For He's a Jolly Good Fellow

This is the second part of the catching up blog postings.

After getting back from our holiday on an overnight bus on Easter Sunday (12th April)and arriving back in Dhaka on Monday morning we then took a trip to Old Dhaka with Lucy (a must see for anyone visiting Bangladesh!).

Given that the streets were fairly crowded and the sun was pretty toasty we decided to take our tour by rickshaw, rather than on foot. After travelling through some of the narrow little streets and admiring the old derelect buildings we arrived by the water's edge at a small port, which I think is better described as a landing station. It was good to see all the hussle and bustle around the landing station as people were transporting vegetables on large baskets on and off small boats, other boats were waiting to take passengers across to the other side of the river, people were working by the side of the river and people just crowded in to see these strange Bideshi (foreigner) faces.

After an exciting trip round Old Dhaka we went to Computer City (a large shopping complex full of computer related stores).

In the afternoon we relaxed, unpacked and then Lucy got ready for her early morning departure. We then all stumbled out of bed at 3.00am and took a taxi to the airport. After a sad goodbye to Lucy Andy and I sleepily got back into bed for a further few hours kip.

On Tuesday it was New Year's Day here. So, that meant a national holiday and the streets were full of people celebrating. The traditional colours to wear on New Year's Day is red and white, so there were lots of ladies looking beautiful in their red and white Sari's or Salwa Kamiz's and the ben were wearing red and white punjabi suits.

On that day our work colleague was getting married, so we set off to a village in Gazipur, which is about 1 hour outside the city.

The wedding was due to start at 11.30, or so we understood. So 5 of us from the office dutifully arrived at the starting time and as expected we were the first to arrive. Even the groom hadn't arrived by then and was still sat in the barber's.

We made our way down the narrow, dusty road to a small village where the bride's family were from and where the wedding was due to take place. The houses in the village were all made of tin and were closely packed together. The houses were kind of arranged in clusters of 5 - 6, with each cluster sharing a toilet and well. At the entrance to the village was a large sort of entrance made out of brightly coloured cloth, which is always put up when there's a wedding.

In the middle of this village was a larger tin building, which normally served as a school but on this day it was to be the church hall.

After some time looking round the village and meeting the residents we were escorted into the church hall where we were given some very welcomme drinks and snacks.

After that there was a bit more standing around and talking, by which time we were absolutely cooking! There were 2 small fans in the church building but not that helpful in 40C heat when you're in a tin shack. I think it's fair to say that neither of us have ever sweated as much as we did that day (sorry...maybe too much information for a blog?!). However, I'm told that the sauna-like conditions are very good for our skin, so that's a bonus!

Anyway, after that we managed to watch one of the pre-marriage rituals, which was a ceremonial washing. The bride and groom were both dressed in yellow and then the bride's family gave the couple a "turmeric shower", where they tipped turmeric and water all over the bride and groom. From an outsider's perspective it looked like the bride's family were enjoying it a lot more than the "Happy couple".

After this ritual the couple then had to get cleaned up and but their glad rags on for the ceremony. Whilst we were waiting to appear we were given seats under the shade of one of the houses and after a few minutes we were surrounded by a crowd of around 50 kids staring at us. To try and remove some of the awkwardness our boss and Andy started doing some "magic tricks" to entertain the masses whilst we waited.

At about 1.30 the ceremony started. The bride looked beautiful in her red sari overlayed with lots of gold. She also fulfilled her role very well of looking completely miserable for the entire ceremony and even shed a few tears. It's the bride's job to look sad at a wedding because she is leaving her family home.

After the ceremony we stayed for the meal provided by the bride's family. They were very kind to us and gave us proper chips and battered chicken - just like a homemade KFC; it was yum!

At about 3.45 we then travelled back to Dhaka, by now completely covered in sweat but nonetheless very happy that we were able to share in such an exciting Bangaldeshi experience.

As we travelled back home the streets were lined with people celebrating the new year and enjoying the fact that for the vast majority of people they were with their family and didn't have to go to work.

The rest of the week was spent at work. Andy has been really busy with some key design challenges, so has had a few meetings to thrash it out.

It's getting pretty hot now as well and the humidity has been turned up a few notches. This means that there are more and more power cuts and we seem to spend our days looking out for the "AC moments" or the nearest cold shower (although in this heat the shower isn't even that cold). Whilst it may sound a little unbearable, we're actually coping fine - God has really blessed us with the ability to adapt to the heat and we have plenty of "cool moments" to fill our day.

If we catch ourselves moaning about the heat we have a very immediate reminder of how blessed we are when we think of our house helper sheltering under nothing more than a plastic sheet on the wreck of her former house, or the street children on the roads outside having to beg in the sweltering heat day after day. Sometimes it's easy to lose sight of the great many blessings we have and we thank God for those gentle reminders in our life.

Until next time...

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Easter Break

I think it's been a little over a week since we last wrote, so there's a bit of catching up to do.

Over the Easter weekend the office was closed on Easter Sunday, so we took the opportunity to take a trip out of Dhaka to show Lucy the real Bangladesh.

We travelled overnight on a coach down to the South West of the country in an area called Cox's Bazaar. This area is popular with the locals and is apparently famed for having the world's longest beach.

We were actually staying in a mission guest house about 60km north of the beach in a hospital compound (there seems to be a running theme of where we take our guests on holiday!).

The bus trip down was good. It's a 10 hr journey to Cox's but about 9 for us because we got down before the bus reached the final destination. Since it was such a long journey we treated ourselves to Executive seats, which was a new experience for us - lovely wide seats, which apparenly had a massage setting on them but none of us could get working and they reclined almost horizontally - ahhh bliss! It's going to be tough reverting back to our standard means of travel.

We arrived at about 7.30am on Friday morning, just in time for breakfast.

The guest house was beautiful; very peaceful and relaxing nestled away on a slight hill amongst lots of lovely shady trees. Our rooms were very nice and typically twee and we were even fortunate to have Western food cooked for us, which was a real privilege. There was even a pool on the compound, which was great for taking a dunk after a hard afternoon of reading!

We were the only Brits staying at the guest house, the rest were American Christians either working at the hospital, or visiting from a nearby area.

On Friday we spent the day relaxing as we were still pretty sleepy after the bus trip. Andy was very excited to spot a full sized basketball court and even more excited when there were people to play with. So, Andy and a few Americans who either worked on the compound, or were visiting formed a team and had a good run around in the blazing heat! Sadly the game came to an early end when Andy got a whopper of a blister on is left foot, so couldn't carry on. A bit disappointing since he could hardly walk, so was out for the following 2 days.

In the evening we joined in with the church service they have at the guest house. This is mainly for the expats who live and work on the compound but those staying at the guest house are invited to stay.

On Saturday we hired a car to take us down to Cox's Bazaar. We spent the morning looking round a Buddhist Temple, which was really interesting, followed by some browsing around the Burmese Market. This area of the country is very close to Myanmar (Burmer) and in fact used to be part of Burmer, so there are a lot of Burmese living in that area and there is quite a high Buddhist population.

After that we had a leisurely lunch in one of the hotels by the side of the beach, whilst we waited for the temperatures to cool down a bit. The restaurant was alongside the hotel's pool, so there was a large glass screen overlooking the pool. This kept us very entertained during our lunch as we watched the locals "swimming" in the pool fully clothed. When we say swimming what we mean is some cross between doggy paddle and a pretend drowning manoeuvre - very amusing! Just to add to the entertainment there were some young men who obliged us with their "diving" acrobatics, which as you may have already guessed were perfectly formed belly flops! Needless to say the Bangladeshis aren't renowned for their swimming prowess.

After tearing ourselves away from the poolside entertainment we wandered across to the beach. The beach was vast and not too crowded - not like European beaches!

There were some sun loungers strewn across the beach in a single line, which we hired for a couple of hours. The sun lounger experience is not quite like in Europe - there's a distinct lack of scantily clad people trying their best to frizzle and instead people sit on them fully clothed and simply chat to their friends, or on their mobile phone.

We of course followed etiquette and sat fully clothed - Andy pushed the boundaries a bit and sat in shorts and t-shirt but Nic of course sat in her full Salwa Kamiz (although minus the scarf bit!)

The sand was beautiful. Not really the pure white sands of the Indian Ocean but instead lovely warm golden sands - the kind you would see in the Med.

The sea was also wonderful. Some really good sized waves to play in and soooo warm! I can't even begin to describe how warm the sea was; just like a bath. So, we spent a good deal of time playing around in the waves admiring the ocean. It was a little restrictive trying to jump the waves in a full Salwa Kamiz (trousers and dress) but I made do!

It was really fun to see lots of Bangladeshi families enjoying themselves in the sea and to watch groups of fishermen hauling their nets through the waters. It's so amazing that there is somewhere so beautiful that people can go and forget the cares of life - no matter whether your rich or poor.

As always we attracted a lot of attention being the only white folk on the beach. So, we got the usual street children come up to us asking for money, or trying to sell us things. There was one lad who was going round with his older brother and friend, who couldn't have been older than 6 or 7. His brother was making him sit on the end of peoples' sun loungers and sing songs to get some money. That was really upsetting - it seemed so degrading to have to sing pityfully to people to get money, particularly when the locals were kind of giggling in a very patronising sort of a way.

Anyway, the kid was very cute, so we sat and chatted to him and his brother for a bit, which was fun.

After our day at the beach we spent the next day at the guest house just lazing around the compound. As it was Easter Sunday they had prepared a special Easter meal, which was yummy and there was an Easter service, which we were able to partly join in with before our bus back to Dhaka.

All in all a very relaxing break and a really good opportunity for Lucy to see the beauty of Bangladesh - away from the big smoke of Dhaka.

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Lucy, Rain and Fire

Hi Everyone!

Things have been busy again here over the past week and a half with big product deadlines and the arrival of a special visitor.

Lucy arrived in the wee small hours of 31st.. we both met her at the aiport and got stuck straight into Bangladesh life with a walk around the local Bazar and a trip to the Orphanage we sometimes visit. She's settled in really well and seems to be enjoying her time here so far. She's proven to be very adventurous and keen to explore some parts of Dhaka herself.

We took her to church on Fri and had some friends from work round in the evening to have an evening of Pit! On Saturday Nicola and Lucy went back to the Hair salon run by the Orphanage to get their hair cut! The Salon has been set up as away of making money for the orphanage and offering training to some of the girls - which we think is a great example of some sustainable and wholistic development work!

The week at work as been a little bit hectic. Lucys visited a few times to help set up a database for the anti-trafficking team. Nicola has been having lots of meetings with a lady who's working for Stop the Traffik in India.

Andy's been in the office all hours trying to finish the Bamboo product for a Design Freeze at the end of March. He was involved in a big meeting on Monday (yesterday) to look at all aspects of the design with the rest of the team... so its had a thorough going over and some changes will need to be made!

The weather has also take an exciting turn with the humidity arriving rapidly leading to lots of storms. On Sunday last week (29th) we had hailstones the size of Golf balls!! Andy and Nicole were stranded at work until 7 and then it took them 2 hours to get home! We ended up walking down the central reservation with the water knee deep either side of us!

Yesterday(Mon 6th)disaster struck when a fire broke out in one of the local slums. The slum houses our house-helper(Halima)Jo's house-helper, works cook (Shuli) and one of our workshops guys (Massum - the zoo song guy!). Halima, Massum and Jo's house-helpers 'houses' were all completely destroyed... The rooms were made of bamboo and tin and were burnt to the grounds with them all loosing everything. Amazingly no-one died in the incident but the devastation it has caused is hard to take in. Their basic homes were literally gone.

We visited the slum this morning to try and offer our love, assistance and some food/clothing. These families had lost everything. All of the few possessions they owned. It was truly heart breaking to meet with them and see the devastation. We spoke to them for a while and was amazed to see the level of hope and positive attiude they carried around with them - even asking how the product deadline at work had gone!

I've been thinking a lot at the moment about all the 'stuff' that we often have. The computers, the TV's, all our clothes, gadjets, cooking appliances, books, dvd's etc etc... what drives us to need all these things in our lives... is my life any better for it? Am I just addicted to owning stuff - thinking that its going to make things easier, better, make me feel more secure?

And then you visit a family who only had a few pairs of clothes, a TV and some food living in a room 8ft square - and in half an hour they lose all of that - they literally have no 'stuff' whatsoever! Yet, they can still manage a smile and still want to know how you are, they're still grateful..... Kinda humbles you beyond belief and makes you think long and very hard...

Sorry for the waffle... please pray for Halima and our work colleagues in this very difficult time.

Love and Gods blessings to you all.
Andy and Nic

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