Bangladesh 2024 pt. 6: ভালবাসা পায়

THURSDAY, JUNE 20th, 2024

Khulna, Bangladesh

DAY 14

It looked like rain again in the morning. The laundry had to be done. It couldn’t be hung up in the roof in case of rain, so wet laundry was hung up on the second floor under the fans….hung in curtain rods, draped over chairs, the table, hung on the window bars. It made the upstairs as humid as the outdoors.

We had a late breakfast of cinnamon rolls, so there was no lunch. I made chocolate chip cookies, loaded them onto a plate, and headed for my favorite lady’s house. She had told me a few days ago to “Come to eat sometime!!!!!” I had asked her when, and she had said “Just come.” So today when I set out with my cookies, I’ll admit, had ulterior motives in mind.

Thami, the dog who sits in front of our gate and I walked to her house. (Her name is Rita, husband’s name is Ronjon. They have two grown sons: Rathon & Rotin) We slipped along the rainy bricks and ducked under wet palm fronds and banana leaves. We arrived just as the rain started to fall.

I gave her the cookies, and she informed me that since I had brought her sweets, she had to feed me rice. I didn’t resist. I removed my shoes and climbed the mud steps into the house.

The mud floor was cool on my feet. The rain was now a torrent outside and the noise was deafening in the tin roof. We yelled to one other as she sat across from me at the table. The open door behind her displayed a gray curtain of falling water.

After our lunch of rice and sweet pumpkin, I sat with the dog and waited for the rain to stop. The yard had completely flooded. My favorite lady’s 2 cows were staked in the yard, and she told me she was going to take them to their barn. She fished around in a bucket for awhile before finding a green plastic bag used to carry vegetables from the bazaar. She put the bag in her head and carefully fastened it around her ears. (Everyone knows that you’ll get sick if rainwater touches your head.) Then, the dog and I watched as my favorite lady descended the mud steps and retrieved a thin stick. She held it defensively against the mama cow’s horns as she untied it. Once the cow was free, she tore through the downpour to shelter.

‼️TMI WARNING. PROCEED WITH CAUTION ‼️If you don’t wish to read about cow messes, please proceed single-file past the next picture.

The baby was still tied up under the tarp. At seeing its mother leave its sight, it got very stressed. It started peeing and pooping all at once. My favorite lady waded through the yard and untied the baby as well. The baby ran full tilt to join its mother. Then, the lady quietly picked up the dung with her bare hands and put it into her puttin’ place. (Cow dung is very useful. They form it around long twiggy things, dry it in the sun, and use it on their cooking fires. I had the honor and privilege of making these with my favorite lady one day. It doesn’t stink, and I’ve been told this is because of the difference in their diets.)

TMI SESSION OVER. THE REST IS SAFE.

At last, the rain lessened. My favorite lady told me she was going to the neighbor’s for her afternoon bath. I had already got up to leave, so I decided to go with her. It was on my way home, after all. My favorite lady, the dog, and I started off.

My shoes were slipping all over the place, so I finally decided to take them off and go barefoot. We had no more than made it 10 feet before the rain picked up again. We ducked under the small mud house shared by her son and husband’s father. I was intrigued to see a WiFi router hung up on the mud wall. Priorities….The son brought me a chair and the grandpa sat next to me as we all sat and discussed my trip. Would I ever come back? You’ve gotten fatter. You still know our language! How much money do you need to go America? How is Lauryn doing? How many hours did you sit in the plane?

(Typical mud house)

Finally, my favorite lady and I decided to make a break for it. Don’t fall, she cautioned me as I stepped onto the brick step. She arrived at the neighbor’s house and the dog and I continued home. She ran ahead, and reached the gate long before I did. Upon discovering that I was not with her, she turned back and bounded to my side.

We don’t deserve dogs, do we.

When I got back to the gate, I was a soaking mess. There was not one inch of me that was dry anymore. Brock and Kylie were sliding around in the rain. Trevor and Lisa were on the porch enjoying it. Everyone had been praying for rain. The thunder overhead sounded like a whip cracking in my very ear. And all the while, the rain fell and cooled the earth.

We took the workers out for supper in the evening. Trevor’s do this every year. The last time they did it was last May for my birthday(!). They decided to wait this year until I was here, and I was delighted. Tulshi, the day guard; Sunil, the night guard; and Dipti, the cleaning lady. They all brought all their families, and ladies all wore their nice saris and clinking golden jewelry. They all reminded me that the last time they had been out together was last year in my birthday :)

We sat in the upper A/C room of a the restaurant and were delighted to discover that one of the waiters knew English! He said he had learned it from watching many English cartoons when he was a boy. I’d say his English was pretty great for just having learned it from cartoons!

When we got back home and everyone was leaving and Toby (my precious dog) was eating his rice, suddenly there was a noise outside the gate. Toby went streaking out the open gate, rice still on his snout and everything. He proceeded to fight with another male dog for the next while. Once the alien dog was out of his territory, Toby came back inside madder than a hornet. He paced around the yard. I checked him for injuries and made sure he wasn’t in pain. (This used to be routine practice. These dogs love to fight. They’re half wild I think. Once, we had to give him injections for an infection.) Once I realized he was perfectly fine, I patted him on the head and left him to his own devices.

——————————————

FRIDAY, JUNE 21st, 2024

Khulna, Bangladesh

DAY 15

Friday, the day of worship in Bangladesh. Friday is the Islamic day of worship, and since Bangladesh is 90% Muslim, that’s how the country runs. The weekend is Friday and Saturday. Government businesses are closed on Friday. And so, we also have church on Friday. Sunday is the first week day.

The morning is filled with Sunday School. First, we walk the 2 minutes down the path to the local school. The wide-eyed children sit on the mat on the concrete, cross-legged and close together. We sing 3-4 songs with the children, have a prayer, and then Trevor tells them a story. He has big picture cards for each story. Some of the kids listen with undivided attention, while others whisper and giggle and have no idea what is going on. After the story, we hand them pictures and crayons. They bend over their pictures and color to their heart’s content.

I have always loved the way these Bangladeshis love color. It shows in their clothes, their busses, their houses, and in the pictures the children color at Sunday School. They’ll cover the entire page with every color in the box. As they leave, they proudly display their pictures for us to see. “Very beautiful,” we affirm, and they beam ear to ear.

Next, we load up on rickshaw vans and ride to the next village. We walk down the mossy, tree lined path to a house. The owners are a super nice and gentle Hindu couple whose son attends. They have agreed to let us use their yard for Sunday School, and even built a little tin and bamboo shelter for us to sit beneath. They don’t let us pay rent. Every Friday, the man of the house sits and listens to the story. Sometimes, his wife sits next to him, but usually she’s busy whipping up something delicious for lunch.

Church is at 4:00. Khulna has five members: Shanto and his wife, Shati; Liton, a barber; Samir, who works for a doctor; and Kobir, the translator. There are also several neighbor ladies who attend every Friday.

The church is a small tin and bamboo building with a concrete floor. We leave our shoes at the door and sit on the plastic chairs. Out one set of windows is a pond; and beyond that, a busy road. Out the other set of windows is a 2-story chicken barn. The blue doors are open to the goats, geese, and ducks that want to join. (They are usually escorted out, although one time, a baby goat stood next to the song leader and peed on the floor.)

After the service, we walked to a nearby  dokan for some fried treats… puri, alu chop, and peaji. We stood in the grass indulging as Lisa and Shati went to retrieve Shati’s goats.

Suddenly we heard a shriek coming the road, the direction that Shati and Lisa had gone. we all scrambled to go see what happened. Lisa was running back our direction, panic written all over her face. “A boy was hit!” she said. “Call the men to come!”

Shati had to run to help. Lisa said she didn’t want to go near, because she didn’t want to see the child dead on the ground. Soon, Trevor and Shanto came running over. Small group had formed around the scene and everyone agreed: it was not the motorcycle driver’s fault. Everyone had seen the little boy run out in front of the motorcycle without looking.

I saw the boy and his mother’s arms. He looked to be about 3 years old. I was terrified of the worst, but saw that he was moving. Lisa didn’t know how he couls be alive—she had seen the child go flying after he was hit. His head had taken a pretty big blow. His mother carried the boy inside of their house. Trevor and Shonto followed, to see if we needed to take the boy to the hospital. Trevor checked to make sure the boy’s eyes were dilating and he could move all extremities. He was attentive and quietly crying on his mother’s lap. His grandmother told us that her oldest son is a doctor in Dhaka. Phew. At least they’re not clueless.

After that scare, we returned to Shanto’s house and drink cha on the porch with Shati and her boys. Shati said that, though she’d see many accidents in her life, this was the first accident she’d ever seen happen in right front of her. Many road accidents happen every day.

For supper, we went with Shanto’s family to one of my happy places: the chicken and naan place. There are several reasons, why it’s one of my happy places. First, great food. second, I’m usually eating it with great people. Last and not least, there are dogs. There used to only be one, but now there are three! They’re all well fed because they eat the bones that people throw out. And they’re gentle kittens. They love people, especially people who love them; and I think we’ve all come to learn that I love all dogs.

We dined outside by the road— plastic chairs and plastic tables and bus horns and motorcycles driven by young men who go too fast. We fed our scraps the dogs and took the rest home for Toby and the dog that sits in front of the gate.

When we got in the EZ bike to go home, it could hardly go. We couldn’t figure out why. Could it be because we had seven Americans inside the EZ bike? Seven Bangladeshis are no problem, but we’re a bit bigger. We actually eat things like meat. Could it be because we had eaten too much at the chicken and naan place? Could it be, perhaps, because the easy bike was running out of battery? The screen indicated it was running low. Trevor asked the driver about the battery and the driver just kind of shrugged him off. We poked along all the way back, half embarrassed, and fully amused.

———————————-

SATURDAY, JUNE 22nd, 2024

Tala, Bangladesh

DAY 16

On Saturday, we went to our outpost in Tala. It’s about a two hour drive down some good roads and some terrible ones. Harun and his wife, Joyanti are both members, and they have three children: Dipto, 18ish; Mukta, 14ish; and Daniel, 12ish. Dipto is working in Dhaka at a medicine manufacturing company. He occasionally comes home on the bus to visit.

We had a Sunday school in the church building with the few children who came from the surrounding village. There was no current, thus there were no fans, thus the sweat poured in rivers. We don’t try to look pretty when it’s hot in BD, we just try to survive.

After Sunday school, we stepped outside and were delighted that it was much cooler outside than in. We sat on the mud porch as Joyanti served up rice, cooked okra, and chicken curry. Her cooking was just as delicious as I remembered.

We opted to have church on the porch instead of inside the church building, as the current still had not returned. The occasional breeze offered some reprieve from the gripping heat, and the shade of the roof overhead offered respite from the burning sun. We sang a few songs (sang, chanted, whatever), and the service commenced.

There were some neighbors in attendance, and the porch was fuller than usual. After service, we packed up and bumped home.

We stopped a few times: once to buy sweets from a shop, once to use the washroom at a mosque, and finally to drop the translator off in Khulna City. Then we dinged around, buying groceries and clothes for Brock before going back to the fantastic Ramen Restaurant. I shall miss the Ramen Restaurant.

————————————

SUNDAY, JUNE 23rd, 2024

Khulna, Bangladesh

DAY 17

Shanto’s family came over for lunch. Pinky, Hridoy’s girlfriend of 6 years/fiance, made me a gift. She is very creative and talented. When I left from teaching here, she gave me a sari she had hand-painted. Today, she gave me a mug with all colors clay flowers she had made stuck onto it.

(One of Pinky’s designs)

We served them their favorite: hamburgers. Trevor also grilled some chicken wings and tenderloins. We made cabbage salad, fruit salad, baked beans, fried potatoes, and served chips on the side. Hridoy ate 3 hamburgers and 2 pieces of chicken. When we all walked to the river later, he was doubled over from a full belly. I didn’t have much sympathy for him, as we usually feel the same way after dining at their houses.

Most of them left around 4:00, but Shanto and Spondon stayed to tell stories and play with Brock, respectively. They left around 5:00.

In the evening the family played RED LIGHT, GREEN LIGHT. The clouds overhead were turning pink and purple with the sunset. The evening prayer call sounded for the Muslims, and the Hindu neighbors tinkled their bells and wailed their puja song. We started 4-square and played well into the darkness. Even though the sun had long gone down, the humidity lingered, and the heat from the day remained.

After a competitive game, we headed inside. Once we were showered and cooled down, we sang until bedtime. Long after the kids had gone to bed, Trevor, Lisa, and I sat around in the living room and talked; and when we looked at the clock, were shocked to discover that it was after 1:00am.

—————————————

MONDAY, JUNE 24th, 2024

Khulna, Bangladesh

DAY 18

Tulshi (our guard and friend) invited us over for lunch. In preparation for the mountains of rice we knew we’d have to eat, we fasted in the morning. We passed the time by playing a game around the table.

Finally, Tulshi called and said it was time to come over. We tromped down the pathway all strung out. One by one, we arrived to the little house. Just as we got there, the current went out.

Tulshi fretted about how the fans weren’t running. His sister-in-law fretted about how we can’t eat without fans. We fretted that they were fretting, and told them it was no problem. We convinced them that we weren’t delicate flowers that would melt in the heat.

And so, they served us rice. Mountains of rice, like I said. Then came dal (lentils). After that came catfish curry (my favorite). Then came chicken curry. After that, duck. Finally, crab tok.

(In one of my previous letters, I stated that I didn’t know what tok was. Ety told us that it’s tamarind and mustard oil, cooked with seasonings. Somehow, it turns into a soupy substance. Ety cooked it with tiny tiny crabs that Bishnu (Tulshi’s big brother and Ety’s husband) had bought in his traps. The crabs were about 1/2 inch in diameter and consumed whole.)

Ety fed us and fed us. She kept putting chunks of duck in my plate, and when she wasn’t looking, I snuck them back into the bowl. Once, she gave me the piece of chicken Brandi had snuck into the bowl. I asked how Tulshi remembered what all my favorite foods were, and he smirked and said “I can remember a little!”

After we were full to our necks and beyond, I walked around looking Tulshi’s cows and pigeons. I held the kittens, and even the big cat that kills baby chickens. Finally, just as we were leaving, the current came back. Good timing.

In the afternoon, Kylie and I took chocolate cake to my factory friends. They ordered it on my first day, and I finally made it for them. They yelled around about my coming and bring cake. (They aren’t the most refined folks. Maybe this is why I love them— we are kindred spirits.)

That evening, I had a payash invitation. The lady behind our house acted offended that I hadn’t come to eat, and informed me that she would be making payash for me in the evening, and I would be coming. She said the invitation was for everyone, but everyone else thought they were still full from Tulshi’s rice. So, Whitney, Brandi, and I carefully and precisely tiptoed down the dark, narrow pathway to their house.

They sat us down and fed us payash. Again, the current left, and we were left to sit and sweat in the darkness. She also served tea biscuits which are not my favorite, so I was thankful for the dog sitting next to me.

The lady of the house gave us a container of payash to take home for the rest of the family, which we promptly spilled on the floor. She cleaned it up and gave us more, and I made sure to hold it tightly with both hands. After 2 bowls of payash and lots of pats on the head for the nice dog, I left before they had time to feed me rice.

(The dogs in BD are their own breed. They’re precious and perfect and I love them all. The dogs in the picture have been painted pink because they have been vaccinated.)

————————————-

Tomorrow is my last day in the village before we go to Dhaka. We will be there for 2 days before I fly out on Saturday at 7:30 pm. I fly to Dubai, spend 11 hours there; then to Seattle, where I have a 7 hour layover. After that it’s on to Denver. I land at 11:55pm on Sunday, June 30th. Instead of making someone drive 5 hours to pick me up, I’ll take a shuttle to a hotel and fly to Liberal the following day at 2:00pm. It’ll be quite the trip, but after my coming, I think I’m capable of adjusting to just about anything. I’d rather not, so pray that I won’t have any surprises on my way home.

Love from Bangladesh 🇧🇩

-Kalli Sue