Moments I Could Live in

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

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

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

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

First off today, I'm going to start off with an easy one. The availability of western foods in grocery stores in Bangladesh. It is weird to think this is a big deal but over time this has actually turned into a form of tourism for me. Every time I come to Dhaka I drop by the western grocery stores (there are 3 main ones in Dhaka) to see what is new or changed. I often times won't even spend any money, I just enjoy looking and make a point to know what I could get. This is important for a couple of reasons. The first being that you know when something rare hits the markets. I once found a 500g package of walnuts in the grocery store. I immediately realized how incredibly rare any kind of nuts other than cashews and peanuts are available here and snatched it up. It was a bit pricey but this was right before Thanksgiving and it made for a wonderful touch 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 to know what I could make and serve people. I love baking and sharing food from home with friends and living on an MCC food budget allows me a few small purchases here and there for this purpose. For instance, this month I purchased pizza sauce and invited everyone in our office over for pizza. Normally I would just make the sauce myself from scratch but tomato is not really in season right now and pizza sauce goes a long way. It was a good treat and everyone had a good time. My final reason for watching these things is just my own personal fascination with how this has changed. Three years ago there was Mozzarella cheese, 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 there are 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 a newcomer in the last 6 months!), 15+ different varieties of coffee (including a reasonably priced local roaster of coffee), and 100's of herbal teas from all over the world in shops that have torn down walls and expanded numerous times to accommodate their bulging stock. One store has even added a western standard butchery where you can get everything from sausages to steaks (all halal of course).

As I alluded to earlier though, all of this stuff is expensive. It is also imported 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, shipped for sale in Australia, and then imported to Bangladesh. It seems rather silly to purchase something that is produced a few hundred miles away when it has traveled 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 really things I need. As the popular sesame street character cookie monster has taken to saying, “cookie is sometimes food!” Sometimes the simple lessons we teach children are the lessons we have need to remember ourselves.

Crazy Busy

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!

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

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.

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! ;-)