Birishiri

The day after my birthday I caught a CNG early in the morning to meet my friend and colleague Kanika at an intercity bus stand  We had a mission in mind - visiting the far flung district of Birishiri, on the border with India.  Around five to six hours in a bumpy and jammed back bus (to go 170km) finally yielded fruits when we arrived in a place of complete beauty and splendour, far away from the Dhaka dust and horns.  An atmospheric rickshaw journey and walk took us to the border of India, where the golden light from the west lit up the paddy fields like a lantern of the god's.

We stayed at the local YMCA that evening, and the next morning set out early on a rickshaw, trundling with a slow grace along the banks of the Shomeshwari River as the sun languidly climbed in the sky.  In afternoon we headed for ‘Karshban’ the  school, now led by the famous Bangladeshi poet Nirmalendu Goon.  The primary school was established by his grandfather as the first in the Upazilla over 100 years ago, and now the secondary school teaches a creative curriculum with music, dance and visual art.  Regular performances by the students draw in the local villagers and families who can learn more about the school and by extension the importance of education.  Nirmalendu Goon led us proudly around the school, which was a rare example of creativity in education in Bangladesh.  Apparently I was the first foreigner to visit, but I'm sure I won't be the last.

Birthday

Is it self-indulgent to write a post on your birthday?  I guess it is in line with keeping a blog on your life and travels.  Birthdays are strange affairs.  You start out totally ignorant about them while parents crowd around and make a huge fuss. Then you get into them and get obsessed with cakes and wrapped presents.  Later in teenage years they may become popularity contexts; or the affirmation of the absence of popularity.  And later on there may be an unsettling feeling regarding the passing of the years...

This particular birthday didn't really fit into any of the above categories actually.  Despite being one of those events that is about 'you' yet you don't really get to have in-depth conversations because of hosting responsibilities, the evening was very enjoyable in the end.  People brought all manner of home-cooked food, which basically covered all the table and presented a gastronomic challenge to the guests.  There was an inspiration sharing session half-way through (a bad habit of mine is to turn social events into experimental workshops), which I was curious about people reactions to.  Such processes tend to polarise a general (non self-selecting) audience - some people were really into it, others seems to be trying to find places under the table to hide.  One highlight was a friend Satish's improvised didgeridoo performance using a vacuum-cleaner hose. 

To round out the evening, around midnight the remaining guests ascended the single flight of stairs to the rooftop where myself and my French friend Melody tested out our home-made fire-staff and fire-poi (which we stayed up to midnight the previous night making out of curtain rods, jeans, chains and wire).
To my surprise and the audience's relief we didn't cause any major combustion or conflagration in our fire dancing.  There's nothing quite like hearing the roar of the flame rushing past you, feeling its heat in the night air, and smelling the thick smoke...    

South Asian Social Forum

I learnt about the World Social Forum years ago, an open meeting place where social movements, networks, individuals, NGOs and other civil society organisations come together to oppose war, commercial globalisation, militarisation, capitalism and neo-liberal imperialism, and to pursue their thinking about 'another world' of equality, social justice, and sustainability.  Its formation was inspired by the mass upsurge across Latin America, in particular the struggle of the Zapitistas in southern Mexico and the 1999 Seattle protests against the World Trade Organisation.

I had been to the Melbourne Social Forum, the micro-scale version of the above, a little collection of friendly stalls at CERES Environment Park in Brunswick.  All very interesting, but unfortunately it seemed to only attract people already quite involved in the usual campaigns... 

So when I heard that the  South Asian Social Forum would be coming to Dhaka, I was very curious.  Scheduled for November 18-22th, it took place at Dhaka University, which has a long history as a platform for nurturing democratic and progressive movements.  The university was the centre of Bangladesh’s historic language movement in 1952, which demanded recognition of Bangla as a national language. Its students and teachers played a key role in the national upsurge in 1969, and the liberation war in 1971.

The main theme for the South Asia Social Forum Bangladesh was  "Democracy for Social Transformation in South Asia: Participation, Equity, Justice and Peace", with various subthemes clustered as following:

Democracy and People’s Participation: Democracy, decentralization, corruption, demilitarization.

Human Rights and Dignity : Fundamental rights, child rights, women rights, labor rights, rights of indigenous people.

Privatization vs Public Services : Education, people’s health (Public Heath Care, HIV/AIDS.), water rights, knowledge technology and people’s entitlement.

Food Sovereignty & Livelihood Security : Farmers’ rights, corporate agriculture, food rights, hunger. land rights, natural resource: (forest, water & mineral resources).

Development Finance : People’s globalization vs IFIs, aid accountability, corporate accountability, trade justice.

Regional and Trans-boundary Concerns : Climate justice, regional cooperation,  peace and security (religious fundamentalism, cast, class and ethnicity), migration and trafficking, water sharing.


The basic goal of SASF was to contribute towards creating a new South Asia, free from poverty and hunger caused by deprivation, exploitation, discrimination, and establish a common humanity based on equality, freedom and justice.

So it was with high hopes that I arrived at Dhaka University right on time at 10am on Sat 19th for the morning session on 'Green Governance in coastal communities'.  It was then that I realised that - like in Australia - passionate people don't necessarily make for organised people.  There were volunteer guides in immaculate uniforms but no one had a map or a program or seemed to know what was going on.  Eventually I found the room, rushing in 40 min late to find... no one there.  Luckily one of the guides was able to take me to an auditorium where one of the main plenaries was being held, with the title 'Another South Asia is Possible'.  Unfortunately the speaker's microphone seemed to be set on the 'muffle' setting and he sounded like he was speaking from underwater.  Fortunately this was corrected for the next few speakers, who were interesting and inspiring.  The last was a passionate woman in her 60s who spoke about many things, one of which was how she viewed herself as a South Asian citizen before she saw herself as Bangladeshi, a shift which invites a broader view outside of nationalistic agendas.  It made me think about how I saw/should see myself - as an Australian, an Asia-Pacifican (!), or simply as a world-citizen.

After this I joined the market place of stalls - hundreds ranging from international NGOs to grassroots groups to movement organisations.  An NGO called the Bangladesh Resource Center for Indigenous Knowledge (BARCIK) displayed over a hundred different indigenous rice varieties, many of which are rare after the Green Revolution in the 1960s and 70s promoted high yielding varieties (HYV) with chemical inputs (pesticides, fertilisers).  A growing number of farmers are now seeking alternatives to HYV because of their cost and negative impacts to the soil. There were talks going on and hundreds of people wandered about in carnival like atmosphere.  At another seminar, 'Climate Change and Urbanisation, Perspective Bangladesh', when myself and my colleague Kanika wandered in late, we were promptly asked to introduce ourselves up front with the microphone, which we did.  Often 'bideshis' (foreigners) are thought of as instant experts - luckily I did not speak long enough for them to realise that this was not the case.

In the evening there were some films screening via projector.  One was an arty doco on consumerism. It was an odd feeling to be watching the perils of the consumerist lifestyle in rich countries whilst standing in one of the poorest countries on earth, with the deja vu feeling of recognising your own country in the images, yet being apart from it for so long (well seven months anyway).  I had this feeling at various times during the forum, when people spoke against the developed world and their strings-attached, NGO interventions into the developing countries.  Still, it didn't end up detracting from the feeling of solidarity and hope that was around the forum, and if anything invites the question of your own subject position and role in the ongoing re-creation that is Bangladesh...



Thanks to GLW for some of the background information to this post.

The tears of green parrots

I sit on my rooftop, Dhaka’s morning haze wrapping itself around me, a soft blanket that does its best to protect me from the admidst the cachophony of din assaulting my senses.  The noise is coming from foundation drilling, in a formerly lush green block cleared of its ‘natural assets’, now resembling more a lunar surface than anything of this world.  

Looking up from my small bowl of noodles, I see several bright green parrots hopping and clinging to the rooftop’s railings, their hooked feet ill-suited for its hard, flat concrete surfaces.  With a jolt I remember the last time that I have seen them – hopping around the coconut and palm trees that used to grow in the block, eating insects and quarelling amongst the dappled foliage.  Like the Swomee Swans from The Lorax, they are just one of thousands of species deprived of their habitat, made home-less by development.

 

So here I am eating breakfast and watching them, and watching the drilling going at the moon’s surface.  What help to them is that pang of conscience in my stomach?  Like the seven months of living that I have done in Bangladesh, I have seen more suffering, need and deprivation than ever before in my life - all from the comfort of having a home and a (comparably) ample income source from the Australian government).  What use is this witnessing? 

Bearing witness is a powerful pre-condition for creating positive change.  It is the essential act of self-awareness in a suffering world. To quote eco-buddhist philosopher Joanna Macy:

"I call it the work that re-connects. It involves speaking the truth about what we are facing. I think it’s very hard for people to do that alone, so this work thrives and requires groups.

It needs to be done in groups so we can hear it from each other. Then you realize that it gives a lie to the isolation we have been conditioned to experience in recent centuries, and especially by this hyper-individualist consumer society. People can graduate from their sense of isolation, into a realization of their inter-existence with all.

Yes, it looks bleak. But you are still alive now. You are alive with all the others, in this present moment. And because the truth is speaking in the work, it unlocks the heart. And there’s such a feeling and experience of adventure. It’s like a trumpet call to a great adventure. In all great adventures there comes a time when the little band of heroes feels totally outnumbered and bleak, like Frodo in Lord of the Rings or Pilgrim in Pilgrim’s Progress. You learn to say “It looks bleak. Big deal, it looks bleak.

Our little minds think it must be over, but the very fact that we are seeing it is enlivening. And we know we can’t possibly see the whole thing, because we are just one part of a vast interdependent whole–one cell in a larger body."

So I sit and watch these beautiful feathered verdant bodies flying to and fro, trying to renegotiate and rebuild their lives in the midst of devastation.  As they call to each other and fly, I think about their tiny frames, so marvelously sculptured through millions of years of adapting to the environments around them.  The wisdom accumulated through this journey is immense, and we humans are only now scratching its surface.  And although our collective mind-less-ness is driving us to scratch open raw wounds in the planets surface, I still hold hope that as we learn more of stunning beauty and interconnectedness of this world, we will see that our present actions make as much sense as tearing our own precious skin.

[Note: I was too slow to get a photograph of any of the green parrots, so the image at the top is of a crow in the same former habitat]

The Sundarbans

Since getting to Bangladesh, I had heard about the mythic Sundarbans mangrove forest in the south, the largest mangrove ecosystem in the world, and home to the legendary Royal Bengal Tiger. It remained on some sort of mental 'to do' as the river of life here in Bangladesh flew, drifted, tumbled and otherwise meandered along. All this changed when a French friend of mine Melody organised a small group of us to visit the Sundarbans on an eco-tour.

We converged at the airport midweek after work, and before a public holiday (the hindu durga puja). After some delay which gave extra time to sample some mishti (Bengali sweets), we flew from Dhaka to Jessore, then took a minivan for a couple of sleepy hours. There was a certain deep-seated pleasure from gliding on the soft, furry edge between wake and sleep. Eventually we arrived on The Boat around 1am to drift into an excited night-before-christmas type of sleep.

While we slept the little vessel chugged through the night, inching its way down the Pasur river. Upon dawn breaking, my bleary eyes met with a visage of panoramic stillness, a mirror reflection of distant treelines in the gently ebbing water. We had arrived in the Sundarbans, around 10,000 square kilometres of mangroves, a vast delta on the Bay of Bengal formed by the super confluence of the Padma, Brahmaputra and Meghna rivers. From the air it looks like a world of capillaries and blood vessels; from the ground it's like you are stepping into a primordial interface between water, trees, and sky.

Our little boat was an exercise in rotund cuteness; squat yet charming, with green and orange sides. There were six tiny compartments down below that slept two each in a cosy fashion, while up top a mini deck provided a shared relaxation place. I felt a bit guilty that there were at least six crew there to support the eight of us, mostly crammed into the crew box-like section at the back. However these type of space constraints were pretty much standard in Bangladesh - maybe you just notice it more when you're on a boat for three days. The tour operator, Rapantar, was more than just a travel company, quoting from Travel To Care:

The company originally had its start as a development organisation under the name Rupantar, which means ‘social transformation.’ The central idea behind its work is that development practitioners use local social/cultural media to encourage change among its client villages. In plain English, these are music performances where the villagers gather not only for entertainment but to hear stories about the difficulties some members of their society face and how they overcome those challenges. Given the low literacy rates and difficulties in transmitting information between the remote villages of the Sundarbans, Rupantar has discovered a unique, effective and culturally appropriate way to spread ideas.

Over the next three days we drifted through various canals and tributaries, marveling at the expanses of sky and water around us, unheard of back in Dhaka. At one point we took on two armed guards - apparently to protect from pirates and tigers. Back in Dhaka I found a Daily Star article that suggested we were lucky to be protected by more than just sticks! As for the tigers, there are estimated to be around 450 left in the forest, but these are threatened by poachers and angry villagers. On the latter point, the villagers actually do have a reason to be angry - on average a tiger will kill a person every three days in the Sundabans - the exact duration of our trip. With their habit shrinking from illegal woodcutting, tigers have been increasing coming in contact with humans. There are some projects that provide alternative livelhoods to villagers to make them less reliant on extraction from the forest. From the tigers' side the SundarbansTigerProject increases research and conservation efforts in the area.

Eventually though it all had to come to an end, and as the sun set while we chugged along back to Khulna, I realised that the last three days had been the most peaceful and beauty-rich in Bangladesh. I hope to return someday!




Postscript: Praise Kid Garden

I took a day off and to stay in Khulna, another of our party Anne did the same. We visited a school that my wonderful Bangla teacher in Melbourne, Mary-Anne Hess, would donate the money from our classes to. I had always wanted to visit it and finally got the chance. The school, called Praise Kid Garden, housed and educated around 70 children from disadvantaged backgrounds - many from indigenous minority groups in the north of Bangladesh. It was started in 2002 by a NGO worker and Christian preacher Patrick Dias, who wanted to find a home for the many small children that he found local women were offering to him as they could no longer support them. Today he still runs the school entirely voluntarily, doing additional translation jobs as paid employment. He is an inspiring, warm hearted man who embodies a combination of love and determination.

Stillness and Beauty

Finally having the discipline of going to bed ‘early’ (before 11pm), I mange to rise early this morning, around 6am, and wander upstairs to the roof to ensure that I don't flop back into bed again.  This rooftop is my little haven, a place removed from the staccato rhythms of the sharehouse living below (and most importantly away from the numbing television with its gapless noise).  Up there, the expanse of the open sky meets the crest of the world, and I humbly cling to the interface, my roles in life collapsing down to an anonymous, conscious appreciator of the world's beauty. 


After some brief meditations I open my eyes to the morning light, which is clearing and distilling itself through the haze as it inches further into the sky.  I turn my head and a flash of movement catches my eye - I glimpse a brilliant green parrot clinging expertly to a gently swaying coconut bough.  A smile drifts up from somewhere inside me, a rising bubble to the water's skin which bursts into flower on my face.  Walking a few paces towards the sun I hear the peeling laughter of children, a glance down reveals a school yard with playing kids, the lightness of their footsteps and the ripple of their voices brings back flashes of carefree memories.  Yet I am here, in the present, the warming air drifting over my face, whispering secrets to my skin.  I turn my gaze from the children and it comes to rest upon some wiry plant that has garnered a precarious foothold on the underside of the concrete roof just near its edge.  The hardy explorer has put out dozens of slender arms, each holding a dessicated star-flower.  They hang sprawled through the air, a Medusa's nest of minute and elegant proportions.   

Beauty is everywhere. We spend most of our lives running between persons and places, places and persons, our footfalls too quick to gather the moss of the world.  A moment's stillness - in mind and body - is all it takes to for the quiet beauty that is all around us to reveal itself,  our silent lover whose caresses are always but a breath away.    

Cox's Bazaar Training

About a week after Dad left, my project team at Concern Universal Bangladesh organised 5 days of training for partner organisations.  The training was part of the climate change and disaster risk reduction capacity building project, and comprised a few different sessions, one on proposal writing, one on learning and evaluation, and other on principles and philosophy of Community Managed Disaster Risk Reduction (some info here).Myself and my colleague Kanika developed the proposal writing module, but this largely got delivered by our unit head Hamid.  Most of the participants were founders/executive directors of their organisations, which ranged from tiny to medium/large size, similarly there was a vast difference of experience in the room which was challenging from the trainer's perspective. 

Everyday after the session would end the participants would generally change into board shorts (for the males, the females didnt have this option and remained in sari's generally) and hit the beach, seemingly becoming teenagers again and running up and down taking hundreds of photographs.  After all, we were in Cox' Bazaar, THE premiere tourist destination in Bangladesh, which seemed to mean vast amounts of fairly dubious looking hotels, billboards and stalls selling shells and other nick-nacks, not to mention the highest concentration of hawaiian shirts in the country.  But it quickly became apparent the real reason that people flocked here - the stunning beach, 125 km continuous kilometres of gently sloping sand.  Around twilight the golden light spilled over the water, which through reflections covered the whole place with luminous honey.  Being from Australia I am fairly spoilt with easy beach access, but for most of the Bangladeshis it was their only access to the dreamy space where ocean meets sky.  Interestingly enough I didn't see a single western foreigner during the week I was here, which seemed to indicate the efforts the government was putting into tourism marketing. 

I did get sick with some sort of virus bacteria, alongside a few others... there was a fairly uninspiring day when everyone else went off gallivanting to another more isolated beach and the infirm held close to their hotel rooms and even closer to their toilets and/or handkerchiefs.  Another incident occurred when three of the participants got stuck in a lift... an hour later they were freed, but a brawl almost ensured when angry participants clashed with hotel staff who had seemingly done little to free their friends. 

The trip ended with a looong overnight bus trip back to Dhaka (complete with the obligatory engine failure around breakfast time).  As we crawled back to the capital, and as I felt my sense of space shrinking to matched the crowded streets, I was able to fully appreciated the magical sense of space that Cox's Bazaar had, and the feeling of being around so many people were able to suspend their difficult lives for a few precious days to kick loose in the sand and run around like children. 

Dad's Visit

My dad visited me over the period September 6-10th, arriving on midnight of the same day I returned from Sri Lanka.  It was lovely to see him, and even more interesting in this different context - previously  I have been the one being led around by him in Thailand or China to hear his dispersion of wisdom... now there was an inversion and I found myself offering key insights about Bengali culture and opportune moments... how the circle repeats itself.  It's also interesting how when you show a visitor around for the first time in foreign place that you now call 'home', it casts a new kind of curious light on the surroundings which had now become common-place and invisible in the process of getting to know place.  It's a certain kind of unknowing.

Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka.  The opportunity to visit came through an invitation to some youth climate change  workshops that the Sri Lankan Youth Climate Action Network (SLYCAN) had sent out. I had little idea about the workshops, but life is all about throwing oneself into new possibilities so I jumped at the chance..

I had one night in Dhaka after returning from Nepal before setting out for Sri Lanka.  Apart from the ritualistic sorting and repacking of dirty/clean clothes,  I was filled with a curiosity of what lay ahead.  A whole new country… Buddhist religion… years of civil war… string hoppers… I was curious about everything, and these musings almost got the better of me at the airport, where I dreamily left my passport behind on a shop counter after purchasing a ‘vegetable roll’.  Twenty minutes before my flight I was frantically searching as were airport security when it was found in safe keeping at the ‘vegetable roll’ establishment.  

After touching down in Colombo I caught a smooth 2hr taxi ride to 'Raveli Beach Resort' where some of the youth deligates were staying.  There I had the doubly novel experience of having a beer with an Indian, Jayasimha, who was not only vegetarian but was doing a presentation about the large impact meat consumption has on climate change for the Humane Society International (beer and vegetarians are rarely sighted in Bangladesh).  This is an issue close to my heart (and stomach).  I also met Vositha, a Sri Lankan activist who was finishing her legal studies and was the powerhouse behind the workshops and SLYCAN, running on few funds and even fewer hours of sleep. 

The next day we attended a journalists' workshop and I delivered a brief presentation on the Community Managed Disaster Risk Reduction (CMDRR) project that I am working on in Bangladesh. It was my first presentation on it, and I tried the hardest to believe all the words I was saying - conceptually my belief was there, but practically I had little exposure yet to the  CMDRR approach in action. Post workshop myself and Jayasimha were dazzled by slick brand shopping mall... where sunglasses in glass cabinets were selling for hundred of dollars, next to countless shelves of designer clothing... the silent mantra around us was to fall in love with the Image, and consume its material counterpart, the Product. It was a bit depressing to be reminded again of the pulling power of unfettered consumption, so the only remedy was some ice-cream consumption followed by a beautiful sunset dinner at the classic Galle Face Hotel, overlooking the lazy ocean rubbing up against the shore.  

The next morning I had some time to relax and spend by myself - precious time in a packed schedule of people people people.  Wandering along the beach and in the hotel I discovered some interesting facts about the way romance is negotiated here.  Like in Bangladesh, public displays of affection are seldom seen (though perhaps slightly more common here), and on the beach the canoodling is usually done behind a massive umbrella, or a rocky outcrop.  Meanwhile, at the hotel something else was going on... series of couples were presenting themselves to reception to then disappear for just a few hours. Later the hotel manager explained to me that the beach umbrellas were for people who 'could not afford to stay in my hotel'.  Aside from the lovers, the beach had considerable slum areas which were my first realisation of the poverty residing outside of the fancy hotels and shopping malls in downtown Colombo.

There were some more workshops over the next few days covering a range of broadly climate related issues.  I presented two - one on the crucial need for creativity in addressing climate change, the other on photography and social change.  An inspiring mix of young people attended the talks, and it was refreshing to speak about bold new worlds being created rather than dwelling always on the critique of the current.  I was particularly inspired by the two sisters behind the events - Vositha and Vishakha Wijenayake.  Polar opposites in personality, they somehow brought the events together, with particularly Vositha's persistence with getting things across the line.  Despite some disorganisation and some attendance issues - that is common when everything needs be done at the last minute with not enough people -the workshops themselves radiated a quiet authenticity and carved out a modest series of spaces for immodest ideas to be discussed and new worlds advanced.  I hope that the SLYCAN network was emboldened by the workshops and will organise more!


Socially too it was lovely to focus on quality, not quantity.  Spending time with the two sisters, and their friend Kaveesha, over cool drinks on quiet beaches, amongst the sway of palm trees and the nocturnal sighs of the ocean, was a beautiful relief to big dinners of Australian volunteers in dusty Dhaka.

There was a final, painful episode of the adventure that should be chronicled.  On the last day I was leaving for Kandy, a stunning town nestled in the forests above Colombo.  Running for the train, I slipped and fell on the railway tracks and ripped my right toenail.  Eheu! Bleeding and hobbling, I made it to the train brandishing my ticket (it was actually for the urging of someone on the platform that I needed a ticket which made me dash across the tracks in the first place), and tried to nonchalantly cover up the pooling blood.  This train lasted an hour, I then transferred to another train, this time for 3 hours.  I really tried to concentrate on the beautiful scenery passing by and not the growing pain in my foot.  However a very generous woman (who turned out to be a nurse) spotted my injury and insisted on taking me to the hospital in Kandy... which turned out to be overfull, so after visiting three private clinics, we found one that could take me in.  They prodded the toenail which was hanging on by about 8-12mm of flesh... meekly I said that we'd known each other for a long time and that could I keep the toenail... no it needed to come off apparently... I suggested that anesthetic would be a good practice, they said yes, they could provide it but its extra time and money, and by way of concluding the decision making they pulled off the nail then and there.  Words cannot really describe the pain, which was extended through forcible scrubbing of the exposed raw nail bed.  Bandaged up, I hobbled off finally to my actual destination - the temple of the Holy Tooth Relic (Sri Dalada Maligawa), which is said to have housed a tooth of the Buddha.  My mind was on toenails (or lack of them) instead of teeth, but it was nonetheless an interesting temple to explore.

When I arrived back in Colombo, Vositha, Vishakha and Kaveesha took me under their wing like the hobbling, bleeding bird that I was and treated me to lovely last dinner on the beach (on the way my contact lens blew out of my right eye into the sri lankan night yielding an otherworldly half-glow to my vision).    As the plane took off at early next morning (there was not a chance to sleep in between unfortunately), I could not help feeling grateful for the chance to visit this peaceful place, which seems like a little pocket outside of time.

Nepal

Leaving the no-place of the airport on 16th August, my colleague Kanika asked me whether I had noticed some differences between Kathmandu and Dhaka.  Once I opened my mouth in reply, surprisingly the observations poured out.  Firstly the diversity of the faces that we passed by – they ranged from south Asian, to east Asian to central Asian, in wide ranging palettes.  Secondary there were women everywhere!  I think I had acclimatized to the 70/30 to 80/20 ratio that you see on the streets here in Dhaka, and now this had been thoroughly overturned.  Moreover, there were women zooming by on motorbikes! Driving them rather than sitting side-saddle behind a man.  Crazyness!  Thirdly, as my eye scanned the roads and horizon, I became aware that my gazes was going up AND down through space – there was actually depth to the landscape!  (Dhaka shares with Melbourne the consistency of a flat plain).  Here valleys opened up between buildings and statues glinted on hilltops.  A fourth difference was actually seeing Western tourists – suddenly they appeared in the streets and out of the shops, walking turtles with their oversized backpacks and brand new hiking shoes.  In Dhaka the foreigners are generally NGO workers who flit between their office, their apartment, and the expat club in cars with tinted windows.  There’s not a backpack to be seen.

The first week was for work, with the five-strong Concern Universal team splitting into two, I was lucky enough to go on the scenic venture to Makwanpur, around 7 hours winding drive from Kathmandu.  Deep, lush vistas opened up around our packed little vessel as it wound it’s way around hilltops and through valleys.  The clouds which hung heavy at our level eventually opened up, and unpaved roads turned to slush. At one point I was introduced to an anti-bog technique of weighing down the car as much as possible when climbing the hills.  This involved various random people jumping in our car, hanging off the sides etc, which surprising worked to get us up the hill in bouts of terror and laughter. 

The Makwanpur District itself was beautiful, with a low-lying, unassuming river offering a peaceful expanse alongside paddy fields and the humble settlements of the town.  The next day there was a sharing meeting that brought together various local NGOs and government around the key issue of Disaster Risk Reduction and climate change.  It was good to see many young people attending (even if I couldn’t understand the Nepali).  I was a bit disappointed to see the lack of participation in the meeting but this is all part of the learning of how things are run over here.  Over the next few days we visited various schools and an NGO that had been implementing a DRR education project there - encompassing infrastructural changes (earthquake sensitive buildings etc) as well as community empowerment (local student and community clubs for sharing stories and co-learning). See report here.

Back in Kathmandu we visited an NGO that had an interesting arrangement between an community organic cooperative assisting to fund the local school which had an environmental curriculum. See report here.  There was a National level sharing meeting with many interesting speakers on climate change and disaster risk reduction, which drew many audience questions and responses.  It’s so hard to know the impact of these events, the extent of how far the ripples go out.  I hoped for the best.

The work trip ended after a week, and I was able to find myself again, which was a bit of a relief (I was the only one who didn’t speak Bangla or Nepali…).  Some of the Nepal AYADs had a spare room and were generous enough to let me stay in it over the next few days where I explored Kathmandu.  Sharmila, a generous model-turned-university-lecturer, showed me around her university, which included a visit to the fine art faculty where I was over-joyed to see actual art being created by a range of long haired characters which reminded me of studies at my art school.  They were very different to the paintings that you tended to see in the Thamel tourist area (such as 'Himalayan range', 'Woman in tribal dress carrying water jug', 'Himalayan range with water jug woman' etc).  

Despite a growing cold (a present I think some of my departing colleagues bequeathed to me), I managed to briefly escape Kathmandu and made it to Bhaktapur, an hour’s drive away with a beautiful old town centre crowded with dilapidated, beautiful temples and maze-like cobble-stoned alleys.  Groups of women would look down on me and other foreigners from their ancient wooden shuttered windows; a wave would return a smile.  I spent a delightful afternoon playing with children whilst sheltering in a shrine from the rain.  Another few elastic hours were spent talking with curious locals who invited me back to there home – two teenage daughter shared a room which was divided into their two choosen disciplines of science and management, with the textbooks piled high on either side.   Eventually though, it all had to come to an end, and on 29^th August I flew out and back home to… Dhaka.

Ten Things I Love About Dhaka

The Fabric
I realised in a few of these blog posts I've focused on some pretty 'heavy' topics, and may be giving the wrong impression of how I experience Bangladesh.  Of course, all the poverty, massive inequality, and entanglements with personal guilt and agency are always present, informing all the threads of life here.  But these are inter-woven with another strand - that of wonderment and life-vitality.  There is just so much vibrancy out on display here; a stranger-flaneur-interloper such as myself has the privilege of seeing and experiencing things that would otherwise be shut up indoors back home.  Of course, the very real factors of poverty, over-crowdedness, and inequality contribute to this situation - however  I do not wish to dwell on this here. Together these two threads weave a heady fabric for the naive visitor.

Unraveling a thread
Not long after I arrived I started collecting small, random experiences and sights that I came across during my walking around Dhaka.  Here are some of them (in no particular order).

- Watching with awe as a predatory kite circled the sky effortlessly over the water, riding the air with the mastery of an animal angel

- Pouring much anticipated cereal into a bowl and adding milk only to find scores of tiny ants float to the surface - but bursting out laughing at the sheer tenacity and veracity of life over here, then feeling Bangladesh sliding ever so slowly under my skin

- A mangy street dog's eyes following me and the moment opening up as he began to wag his tail

- Coming to the rooftop and sharing the expansive twilight sky with a handful of other people lounging around on their rooftops, chatting, laughing, and watching the world go by

- Crossing the busy Kamal Attaturk road in the middle of the upmarket Banani area one morning on the way to work, and finding a group of large, docile cows crazing next to the police checkpoint; an old man caressed the flank on one as he milked he, standing on an ancient wooden stool

- Watching the storm roll through from my bedroom, the cooling air rushing through the stuffy room carrying in the wet scent of the city

- Walking past a women in a bright red-orange sari sitting on the ground slowly sculpting a new rounded cooking stove from rich brown clay

- The warm rains pimpling the dreamy green Banani lake

- Picking up a seemingly dead beetle on my spartan balcony which started to revive and as I tossing it down towards the garden to the south it spread blue-green wings and took off in a determined line through the air

- A small boy leading a blind man with a cane across the road near the lake.  A spirited conversation between the two, the man's smile


I hope that some of the photographs below can give you a sense of this melody of life.

Air Conditioning, Bowls of Water, and a Long Hose

All of the above objects were combined in unexpected ways last night.  I had got back at around 10:30pm from a Bangladeshi play (which told the heroic/tragic story of the murdered Bangladeshi Christian-Indigenous leader Alfred Soren).

My room was predictably sticking hot and I turned on the ancient air con unit, which grumbled to a start.  I had left the room and was just about to pop into the shower when I saw a flash of light and flames erupt from the geriatric unit.  Clad only in a towel, I ran around the house looking for a water receptacle - the best I could find was getting a setup involving plastic tub to transport the water to the room and a small ceramic bowl,  to dowse the fire in discrete upward throwing motions.  The flames were resilient though, and kept growing despite my heroic actions.  In between bailings I called the building manager Kamrul who eventually came with a more advanced piece of fire-fighting equipment - a thin black hose which he proceeded to attach the bathroom faucet.  By this time by some stroke of divine luck my repeated bailings seemed to have extinguished the visible fire, and Kamrul used the hose to soak the whole thing down thoroughly for good measure.  The sweet smell of incinerated plastic and melted electrical components lingered in the air in some kind of fragrant mocking way. 

Together with a supportive housemate Carla (who brought me some iced ribena after the ordeal), I requested over email that other Australian volunteers should be advised of the fire risks and adequate mitigation measures taken etc etc.  This is being currently taken care of, and hopefully the net outcome of the incident may be positive in reducing future fires, and risk to other volunteers.

However standing out on my balcony in the balmy July Dhaka night, I looked down on the shacks clustered around the building site next door.  It's estimated that between 25-30% of the Dhaka population live in slums, which are at continual risk of being set alight by faulty or unattended cooking stoves.  Standing on that balcony, feeling lucky to be unscathed,  I had the backing of the Australian Government to mitigate my risks, as well as my own relative affluence in this country.  But who was looking after the risks of the people who were down below?  It reminded me again how culturally, economically, and geographically relative the perception of 'risk' is.

Returning to Nerd-dom...

I found some old essays and writings of mine when I was going through the dark recesses of my computer.  Remembering the various times that friends had been curious about my writing, I thought I would dust them off and load them up onto the web.  It's actually a fairly bizarre set of essays, encompassing topics such as zen, art, social change and fish hearing.  So feel free to have a browse if you're in the mood. (it may cure you of any curiosity fairly quickly!)

http://www.scribd.com/michaelchew

The Bat and the Stealth Bomber

Beauty.  Air.  Death.

I got back from work, with a heavy heart. A small boy had called 'bondhu...' (friend) after me as I walked back - often this is accompanied by an ask of money, so I just walked on.  But no ask came.  Either way, his small, skinny, frame and large brown eyes disappeared from my view, leaving the lingering traces of my privilege resonating inside me. The chance encounter of two with such vastly different opportunities in the world.

I cooked a quick dinner of noodles with tomato and gourd, and headed with it up a flight of stairs to the roof, a favourite place of mine.  Curiously no other foreigner comes up here (despite myself continually extolling the wonders of the place).  I settled down to eat, under a cloudy sky which faintly trembled with the beginning of a cool change, the cautious wind picking up gently around me.  Having finished, I stood up and walked over to the ledge to look down.  Almost immediately a dark flapping figure drifted through my line of vision.  A bat!  It's a flying webbed thing, I caught a good glimpse of the membranous black wings flapping through the air, just as a spider walks across the earth.  That is, it was having a conversation with the air, (or the ground), instead of a monologue which birds are want to do.  My mouth remained in a firmly embarrassing 'O' shape as my head swiveled to follow the disappearing creature. 

It was awe-ful, in the proper sense of the word.  I had a flashback to a moment when as a young teenage boy, I begged my parents to go the Avalon airshow, where myself and thousands of others formed similar 'O's as they craned their heads to see fighter jets roaring through the sky.  This kind of awe seems elemental, perhaps.  However the more I thought about it, the more I realised that mostly our awe of a flying creature is directed to military technology, machines carefully and painstakingly designed to kill and destroy.  Our collective fascination with the advanced cruise missile, the stealth bomber, the unmanned drone, each the distillation of billions of years of evolved creativity, directed not to life, but to death. 

The bat flew back and forth a few times, indecisively trying to find a suitable tree to settle into. Each time the feeling of awe was in my belly as I saw this seeing this great creature fly by.   This time I was relieved that I cast my lot with life.

Raindancing

It’s raining here.  

The brooding clouds have finally shelved their bashfulness and wept.  For joy or sadness, I cannot tell.  A sudden desire comes upon me, I strip back to a pair of shorts, race from my room up to the roof and stand in the driving rain.  Fuelled by a secret naughty knowledge, the decades late defiance of the whispering of parents past - stay dry, you’ll catch a cold – I feel the droplets striking my skin, their rolling caresses, a brief affair with the sky.  Once I overcame the default urge to cower, to hide, to flinch from those miniature heaven-sent spheres, I am filled with a primordial relish-ment that seems to seep from a cellular place.  Water within, water without.   

Walking over to the rooftops edge, I stare down.  By some chance I stare into exactly the direction of the rain sheet’s trajectory; instead of seeing them race by me, across my vision, I am looking down the barrel at them shooting past me on all sides, a receding tunnel of thousand upon thousand of droplets whispering past me to disappear in their communion with the earth surface below.  I’m sitting on the rear deck of a lonely spacecraft, watching the stars recede away from me.  But instead of moving, I am at rest, an amazed witness to the sheer brilliance of water, air, and movement.   

A thought appears from nowhere – what if these countless droplets were each a soul, a person, a living being, and I was watching from some god’s perspective their brief wobbling journey through life on the way down.  A flicker of individuality, precipitated from the continual collective condensation way up above, each totally unique, and each hauntingly similar, we make our way through life, jostling and mingling with the other droplets on the way down.  The way down.  We stream past the gods’ eye, in our brief existence we experience all of reality, no more no less, before reaching the ground where we once more rejoin the flow, handing on our little gift to the stream.

PS: the girls in the photo above were also dancing in the rain, and having the time of their life.

Barisal Field Trip

My team at Concern Universal had a second field trip over July 2-5th, this time to a southern district called Barisal.  The trip formed part of our 'Community Managed Disaster Risk Reduction' project, which involves working with 67 partner NGOs to build up their capacity to deliver their own community programs better.  Half of the trip involved this capacity building training, while the other half involved visiting a few villages and schools in which two partner organisations ran various education and training programs.   I was lucky enough to go this latter trip, and we were joined with representatives from the five partner NGOs that were from Nepal and they had traveled down to Bangladesh to join in this visit.

It was fascinating and harrowing to visit some of these villages, one of which was barely 500m from the Bay of Bengal.  During the massive Sidr cyclone in 2007, waves over 6m had pummeled the coast, including this village, which was devastated.  However through participating in some of disaster preparedness activities that the NGO was running, they were able to slowly build their resilience.  This included raising houses on mud platforms, building portable cooking stoves that families could take after disasters, using coconuts as floatation devices, and developing early warning systems.  Two years later the village was hit by cyclone Aila, but because of these interventions, damage was reduced.

During meeting the villages, seeing their preparations, and hearing their stories, I was moved by what these people had gone through, and the sheer tenacity and hope which they approached their situation.  They weren't going anywhere, and it was impressive to sense some of the pride that they had in their community.

It seems in start contrast to the clamouring and complaining that I am reading about in Australia regarding the carbon tax.  Over here, no one is debating climate change - their are no Lord Moncktons deniers spreading the seeds of doubt.  Millions have been facing a changing climate, and increasingly severe natural disasters, for decades, and thousands of NGOs, research institutes, and community initiatives have been quietly working away at methods of adapting to the onslaught.   At these times I cant help but to feel ashamed of my own country and our bubble of illusion that we are desperate to prop up, despite the fact that our denial is actually costing the lives and livelihoods of people here in Bangladesh. 

Further trip details are here.

Crying for the world

I’ve never been very good at crying. 

I’ve lost track of the times in domestic conflicts when I’ve spun endless rational arguments while my partner at the time simply cries.  Emotions don’t usually flood over in my family, and I seem to have maintained that tradition. 

Except for today.  This evening I found myself on a rooftop, sobbing uncontrollably. 

It had been a slow day at work, some report writing, a bit of research, emailing.  I had some loose time to use at the end and found myself reading an interview of Joanna Macy, Buddhist scholar and ecophilospher.  Few of the grave facts that Joanna spoke about were new to me – that our biosphere/planet is currently going through its 6^th mass extinction since life began, caused directly by humans, that we may have passed the threshold of preventing runaway climate change, and with it may come the eventual collapse of the planet’s life-support systems and civilization as we know it.  I had read about them in various forms over years, and treated them as I treat most knowledge – intellectually.  More facts confirming humanity’s unique suicidal tendencies…  

5pm came, and I packed up, said bye to the other staff and walked off towards home.  But somehow those words had sunk in, past my mind, and were percolating through my body.  Stepping out to the street I felt a wet, floating vulnerability drift around my limbs. The familiar aching feeling began behind my eyes.  As I walked through the usual path, along the side of the rubbish and sewerage-infested Banani ‘lake’, all of the suffering of the world was suddenly around me.  It’s usual to see beggers, the homeless and severely disabled people here, whose visceral presence I have never been able to evade.  But somehow this feeling was different – it wasn’t about an individual’s suffering, it was the very earth itself, the ground that I walked on, the ultimate cradle for our collective existence.

A large black bird arched through the sky, and for a moment I saw everything around me as a mirage – the glass, steel and concrete of one of Bangladesh’s most wealthy areas, the polished urban environment that stands for success and which is replicated and desired all around the world.  In that moment I saw it how it really was – a thin, fragile layer built from materials, energy and industrial processes that were all unsustainably harvested, ultimately built on borrowed time, and energy.  Like the cartoon character who has run off the cliff, we keep running on invisible ground, faster, hoping we can get to the other side before we fall. The least developed countries haven’t stepped off the cliff, but are running madly towards it to try to catch up to the wealthy runners ahead of them.  Our ground has seemed so solid up to now. 

As I walked back I saw and felt the brittle human presence around me – the boisterous young businessmen loitering at the chai-stalls, the rickshaw drivers angling for customers, and the laughing kids gathered on the pavements.  Those hopes of a rising nation, rushing to join a world order that is accelerating in the wrong direction. 

My eyes were thawing now but had not yet melted; I reached my apartment block and laboured up the six floors to the roof.  Stepping outside, the sounds of the Dhaka mega city washed up to meet me, as the space all around opened up to a sea of white apartments rising amidst crumbling grey buildings, half-completed structures, and the ubiquitous green umbrellas of tall coconut trees.  I stood there, closed my eyes, and felt my heart open up to the world, the tears finally flooding out.  A simple, most humbling feeling, my body seemed to become a common channel of the world, opening itself up to the pain being suffered by the earth everywhere, continuously.  For once my mind was silent as my heart instead listened to the world.  The thousand upon thousand acres of clear-felled forests, where once the most complex ecosystems thrived.  The dying oceans, with their disappearing fish and bleached coral reefs.  The Bengali tigers here in Bangladesh, competing with villagers for food in their dwindling habitat.  These scientific facts that had greeted me countless times over breakfast through a newspaper column were now visceral.

It was my privilege to have this experience – my (relative) affluence here meant I had the space and time for it, while so many others toiled away without choice.  Yet how often had I opened myself up to this feeling?  How often have any of us stopped to actually feel what is happening to the very earth beneath our feet?  Feel with our hearts, rather than analyse with our heads.

The wave subsided almost an hour later, and my mind regained its usual dominance.  I think (or rather feel!) however that I’m not quite the same; sensitised ever so slightly more to the seamless, invisible destruction that rolls on. But an opened window lets in both heat and cold – I also feel my perception of the world’s constantly unfolding beauty sharpened. 

Joanna Macy writes about the proper place of despair in the process of system change, as a necessary bridge between the protective numbness that we use as a shield against suffering, and a grounded, empowered stance that is the basis for action and movement.  It is a bridge that we often cross, and re-cross for loved ones, but seldom do for our broader family – our fellow species and the biosphere that ultimately supports us all. 

More of Joanna Macy's writings can be found here.

Kolkata Trip

Myself and two other AYADs (both called Victoria) took the opportunity to sneak away from hot, dusty Dhaka to evener hotter, dustier Kolkata for a brief holiday.  Actually it was a wonderful trip, and break away from both work and social routines.

I had first visited Kolkata in 2004 on the first Friends of Kolkata volunteer trip, and had many challenging, moving and beautiful experiences teaching photography to children and learning about the inspiring work of the Centre for Communication and Development and the Institute of Social Work which I volunteered at.  I returned again in 2007 with a new group of volunteers.  But I had never had much time to just wander around the streets and take in the sights (and smells!).

Most of the trip is conveyed in photos below.  But a few interesting observations can be made about Kolkata compared to Dhaka:
- It was interesting to see many more women on the streets, as shop keepers etc.  Dhaka has few.
- The Western influence is much greater - more trendy street wear, and in particular women wearing jeans which is pretty rare in Dhaka, more western shops and cafes. 
- There seemed to be far more activities around and on the street - more vegetable sellers, more cold drink stalls, more coconut juice-wallas, more risque underwear street stalls, more people lying in the shade, more goats playing acrobats.  Driving back from the airport in Dhaka I was thinking 'where were all the people', something which I never would have thought I would say about Bangladesh.
- It has a beautiful, mesmerising flower market next to the river banks which remind me a little of Varanasi.


I hope you enjoy the photos!

Training trip – Bogra

I’ve just come back from a training trip to Bogra, in the north west of Bangladesh.  The training was for resource mobilization and monitoring/evaluation for 15 or so of our partner organisations – to essentially equip them better to deliver their programs on education, health and disaster preparedness mostly.  It was basically all in bangla so the content largely went over my head, apart from the odd word here or there.  I was doing photo and video documentation of the training so at least I could feel useful in some way... 

Unfortunately on the second day I got quite ill with some sort of nasty viral fever which left me largely bedridden for a couple of days, with aching muscles and a temperature.  Just when I was thinking things may be getting better, another disaster struck – while being in a bout of feverish delirium, my camera fell from its bag and my brand new $650 lens broke (or rather ‘bent’, not a good thing for a lens to do)!  I had discovered the low-point of the trip.  

From there things picked up a bit, I started to recover, and I had a nice last night chatting to co-workers and answering various Australia related questions, being the expert representative.

It was ultimately inspiring to meet so many people from different organisations, big and small, that are working at a grassroots level towards poverty alleviation.  I lost track of all their projects - but they gave me hope.  Another positive thing was that I able to make some beautiful photographs.

On the way there:

During a field visit to one of the partner organisations and their village:

During the training at Bogra:

Working at Concern Universal Bangladesh

I’ve been at my work Concern Universal (or ‘Concern’) for almost two weeks now. It is an incredible organisation which seems to have achieved so much since starting in Bangladesh in 1993 (head office is UK, they have chapters in 12 countries).  They use a strong community empowerment ethic which translates into working with a range of local organisations to build up their capacity to serve their community better – trainings on climate change, disaster management, resource capacity building and so forth.  In the main project I'm working on, there are 67 different partner organisations  57 in Bangladesh and 5 each in India and Nepal.  Every one has a different acronym...!  

During the time so far I’ve been doing mostly reading of reports and other 'desk research' – internal ones to try to find out what other staff are actually doing, and external docs relating to climate change issues and adaptation practices.

The staff are friendly and luckily for me they speak English well.  Quite a few of them sing well too – both my female co-workers have beautiful voices that they spontaneous burst into song with from time to time.

The Dhaka Streets (I)

To indulge in gratuitous stereotypes, anyone who has traveled amongst Asian countries knows the broiling pot pouri streetlife that makes anglo-saxon streetscapes seem like ghost towns.  Dhaka is no exception.

Moving in – Choy house

Today I finally moved into my home-to-be for the rest of the year – called ‘Choy house’  ('choy' is six in Bangla which was its previous number of occupants). It’s a five-bedroom flat at the top of a five story building in the heart of the Gulshan, one of the weathier areas of Dhaka. ‘Wealthy’ here seems to mean a larger polarisation between rich and poor – slick and ostentatious mirrored and pillared white apartments peer down on street sweepers, beggars and dilapidated shacks. The AYAD program, being government-run, has tight security guidelines around where we can live, and most AYADs are in and around this area. This apartment block is on the moderate to medium scale – the rooms are big, the floor and walls are clean, with the added touches of wiring bursting out of the sockets and numerous holes where fans or lamps may once have been. (maybe that’s where the mozzies (mosha) are coming from.  My room has a gorgeous west facing balcony – today the sun set like a glowing orange sinking to kiss Dhaka’s dirty pink horizon.  

 The view from my room

 The room itself!

In Country Orientation

We had two weeks of orientation and various trainings at the lovely Hotel Lake Castle.  The ‘lake’ was somewhat different to the photograph and reminded me more of sewerage filtering ponds.  But apart from this the staff were all very friendly, the rooms spotless, and it was generally a very cushy place to live.  Training sessions were held at the hotel and covered things like security (safehouses, hartals, muggings and the like), living in Dhaka (houses with guards and preferred perimeter walls), health (multiple forms of diahorrea, malaria, dengue fever), and transport (curfew after 8pm).  Perhaps it was aimed squarely at eliminating the Howard’s ‘relaxed and comfortable’ motif. 

The AYAD staff are a dedicated bunch and consisted of Badral the manager and Boby and Raihan running the logistical operations.  These consisted of mainly multiple shopping and tour runs using two vans amongst the crazy Dhaka traffic.  They handled it with aplomb and I was further impressed to know that Boby had pulled it off previously with 17 AYADs last year (including sari shopping, which he diligently took our group on also).

Arrival/Singapore airport

Singapore airport proved an interesting 4hr stopover.  It has a walking tour connecting various small parks, including a butterfly house and sunflower rooftop garden (the latter that was unfortunately moonlighting as a smoker’s garden).  There are various interactive exhibits where you can practice rubbings (the stall was secondarily advertising a paper with green credentials, interesting given the amount of discarded paper it seemed to be generating), and a science learning station. Even fire hydrants were treated with respect. Melbourne airport needs to get its act together.  After six hours in the air, the aircraft starts on a slow circle around a sprawling metropolis, its thousand upon thousand lights burning below.

Pre Departure Training - Canberra

Have just had pre-departure training - 5 days of health, culture, communications, and development primers in Canberra for budding aid workers and other types of random bleeding hearts such as myself. Demographics of participants confirms my 'two-hump' hypothesis - of a large portion being the 'post-arts degree next step crowd', followed by the 'I'm pushing 30 (the age cut-off)' crowd (myself). It was a bit of a hothouse with 110-odd of us sleeping, training, eating and socialising largely in the one hotel. Met some amazing people who I hope to stay in touch with across the globe during assignment. But it was with some relief that I could have some downtime after-wards for a few days at my sister's place.

 A bit of glam at old parliament house.

 The main sessions.

 Trialling 'culturally appropriate' dress.

The group going to Bangladesh!