There was this one time, during rainy season, it rained… Imagine that… However in all seriousness, the north west of Bangladesh doesn’t get nearly as much rain as the rest of the country. I thought rainy season should be more of an event, but the first two I experienced in Bangladesh were sort of disappointing. This summer it was more of a proper rainy season. The thing that you have to understand about Bangladesh is that there really is no rock to speak of. It’s silt the whole way down, which is part of the reason it’s so flat. If there’s high ground, chances are somebody made it that way. So when it rains you get a lot of standing water. Everything is a business in Bangladesh and fishing rights always need to be negotiated, but after a rain, flooding creates a lot of areas which are sort of common and thus able to be fished by anyone, so roads and drainage ditches alike become a place to find fish.

After a few days of rain in early August our front yard was relatively flooded, and people started to fish in our front yard. The fish they are after are really small, maybe only 2 inches long; “Chotto mach” as they say in “amader bangla basha.” They fry them up in as a curry, bones and all. I tend to think of fishing as with rods and hooks, but a net is the most common fishing method in Bangladesh. Our neighbors Momina and her children Momin and Masuda set up a net where there was a lot of water running across our driveway and waited for the fish. They caught quite a few too. Other villagers came out and joined them, standing with rain beating down on their umbrellas while the children fished. And there stand I, out in the rain, in a flooded front yard, watching this catching of fish. Food and fun is where you find it.

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.

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

This is the electrical transformer just down the street from our office.  Note the scary connections down on the bamboo pole.

The problem is compounded by the fact that many people steal electricity. Officially the Bangladesh power board has only 1,922,361 consumers. The actual number is something else. I was walking home through a village and there was a young man of about 15 or 16 using a long piece of bamboo to play around with some wires attached to the power lines. An older man was walking past and stopped to give him some advice… Make sure you don’t stand in the puddle.

Two emails later I was on a night bus with Daniel down toward Cox’s Bazaar. The actual hospital name is Memorial Christian and has been located for many years just north of Cox’s Bazaar, but 10-13 hours by bus from Dhaka. Last year I went with Daniel up to LAMB hospital when he had a concussion and broken right wrist so it seemed very apropos that he would come with me. Upon arrival I was very quickly run through a consultation before gowning up and getting moved into surgery. I remember being wheeled into surgery. I remember being placed on an operating table. I remember a conversation with one of the surgeons. But I don’t remember anything else until waking up in my hospital bed about 3 hours later, hand in a half cast and slung up in the air.

There’s something odd about post injury. Life slows down very quickly. I spent the next 20 hours mostly sleeping, then resting in the guest house for a few days. We got to have some interesting conversations with hospital staff and even observe some surgeries. Now I’m back in Dhaka, healing, and struggling to type one handed. There’s a project I think I can work on here that doesn’t need too much right hand movement. Aro kerup hote parto – It could have been worse