That rootedness is a bit of an illusion though. I think I’ve mentioned how little rock Bangladesh has. It sits on a delta and is silt a long way down. I may be crazy, but I think that this contributes to a sense of instability at some level. Last week there was an earthquake in Sikkim and all the buildings in Dhaka wobbled. I was on the 7th story of a building close to the MCC office in Dhaka at the time and the rattling made me pretty nervous. People ran out of their buildings and were scared to return. Earthquakes are a problem that is in the back of many peoples minds. There have been big earthquakes in Bangladesh’s past, and if a large one ever hits again, all previous disasters in Bangladesh are going to pale in comparison. Unfortunately like so many issues here, nothing has really been done about it because there are more immediate problems.

I find myself thinking a lot about stability, especially now that after 3 years, my term in Bangladesh is quickly winding down and I’m not sure what’s next. I’m waxing nostalgic about where I went and how long that journey has been. There have been times of deep contentment and also pain. In a little while I will return to the US and hope to reconnect, but I will find you at a different point in your life. With this in mind, I ask the question, as you sit back and think about the last 3 years, Kothay Geyechen? Where did you go?

In Bangladesh if you need some work done at your house, you’ll call a mistri or tradesman. I think it literally might mean master, as in master of a trade though that sometimes might be a bit optimistic. The mistri will show up barefoot, with a little bag of tools consisting of a saw, a few chisels, a plane, or maybe some trowels if he works with brick, but there will almost be a hatul or hammer. A hammer is the tool of choice for everything. Bangladeshi’s have a penchant to pound. Specialized equipment like motorcycles and bicycles often needs some special wrenches to work on certain parts. However if you don’t have that wrench, a screw driver and hammer tapping at a protruding corner might work. Tools are used to death in Bangladesh and often don’t last as long as I think they should. For physical things don’t there isn’t a sense of permanence. Maybe it’s because things are changing so quickly, or maybe it’s because at the very core Bangladesh is a delta and even the land isn’t permanent. There are very few old ruins in Bangladesh. Other thinking on the other hand seems to change very slowly, for many Bangladeshis, no meal is complete without rice–without it, it’s just a snack. I eat a lot of Bangladeshi food, but when I try to share dishes from other places I’ve lived, it often goes unappreciated. I’ve heard it said by Bangladeshi’s, “your food is not suitable for us.” From my perspective, what Bangladeshi’s consider suitable food, is very limited.

I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s a certain amount of functional fixedness that is required in society. It allows one to make assumptions that form the basis of further development. Without a core foundation of assumptions or design patterns, it is difficult to design or build upon previous work and a project that makes sense when it was started can very quickly become irrelevant when those assumptions become invalid. To compensate, projects either need to be over engineered or restarted and both drastically increase costs. Sustainable technology work is in many ways on the edge. Sustainability implies a very long time, yet we talk about technology as having a lifespan, often very short. Most new technology, either the product or the idea behind it, doesn’t come from Bangladesh, and importing it without adaptation often puts it into conflict with local thinking and structures. When it comes to technology, I understand many ideas that are simply absent in most of Bangladesh, and am often asked to share them, but it’s difficult because often they are premature and simply won’t work here or if they did would require too much time or expense to get working. The idea behind sustainable technology is to bring wisdom rather than just knowledge and that is much more challenging. I’ve had conversations about how tools improperly used soon become noshto or broken and I’ve tried using the phrase. “shudo hatul takle, shop shamosha perekei moto decade” – If all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. While I think it’s grammatically correct, all I get is blank stares. I guess the idiom doesn’t translate.

He claims that when we can graph stuff that costs a lot of money against stuff that has a big effect. Stuff that is very expensive and very effective is strategy. Things that are neither are trivia and he also observes rather tongue in cheek that consultancy is both expensive and not very effective. The final category he claims doesn’t have a name and is where details are key and have an effect out of proportion with the effort involved. Personally, I think that last category is tactics.

I’ve been thinking about how that applies to Bangladesh. If you look at it’s problems the first thought I have is that what seems to be lacking is strategy. A recent study showed that cost of traffic congestion in Dhaka last year was about 3 billion $US. It would seem this is the result of poor logistical planning. However, there is a plan. From what I understand it’s not even a bad plan. The problem is that it isn’t followed; buildings get built in designated free space, bridges are built too narrow and the materials saving pocketed, etc. etc.

My knee jerk reaction is regulation, but thats not exactly the problem either. Bangladesh bureaucracy is legendary, but it is mostly just a barrier to entry. From what I can tell the missing piece is enforcement: between corruption and culture, enforcement and penalties are for all intents and purposes absent. The biggest problem with corruption is not that it siphons off money, but that it actively sabotages much needed improvements. pukur churi koreche – they stole the pond…

The expression ” stealing the pond” needs some explanation. The village pond or pukur is the center of rural life so it refers to a really terrible sort of theft and is probably appropriate in this context.

Rickshaws are somewhat controversial in Bangladesh. I sometimes ride in a car, and riding in a car one seems to wait on rickshaws a lot. Bangladeshi’s, especially wealthy ones, really dislike rickshaws. They view them as symbolic of a poor underdeveloped country. They are very understandably perceived as the source of delays and traffic jams. Interestingly enough the people who have studied transportation claim that moving people is a function of space and speed. Using those metrics Rickshaws are actually quite a bit more efficient than cars at moving people around.

I haven’t had to drive a rickshaw to earn my keep, so I don’t think I can fully tell that story, but I can tell you that the mechanics of the rickshaw aren’t ideal. Because it’s converted from a bicycle the geometry is wrong, the seat is in the wrong place and the handle bars are difficult to turn. The gearing of the drive train is also wrong. It’s generally 61 gear inches which means that it feels like pedaling up a hill in your highest gear. When all of this comes together you have a machine which is really hard on the pullers body. Gill Bedford one of my coworkers in Dhaka worked with Rickshaw pullers and tells me that it’s a job you can do for 15 years. After that your body is broken.

If we step back from the situation a bit we can start to understand the socio-economic situation that puts rickshaws, cars and busses together. Bangladesh is the most densely populated country in the world. There are a few city states more densely populated, but as country it’s the most denses. One hundred and sixty four million people living in an area the size of Illinois. 80% of the population works in agriculture and 70% of the land is used for agriculture, so roads are made as narrow as possible and in that space traffic patterns seem to be based on the game of Chicken.

So here are several different ways to look at at situation. Where you sit affects how you think and that place might be creating problems for someone else, just as they might create problems for you. Ek hate tali baje na – You can’t clap with one hand.

This month marks two years with MCC and if I’m honest there has been a lot of turmoil in that time. There has been stress in the transition coming here and also the transition MCC has been going through while I’m here. It has been a great learning experience though. It has given me a lot of opportunity to observe and then question. What am I seeing? What is causing this situation? I think answering these questions honestly means dealing with some very big problems and from this arises a tension of recognizing the reality around us, yet trying to find and share hope. Somewhere I read it described with the metaphor of two worlds, “We live in world and must create the other.”  While it’s fun thinking through grand philosophies at the end of the day we are left living in the mundane, and these things wear on one.

So I went on vacation, to Indonesia, and I realized a few things. For one I’m out of practice at relating to groups in English, and because it’s been such an intense experience, Bangladesh has become the baseline against what everything is measured. So I vented, relaxed, got a foot massage, hiked a mountain, ate lots of great food and drank lots of coffee. Jane pain payechi – My thirsty soul got water.

I put some pictures from the trip up on flickr.

Be still my restless wandering soul
for with your footsteps spewed forth upon these lands
you have been scattered and diminished
tarnished and stained with miles traveled
Rest and be found
your pain will be made holy
and your suffering praised
waiting will make you whole

If you get past those questions though you’ll often get lectured about how Bangladesh is such a poor country and how it has so many problems. The power goes out because they can’t produce enough. They have the twin problems of traffic jams and lots of road fatalities because the roads aren’t big enough and the vehicles aren’t road worthy. Just today I saw a man bloodied and dazed being loaded onto a vangari and taken to the hospital. There’s either flooding or water shortages. It’s often contaminated by arsenic, or bacteria, or pollution. People eat lots of rice, but not enough vegetables so they don’t get good nutrition. Businessmen manipulate food prices. Natural Gas one of the few natural resources of Bangladesh is running out and already there is a shortage in Dhaka which means people end up cooking in the middle of the night. The air is polluted. Dhaka was listed as the second worst city in the world to live according to the Economist. Buildings are falling down because they weren’t built to code. Politicians, public servants and police are corrupt. Facebook got blocked… etc. etc. etc. It’s easy to get overwhelmed, negative and advocate changing everthing.

In the midst of all these problems the challenge is to stay positive and determine what small things that can actually be done. This week I saw the first of a batch of new BRTC buses(the government bus company) that was clean and modern. There are thousands of buses in Dhaka, so It probably won’t last, but it made me smile, and I was reminded how small changes can make a big difference. matha beta hole matha kete phelbo? If you have a headache will you cut off your head?

This summer I ended up wandering around Europe for a while. I went for LinuxTag, staying to do some more work and a bit of vacation. With a memorial day holiday thrown in, I spent a good long while away from home in North Carolina and by the time I got back my roomate had gotten a TV and cable. The journey got a little lonely at times, but at the end I was completely contented. My entire life was in my backpack and it was more than enough.

Right before I left MCC offered me a position and I told them I wasn’t going to think about it till I got back, but wandering around with nothing but your own thoughts or the meditative worship at Taize isn’t exactly the best situation for ignoring decisions. I think at some level the desire to simply led to my decision to come to Bangladesh with MCC. The idea being that by putting yourself in such a new situation, you can be confronted with your wants and desires. I have no desire to be an acetic, but I’m not sure I want to be distracted from the things I think matter.

Last week I moved to Bogra. Bogra is where I’ll be based for foreseeable future. On the whole I think I’m enjoying Bogra more than Dhaka. My observations have been slightly tempered by being slightly sick and the desire for a proper latte. Surprisingly enough there were several places in Dhaka where one could get good coffee. Bogra is much smaller and while it’s pretty dense downtown and has most of the things available in Dhaka, traveling a few kilometers will take you to rice patties. I’m not sure of the population of Bogra, I’m pretty sure the number listed on Wikipedia was pretty far off, but there are less than 10 Bideshi’s(expatriates) in the whole city. I haven’t seen one on the streets that I didn’t know. Right now those of us who work for MCC make up the majority of that number. We eat together for most of our meals and the majority our conversations consist of the state of our digestive system, how we’re getting along with the local food, and the things we miss. Figuring out why you miss something is sometimes very telling. Deciding how to replace it and justifying it even more so. Some of the justifications and rationalizations can be a little embarrassing.

A few days ago I used my limited Bangla to take a rickshaw downtown where I bought UHT milk, sugar, tea and an electric tea pot so I could make tea. As I walked down the last alley before getting “home” I thought about where I was. I hadn’t showered in 3 days. I had a brush burn on knee, I was in as “foreign” of a place as I’m ever going to be able to get in my life and for no discernible reason I was content. Ami kushi – I am happy/contented.

Incidentally the electric tea pot has also been the source of a surprising amount of joy.

Without relatives in this area I probably would have never come and upon arrival and I started attending Durham Mennonite Church with them.  For as long as I’ve been there it’s been missing a solid group of 20-somethings.   Brad and Beth Yoder moved into the area and from them I found out about this Mennonite Church Plant in Chapel Hill.  I visited but the service for me at the time was a bit much and I didn’t return until about 4 years ago.  In that time it had changed to something I found more palatable and since then I’ve been attending both churches.  Those who have sojourned there and at Durham have gotten me into a fair number of things.  From Fred and Elizabeth Bahnson I got involved in Anathoth Garden.  On Tuesday nights I try and get out to to the work session in the garden, It’s a bit of a haul but there’s a potluck after the garden work is done and a Mexican lady makes these fresh tortilla’s that are to die for.  Jonathan and Leah Wilson-Hartgrove were part of the same Christian Peace Maker Team as Shane Claiborne and I got to know some of the folks from Rutba house as that formed and gotten to know something about the New Monastic Movement.  I led the youth group at Durham such as it was until everybody graduated from High School about two years ago.   We did a few things with Raleigh Mennonite and I got to know folks from there.   So I feel like I’ve formed a life here, but it’s spread out, everything requires driving 20 minutes to get there and I move from event to event, group to group without a lot of connection.

… Cue Ramble On – Led Zeppelin …

So when the Jesus for President tour comes to Raleigh I’m only mildly interested, I think I know a bit about this Shane Claiborne character.  I figure I know the community he’s writing from and his story, but even still it’d be fun to see the pageantry.   He and Chris Haw didn’t disappoint as it was more than I expected.  Their dialogue interspersed with fragments of song from the Psalters was raucous, awesome in the classical sense and I love that sort of thing.  But I feel like I’m in the choir.  I’m not really sure we’re the crowd who should have been there.  I’d have loved to see how a bunch of Southern Baptists or Presbyterians would have reacted.  I thing that most us of attending probably agreed with him going in, so for us it’s nice hear another voice speaking counter to the market.  It’s refreshing to hear a prophet who isn’t shilling for the man.  It allows us to tune out the messages in the media a little while longer.  So although the audience might have been the wrong one, to me it was the audience was the most significant part of the evening.  Amidst this motley crew of 700ish people that showed up, there were those I know from the Mennonite Churches in the area(Greensboro, Graham, Raleigh Durham and Chapel Hill), people I know from playing Ultimate Frisbee on Sunday afternoons, people I know from Habitat from Humanity, from Anathoth and from Rutba house.  It made me really happy to feel like all these fragmented pieces that seem so disconnected are part of a larger community, if only for one night.

I like to travel. I’ve visited a few places in the last couple of years and what I like about traveling is the sense of adventure, of seeing new places, experiencing new foods and meeting new people. However the thing, I think I like the most is the sense that I’m not completely in control. I’m a little bit out of my comfort zone. Sometimes a lot. In that lace of control I feel like God works. One thing I keep on saying about travel is that God is my travel agent. Unexpected things always happen in ways that continue to startle and amaze me.

For instance at the end of 2005, I went to Djibouti in East Africa. I thought that I was going to teach some computer education classes, but I didn’t really know what I was getting into. Somewhere between taking off in Raleigh and landing in Djibouti 40 hours later those plans fell through. Within two days I had the opportunity to write an Open Source Application to manage the Pharmacy of a free AIDs clinic funded by the WHO and teach a local about the tools and code I used to create it so he could maintain it after I left. Oh and did I mention that they speak French there? My French isn’t very good.

As I describe that situation to you, it might sound like I’m a very adventurous person and thus you might be surprised by the fact that I don’t necessarily gravitate toward doing these crazy things. Rather, I want to be that sort of person and I choose to put myself in situations where I am forced to be stretched. It is at these times when I must rely on the strength of God and he does not disappoint. Life seems fuller and more vivid in these times. I’m not sure I want to make to much of that fact because it starts to sound a bit like a drug addiction. However the fact remains, in times of trial God’s strength prevails.

Some one asked a rabbi, “why do you always teach using questions?” to which he responded. “What’s wrong with a question?” I think that some of the hardest issues in my life I can only talk about using questions. It’s “easy” for me to trust God and expect him to move when I travel, but it’s much harder when I’m living a quiet life in North Carolina. It’s hard to expect to see God move in new ways when I’m putting in a 40ish hour week and new isn’t the pattern. Yet as I reflect on my life there is a nagging question, When do I need to rely on God’s strength and not my own?

What are the things I need? Relationships? Opportunities? Money? I don’t think I like to rely on God for money, it seems like poor stewardship. I don’t like leaving things to chance, l try and plan and use my resources wisely. Yet safety is a myth and my best laid plans are fragile. I was reminded of that just a few weeks ago when I blew out my knee. That injury of an instant put in jeopardy the weeks of planning and shopping I had spent for the bike trip I am still hoping to go on next week. I still may go, but it is very uncertain. This desire for safety I think is a result of fear and fear limits us.

John A. Shed wrote, “A ship in harbor is safe — but that is not what ships are built for.”

That’s a great quote but having heard that and asking hard questions isn’t enough. I still wonder if I am attached to things? My house, new bicycle, pottery studio? The temptation is to prevent their loss. But what if that is the expense of obedience? Jesus gives us some tough instructions about money. Do I value obedience to God above all? Stewardship seems like a good value but if I put safety in the name of stewardship above obedience to God, that’s a problem.

I am not the only one with questions. I have good company. John the Baptist sent his disciples to ask Jesus if he was really the Christ or if they should expect someone else. Jesus doesn’t give a straight yes but answers John’s doubt in a very explicit way. Understanding his answer requires us to go back a bit earlier in Luke, where Jesus starts his ministry by reading from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah,

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Jesus answer is a once again claiming the prophecy from Isaiah, but one interesting thing is that he has preached the good news to the poor and this is before his death and resurrection, so what is this good news? Looking again what’s happened in Luke’s gospel we see that Jesus says to the poor, yours is the kingdom of Heaven, you will be satisfied, you will laugh.

This must be comforting. Comfort in the midst of suffering, maybe a bit like what Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians.

However, this same passage that describes the good news to the poor also gives me some discomfort since it describes woe for situations too which I feel painfully close.

“But woe to you who are rich,
for you have already received your comfort. ”

“Woe to you when all men speak well of you,
for that is how their fathers treated the false prophets”

The example of Jesus is a challenge to us. It isn’t easy to follow his teachings. As I read about his life I find hard questions that I feel the need to wrestle with. How do I rely on God’s strength? Am I projecting what I expect on who he is?

“Go back and report to John what you have seen and heard: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor. Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me.”

Delivered at Durham Mennonite 5/13/07