Servants and Friends: Talking to People From Different Class Backgrounds

08/03/13

            One of the most challenging parts of living in South Asia (for me) is figuring out how to talk to different classes and roles of people. I recently read a book set in 16^th century England, and it described the relationship between master and servant as a strange mixture of familiarity and invisibility. It seemed like a good description of the relationship I see around me between servant class and middle/upper class here. It is hard for an American to understand the role of servants. Most of us are not used to having people who cook our meals, clean our homes, drive or cycle rickshaw us from place to place, do our grocery shopping, run our errands, wash our clothes. This list could go on and on, I think.

This woman had cooked us rice cakes in her village in the Hill Tracts. They were delicious. Her generosity in sharing her food and her home was wonderful. I don't even remember her name.

The Bangla language even has the idea of varying degrees of respect built into it; there are three different ways to speak in second person: a formal, an informal, and a familiar. The formal is used for anyone older or worthy of respect for some other reason (perhaps they hold a place of political consequence, for instance). I also use the formal when talking to all service employees inside and outside my home. Many Bangladeshis do as well, though it is not uncommon to hear service workers addressed with the informal. The informal is used for people you are close with or who you consider your equals. Friends, lovers, less formal relations with relatives, classmates and peers can all be addressed with the informal. The familiar is used to speak to children (sometimes) and is basically an insult when speaking to anyone else.

This is Liz and her language partner Nipu. Nipu is given an hourly wage to speak Bangla with Liz, but she is also Liz's (and my) friend. She had us over for Eid and we got to meet her entire extended family, who all fed us delicious food and were delightful to spend time with. We also went through the ritual of Salaami, in which we would touch the feet of those who were older than we are and they would give us smaller taka bills in return.

Anyway, these proscribed roles have always been noticeable to me as a part of South Asian cultures, but they became particularly sticky around the concept of Eid bakshish. Eid is the biggest holiday of the year in Bangladesh. Shopping is a nightmare because everyone is out until the last minute looking for the perfect gifts (and businesses mark up their products accordingly). Beautiful strings of lights in every color of the rainbow adorn buildings. People buy a nice outfit (or a few nice outfits) to wear out visiting family and friends. On the day of Eid, most businesses shut down and people leave the city in droves to go back to their home villages to spend the three(ish) day holiday with their families.

This is a village like many of the ones people return to over the holidays.

In order to afford to get to their villages and to bring the expected presents for their family members with them, many members of the servant class receive an Eid bakshish (read Christmas bonus). When you have as many servants in as many roles as we do, this bakshish adds up. In our dormitory alone, we needed bakshish for two cleaning women, one laundry lady, a front door guard, a building caretaker, a household caretaker, two cooks, and a driver. Besides these people, many rickshaw pullers, door guards, and beggars will ask for Eid bakshish in the week leading up to the holiday.

This is a jamdani sari shop. Notice the chairs? You sit in them and point at the saris you want to see. The shopkeeper brings them to you and opens them on the platform. If you like one, you tell him, but be wary. You might then find yourself engaged in an extended conversation/bargaining session. Sometimes a shopkeeper will bring out tea so that you can continue bargaining like it is just a social interaction without money attached.

This means that I suddenly find myself hyper-aware of how dependent these people are on the consideration and generosity of those for whom they work. It is a precarious way of life, and I cannot begin to imagine how they view their relationships to me and their other employers. These relationships are personal enough to involve friendly conversations or even genuine socializing, but it does not seem possible (to me, at least) that anyone ever forgets the power dynamics underlying them. When my money is the only thing guaranteeing that the caretaker can go home and see the wife he has not seen in five months, how can any of us forget?

Riding a public bus. Yet another experiment in social custom. Usually if the bus is crowded, there will be a few seats at the front expressly saved for women. In this case, the bus was empty enough that both the men and women in our group were able to sit together.

These relationships certainly exist in the U.S. as well, but we bury them deeper and avoid talking about them when we can. Here, it is all on the surface. And this is what brings me back to my original concern about how to talk to people. Because I am relatively well off by Bangladeshi standards, I have more of the power in these relationships. However, because I do not have the depth of cultural knowledge and comfort of someone who grew up here, I am always hesitant to overstep my bounds by being too personal. I do not want anyone to think they HAVE to talk to me/socialize with me/help me practice my Bangla simply because I control some portion of their income. I keep the relationship more formal than it probably needs to be because I am worried about respect. And of course, because I do this purposefully, I worry that I am missing out on the potential for interesting friendships and social interactions. At the end of the day, I’m not sure my solution is the best one possible.

Some cool graffiti near Dhaka University.

Wandering the Hills of Bangladesh

07/28/13

I spent last weekend wandering the Chittagong Hill Tracts on a class field trip. As usual, my complete lack of knowledge about Bangladesh meant that I had no idea what the Chittagong Hill Tracts were or what to expect when I got there. The basics are that the Chittagong Hill Tracts are the only hilly region of an otherwise very flat country. They are also home to a huge indigenous, non-ethnically Bengali population made up of large tribal groups. Over half the population is Buddhist and the area has a long history of conflict with the Bangladeshi government (including a possibly politically-motivated kidnapping that happened less than three weeks before our trip).

Walking to a Tanchangya Village in the Hill Tracts. Yes, it is really this beautiful.

In our orientation for said trip, which happened less than two days before we left (oh, Bangladeshi understandings of time, how you continue to confuse even me, she who is perpetually late and slow in all things involving time…), we were given a list of minor concerns, which included safety after this kidnapping (we were not to go anywhere alone or after dark ever), the odds of our bus getting in a traffic accident on the way back (the road between Dhaka and Chittagong is apparently known for LOTS of traffic accidents), and the prevalence of malaria-carrying mosquitoes in the region (good thing I brought doxicyclene…). The night we were supposed to leave, then, I was ridiculously excited but also very nervous about what exactly this trip was going to entail.

Sunset in the Hill Tracts.

            All of the warnings turned out to be unnecessary in the end. What I should have been warned about was how pathetically ill-equipped my body is for overnight travelling. We boarded a train at 11 pm on Wednesday night and arrived in the city of Chittagong around 8 am Thursday morning. We had not managed to get sleeper cars, so we were in upright chairs all night long (and for some reason they left the lights on and a television blaring at full volume all night long as well). I woke up groggy and confused in order to be herded onto a van for the three hour drive up to the Hill Tracts. That first day, we drove out to Tanchangya Village, where they had been anxiously awaiting our arrival and had prepared a whole dance performance for us along with some tasty things to eat (rice cakes and homemade biscuits).

Look at these adorable girls who are about to dance for us! They were so curious and smiley and chatty, and I wish I could have understood more of their dialect of Bangla. One of them demanded a photo with her arm around my shoulder before I left.

I couldn’t help feeling a moment of postcolonial discomfort at how warm and welcoming these people were to what was basically a group of white tourists, and I am still ridiculously curious about why our visit was exciting to them. I know why it was exciting to me (they were kind, their lifestyle is very different from my own which is always interesting, and it was a good chance to exercise my language skills since they spoke a different and difficult to understand dialect of Bangla), but what could I possibly offer in return besides a curious eye and an openness to the experience? How does one act as a tourist without automatically becoming a voyeur? Is there another way to be in foreign places?

A home in the Tanchangya Village.

            The next day, we boarded small ferries on Kaptai Lake, the biggest man-made lake in Bangladesh (which apparently was partly funded by the US and displaced nearly 100 thousand people in order to build a hydro-electric plant…). Kaptai Lake felt endless and we spent the entire day relaxing on our boats as we passed island after island. At one point, we stopped and hiked to a nearby waterfall.

Waterfall on an island in Kaptai Lake.

On another island, we stopped for lunch at a tiny, hilltop restaurant run by a Christian, Chakma (the name of his tribe) man named Sujoy. I mention Sujoy, because his reaction to finding out I was (ethnically) Jewish was so startling: “It has been my dearest wish to meet a Jew. I have read the bible many times and I know Jesus was Jewish and I have always wondered what Jews would be like.”

Village on an island in Kaptai Lake.

Sujoy’s restaurant served the most delicious lunch of fried fish, savory greens, spicy bamboo, and some sort of mashed-up peaflower. When we left, he shook my hand, gave me a guava as a gift, and repeated his delight at having the chance to meet me. I think if Sujoy had been less kind, I might have just felt awkward at his excitement over my tenuous ethnic identity. But he was kind, and it was interesting to talk to him about his relationship to Christianity in a world in which it is such a tiny religious minority.

An outdoor restaurant at the top of a hill on a tiny island in a giant lake. Fun!

Climbing off the boats is harder than it looks!

           That night, we dined at a local Chakma restaurant at which we also sampled the locally made rice wine and beer. Bangladesh is more or less a dry country, so for many, this was the first drink of the trip. Some of the teachers also sampled the wine and beer and it turned into a silly evening of laughing at each other’s mild tipsiness. The wine and beer, by the way, were not particularly pleasant tasting, but the food was once again amazing, spicy with a lot of interesting flavors and textures, whereas most of the food I have had in Dhaka has been kind of uniformly mushy and only blandly spiced. I attempted to take a picture but this is food you have to taste with your mouth and not your eyes, I think. I have also gotten surprisingly adept at picking tiny bones out of fish using only my right hand, since eating with your left hand is considered rude--and eating with silverware somehow feels wrong when all the Bangladeshis are just digging in with their hand (plus it is WAY less fun).

This food cannot possibly look as good as it tasted.

            The final day of our trip, we headed back down to Chittagong, stopping along the way for a visit with some very special turtles. On our trip schedule it had said “do the usual thing with the turtles,” and I had spent a good hour amusing myself wondering what the “usual thing” might be. Turns out, that there is a man-made pond in which live these giant, wish-granting turtles. If you feed them and then rub their backs, it is said that they will grant you a wish. So that is the usual thing. Mystery cleared up. No idea how it started or why these particular turtles in this particular place, but they were super cute, creepy, and awesome at the same time. I am not complaining.

It's the magic turtles! But I'm not telling you what I wished for.

            Finally, it was time to get on an overnight bus back to Dhaka. I was starting to come down with a cold, so I popped some Nyquil and passed out on the most plush passenger bus I have ever seen. It had extendable, cushioned footrests as well as seats that leaned almost all the way back. There were only three seats in a row so there was plenty of space to stretch out. It would have been pretty idyllic except that I saw a cockroach crawl across the window shade by my head just as the drugs kicked in (and hence was too tired to do anything except observe it and then fall asleep…hopefully it decided to go somewhere else…). Ah, Bangladeshi wildlife. Goats, turtles, monkeys, lizards, cockroaches, spiders the size of your hand (don’t worry, those are in another part of Bangladesh). Every day is an adventure.

India is crawling with monkeys, but these are the first ones I have seen in Bangladesh! Monkeys, for those not in the know, are as ridiculously cute as they look from afar, but they are also foul-tempered, aggressive, and thieving. Do not mess with the monkeys! I accidentally got too close to one of the nursing mothers and received the most spiteful eyebrow raise and tooth baring that I have ever seen. I thought she was going to come after me...

Day-to-Day and De-Normalizing

07/19/13

            When I first decided to write down my thoughts and experiences this summer, I did so because I wanted to be more aware of how I process, of what stands out to me and how I observe it, of who and what matters as I am living my daily life. The goal was both professional and personal. As I get closer to starting the research and writing for my dissertation, I want to focus on writing no matter what, on recording even if I think there’s nothing particularly worth putting on paper in any given moment. At the same time, I remembered how hard it was for me to describe my experiences in South Asia to anyone once I had returned to the United States. It was like some strange dream world in which logic and feelings functioned differently, in which the contours of daily life could not be expressed in the words and emotions I had available to me as an American English speaker to express them. I had hoped that by recording things as they happened, I would perhaps be better able to explain them.

            But how do I explain all the things I take for granted, the things I don’t even realize are unusual or unexpected? Or maybe I did think at one point that they were, but because I did not focus on them in my earlier writings, I no longer remember how strange they were at first. Perhaps there are things that I take for granted with my cultural background that I would not if I were a native Bangladeshi. Aren’t those things also worth mentioning? Today’s entry is a number of stories told in pictures about the little things, the things I have forgotten to notice (which are also very big things). And maybe just by writing them I will see them differently once again.

These are jamdani weavers working on a jamdani sari. Jamdani is a weaving technique which uses a hand loom to create beautiful decorative patterns on cotton and silk. One sari, which can involve days, weeks, or even months of labor sells for anywhere between 700 and 7000 taka. A junior weaver might make 1600 take in a month. 80 taka, by the way, is about equivalent to 1 dollar right now. Somehow, this does not seem like a fair labor practice. I bought a jamdani-woven salwar kameez set because it was beautiful, but I am not sure how to feel about it. It is worth noting here that shopping is a HUGE part of socializing in Dhaka. There are hundreds of thousands of shops displaying all kinds of clothes, accessories, shoes, home goods, and more. One of my teachers told us that she owns 800 saris! And when you are coming from abroad and you can have an entire suit of clothes made from fabrics you hand select for less than $20, it is difficult not to get carried away. I have never figured out how to stop myself from going material-crazy when in South Asia.

This is a human-operated ferris wheel. I just thought it looked cool and ridiculously unsafe.

Hanging the laundry out to dry, like you do, after you've washed it in the river behind your house.

These are the ruins of Panam City. Panam City was once a trading center (under British rule) for fabrics. Now it is a protected ruin with a living village surrounding it.

In the village of Panam City, I ended up spending more time talking with a few village women than actually looking at the ruins. I could not understand everything they said, but what I think I got was that one of them had had 8 grandchildren, 6 of whom had died. Death feels closer here. It's not just the tropical diseases or the fact that one bad earthquake would level Dhaka, it's the other deaths, the ones that seem so preventable. We just went through a 4 day hartal, a work strike called by the radical Islamic group, Jamaat-e-Islami, after two of their leaders were convicted of war crimes they had committed during the Bangladeshi War of Independence. I assumed that a strike was a relatively peaceful means of protesting. But at least 9 people have been killed by bombs and riots in the 4 days of strikes, and this is apparently a low number for a hartal. One of my friend's language partners told him that Bangladeshis have seen a lot more death than most westerners and then related a story of seeing a woman across the street hanging herself by the window when he was 9 years old. Though he tried to run over and stop it, he was too late. People are killed in the traffic here every day (or run over by buses). Then there's diarrhea, dehydration, starvation. Rickshaw drivers frequently suffer early heart attacks by actually working themselves to death hauling passengers across the city. Death is everywhere in the US, too, and I don't mean to downplay that, but I think because I am a foreigner I am more aware of how little anyone seems to notice it here.

But at least these baby goats are ridiculously cute, right? They were born about a week ago in my neighborhood. I tried to go up and pet one, but they are already people shy, so I just took this picture from afar while they attempted to eat part of a construction site.

I have no idea what these men are doing with these bricks, but it has something to do with building things...

This is the central courtyard of Independent University Bangladesh, which is where I attend the Bangla Language Institute. It is a pretty fancy building with classrooms on four sides surrounding a central courtyard. There is a guard at the front gate at all times and guards and cleaning staff on every floor. There are three rabbits who run around the courtyard for unknown reasons, a three story library, a small restaurant/cafeteria which the students have shut down by calling for a strike of its products (they were too expensive and not tasty enough), and carom boards and table tennis on the first floor. The classrooms all have AC, though to pass from one to another you walk outside (the hallways are not walled in). When there is a hartal, it is deserted except for us, our teachers, and the guards and cleaning staff.

This is my classroom and one of my teachers, Nandini. There are only two of us in my class.

This is an empty lot on my walk home. Considering how much development is going on, I am always surprised that it exists.

This is the weird fancy house near my apartment building. It is almost directly across from the vacant lot. So on the one side, I see this ornate house with private cars and a guard house and on the other I see cows, goats, and sometimes random street kids hanging out. It is a strange contrast.

It is currently Ramadan and during Ramadan, the attendance at prayers increases exponentially. This is because you can earn God's mercy (or wrath) during Ramadan based on how you behave. This crowd is all about to participate in afternoon prayers somewhere on a road to New Market. The number of people who fast during Ramadan is also staggering. Most roadside tea stalls hang sheets up to block them from the street so that no one who is fasting has to see others eating and drinking. Even some rickshaw pullers fast. I have no idea how they drink no water and eat no food for almost 15 hours a day while biking passengers all over the city, but somehow they do.

This is New Market, where you can buy basically anything. It is huge and packed and overwhelming. It is also the place many go to find the best deals on certain items (some western clothes, plastic food containers, stationery) in Dhaka.

This is the traffic you have to get through to make it to New Market. Why does anyone go there besides stupid foreigners like me who do not know what they are getting into?

Public Buses, Markets, and the Dhaka Arts Center

07/09/13

I was originally mildly disappointed to be going to Dhaka instead of Kolkata for the summer. Kolkata, a city in India, is the other major location in which one might choose to study Bangla. It is known for its history of leftist intellectuals and continues to be seen as a vibrant artistic and cultural destination. Playwrights like Utpal Dutt and Rabindranath Tagore are associated with the city (and if you are a theater person and you don’t know who they are, you should find out, because they are both excellent), and I was also looking forward to visiting Jana Sanskriti, a group near Kolkata that practices Augusto Boal’s “Theatre of the Oppressed” techniques. My knowledge of what Dhaka was and is known for was horribly inadequate (we’ll get to that, I promise), but what I had heard was that it was one of the most crowded and overpopulated cities in the world (and it was friendly and good for learning Bangla). To drive the point home, the students studying Bangla in Kolkata this summer through the other program I could have done are all humanities students. Here, there are two of us in a group of fourteen. And while I have already noted how diverse my group’s interests are, the majority of them are studying public health and development in one way or another.

            Which is all lead up to my admitting how very ignorant I was. I should have realized that a city as large and crowded as Dhaka has the kind of vibrant arts scene that big cities all over the world encourage. But I didn’t. Here is the day in which I realized how wrong I was:

This is Liz. Liz is my adventure buddy. In this photo, she is drinking coconut juice. Directly from a coconut. Like you do.

It was scorchingly hot when Liz and I left to meet my LP at the Shawra Railgate. We were going to take a public bus for the first time, which was both exciting and terrifying. When we got on the bus, it looked like an extremely run-down version of a Greyhound bus, with torn and faded seat covers and a half-shattered windshield.  There were six rows of seating that were only for women and the rest of the bus was full of men. We stood with my LP, clutching the seats to keep from falling as the bus jerked and weaved its way through traffic. Though the bus was hot, as long as we were moving, there was a breeze that made it tolerable. Luckily, it was also one of the buses that actually stopped, instead of slowing down slightly while you jump off (left foot first so you don’t fall under the wheels as you exit).

Maybe you can't tell, but this was the most crowded market ever.

When we stepped down at Chandni Chowk (a huge indoor/outdoor market for women’s clothing) I could not believe the size of the crowd. Once we stepped into the flow of people, we had no choice but to move along with them. It was less like walking and more like being a part of a river’s current. I am not a person who is prone to claustrophobia, but the first thing I found myself thinking was, “I would be completely screwed if there was a fire. As would everyone in this market.” Luckily, I was quickly distracted and overstimulated by the number of people, fabrics, accessories and ornaments surrounding me (this would come back to bite me later in the day when I realized how extremely dehydrated I had allowed myself to become). Eventually, we were able to fight our way out of the current of the main crowd and into a side eddy where we could actually stop to look at cloth.

This is how you shop for clothes here. Point at a fabric. Check it out. Get enough of one you like and take it to a tailor. Design the outfit with your tailor. He makes it. All for about $20/outfit. This is an overwhelming amount of fabrics to choose from. In case you didn't notice. 

There were hundreds of tiny shops piled floor to ceiling with fabrics in as many colors and prints as you can imagine. There were cottons and silks and linens and blends. There were merchants whose eyes lit up at the sight of foreigners who might pay them more and merchants who entirely ignored us. Anytime one of us saw a fabric we liked, we would stop, point and ask to see it unfolded from the stack. If it seemed worth it, we would then have a conversation about price with the shopkeeper. Once a price was agreed on, the fabric would be handed to us and we would be off to match it to fabric for pants or leggings and an orna/dupatta (basically a scarf you wear draped across your chest for modesty). If we were lucky, the fabric would come in a pre-matched three-piece set. Sometimes, though, it’s fun to make up your own fabric combinations. I, for instance, purchased a black fabric printed with tiny dogs, hearts, and arrows, to which I then added a hot pink and gold yoke (a yoke is a flowery, lacy chest piece that gets sewn onto the fabric) and matched with hot pink pants and a gauzy, hot pink scarf. In Bangladesh, any color goes with any other color; there is no such thing as tacky, and I absolutely love it.

Remember I told you about pani puri? This is a pani puri cart. Yum! 

A quick side-on Bangladeshi clothes shopping (AKA beginner’s fashion design): After you buy the fabric, you take it to a tailor and describe exactly how you want it to be cut for your salwar kameez suit: neckline shape, piping, sleeve length, decorations, top length, pant-type. For people who are new to working with a tailor, this many decisions can be overwhelming, but for me there’s something really enjoyable about being so hands-on in what my clothes will look like. It does, however, mean that getting a new salwar kameez made can take forever; people rarely buy readymade garments here (why would you when they are more expensive and less well-fitted to your unique shape?).

This is Bobby. Bobby is a screenprinter, and those are her prints.

From Chandni Chowk, we headed for Dhanmoondi, a young, artsy neighborhood full of galleries and restaurants. There, we visited an art gallery called Dhaka Art Center where the screenprints, etchings, and sketches of one artist, Biren Shome, were being displayed downstairs and an Oxfam poster contest for defeating world hunger was opening upstairs. The screenprints were stunning. Done mostly in black and white, they depicted women’s faces and upper bodies in a style that felt strikingly unique but still Bangladeshi. Non-western visual arts tend to be treated as either derivative of western masters or primitively native (which I find detestable), but it is also true in every artistic field that the influence of colonization on cultural practices cannot be ignored. The “West” was here and lingers still in the most random places. I thought Shome’s work had just the slightest touch of Picasso, but for me this didn’t detract from his originality in technique, style, and theme. While we were visiting the gallery, we got to meet some younger men and women who are aspiring artists. They were working on their own pieces in the back, and their generosity in sharing their techniques and their work with us was incredible. We may even go back to take a class with them in screenprinting! One of the women, Bobby, gifted me with one of her own screenprints (and her phone number so that we can hang out and talk about art again sometime).

Dhanmoondi is home to many other art galleries, which I hope I have time to explore over the course of this program. I’m still working on tapping into the theater scene, because I have no doubt that I am going to find a lot of quirky and inspiring people there.

Traffic, Vaginas, and Tea, Oh My!

06/30/13

I have been here a little over a week, and I can now say with certainty that the traffic really is as bad as they say, that Dhaka is both like and so unlike my experiences of Delhi and Jaipur and I cannot wait to get to know it better, and that being a vegetarian here really is a pain since many restaurants and locals cannot even comprehend why you would not want to treat yourself to some meat (meat from that cute goat, anyone?). Settling into a new place is always a bit of a process, complete with bouts of elation and of homesickness. Here, it is helped by my very sweet and adventurous classmates and hurt by my ridiculously pathetic stomach. The people here are studying Bangla for all kinds of reasons, from those who want to work in international health policy to comparative literature, from journalism to law, from psychology to medical school. It is an interesting bunch of people to share a life with.

We made pancakes!

Our program set us up with three floors of an apartment building. Each floor has five bedrooms, four bathrooms, and a tiny kitchen. I feel a bit like I am living in a dorm all over again, with groups of people going on spontaneous adventures or working on homework together or playing cards every time I turn around. If the people I were living with were jerks, being on top of each other all the time would be awful. I spend six hours a day five days a week with the one other student in the advanced beginning Bangla class, an adorable individual newly out of undergrad with a degree in Comparative Literature and the same desire I have to find the queer and feminist communities in Dhaka (and we had our first lead when I found out that my language partner’s older sister started a V-day Vagina Monologues tradition in Dhaka four years ago!!!). To be fair, we are just barely starting week two and there is still plenty of time to hate each other’s guts, but so far, I am hopeful that we will be the foundations of a support system for one another and a diverse learning community. Who says I will never live in some sort of (almost) cooperative housing project?

This is what monsoon looks like.

 We have our own cooks, who live on the first floor and somehow produce miraculous amounts of delicious food in their tiny kitchen (daal, rice, fish, goat, eggplant, greens, salad, fresh fruit, and more). They make breakfast and lunch for us five days a week, and for dinner we tend to go around the corner to a restaurant that serves our favorite street food, fuchka, in a (hopefully) slightly cleaner setting. Fuchka is the Bangladeshi version of the Indian pani puri. For those of you who have not managed to try either, it is a bit like a tiny, hollow ball of crispy bread with a hole in the top. Into the bread go mashed chickpeas; onions; potato; crispy, spicy cracker bits; and finally, tamarind water or yogurt. You put the whole little concoction in your mouth, and as you bite down, the spiced water/yogurt explodes on your tongue. It is one of the best foods on earth. Sweet and salty and spicy and crunchy and refreshing all at the same time. I have not tried to cook much in our kitchen, with its two gas burners (light at your own risk), one functioning pan, and peeling spatula. There is so much interesting food to eat here, even if it is not the most vegetarian-friendly country.

An Armenian Church full of friendly (but mangy) dogs I wanted to pet.

One of the best parts of our language program is that we are each matched up with a local Bangladeshi student of our same gender who is paid to spend ten (or more) hours a week with us. We are supposed to split this time between experiencing the culture and working on our language skills. It is a mildly awkward way to build a relationship, knowing that your new “friend” is being paid to spend time with you, but many of the students have already developed close relationships with one another. My language partner is more reserved and difficult to read, but I am hopeful that I will get to know her over the course of the summer. The stereotype of Bangladeshis is that they are the warmest and friendliest people you could ever want to meet, but my experience so far of Dhaka is like any other city: people are careful about making new friends, having already built the communities they plan to spend time with over years of living in the area. I remember having this frustration in Paris and again in New York City. Perhaps cities are cities, regardless of where they are in the world, and they encourage a certain degree of cliquing up as a way of surviving the crazy amount of people living in, moving to, and leaving from them.

My first cha stand!

My language partner’s (LP’s) name is Tahsin. Tahsin lives with her mom and an older sister and brother (her dad commutes on weekends from Chittagong, a city on the coast of Bangladesh) in a family apartment building with aunts, uncles, and cousins populating the other floors. She studies environmental science, hates shopping, has a boyfriend she is quite fond of, and seems to have very few restrictions on her freedom to do and be what she wants. I was not sure what to expect from gender dynamics in Bangladesh. Having lived in India and dealt with almost daily (though usually minor) sexual harassments, I was prepared for anything. After all, we were warned in advance not to talk openly about sex or sexuality, not to touch members of the opposite sex in public (we were even discouraged from starting conversations with Bangladeshi men we did not already know), not to be surprised if our language partners had to be back before dark, not to travel alone after dark if we were female and could help it. And certainly, some of the LPs must keep any dating they do a secret, meeting their partners in public places and sneaking smoldering glances and gentle arm grazes where they can because their parents do not allow them to actually date.

Traffic?! What traffic?

The funniest moment such different gendered-interaction expectations have produced so far happened today when I was feeling homesick and asked a (male) fellow student for a hug. We knew touch was not appropriate in public, so we waited to get our cuddle on until we were back in our dorm, at which point he gave me a big hug. At exactly that moment our cleaning lady opened the front door, took one look at us as we broke apart, and slammed the door again as quickly as she could. This friend of mine is gay, and the fact that this would have shocked her even more had us giggling hysterically for the next few minutes. Later on that day, this same cleaning lady stumbled upon this same friend cuddling with another female friend of ours (platonically). She must think he is such a ladies’ man, and none of us can correct her misconception without making the situation more awkward.

Why, yes, that is part of a beautiful old fort with a weird staircase to nowhere being built behind it.

 We took our first class field trip to what is known as Old Dhaka on Saturday. Old Dhaka is known for being the oldest (surprise, surprise), and most of the political protests and strikes (hartals) center on or near it. It is a chaos of winding streets, huge markets, charming hole-in-the-wall food and tea (cha) stands, and beautiful buildings (along with dilapidated construction projects and filth like you would not believe). I had my first cha stand experience (another of those things the orientation packet recommends be boys-only, ha!). The tea was delicious (and so was the moment of ignoring any male-female awkwardness I might be causing). Besides the realization that I would have to return, since I would not be able to explore Old Dhaka’s nooks and crannies on the class field trip, I also got my second taste of real traffic (my first came when my LP’s dad drove me home from a nearby neighborhood and all the stopping and starting had me violently motion sick for the next 24 hours, ugh!). Sometimes we would be moving just fine, but other times, rickshaws would clog the road in every direction and the bus would sit at a standstill for five or ten minutes. The monsoon flooding certainly did not help, as no one wanted to drive through three feet of water (though an impressive number of rickshaws tried). I have to find a way to deal with the motion sickness, because there is no way I am going to let it stop me from going places. Any suggestions beyond knocking myself out with dramamine?

More of the Red Fort!