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)

This is a fairly common question. Now I’m no linguist, but I think the response is quite interesting. In Bangla there are many compound verbs where a noun is added to a verb. So in the case of marriage, the word biye is added to a verb. The interesting thing is that the verb added depends on your gender. Men respond with a conjugation of biye kor and women with biye hobe. Kor translates as to do and hobe as am. The observation is that men do marriage and women are married. From a grammatical standpoint, men respond with an active form and woman have a passive form. As one coming from a “proactive” society where gender inclusiveness is valued, the knee jerk reaction is that everybody should use the active tense–Marriage should be active not passive. However, in Bangla, active refers to a single point in time passive is a general state the implication being that for men, marriage is an act that happens a single time while with women it’s a continuous state.

The month of October has come and gone so very quickly and now here I am, jet lagged in Dhaka.  After leaving IBM and North Carolina at the beginning of this month, I ran around trying to visit as many people as I could in the little time I had before leaving.  The highlights of this were camping in Lancaster, visiting EMU for homecoming, a quick jaunt up to NYC and taking in Messiah’s homecoming soccer game all before orientation started on the 21st. Orientation lasted 10 days and was held at MCC’s Welcoming Place in Akron.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Welcoming Place it is MCC’s answer to a retreat center–consisting of several small dorms, each named and decorated after a continent arrayed around a dinning hall and assembly hall.  After finishing orientation I took a British Airways flight to England to spend 3 days on a very quick trip to Cheltenam and wandering around London.  From there BA 145 took me to Dhaka this morning, arriving late enough ( or early depending on perspective) that just as I was falling asleep I was startled by the 5am morning call to prayers.  I did get a few hours of sleep before a morning cup of tea and starting Language Study.  Which leads me to our Bengali lesson.  Apni kemon achen? – How are you?  Ami Klanto Achi – I am tired.

P.S. I’m sending out an email with periodic updates, the idea being that it will be mostly the same content as posted here.  I sent out the first one yesterday.  If you did not receive it and would like to, email me at ncharles [at] gmail [dot] com.