A Digression

Now then now then - I wrote something today, but it was a bit long and mostly to do with creativity and art, so I've moved it to my other blog.

Go and have a look if you're into that sort of thing.

In other news, how's this for a quote, from Kim Fabricius, via the ever-insightful Maggi Dawn:

Ministry is that wonderful vocation provided by the good Lord for displaced Christian intellectuals who are useless at proper work.

I'm doomed.

Oh man, I wish I'd got a photo

One of the things that happens in the aforementioned Traffic Of Dhaka is that you spend a lot of time waiting a major junctions. A lot. And in these traffic jams, it's not unusual for you to have a tap at your window and find someone trying to sell you a book or two.

These always seem to be the same books, though I imagine there's a seasonal rotation of whatever these guys can get their hands on. At the moment, everyone's got Steven Covey's 'The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People', 'The Idea of Justice' by Armartya Sen and 'The Lost Symbol' by Dan Brown. So I suppose, unless the free-marketeers have lied to us, there must be a colossal demand in Dhaka for re-packaged ancient wisdom, obscure-but-brilliant political philosophy, and crap.

And nothing else, or so I thought. But when I was stuck in a traffic-jam last night on my way to a nice end-of-the-week meal, a Bangladeshi guy came up to my window and tried to sell me something else.

Mein Kampf.

Crazy Nippy Gadabouts

Now then. Before you read any further, I'm afraid I've got to ask you something. I’m writing this post in the interests of giving you a full picture of what life in Dhaka is like; but you’ve got to promise you won’t be alarmed, or worry too much. This means you Mum. OK? OK.

The other day I said I parachuted out of a snuffle-bound and culture-stressed day by taking a CNG home.

Unless you read the comments on that post, the inherent foolishness of doing that may not be immediately clear, so let me explain. CNGs are eye-poppingly dangerous but environmentally-friendly motor-tricycles painted green and encased in tinfoil and fake leather, designed to travel – to your destination, which may or may not turn out to be on this plane of existence - at about 50mph, until they get hit by a bus. CNG stands for Compressed Natural Gas, which sounds to me like a fart joke but is actually and officially a good thing for the environment.

They look reasonable enough until you get in one and start moving, and the Traffic Of Dhaka (which truly merits capital letters) starts swirling around you, and you realise that getting out of a stressful situation by getting into a CNG is like escaping Stalinist Russia by accepting a position as Mao Tse-Tung’s cleaner.

See below a rather nice photo of a typical scene on the melodramatic stage which is Dhaka's highway system:

...except that's probably happening at 50mph or so.

Traffic etiquette here seems complicated until you realise that basically, you drive where you like, never do anything to help keep traffic moving, and blart your horn at everything. In fact, if you hit the guy in front of you because he brakes hard, and you haven’t sounded your horn to tell him you’re there, it’s your fault and you will be fallen upon from a great height by the insurance company, the law and whatever private-security set-up your victim may have (and if he’s got a nice car, that might turn out to be 7 foot of scowling ex-KGB muscle, you never know).

Not for nothing, friends, is the Bangla word for 'traffic' 'trafikjam'. No, really.

The traffic here is mental. Sitting in a CNG, you’re uncomfortably aware that a single lapse in concentration from either your driver, the impatient Toyota Land Cruiser behind you, or the maniac bus driver even now trying to pirouette his diesel death-box into a playing-card-sized hole in the traffic, will result in your untimely appearance in a headline in your hometown newspaper.

Focusses the mind, I don’t mind telling you.

On the other hand, I cannot deny that I've been here for nearly 3 weeks and the only accident I've seen is an American falling off his bike. So maybe there's order in the idiocy.

So what, when I fancy a more sedate means of traversing this chaos, do I go for?

One of these:

Don’t worry, mum. They’re sturdier than they look. Honest.

Armless Gymnast

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.

Welcome to Dhaka

Oh, dear. I hope this isn’t the way things continue – sorry it’s been a while since the last update, it seems that getting settled in a new city is quite a time-consuming experience. Big blogs are difficult to write but micro-blogs are dead easy, so you should probablyfollow me on twitter if you want an idea of what day-to-day life is like, straight from my inner monologue to the great wide world.

I had hoped to have some photos of my new pad to post up here, but last night when I got home with my camera out, there was a powercut. They happen about once every other night at the moment, but give the government their due – they only last for an hour to the minute and then everything comes back on at once, just when you’ve fallen peacefully asleep. When you hear about ‘rolling powercuts’ in the UK within 5 years, know this – they are a pain in the euphemism.

So, no pictures for today (check back tomorrow), but let’s see if I can try and give you a few first impressions of Bangladesh, my new home.

………

Damn. Not sure I can, you know.

It’s not my fault. Everything here’s just…different. So trying to pick which particular difference to tell you about out of a thousand or so feels like letting you down; only letting you see a bit of the frame on the Mona Lisa. Dhaka may not be that beautiful but it’s certainly that remarkable.

But for you, my beloved supporters and friends, I’ll give it my best swipe.

The first ten days here have been adjective-defying. I wish I could give a single word to describe what it’s been like to be a relocated, dislocated white boy in the most densely-populated nation state in the world. The open sewers; the blued-but-broken glass on the side of still-new skyscrapers; rickshaws and delicious-but-boney fish curry. Remembering never to hand money over with your left hand. Traffic that makes you feel like pacman. Addressing beggars as brother instead of scum, but still not giving them any money. Is it right or wrong? Does anyone care?

Sensory deprivation, this isn’t.

I’ve started Bangla lessons (don’t call the language Bengali, it’s terribly rude – like arriving in the UK and asking the first guy he meets how he likes being Anglais). My flat is nice if small and has a minimum of cockroaches. I’ll say this for Bangladesh, with appropriate shamed apologies to all the people I’ve ever lived with – you don’t half get good at doing washing-up when the alternative is having bugs all over it in the morning. Eesh.

But, as I say, they haven’t been too bad. Thank God.

I’ve been very graciously welcomed by some friends of my flatmates, most of whom are teachers at the British school – meaning I’ll watch more Premier League football here than I ever did in the UK. Ditto by members of a local bilingual church. It’s happening slowly but it’s good to feel like I’m not camping here, and like I’m trying to build a life for 3 years.

It’s a challenge - there are any number of difficult things to deal with, which you’ll hear about over the next few days. Mostly I need to find a way to enjoy living here. The noise, the smoke, the crowdedness, the staring – none of these help me to relax. Without that, I’ll go crazy.

That said, I do have some hope. I went out to the roof of our block of flats the night before last, after getting home from work, to check out the sunset. And I’m glad I did:



Aaah. That’s better.

A very pleasing epigram

So how's this for a summary of my take on the whole vexed question of religious belief?

'I am so convinced of God that I will never stop asking questions'.

What say you?

Arrivals

Well, I'm in Dhaka! It's about 10am here, and we got in at about 2 yesterday afternoon.

Things are good. So far, I've unpacked, met my new housemate (legend), bought some food (surprisingly expensive), watched a bad football match (Spurs v Stoke) and generally acted like an expat in a new city.

It's been nice, but it's reinforced to me the importance of learning Bangla as fast as humanly possible. But more than that, it's made me consider poverty a little more.

Poverty is easy to feel guilty about. It's a nightmare of deprivation, and it forces you to confront some horrible moral compromises, ones you have to make in the face of widespread, systemic devaluation of human life.

A woman came up to me at the airport, sideways. I looked around, and she was just there, looking me in the face and holding out her hand. She looked thin underneath her sari, and she probably was. She clawed at my arm, and when I said no, she just carried on.

I couldn't even offer her the cursory and pathetic 'sorry mate' traditionally given to a homeless person in the UK. Couldn't even dignify her by answering in her own language.

She expected nothing less, of course. But it's messed up that that's true.

I knew there were going to be beggars, and horrifically present, unavoidable poverty which my unease will do nothing to assuage. I'm here to do good, and that isn't done efficiently by being surrounded by people asking for money, most of which will go back to gang-managers anyway. I know it.

So systems of deprivation, injustice and dog-eat-dog self-preservation have grown, fecund, out of seeds of selfishness and cruelty, until you can no longer see who is responsible for the mass of pain around you, because to an extent, we all are. I can give to the beggar, because the money is nothing to me and could everything to her; and thereby perpetuate a system of domination and abuse which happens away from my eyes.

Or I can not give, and be a part of writing the broader and equally damaging story about the fact that rich people don't care about poor people; that money gives you worth and poverty gives you worthlessness; that white people don't care and that brown people are helpless.

They're all lies. This is what sin looks like, when it has been around for a few hundred millennia. It's everywhere. Everyone is co-opted; everyone is guilty; everyone is a victim, or desperate to prove they're not a perpetrator.

(Which, of course, is the power of Jesus - simply destroying the problem of guilt and selfishness by just wiping clean a debt which is too hideously complex and untraceable to actually pay off).

Sin is the problem. We are the problem. Jesus is the solution. I'm here, as a Christian, to show Jesus and be part of making the solution happen.

So if I'm not going to give money to the precious children of God in this city - if, because of the sheer weight of harm, and the broader social realities of what sin does and the fact that it screws us all up, I'm not going to give them money for food - I can at least say no in a language which is their own.

It's a minuscule step, almost pathetic next to the scale of the problem. I'll try and make others.

So I'm hitting the books today. If I want to be part of the solution, it certainly has to do with broad projects and hard work instead of random acts of small-change generosity. I'm here to make a difference like that. But it also has to do with remembering that people are never problems, they are glories. Look them in the face and treat them that way.

Don't know if I can. Going to try.