The first train went from Belfast to Dublin. The great thing about trains is that they tend to follow more scenic routes. So I watched the scenery go by and started reading a book. The only piece of the journey that’s a little tricky is that you have to catch a bus from the Dublin train station to the Ferry station. It was fairly easy to navigate and I listened in on some backpacking culinary students talking about their amazing meal they were going to make that evening. Checking into the ferry was almost like checking into an airport, but much more laid back. I went through “Passport Control” which was very lax, got another cup of tea and waited to board the ferry. This was one of the largest ferries I’ve been on. I think there were 4 levels and it a duty free gift shop, a food court with several food options and slot machines. The ferry was full of passengers and I shared a table with a middle aged Australian who was on holiday who was sporting many bandages learning how to mountain bike in Northern Ireland. It was exceptionally grey and cloudy so I read a book got a sandwich and a beverage. Guess what it was?

The ferry lands at Holyhead and a shuttle runs you to Simmons’ there is a two car diesel train across to Chester before a larger train that heads down to London. Unfortunately the our train was delayed and I missed my next leg, which was more significant because that’s a leg you need a reserved ticket for, but was able to catch a train to Crewe and from there hop on a train operated by Virgin. There are many operators that run trains as part of National Rail and I think Virgin has the nicest trains in England, they are newer, the inside is very futuristic with a nicer fit and finish. They also have a decent tea. They go out of Euston and at that point I was in the rabbit warren that makes up the London tube and rail system. Between the underground, overground, and National Rail London is a web of steel transportation. Two more quick rides on the tube and I was at Old Street, a short walk from Eric’s flat. It was about 14 hours, 500 miles, 7 trains, a ferry with two short bus and car rides thrown after I had started. Or maybe I should say it was halfway through Dan Simmons’ series and 5 teas later. Fortunately, unlike the buses of Bangladesh, trains and ferries have bathrooms.

As a Mennonite, I feel like there are a few things we really like to focus on. The winning buzz word bingo card at a Mennonite event would probably contain the words missional, non-violent, community, simple and justice.

Things that connect to those themes make for easy and exciting stories to share about Bangladesh. Like the story of Probitro which means Holy in Bangla. This is an 8 month long training program for victims of Bangladesh’s sex trade and the women take part in job training as well as learning about physical and mental health. Some graduates from this program go on to work at Sacred Mark which makes handmade soap.  Maybe you’re familiar with it from Ten Thousand villages. The name Sacred Mark comes from a poem by the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore. “O let me wear secretly…the sacred mark impressed by your own hand.”

Another story is of the Monga mitigation project which is a Heifer International project style which gives cows to families and then the first calf is returned to go to another family. In the last several years MCC has become the largest cattle buyer in Bogra and has given out over 2000 cows. These cows will ultimately translate into a financial windfall for the families involved.

But I only worked tangentially with those projects. My assignment with MCC didn’t fit into what I considered the expected story of an MCC service term, because it starts with technology, appropriate or sustainable technology, but technology none the less. Technology is generally not one of the things we talk about, because while it may enable the things we value; it isn’t really an end unto itself. I’m not sure if it exists in any official form, but one report I had to fill out described MCC’s mission as bringing peace, justice and comfort to God’s children. It seems to me that when we talk about bringing comfort to God’s children it give space to do things a little of the beaten path; which is hopefully what I did.

When overpopulation turns travel into acts of violence, advocating sustainable transportation can be justice. When the water you drink can poison you or sanitation is a health hazard, water purification and cleanliness is comfort. When overcrowding causes conflict over scarce resources finding efficiency can be an act of peace.

These things seem to be caring for others and caring for creation so maybe if we use the language of creation care we can find a place to put technology into our worship.

MCC in Bangladesh historically did a lot with appropriate technology but around 2000 that sort of all closed down. So this is somewhat of a new effort. The first thing I did was design and build a place to live and work in.  In Bangladesh there is an expression “mosha marte kaman daga” which translates as “firing a canon to kill a mosquito”. When I first talk to people about sustainability they often think of alternative energy; replacing polluting sources with green methods. This is a good idea, but might not be the place to start.

My colleagues and I would often discuss what was available and what should be available; one issue that kept coming up was hot water. At the core of the argument was whether it was a necessity or luxury. Obviously there are several options to produce hot water. In Bangladesh, it’s fairly rare for people to have a dedicated water heater, but if they do, then it’s probably electric. Bangladesh currently isn’t able produce enough electricity to satisfy demand which is the source of the rolling blackouts, and many people don’t even access to it at all. Running an electric water heater off photovoltaic solar electric panels would be very expensive, more than 10,000 dollars. Electrical power isn’t always the most efficient form of energy, we often don’t use electricity directly and it’s generally not produced directly and that makes it inefficient. However it is very convenient and flexible so we often look to it solve our problems. Aside from simply generating more electricity at a plant, another way to have more available is if people simply use it less. The simplest electric appliances are often inefficient. At one point the government of Bangladesh calculated that by simply replacing all the incandescent bulbs in with Compact Fluorescents, they could eliminate the rolling blackouts. In our example of hot water what we really want is heat so we could produce that heat directly with a solar thermal water heater and that would cost only a few hundred dollars. Another way to heat water would simply be over some sort of stove. One common fuel is dried cow manure, but not particularly efficient and means you can’t use it for fertilizer. One way to increase efficiency is by cooking directly of the methane. Bio-gas from cow manure is a technology that is seeing some limited success in Bangladesh. By using a biogas digester, more energy is captured out of the manure and the slurry left over can still be used for fertilizer. But all these solutions require effort and money and are dependent on a real rather than perceived need. Toward the end of my term we got an email from a Doctor with a list of issues relating to public health. The problem he was seeing is that infants aren’t bathed in the winter because the water is cold and as result, can develop health complications. One of the things on the list was for a cheap solar water heater.

In the west we talk about efficiency as creation care or reducing our carbon footprint. However, in places like Bangladesh efficiency is a matter of quality of life. Applying technology without understanding is like firing a canon to kill a mosquito.

I had a conversation in Dhaka with another Development worker who had been in Bangladesh much longer than I had, in which he said, “We can’t fix the problems here; Bangladeshi’s have to do it themselves.” It struck me as truth, but seems that it begs the question of well, why do we go? We hopefully bring knowledge and other resources, but I think ultimately we provide a different perspective. We bring a story. When I was in orientation, there was a quote that has stuck with me from Lila Watson, “If you have come to help me you are wasting your time. But if you recognize that your liberation and mine are bound up together, we can walk together.”

I can’t say that we’ve done great things in Bangladesh, but we are moving in the right direction. Maybe in time, some of the work my colleagues and I did will have an impact, but I felt like I walked part of the journey on the sustainable road toward better health and validation. The story I can tell is that I myself have changed and am still changing. I’ve learned a lot about how the policies and decisions affect people’s lives. I learned enough Bangla to get in trouble, and in many occasions enough to get out of it. I’ve learned how to make really great tomato lentil soup from local ingredients. I’ve learned to recognize local fruits and vegetables and a few local plants and birds.

It may be cliché, but as Orsen Wells said, “If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.” So I’ll stop my story there, but remember that the story goes on, and we’re all connected to it, whether through time, or money or simply in the hearing.

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.

e.g. /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/GrammeenPhone

[connection]
id=GrameenPhone
uuid=b68882db-7e97-4fa3-a811-9234f64098f6
type=gsm
autoconnect=false
timestamp=1316411329

[ipv4]
method=auto

[serial]
baud=115200

[gsm]
number=*99#
apn=gpinternet

#nmcli con up id GrameenPhone

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.

Last year I had a motorcycle accident and broke my 3rd metacarpal in my right hand.  At the same time my power cable for my laptop went out and getting a warranty claim processed in Bangladesh takes longer than it should. I was without my primary computer, and I couldn’t use a keyboard like I normally did. The biggest single reason I bought an Android device is that it works as a standalone device, and during that time, that functionality served me well. For several weeks, my Nexus One became my primary computer. I used it one handed, and it turned out that for many things I wasn’t really limited. There was a big criticism about tablets was consume content rather than create content. I think has largely faded being I don’t read as much about that anymore.  High end phones are just as capable processing wise as the tablets and maybe a more important question is whether the device functionally complete: is the device able complete a task without physical access to another general purpose computer. While my Nexus One was my primary device, I couldn’t access peripherals such as flash storage and USB devices and I couldn’t develop on the Android for the Android.¹ These issues are basically the same on iOS as well, but the times they are a changing.  Smart phones are becoming increasingly standalone devices.  I’ve now got a Python environment on Android through Scripting Library for Android and the recent announcement of Android ADK is going to allow a plethora of hardware options.  Apple with it’s proprietary connecter offers a good deal of input output options and dongles like camera connection kit allow you to move data on and of a device. Recently I even saw that Oscium makes an oscilloscope/logic analyzer for iOS, which is something I would find useful.

As these phones become functionally complete, they’re going to start replacing computers.  As low end phones gain functionality and processing power, Android is going to start showing up in the developing world.  I wonder if Microsoft realizes how truly irrelevant it is becoming.  Desktops and laptops here run either open source or pirated software, but there are over a billion people who want to buy phones in the Indian subcontinent and another billion in China.  While I don’t think Apple is going to go after the developing world market, I suspect that Apple will continue to transition iOS toward a standalone OS which would position them with the option.² The personal computer of the developing world is a phone made in Shenzhen, and I wonder who’s thinking about that.

1 Not including a linux environment on a rooted handset.
2 My bet for the North Carolina Datacenter.