In the past two years I’ve lived in Bangladesh, I’ve spent a lot of time riding on rickshaws. I ride them to get to the center of town for shopping. I’ve ridden them for a hour to get from a town to the border. When my hand was broken, I would go 40 minutes on them to get to the Bogra office. It’s a bit difficult sometimes to negotiate a fair price but when I sit on a rickshaw I think it’s a great way to travel. It allows you to sit and think, it’s more peaceful than riding in a car and more environmentally friendly. Sometimes it’s a bit bumpy but for the most part it’s an enjoyable way way to travel. The biggest frustration is the cars which honk at you. They make so much noise and are smelly and go so fast. It’s easy to get angry at them.

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.

My life is lived in tension. I think that’s ok, because if we’re honest, we all live in tension from the stark contrasts in life. For example, when I used to work at IBM, one issue they talked about the was finding balance between work and life. They realized correctly that a career and family life are very much in tension. In the Christian service community we talk about being called to be sent and being sojourners, yet there is also a need to be rooted and live in community. Even at the very center of the Christian faith are two seemingly incompatible opposites, Christ is both completely human and completely divine, and that the nature of God is both 3 persons and one.

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

One of the difficulties of living in Bangladesh is the game of Bideshi 20 questions. Someone will accost you on the street, and run down the list of questions. They must have all read the same script because they very rarely vary. What is your country? What is your name? How long have you been in Bangladesh? What are you doing? What is your Salary? “What is your Salary?” is one of those questions which is culturally appropriate here.

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?