By Saturday I’d already managed to get a little cold, which I’d expect in November, except it’s 32 degrees outside (sorry) – then unwisely went to explore Newmarket and Elephant Road. I wish I could have taken a photo of it from the footbridge over it – I wouldn’t be surprised if there weren’t 5 or 6 thousand people in my eyeline, on this not-particularly-long road. I wish I had a better phrase to hand for this, but ‘sea of humanity’ will just have to do the job. Unless you’d like to picture a forest of people – a sky of persons – a cosmos of the cosmopolitan. See, sometimes clichés are just the best words at hand.
Staggering down the road, muttering the Bangla for ‘forgive me’ every three paces to beggars lacking money, limbs or eyes, I began to realise what was bothering me about this place.
At the moment, it feels as if I’m not a person here, I’m a resource.
This isn’t necessarily
wrong, after all – in this economy, even my UK-poverty-line income is far more than enough to make me wealthy. There’s no social security and a long cultural tradition of the rich giving money to the poor.
But to me, at the bottom of a tired, achy, sore-throaty barrel, it was too much. I don’t like walking out of my house and having every third person (or so it feels) some up to me to speak, not out of friendliness or any desire to
relate, but because I’m probably good for a little cash. Especially when, as I’ve said, in my part of the city there are so many guilty foreigners like me that begging is a big, and franchised, business, controlled by men who are quite brutal. So I got in a CNG and went home. What’s a CNG? Find out later this week.
It’s difficult, and I’m still trying to work out my approach to all of this. I’m told that the culture outside of NGO-town (which, sadly, is where I live, a western, rich ghetto which practically invites exploitation) is very different; that people are welcoming and eager to tell you about themselves, and eager to know about you, and aren’t on the blag.
It’s a truism of travel that it’s worse in the cities, and a truism of development work that it’s worst of all in western-residency areas. So, though I’m surrounded by noise and dust and I’m spending money on Bangla things, I suspect I haven’t really seen a great deal of Bangladeshi society.
A nice corrective to this is the office. I’ve raved a bit before about FH and how good I think the attitude is; and John and Kate Marsden, the country directors for FH Bangladesh, have done what others have yet to only speak about, and find talented people
from Bangladesh to head up crucial parts of this operation – which, after all, exists
in order to help Bangladesh. Smart thinking, that.
Reasonably enough, since this is a Christian organisation, there’s a reflective devotional time each morning – not compulsory, but people come anyway. There’s bible study, and it has a visible positive effect on people’s relationships here.
I’m incredibly impressed by this office. The mostly-Muslim staff have got a much better hold on the basics of Godly living – compassion, forgiveness, servanthood - than many Christians of my acquaintance. It’s privilege to learn from them, and I’ve been so welcomed. A big part of my job at the moment is hanging out downstairs with the support staff to practice my (pathetic) skills at speaking Bangla. They’re patient, kind and helpful, and funny.
It's still very frustrating though. My word yes. I'm a communications specialist, right - I was hired for this skill (don't worry, I get most of the verbal diarrhea out of my system here) - yet without the language, I cannot communicate. I'm precisely as useful as a brick made of pumice. With less comedy value. So I go up to someone - anyone who looks friendly, usually one of the guards - witha head full of sentences, of things I'd like to know, relationships I'd like to build. And I just about struggle through 'How are you doing?' and 'I'm still learning Bangla but I don't know a lot' and then it's lunchtime because I've spent a few hours per word stroking my beard and feeling like a fool. People are very patient though.
So who knows what I’ll end up making of this place. It’ll be nice, when I can speak Bangla better, to get out into the country and see what life is like away from the capital – to find the Bangla equivalents of York and Bromsgrove and Coventry, instead of living in the Bangla equivalent of Kensington and imagining I’ve seen the whole country. I’m looking forward to travelling here; and of course, if anyone fancies a trip you’re very welcome to come and travel around with me.