Here, there and everywhere

Business or Pleasure?

The past three weeks have seen me on the road in a multitude of forms of transport. In plush buses with armchair massage seats, sardine style packed full local buses and even on the trusty VSO mini bus I have travelled the length of the country twice attending conferences in the far north at Dinajpur and in the far South at the wonderfully named Cox’s Bazaar.The trip to Dinajpur was for a VSO conference on Indigenous Community Rights in Bangladesh. The North West area is completely different to the Hill Tracts. It’s impossibly flat and covered as far as the eye can see by hundreds of tiny fields which mostly grow rice. As the rice has just been harvested the normally green fields now have a golden colour which glows a syrupy brown as the afternoon sun lowers in the sky. As well as the impressive community development projects we visited, a highlight was going to the Kantanagar Temple. This Hindu temple built in 1752 is a beautiful structure made of brick and terracotta and the carvings are some of the best I have seen.

 

The second trip to Cox’s Bazaar was for the VSO volunteers Professional Development Group meeting. The meeting allowed volunteers to share learning on the different work they are doing in Bangladesh as part of the Good Governance, HIV/AIDS and Indigenous Community Rights programme areas of VSO. It was really useful to compare and contrast approaches and is helping me gain a broader understanding of issues here in Bangladesh. Cox’s Bazaar is odd. I have been told by many a proud Bangladeshis the beach is the longest in the world and watching the sun set over the Bay of Bengal from a beach shack café is quite beautiful. However, compared to most holiday resorts the place is empty, eerily empty. Dozens of concrete hotels line the beach but all are only full of ridiculously high numbers of staff whose purpose has yet to be ascertained. Perhaps Cox’s Bazaar is awaiting the Bangladesh middle class to occur in the same way India’s has? (Although we were there near to the national religious celebration of Eid-uk-Azha).  

Partytime = Hip-hop music video, wonderwall, rice wine and Marmite

Intermixed with my trips has been an equally diverse range of social events, some of which I could never have imagined occurring in Bangladesh, or anywhere outside Miami for that matter. The first, and most ridiculous was on a hotel roof top in Dhaka. On arrival at the scene – 20 stories up with pumping music, free food and drink and a stunning roof top pool, we (fellow VSOs) grinned like fools entering a dream world of decadence, half waiting for a security guard to arrive to quickly escort away us dishevelled folk.  Other notable parties have involved the local community members who I work with and some that I know. Since arriving in Bandarban I have been overwhelmed by the hospitality and generosity of the local people, who never tire of inviting me to have tea, lunch or dinner (I am under no illusion that this is less due to my sparkling personality but down to the friendly culture of the people here). Most events involve consumption, together with the tasty local food, of the locally brewed rice wine – a drink with its unique effect on one’s brain. Rather than gently, fun and friendly lulling one into a drunken state as alcohol usually does, rice wine has a more full on effect which makes you feel a small group of construction workers and doctors have taken up residence in your head are pushing and probing your brain whilst rearranging bits of it for fun. The indigenous culture is one of song and dance and it never takes long for someone to stand up and start performing. Unaware of the British reluctance of such activities (or maybe with only access to the delusional fame-oholics in reality TV) they assume I will/can sing and dance (I was banned from singing at school by both my music teacher and friends). Unsure how to follow their traditional songs I reach for the safety of the UK’s own ‘tribal’ song of Oasis’s Wonderwall  and give a rendition of true horror which stretched their delight in my presence(this has happened on three occasions, luckily VSO’s Duke Box Joe Crook saved me on two occasions). Luckily, I am saved thanks to a surprising piece of English culinary magic. I had expected (as most people do) my Bandarban friends to recoil at the taste of Marmite but it was quite the opposite, they soon were pouring large dollops onto their fingers plunging it straight into their mouths. So Unilever, if you are looking for a new market?  

Colonialism, saints and annoying radicals 

At the various meetings I have attended over the past month I have been able to listen to a variety of observations on development programs throughout Bangladesh. Added to this my observations and the stories I hear from locals about the challenges faced by the local indigenous people to the encroachment into their lives of Bengalis, not to mention the numerous encroachments (this should be seen as cultural, physical, political, social and economical) made on all people in Bangladesh lives by forces beyond their control and you start to wonder a bit. Borrowing from the categorisation of George Monbiot, people call you a saint when you tell them about some of the work you are trying to do (be it in development, environmentalism, human rights etc.), but when you start to tell them about the things that need to happen (and I mean really need to happen, not finger in dam stuff) to stop the suffering of the people, animals, lands being exploited ie. the reduction in the excessive living standards of industrialised nations, they call you a radical with its definition tainted by notions of lunacy and loss of reality. I believe there is a need to be pragmatic about what people expect other people to do, but it is interesting sitting here in Bangladesh getting a different perspective (true, a comfortable one allowed by my own luck at being born in the UK). Previously I have always shook my head when I heard people demands for reparations from physical-colonial powers (I say physical as financially the same powers pretty much own the poor economic countries today). However, and I share this not as some sort of statement of position, but just one to explain the thoughts a different perspective can generate, now I feel such a demand for reparations is completely justified – we took all their resources and force them to play by a set of rules we invented to suite our own needs……. 

A note

Just wanted to wish anyone reading a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Hope you have a good one, and don’t worry, I strangely content here in Bangladesh.