Lesson 7: Jeamon manush, teamon dudh.
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.
