I’ve been spoiled by good bread.  When I was growing up my mother would bake bread almost every week.  Everybody who visited for dinner or something would compliment my mom on the good bread but it was something I took forgranted.  One year my Uncle Dan’s Christmas story was about his quest to find good bread in Washington D.C.  It was interesting, but at the time I couldn’t really relate.

I went off to college and didn’t eat much bread.

After graduating in 2004 I went to visit some friends in Europe.  The first day I ended up eating in a bakery/cafe just outside Brussels that had these huge loafs of artisan bread.  It wasn’t something I had seen before, and the bread was wonderful.  Since then I’ve found several places that a little closer which are similar, but they fascinate me.

A few years ago the Independent weekly put out their food issue with the title, “The rise and fall and rise of good bread”.   An interesting issue which sat on my desk for a long time, it had different peoples stories and their experience with bread.  My favorite article was by David Auerbach who ended up making several bread ovens in this quest.  That sounded really interesting to me, so I started thinking about making a bread oven.  I didn’t really have really have the space or felt like I would use it enough, but I filled it away in the back of my mind.

In Bangladesh there isn’t much in the way of wheat.  It’s one long term goal of MCC has never been very successful with.  The best bread that is available is tandori rutti or nan and that’s just considered a snack.  While designing the workshop and house I started thinking about a wood fired oven.  Austin and Daniel started also started thinking about it independently.  So a few weeks ago we had everybody out to the house and had a oven making party after another saturday and a few mornings this week we wrapped it up.  I put some pictures of it up on flickr.  Asha kori ektu pore khub bhalo ruti hobe –  I hope there will be good bread soon.

I have returned… returned to the States and now back to Bangladesh. Going back for Michael and Rachael’s wedding was a really nice vacation. They’re now happily married and moved into their new house in Lancaster. Derrick and Rebecca also recently bought a place in Harrisonburg and I was able to visit that as well. I did lots of shopping, drank lots of lattes and spent as much time with as many people as is possible for this introvert. It’s odd but Bangladesh seemed like dream while I was there and now that I’m back the visit doesn’t seem quite real either. I’ve heard it takes a day per time zone to get over jet lag, but using melatonin seems to make the switch quite a bit faster. So the sleep schedule is back to normal.

There have been several changes while I was gone. Dave, who was part of the SALT program, finished up his term and headed back to the states. Arriving back, the MCC Guest house in Dhaka, or “Bat Cave” seemed very empty since Sarah who working with the Peace program had also finished up her term. And while we can’t replace her, we’re looking for someone to fill her Position

One small change that happened while I was gone Rishi, our office driver here Bogra, turn a prototype tank outside the office into a nice little fish pond by adding some rocks, water plants and of course fish. There are even a few small eels. There wasn’t an aeration system and the fish started looking like they needed oxygen, so I hooked up a little aquarium pump we had to do some wetland research and Rishi was happy. There are probably other ways to increase oxygen levels without electricity. Maybe a small waterfall made from a hand pump and a big bucket or an old tractor inner-tube with a tap and a pressure valve, but this was what I had on hand.

A change that I was hoping for but didn’t happen is with the new house/workshop. I was hoping that it would be finished, but it’s pretty much at the same place where it was when I left. Almost done but… And the biggest issue right now is electricity.

I used to take electrical power completely for granted. Sure I was a part of the NC green power program to buy green electricity, but it wasn’t something I thought about everyday. Electricity is probably overused on the whole, but as a convenient way of moving energy it’s wonderful. That said, I’m a little ambivalent about electricity because even though it’s so useful, unfortunately the first thing that often comes with electricity is the Television. Actually it often comes before because it’s often run from batteries. So it’s a little disheartening that we’re so dependent on electricity, but without fans things can be pretty miserable. Everywhere I’ve been in Bangladesh has either inconsistent power or none at all. If you do have it you should be grateful because you’re part of the 38% of the population which has access to electricity in the first place. If you do have power it’s probably going to go out every day, because the power grid is 30% oversubscribed so rolling blackouts or “load shedding” happen when production is insufficient. The general problem is that Bangladesh is too flat for hydro, doesn’t have enough wind for turbines and solar is _really_ expensive. They’re doing a lot with Bio-gas, generating methane from cow dung, but that’s still pretty small. Most of their power is currently produced from natural gas, but aside the problem of burning fossil fuels, it’s very likely they’re going run out in a few more years, one professor at the University of Dhaka said it could be as early as 2012.

Which brings us back to this construction project. We either could get power from the grid or produce it on our own. On the one hand there’s electricity in the village… but the current transformer is overloaded and a new power line is needed. On the other hand we have this inexpensive generator that I bought a couple months ago for running tools. It’s a Bangladeshi generator belted to a Chinese made Diesel engine, fairly large actually… but it’s producing dirty power and making things burn out. Rock meet hard place.

All this makes the Dilbert cartoon from a few days ago quite relevant and very amusing. I sometimes feel like there’s this shell game that gets played with resources. We, self included, play games moving around labor, energy, and materials and hope we’ll end up with working systems without having to pay the price. Bidudh nei, eta boro shomosha. No electricity, it’s a big problem.

It’s storm season. It’s almost over from what I understand, but we’re kind of on the edge of the end of storm season and about to move into the rainy season. During storm season localized thunderstorms spin up and create mischief before moving on. For me these storms are quite welcome because it cools things off, but it also tends to knock over rice and ruin crops so it’s a mixed blessing. Today we had a nice little storm. I was in my Bangla lesson in the library when the power went out. Now the library is the only room in the office that has AC. It’s been hot. Really hot. I don’t think that I’m suffering as much as some of the other poeple around here, but it has made for some uncomfortable nights. Especially when the power goes out… which it does… a lot. It makes the library a nice place for a Bangla lesson. It doesn’t have any windows though, so when the power goes out, it’s time to leave.

We haven’t had rain for a week or so and I was surprised to hear rain as I walked out the door. I went out to the office door way to watch the rain. There’s a huge mango tree right outside the office. It’s branches almost reach to the roof of the 5 story MCC office here in Bogra. It’s quite startling when a mango falls 5 stories onto the tin roof of the storage shed in the middle of the night.

We’ve had some service worker staff changes recently. Daniel is the newest MCC service worker in Bogra although he was actually born in Bangladesh so he’s sort of a special case as service workers go. He’s obsessed with fruit and is always buying “litchu o am” (litchi and mangos) this is nice because it means there is generally fresh fruit around. Amar litchu bhalo lage (I like litchi.) I don’t think I’ve ever had them in the states, but they’re a little spiky round fruit that you peal and eat. They’re quite juciy, a bit like a grape and there’s a large seed in the middle that you have spit out afterward. Anyway, so it’s raining and gusting, mangos are dropping out of the trees and a bit of a competition gets started to see who can find and eat the most fallen mangos. Daniel’s going over the roof’s, the office staff scurrying around the yard and a few children are trying to come over the roof cause they think they can take mangos since it’s raining and no one will stop them. I had 4 and apparently I didn’t do so well, but it’s good enough for me and I was well sated.

I love rain. I’m a bit curious to see what rainy season is going to be like, whether I’ll get tired of the rain or not. I’ve heard that it’s not as hot, but that the humidity stays up close to 100% all the time. I’ll miss a good chunk of it though, because I’ve just bought a plane ticket to go back to the states for my brother Michael’s wedding in July. Since it’s a long flight I decided to take some vacation while I’m there… Hoto pare brishti hoi. (Maybe it will rain)