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.
- - - -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.
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