My friend Alaina just told me I have only 33 days left in this place until I come back to the US. In some ways it feels like I just got here. I'm finally adjusted to life and I feel like I should stay because I've have established some roots and found Community here. Somehow I have learned to call this place home. In other ways it seems like this year would never end and I am breathing a sigh of relief that the time is almost here to go back to my own culture, friends and family. It's been a year like that...great and terrible...amazing and boring...intense while being laid back. It has produced unexpected reactions. It's hard for me to tell the story of Bangladesh yet.
One thing is for certain, after living in Bangladesh I won't be the same. I'm sure people who live in a developing country say this sort of thing all the time...but for me I think it will be true, or at least I hope it will be true. This year has produced more questions than answers about the way this life works, the nature of God and his relationship with us as human beings...the cycle of poverty and injustice. I came to Bangladesh wanting adventures and wanting to learn what life was like on the other side of the world. I wanted to shake up my theories of life. I wanted to remember why I cared about issues of justice. I wanted to get away from North America and hear the sounds on the other side of the world. I wanted to listen to the stories of those who were experiencing the things I only briefly skimmed over in the newspaper as I ate my cereal and downed a cup of coffee before rushing out the door in the morning.
My theories of life have been shaken up, but the more I am here, the more I am realizing that a place is a place is a place is a place is a place. People here are like people everywhere. Sure, it looks different; all the fruit shops with neatly arranged apples and hanging grapes, men sitting inside, beckoning me to come, "Sister, Sister, Asho..." The hundreds of colorfully decorated rickshaws on the roads, bells ringing, telling people to get out of the way, the women in Burkahs, hidden away in their own little black boxes. The smell of Hindu incense. The day laborers in their plaid lungis, shovels in hand, waiting to get picked up to go to work in an attempt to get some money so they can eat as well as feed their family. The amazing fabric and color combinations that take extrodinary imagination. The little kids right outside the Mission that I see everyday playing cricket-- daring eachother to say hello to me. The call to Prayer, whining, "Allah, Akbar" coming from the mosque next to the Mission, mixes with the Bell we use to remind us it is time to pray. On the surface it looks and smells and sounds different. Underneath all that, though, everyone's just trying to make ends meet. Babies are still being born and the sun is still coming up each day. Or at least we are all counting on those things.
And while I seem to have gotten used to life here, my experience as a single, not-terrible- looking, white, Western woman tells me that people, especially men, have not gotten used to me. I think this has been the hardest part. In Muslim culture, men are not supposed to look at women, they are not supposed touch women, they are not supposed to make comments to women. If a woman is not dressed modestly enough, if her orna does not cover her chest completely, it is her fault that she has drawn attention to herself and has invited inappropriate comments or the like. Segregation on buses and trains, in church, and around the table is normal. Men on one side, women on the other. Marriages are arranged by the parents.
My experience with the men in this place has been incredibly negative. They think that I, as a woman from the US am like the movie stars they watch on their dish network TV, wanting sex with any random man all the time, anytime. They think that it is somehow appropriate to yell sexual comments in my direction, grope me in crowded markets, hiss and leer at me while I walk down the road. They take pictures of me using their mobile phone cameras. It pisses me off.
Here, women are not respected, they are cooped up in their homes, cooking and cleaning, they get locked inside by their husbands. They do not have much say in their career choice, if they get to have one at all. They are forced to wear burkahs and baggy salwar kameezes to hide their curves, to prevent men, besides their husbands, from becoming attracted to them. Women are paid less for the same work, they are not seen outside in tea shops. There aren't even women's bathrooms anywhere. Many young women are married off at the age of fourteen or fifteen. This is their reality. They do not have a voice.
Obviously, my own experience has been dramatically different, growing up in the US. I can celebrate being a woman with a body that looks like a woman's body, I can choose how I spend my time, I can choose if I marry or not, I can study things I am interested in, I can stay out late with friends listening to music without being seen as a "woman of the night", and (gasp) I can even have male friends. It is hard to explain these differences to people here who just have no context to understand it.
Living with the Sisters has been a good good thing this year. These are women who have decided not to marry. They get to travel the world. They are proud to be women. They have made a decision to serve God and humanity with all they have. They take a vow of Poverty, Obedience and Chastity. They live in Community with eachother so well. They take care of orphans and widows and teach poor kids how to read. They do it with out a hint of pride. And if they knew I was saying all this they would be very embarassed. They have become my best friends this year. It's taken time and many adjustments on everyone's part; and as the Scale of Time is tipping in Home's direction, I am becoming more aware that I will miss them and will have to come back at some future point. They already made me promise I would, actually. I have learned from them how to show hospitality and what kindness to strangers looks like. I have been able to ask questions about how to continually have compassion and not burn out (their continuous answer: prayer), how to love those who seem unloveable...... All while having fun and laughing alot, and not taking themselves too seriously.
33 days....
A Harmonium in the making.
A nearly finished Harmonium.
Tabblas hanging from the ceiling.
Men making spice grinders.
The sky was so beautiful yesterday.
School boys stop for fuschka. Which also happens to be my favorite street food.
Beautiful women in saris move effortlessly through the streets.
On Hindu Street. When I first walked down this street 10 months ago, on my second day in Bangladesh, it completely overwhelmed me with all the stimuli. Now that I can speak some Bangla and know how to move without getting hit by a rickshaw it was a lot of fun yesterday. This street is really cool and feels so alive. Many instrument shops, jewelry shops, people hanging out drinking cha, Hindu temples. And we walked down it after it rained so it had a fresh cool feeling and the lighting was gorgeous.
a new little friend.
two new little friends.
Jackfruit, Bangladesh's national fruit
Carved conch shell bracelets. Wearing them on your wrists mean you are a married Hindu woman.
Lungis being delivered.
The streets in Old Dhaka are very narrow, and stacked high with shops, apartments, and people looking down on the busyness below.
Pink Palace. Very Colonial.
