Thicker than water…

In general there are 3 kinds milk in Bangladesh.  UHT, powered and fresh.  UHT is the Ultra-high temperature processing which allows milk to be kept at room temperature while sealed, powdered milk which I think most of us are familiar with, although it still has the fats. Fresh milk, comes from Dudh wallahs, or milk men, who go around on their bicycles with a plastic bucket full of warm milk.  Milk power seems to be taking over the market to the frustration of people milking cows.  My coworker Jodi tells me that it has to do with the high food prices in 2008 and the government started allowing the import of powered milk.  Apparently a lot of rejected milk power from other countries gets imported in bulk and repackaged in Bangladesh.

I tend to drink a lot of milk in the US, but in Bangladesh I only use milk in things, like tea and coffee or cereal.  The problem with UHT and powered is the taste, and the problem with the fresh milk is that it get’s watered down.  When I went to LAMB hospital in Dinajpur a few months ago I was thinking through these issues.  Latometers are a common way of testing the specific gravity of milk and by extension quality.  I got to talking to some of the staff there some of whom have been in Bangladesh for a very long time, wondering whether introducing lactometer’s would have any impact on the situation. The first observation was that the word for accountablity doesn’t exist in Bangla.  The second was that in the old math education curiculum was the following math question.  If you have enough milk for 4 customers, but have 5, how much milk do you need to add?

Bogra is famous for it’s sweet yogurt or mishti dui as it’s called. Daniel makes his own yogurt and was having problems getting it to set because of the water.  He started using UHT milk and that sets up well, but he asked an old dui maker how to find good milk. The rather disparaging response was that it was all bad.  Jeamon manush, teamon dudh – As the people, so the milk.

Last week I went to a wedding of one of my co-workers. I knew it was an evening wedding, but there were two pieces of information I didn’t know. It was going to be a Hindu wedding, and Hindu weddings are a lot more interesting than Muslim weddings.

The wedding was in a village outside of Jaipurhat. To say it was surreal is a bit of a understatement. It felt at the same time like and unlike like going out to a concert in the US. It starts by everybody vamping before going out. Then tea stall hopping. Then everybody is on their phone trying to figure out where the party is before the actual event. At that point we got picked up by the party bus. Ah ha hush that fuss everybody move to the back of the bus. That’s where the first band was playing.

It was a loud, long evening. We didn’t leave for the wedding until like 9 in the evening and it was well after midnight before I got to sleep but it was a good time.

Here are some pictures I took at the festivities.