Back to Reality

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

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?

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

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!