Bangla, Bazaars and Bible Study

Well we thought we'd reduce our blog writing to every few days since we assumed that things would start to get more familiar but actually I think more exciting things have happened in the past 3 days than the whole time we're here.

So, on Sunday we had our first Bangla lesson at the office by the head of the language school. She also gave us a bit of the lo-down on the history of Bangladesh and some cultural pointers. We start our Bangla lessons properly next week.

We also learnt a bit more about this history and ethos of Oasis and their international work - very inspiring.

Oh yeah you'll be pleased to know that our AC is now mended (ah...bliss). Our lovely landlord sent someone round to install a hose, so it no longer leaks on to one of the flats below us. We went to apologise to the neighbour that had suffered our AC and turns out they were super nice, invited us in for a drink and spoke perfect English (having spent some years in the US) - what a blessing!

Just as another aside, thought I'd give you a running account of Andy's Delhi Belly. He came down with his 2nd spate on Saturday afternoon and just about recovered by Sunday morning. Trying to cut out dairy to see if that works (think I might need to start a separate blog to monitor the progress...there's more to come (see below)..)

Monday we finally managed to get some drawers, computer desk and wardrobe but it did take all day to do. It's not like the UK where you can just take a trip to your nearest Ikea; it's a case of visiting several shops, bartering, waiting for it all to be processed and delivered - mammoth job.

During our shopping trip we discovered a very large Western style shopping mall with 8 floors - not what we were expecting to find in Bangladesh. The only drawback to this mall was when we were in a music shop looking at guitars Andy looked at me with a smirk. When questioned he told me he'd fill me in later. Turns out a mouse had been running round my ankles - eek!!

In the afternoon we went to New Market, which is a massive market (oddly enough!) Really exciting place and dead cheap. We also took our first bus trip to get there - not so exciting! It was swealtering hot, crowded and we got stuck in a traffic jam on the hot sticky bus for about 45 mins. Think we'll stick to CNG's!

Today we visited the Oasis Duaripara project, which is a school (which also provides health + family care) for girls living in a slum near our office. It was an amazing experience. The classrooms are small, dark, hot and dingy with hardly any resources but the smiles on the girls' faces lit the place up. They were so pleased to see us and to practice their English on us. One of the classes even performed a drama for us - very amusing.

The sad part of it all is that the teachers are working so hard to convince the parents that the girls should be coming to school, rather than going to work in the garment factories (or other such undesirable jobs), where they can expect to earn 800 tk a month (approx £7) working 6 days a week, 12 - 14 hrs a day. When they reach the age of 14 (sometimes less) the parents don't want to keep their girls in education and need them to work. Unfortunately the severe poverty over heremeans that work comes befor education, so the teachers at Duaripara are working hard at educating the parents where possible and trying to show them that by giving the girls an education it provides choices, so they won't be forced to enter into exploitative labour. I can't even begin to go into the other problems facing these girls and their families which affects their decisions and situations and means they end up in exploitative labout (I should also mention that not all garment factories are bad - some provide decent wages and working conditions but the families these girls come from tend to be in the worst factories)

Seeing the enthusiasm and joy on the girls' faces was extremely humbling and if you thought about it too hard it would reduce you to tears. These girls and their families need lots of love and lots of prayers.

Anyway, just to continue with the Andy Delhi-Belly update, he came down with his 3rd spate this morning and after several glasses of saline and coke he is now sleeping it off....

So, here ends the report for the past few days.

Oh yeah, just before I sign off it has been suggested that these posts are a bit long and waffley (sorry about that), so if you would rather see shorter posts let me know and I'll try and be a bit more succinct (although not particularly my strong point as you may know...)!