked up from a resturant in town. Nate and I both thought it was a tasty meal.

I have also managed to get most of the way through both books that my mother gave me for Christmas already. She sent me a couple of her copies of books from the Home to Harmony series by Philip Gulley. They are a good humorous light read. Great for lazy days like the last couple of mine.

Here is hoping that all your Christmas' were more exciting than mine! (but not in a bad way of course)