All better again

Well, I think I can pretty safely say that both of us are now in good health, so we're relishing life in Bangladesh.

For those of you interested in the tummy diaries, my tummy has just about made a full recovery as of today but I was back up and running (with a small amount of discomfort) from Friday onwards.

Well who'd have thought that 3 weeks in and we still have more exciting news to report.

On Saturday began the side effects of Cyclone Remish, which hit the Bay of Bengal. The side effects weren't too devastating for us but there was a lot of rain, wind and the temperature dropped significantly. In fact we haven't run any of our fans since Saturday and have had to put a blanket over us in bed! It was pretty horrific at times, particularly travelling by rickshaw and CNG in the pouring rain - not particularly pleasant! One of the main problems with coping with the heavy rain over here is the poor drainage - water seems to just collect, which is pretty bad for the poor rickshaw wallers, especially since they can't see all the pot holes in the road.

On Saturday evening we went to a discussion group at one of our colleague's flats, where the Oasis visitor was speaking on being an integrated church, in particular how the church can integrate with its community and other faiths, whilst remaining true to its identity - very interesting stuff and left us brimming with ideas.

On Sunday we spent the day in the office, listening to the roaring winds and pouring rain (and doing some work of course). We have started having lunch with the "locals" in the office, which has been great - they're such a fab bunch, it's been really good getting to know them better. Andy's even managed to get an invite to the zoo with one of the workshop lads and our design colleague has managed to get tickets for him, his wife and us to go to the cricket (not sure when though).

On Monday we started our Bangla lessons. Unfortunately the language school is over the other side of town, so it means getting up at 6am and leaving the house at 7am in order to get there for 8am (it doesn't take an hour to get there but catching a CNG can be unpredictible). The lessons start with everyone in the language school sitting down together at 8 for a hymn (in Bangla), short thought by one of the students and a prayer - it's amazing that God really is in every aspect of our life in Bangladesh!

There are 10 people in our class, which is a 1 mth beginner's Phonetics course - survival Bangla! It's actually a lot of people to have in a group and the class room is tiny but we'll cope. The style of learning is not ideal for me - they tend to teach by repitition, so it means a lot of study when we get home after work to digest it all. There course is pretty intense, there's a lot packed in but so far we're enjoying it. Just need to start putting it into practice.

After language we went to work - another good day in the office! In the evening we went to the home group at our colleague's round the corner. A really lovely evening where we were able to connect with God and continue to grow the relationship with some of the foreigners (Bodeshis) in our area. Plus, one of the girls, who actually lives in the building next to ours brought chocolate cake for the second week running - yum!

We've discovered that there's a "Bodeshi" cook book, which is a cook book especially for foreigners. It's written in English and Bangla, it contains a lot of Western recipes and the recipes only include ingredients that are easily available over here. Most foreigners seem to have a copy. When they get a craving for a chocolate cake, or a Western meal they will tend to give the recipe book to their cook to make the meal. Unfortunately, our domestic helper doesn't read Bangla, so we're stuck with Bangladeshi food, until we can teach her something Western.

Today we had language again in the morning then back to the office. There was a bit of excitement in the office cause there was a film crew around filming at the school in Duaripara and then doing interviews at the office with some of the teachers at the school. One of our donors is making a DVD of some of the work going on in Bangladesh to show in churches back in the UK. So, given that our office is already cramped when everyone's it, it was chaos for a couple of hours with so many extra bodies floating around. Anyway, anything to raise the profile of the school and highlight the much needed funding is always welcome.

The school is currently looking for alternative premises, cause it's far too cramped, dark and dingy in there, so please remember the project in your prayers and pray that we find a new suitable building and that we have sufficient funding in place to afford it.

After work it was back home for some more language studying and to do our homework.

The cyclone left yesterday, so it's been a perfect day today - still relatively cool after the cyclone (by which I mean still t-shirt weather but pleasant, rather than overwhelming) but beautiful blue sky. I'm so glad we can go pack to tolerating the cold shower in the morning, rather than dreading the thought of it...

Hope all's well in England.

We'll update you soon

lots of love (as always)

Read more...

Nicola's Turn.....

Hey everyone, hope your all ok? Thanks for your comments on our blog postings! Its nice to hear from you...

You'll be pleased to know that Andy's health has returned but Nicola has been discovering some of the harsh realities of Bangladesh!

She came down with some belly problems of her own and managed to go one better than Andy by doing a bit of sick too. She was pretty ill on Wednesday so didn't go to work and had Andy home by lunchtime to look after her. The major concern was making sure she kept hydrated. Fortunately a book we had (kindly given to us by the medic in our family) mentioned the idea of drinking in sips rather than gulps. This method seemed to help her and she stopped being sick in the afternoon but continued to be unwell till lunchtime on Thursday!

So now we know to sip our drinks when we're ill and to use the Saline hydration packs that are easily available here or add some salt to a glass of flat coke or lemonade (Nicola's preferred treatment).

So Nicola has been out of action for the past few days. Andy has been working hard in the office trying to create some Bamboo products and learning some basic hand skills for shaping the wood - most involving using a big machete type knife (pictures to follow soon!!). We're working on some tray and towel rack designs at the moment. Its great fun working with and learning skills and language from the locals in the office.

Today (Friday) we helped to entertain a guy who's visiting Bangladesh for 36 hrs. He's here visiting Oasis and works for a Christian movement in the UK called 'Faithworks' (a movement designed to help churches interact and serve their communities). We had lunch with him at the Bagha club (western food available - yippee!!) before hearing him speak at the International Church.

Afterwards we all went out for a meal in a really nice Indian Restaurant which was very tasty and hopefully not too difficult for our tender English stomachs to cope with!

Tomorrow we're off to practice the British Skit for an international evening we're attending. We're waiting at Bus Stops and Barn Dancing to show a typical British lifestyle! (guess who's calling!!)

TTFN
Andy and Nic x

Read more...

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...)!

Read more...