Dancing with Boppi

It's easy to get weighed down here in Bangladesh. Too much noise, traffic, pollution. It's overpopulated, men make inappropriate sexual comments all the time, people staring--rubbernecking to get a good look at me. (not to mention the extreme poverty, corruption, sexisim and all other "isms") The daily combination of all that can be, quite frankly, exhausting.

However, there are many things besides the aforementioned that are life giving--making my time here in Bangladesh not only manageable but delightful. This morning I headed to Ashinir- L'Arche ( an international community for people with disabilities) with three of my students. We took a rickshaw and arrived right on time to help with the day care for kids with special needs. We got there and learned that it had been cancelled because of the Easter Holiday. We could have gone home, but we sat for a little while, drank tea and ate biscuits with the live- in volunteers. Three volunteers are from Bangladesh and one woman, Elenor, is from Ireland, but spends her life taking care of the 4 boys with special needs and no families, here in Bangladesh.

After drinking cha, Amrita, Nandita and Chandra all decided to help out with the cooking and cleaning, giving Elenor, Boppi and I a chance to gossip a bit. Boppi is about ten years old with both mental and physical disabilties. He doesn't use words to speak, but communicates quite effectively, if you know how to listen. He loves to listen to the gossip from around town. Elenor and I chatted for a while about western culture and bengali culture and just enjoyed speaking effortless english with eachother. Boppi played with my orna and held my hand and smiled alot, making cooing happy sounding noises. Soon, it was time for Elenor to finish the laundry, leaving me with Boppi. Two of the other volunteers dressed him up in my orna, Elenor's orna and some other colorful clothes and turned on Hindi dance music. Boppi knew just what to do. He started laughing and dancing in circles, grabbed my hand and asked me to dance too. Well, you don't have to ask me twice to dance, so Boppi and I danced and swayed and laughed and twirled around to music on the hard cold concrete floor. Soon my students, Elenor and the other volunteers were dancing and laughing too. It was amazing.