Backtracking: Durga Puja and Cox's Bazar

I was a little bit run down with a cold this week after my trip to Cox's Bazar, so am now playing catch up with my posts. I'll try to wrap them up and get back on track.

Durga Puja
Durga Puja was great fun. From Dhaka, it took us about an hour and a half to travel to the Kumudini Trust in Dhamrai where we watched the festival. Unfortunately, most of my pictures did not turn out so well, but in this one of my friends Katie, Sydnee and me you can see the elaborate set-up of the goddess Durga in the background and us wearing our teeps (or, in Hindi, bindis)--the little dots in the middle of our foreheads.

After the ceremony, the owners of Kumudini invited us into their home and below are a couple of shots of the kicthen--it was huge and as usual, this woman was very proud to have her picture taken.










Cox's Bazar

The day after the Durga Puja ceremony, I flew to Cox's Bazar in the southeast cordner of Bangladesh. It was a nice break from Dhaka and I enjoyed seeing more rural areas of Bangladesh, which are still full of people, but at least there is a lot more green than Dhaka. As I wasn't in Cox's Bazar for vacation, I didn't get to see too much of the beach. But I did love seeing people swimming in their clothes. I can only imagine the stares I would have gotten if I'd stripped down to a bathing suit and jumped in the Bay of Bengal.

The purpose of my visit to Cox's Bazar was to visit two Rohyinga refugee camps, Kutupalong and Nyapara. Since 1992, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has run these camps for the Rohyinga, who are Muslim migrants from the northern Rakhine state of Burma. Many Rohyinga fled persecution from the Myanmar government to Bangladesh, although Bangladesh has not necessarily treated them much better as the majority have not received citizenship and they remain a stateless population trapped in the camps. As it was my first visit to a refugee camp I wasn't sure what to expect, but it really was an interesting experience. Apparently conditions in the camps have significantly improved over the last few years and many of the NGOs we visited with are doing great work there, including Austcare and Handicap International. I was amazed at how close we were to Burma, too--only about six kilometers.

The women in this picture motioned to me that
they were hungry, but supposedly only a few
people of the 10,000 that live in each camp suffer from severe malnutrition.

These children look so proud and loved having their picture taken.
















And finally, Cox's Bazar from the plane. It's amazing to see how much water truly surrounds this country.

Back in Dhaka: the Bihari, or the minority Urdu-speaking Bangladeshis
Back in Dhaka, we visited one more site where the Bihari, or more correctly, Bangladesh's Urdu-speaking minority, live. The Bihari have been stateless since the founding of Bangladesh in 1971 and it has only been over the past year that they were allowed to register for id cards in Bangladesh, which basically means they are now citizens. The Bihari still have a long way to go, as the conditions we saw at Mirpur camp were deplorable. (Really so terrible I've never even imagined such conditions.) But al Falah, an NGO working in the camps, advocates on behalf of the Bihari to improve conditions and are making some important strides. Surprisingly, most of the people we spoke to are employed, but their poverty is so great it's difficult to save much to improve their lot. This man works six days a week for 12 hours a day. He can make about two saris a week and then sells them to a middleman for about 1000 taka, approximately $14. For Bangladesh, this is actually a fairly decent wage, but again, the poverty is so great it makes it difficult to end the cycle.
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Ok, that about wraps up last week. This past week was also eventful--I went to a birthday party for my friend Khaled's daughter and son. It wasn't so different from American kids' birthday parties, but it was fun soaking up all of the liveliness and meeting new people. And to top off the week, last night I went to Dandiya, a Hindu festival celebrating something (what that something is, I guess I'm not really sure) where we danced a lot with sticks. I had a great time, but learned that I am terribly uncoordinated when it comes to dancing and hitting sticks at the same time.

Happy Durga Puja

This week we have yet another short week (yes!) thanks to Durga Puja. It's a holiday that's primarily celebrated by Bengali Hindus that celebrates the return of the goddess Durga to her birthplace. It typically lasts about nine days, but in our case, we only get one day off--rats. But I'll be going to a predominantly Hindu village just outside of Dhaka tomorrow to celebrate Durga Puja and I'll be sure to report what goes on at the party. I won't be getting home until late though and am then I'm headed off to Cox's Bazar, which is in southeast Bangladesh near Burma. Cox's Bazar claims to have the longest sandy beach in the world, so I'm eager to see this classic Bangladeshi honeymoon spot.

In the meantime, I'm trying to convince my sister to start a blog, too. She's already famous in Richmond and I think she should expand her popularity by starting a blog of her own. She's got some interesting ideas and I know she'd be great at blogging. If you know her, you should try to encourage her, too. :)

Fletcher Nostalgia

I got together with two Fletcher friends today at Coffee World, another hip and trendy chain in Dhaka. It was great. We reminisced about Fletcher and the good times we all had living in Blakeley, Fletcher's grad student dorm. I met both of them my first week at Fletcher and one of them I met while sitting next to him at a Red Sox game--I had to explain the rules of baseball to the best of my ability, which was surprisingly waaaay more difficult than I thought. I also reminded my friend Ashirul that it took me FOREVER to remember his name, which is pretty atypical for me. But I literally had to ask him his name four or five times. This is a common occurrence for me here and while I'm getting better at remembering names as I become more familiar with them, it's still going to take me longer than it did for me to remember Balkan names. Guess I just have to keep trying.

My friend Ashirul is from Dhaka, but lives in the States so is just visiting his family for a couple months. My other friend Jabed works at the Bangladesh Foreign Ministry. They were of course typically Bangladeshi, with Ash picking up the check for us and Jabed offering to take me on a personal tour of Dhaka whenever I'd like. Such hospitality. Jabed and I will soon try to plan a Fletcher get-together for those of us living and working in Dhaka.

Our other Fletcher friend in Dhaka couldn't get together tonight. But she has also been amazing about showing me around Dhaka. Nermeen took me Eid shopping last week and she and her husband Kamal earlier treated me to a very nice dinner.

You should check out the company that Kamal founded--Cell Bazaar. It's kind of like the Bangladeshi version of Craigslist, except people use their cell phones to buy and sell goods. Like many developing countries, Bangladesh has skipped a technological step. Most people have never had a land line phone, but millions now have cell phones. Grameenphone is probably the most popular (at least anecdotally). You can find people selling i-pods, but more commonly people sell goods like rice, potatoes and dal (lentils).

While this get together was probably the highlight of my week, life in Dhaka is still going well. I spent the rest of my Eid holiday weekend playing squash at the American Club (I am slowly, but surely getting better...at least that's what my marker, Syeed, tells me.), swimming at the American School, eating ice cream at the Westin and getting a facial at Avera, one of the many spas in town. Rough life I'm leading here in Dhaka. Which is one of the reasons it bothers me so much when I hear Westerns complaining about how much they don't like it here. Of course there are things to gripe about and believe me, I'm sure I'll do my share, but really, life here is pretty good and I don't have too many complaints.

And for now, I'll leave you with one of my latest favorite pictures from Dhaka. It's amazing the things you see people carry on rickshaws or CNG's. I just wish I could capture more of these crazy photos (and wish this one was bigger--still trying to figure out how to edit photos on the computer).

Eid Mubarak!

Eid Mubarak everyone! According to Wikipedia, Eid Mubarak is the traditional Muslim greeting for the celebration that marks the end of Ramadan, Eid ul-Fitr. It essentially translates into "may you enjoy a blessed festival." To me, Eid Mubarak kind of translates into "Merry Christmas!" I like it.

Bangladesh celebrated Eid today. They didn't celebrate it the yesterday or the day before like many Muslims, although it's still not clear to me why Muslims celebrate on different days. I know part of it has to do with timezones and part of it may have to do with whether you follow the Saudia Arabian calendar, but I don't think I've captured the reasons fully. To be fair, I haven't done much research on the subject.

It's a fun time to be here because the day is marked by celebrations and parties. Most people have the day off, too, which makes it even better. I didn't go to a host of Eid parties like many people do, but I did just return from my colleague's house. He invited our entire Political/Economic section to celebrate with his family and they had prepared a great feast for us.

People typically give a lot of gifts around Eid so I also went shopping last night. A few Bangladeshi friends took me around to the various shops (including Aarong), most of which were open until 2 or 3 in the morning. You can see one of my purchases in the picture--they kept insisting that I buy something to wear because everyone always wear's new clothes on Eid, but it didn't take much to convince me--I love all of the colors.


Fortunately, we didn't stay out that late, but after we'd done a bit of shopping we went out for ice cream, which is usually where most young people hang out since. We went to Movenpick, which is THE PLACE to be seen if you're a young person in Dhaka. My friends kept running into all sorts of people that they know. Going out for ice cream is kind of their equivalent of a bar, except their are no bars here, which is why they go for ice cream.

Probably one of the best things about Eid is that the traffic is so much better. Many people go home to their villages to be with their family for a few days, meaning that there are fewer cars and rickshaws on the road.

I took this picture from the top of the Westin Hotel and you can see there are hardly any cars on the road. This is one of the main circles in one of the three diplomatic areas--Gulshan 2--and the road you see is Gulshan Avenue.



Traffic is usually very backed up, although it's never as bad as it is in areas like Dhanmondi, one of Dhaka's older, more middle class neighborhoods, where I took the picture of these rickshaws.













Wishing everyone a very happy Eid Mubarak! I must get some rest in order to get up at 7:00 a.m. to watch the Vice Presidential deabtes!