Mymensingh and Mallikbari

*Nuts and Bolts*
Impossibly, I have settled into a routine in this slam-bang city. Language class finished, I started to work at the CRWRC office full-time, and I moved in with Alana. This last item has been, by far, the most pleasant change in my Bangladesh life. Alana has a bright and breezy apartment in what I consider to be the best part of town—away from the diplomatic enclave into a more middle-class Bangladeshi area. I had put a lot of prayer into this lifestyle choice, and I felt it was a direct answer when Alana offered to share her place with me. It is somewhere in the middle of the slum-mansion spectrum; a comfortable room with matching curtains, but the cockroaches, neighbourhood noise, and lack of a/c still remind me that I’m in Bangladesh. The most luxurious part is sharing the space with Alana, whose energy, fluent Bangla, and NGO experience make this place all the more vibrant. She works with adolescents here, doing everything from sex education to self-esteem building. Over our yogurt and banana breakfasts we talk about “transformational development,” the phrase that’s on the lips of all Christian NGO workers around here, or so it seems. (I’m reading Walking With the Poor by Bryant L. Myers. If you’ve read it too, tell me what you think.)

Ah. I digress. Which proves that even with a routine, there’s still so much going on in Dhaka and in my head. This is why I’m using subheadings, in a desperate attempt to contain the exhilaration.

*Subheading Two: We Flee the City*
For the sake of our lungs and sanity, it was time to leave Dhaka. We left on a Friday morning, on a beat-up Neepod bus that blew two tires and sideswiped another bus on the way north to Mymensingh. No matter. Such are the joys of traveling in Bangladesh. We were a little haggard when we arrived, but the air, the shockingly fresh air, was enough to revive our group of wilted flowers (two Canadians and a German). Our destination was the Taizé community on the edge of the city.

The Taizé Chapel of Mymensingh



The Taizé community is a small garden compound centred around a centuries-old Anglican chapel where prayers and meditation are held three times daily. There are three Taizé brothers (from Sweden, the Netherlands and France) and about twenty teenage boys from tribal communities, who board at Taizé and attend local schools. The Taizé brothers have their fingers in many pots, helping with the services, starting a L’Arche community, visiting prisoners, and providing financial/spiritual support to needy families.

It was so special to attend a service at their little church. We sat on jute mats with candles all around, and listened to the Bangladeshi Taizé songs, sung with harmonium, tabla and bells. There were also a few English ones that I recognized; how wonderful it was to travel across the world and sing the same songs. I was honestly beaming with joy.

*Part Two: Mallikbari by Tempo*
On Saturday, after the 6:30 a.m. Taizé service, we hopped in another bus and headed south, this time to a little hole-in-the-wall, Mallikbari, by way of Bhaluka. This destination was more challenging to get to. It required more vigilance on our part, and more wild gesturing and broken Bangla with the bus workers. Then there was the half-hour bumpy ride in a baby taxi-wagon called a “tempo” which finally deposited us in the Mallikbari marketplace—three white foreigners with backpacks
surrounded by chickens and staring men.


Mallikbari Vangari Express



But along came Angela, our German nurse friend. We saw her coming from far away, a tall figure in bright yellow holding a black umbrella to block the sun. She led us back to the Mallikbari Mission, where she and her Austrian colleague Sandra hold down the fort—literally a fort of 7-foot-high walls surrounding a clinic and house. They had a feast waiting for us, of eggplant and biryani and lentils and chicken curry. We were happy to stop and eat.
Our day at the Mission was like a retreat. We took long naps, we drank tea, we went for a walk to see the village sights of Mallikbari. Like most of Bangladesh, this area is agriculture based, lots of small farmers working a couple of acres of land to sustain their families. It was both fascinating and sobering to learn how much of our food is grown. We walked through rice patties, tugged at tube wells, marveled at the size of mango trees, and pondered the sci-fi mysteries of pineapple birth. The highlight for me was scratching and sniffing my first cinnamon tree. I took a shard of its bark as a souvenir.

A Pineapple is Born



And in a flash, our weekend was over. Back on the bus (an uneventful ride) and back to the noise and smells and density of Dhaka. We were recharged and ready to tackle it again.

*…*
Okay, so this happened a few weeks ago. What’s happened since then? I’ve had a few unusual experiences, including watching a 1960s Russian children’s movie at the local Goethe Institute (after getting totally soaked in a random downpour) and trying to get my laptop fixed at the Mac HQ of Dhaka (three 2000-era iBooks in a cluttered office, six staff with more machismo than computer skills).

But mainly my life has been about working hard at CRWRC. In an office full of development and health experts, I enjoy the privilege of being “the word person.” This means both the pleasure and tedium of copy-editing development documents (boy, am I learning a lot), plus the undeniable joy of collecting stories from CRWRC participants in the slums. Talking to these men and women has been the best part of my experience, by far.

In short, I continue, despite routine, to try to suck the marrow out of my Bangladesh experience. People actually do suck the marrow out of their chicken bones here, so I really understand this figure of speech. Anyway. Raise your chicken bones to the sky!