House-Hopping

Imagine being the son of Bangladeshi villager. Your family has very little land – just room enough for your straw hut and a small grove of fruit trees. These trees are basically the family livelihood, providing enough fruit to sell in the local market. You’re in college (Bangladeshi college – grades 11 and 12) and hope to attend university when you’re done. It’ll be really expensive, but your family agrees that you should be able to scrape enough money to make it possible.

Now imagine that one day, there’s a fire. It starts maybe in your hut, or maybe the neighbours. Because the straw burns so quickly, we probably won’t ever know. But it spreads at incredible speed, incinerating all the huts in the area in just a few minutes. The huts are close enough to the fruit grove that the fire spread to them as well. Before anyone can act, all of your material possessions are burnt. You have no house, no source of income, and only the clothes on your back. Suddenly, the prospect of university is utterly destroyed…

This is Bakul’s life. [Note: I spelt his name as ‘Bokul’ before. I since learned the correct spelling, but it’s pronounced like my earlier version] His home is just outside of Bogdur (the nearest market), so he took me one day. He told me his story, and about why he’s registered in DESI. University is now not financially a possibility for him, but he wasn’t satisfied with not continuing his education. So DESI gives him the chance to still get a good career, but without the unbearable costs. Still, the fire and the damage it did seem to haunt him. He told me once (I’m paraphrasing), “If only it had been a thief. A thief takes your money or your things. But he doesn’t take your house and he doesn’t take your trees.”

I know Bakul is not the only student at DESI with stories that wrench at the heart. There is basically a unifying theme among the students: the family is just so poor, but want good things for their son. All the DESI students get in through good marks and an interview, so they’re all strong, hard-working, dedicated students who genuinely want to learn. They deserve the opportunities we get in Canada, arguably more than a lot of other university students I’ve met. This is just one reason why DESI is such an amazing project to me.

Bakul’s house is not the only DESI student’s house I’ve visited, nor do I expect it to be the last. Sometimes I wonder if by the time I leave, I’ll have visited everyone’s! Actually though, many of the houses I’ve visited are not the student’s true home. For example, one day my ‘Nana’ (see last post) asked me to come visit his home. He introduced me to his father, mother and siblings. We enjoyed some fresh, hot milk (delicious!) and it was overall a good time. But after we left, I found out that these weren’t his biological parents and siblings. Not that my Bipul(Nana's real name)’s adopted or anything, but he has a sort of surrogate family in the local area. His own family lives very far away, and so it’s not practical for him to ever visit, even on holidays. So, this local family offered to take Bipul in while he’s at DESI. I also learned that they’ve helped out other DESI students in various ways, including financial support. As far as I can tell, they have no true motivation for doing this other than that they are good people. It is incredibly inspiring to see their selflessness.

Me and my 'Nana'



Left to right: Shukumar (likely spelt Sukumar) and Shojib, with Shyamol and another DESI student who's name I ALWAYS forget (he's only one of two that I don't have down. I don't know why I always forget only them...) in the background

Another student, Shojib, also has a ‘surrogate’ family for the same reasons, and that family is actually my boss’, Sepal (the Dipshikha Rudrapur area manager). Shojib brought me on a weekend to meet the Sepal’s wife and see the property. They have a nice, relatively spacious home, and just a few steps outside there’s a really nice place to sit, look at the surrounding rice patties, and enjoy a light breeze. We spent a good while sitting there with Sepal and some locals, where I noticed again improvements in my Bangla. I think for a while there I got a bit lazy (because I  can get by quite well with Roman and Uttam and at least a handful of the DESI guys just in English), but have recommitted. I can now fairly easily understand the ‘regular’ questions I often get: Name, country, profession, family members, etc. Anyway, after a bit Sepal’s wife offered us some food. Lucky for me, mango season has properly begun so that was definitely on the menu. We mashed them (by hand, ourselves) and mixed them with fresh milk and what we at home would basically call Rice Krispies. It made a delicious treat (But difficult to eat with your hand)! Also, I managed to embarrass myself when mashing the mangoes. As I squeezed one, it shot out of my hand and my hosts exploded in laughter. The story has since been told numerous times by Shojib.

On the topic of fresh mangoes, Kalpana has also had me back to her house several times. Kalpana (pronounced Kolpona) is the METI teacher I mentioned before who teaches Bristi and served me green mangoes (last post). Now that mangoes are in season, she’s invited me several times after school to enjoy a little treat; she lives quite close to METI. She’s also served me jackfruit, the weird looking thing none of you could identify a few posts ago. I was a bit nervous taking my first bite since I had heard horror stories about the smell and taste for foreign. Apparently, they tend not to like it. However, I think it’s DELICIOUS! Very sweet and in my opinion, a little bit reminiscent of banana.

Kalpana has shown herself to be a very interesting person. As I said her English is quite good, and it’s actually better than I thought. She is definitely in the top three for METI staff in English. Anyway, it’s allowed her to tell me many interesting stories. One is that she’s been to Germany. She went to observe schools there through Dipshikha’s German donor, but it’s interesting to me because it’s not often that you meet a Bangladeshi who’s been to the developed world, especially for as long as three months, as Kalpana has. The other really interesting thing I’ve learned from her is that while she only has one biological daughter of her own, she is caring for I think at least 4 other children, who are all, I think, her sister’s. Because her sister is poor and uneducated, Kalpana has taken on full responsibility of them. They live at her house, she buys their clothing and serves them food, and she is paying for their education – college and university both. It’s quite amazing to me, especially since while I think her family is fairly well off (considering the size of their property and the number of animals and fruit trees they have), I also know that a METI teacher’s salary isn’t exactly wonderful (less than teacher salaries at other schools, which are already not very high). Again, it can only be explained, for me, as true, inspiring selflessness.

Perhaps the biggest highlight since my last post was a small Hindu celebration we attended. It was at the same place as the village fair I mentioned in the last post (they were only a few days apart. Somehow they were related, but I’m not exactly sure what that ‘how’ is). There were much less people than during the fair, probably because there were far fewer shops and no ‘peripheral’ attractions like games or rides (Muslims, for example, would have no motivation to attend). Though I’m not at all positive, from my research I think this day was important because it was a new moon in the Hindu month of Jyeshta. This makes it significant to the Hindu god Kali, who appears to be the main deity for the local Hindus.

The shops that were around were mainly for food, and some specific Hindu-related vendors (such as those who sell white bracelets made of shell, which married Hindu women wear). But the main event was a live sacrifice of goats. Yes, that’s right. I wasn’t expecting it (nobody warned me until we were in the crowd, pushing to the front), but I actually feel so fortunate now to have been able to experience it. Many goats were sacrificed – their heads were bolted into place and then in one swoosh they were rolling on the ground. I don’t want to get too gory here in my descriptions, and already I feel as though some of you readers are squirming in your seats. But to be honest, the whole thing didn’t bother me as much as I thought seeing a live animal sacrifice would. Those who’ve known me since my France days will know that I’ve seen a bullfight. I would consider that to be a much less desirable thing to see, and would say that they probably can’t even be put in the same category. The sacrifice seemed like such a genuine, human action: when the goat was strapped in place, the soon-to-be-beheader would make a visible and deliberate prayer to Kali, and then once the goat was dead, its blood was poured at the entrance to Kali’s temple, which was just steps away. While I’m not a Hindu and don’t believe in Kali as a god, there was beauty, for me, in the fact that this sacrifice was made in her name. Rereading what I’ve just written, I don’t think I’ve really conveyed that beauty very well. But maybe you can trust me that the live it is so much different than to just read about it. Oh, and maybe it will make you happy to know that the goat meat of the sacrificed goat is subsequently eaten by the locals.

A goat in place for the sacrifice. A little blurry, but actually the best non-graphic one I got. Everyone was pushing and jostling and everything was happening so quickly that it was hard to get a good shot.

I’ve taken to going for walks fairly regularly in the afternoons after school. Bidan, of DESI, is my particularly enthusiastic walking partner, though we usually can convince others to join us. One day, Bidan brought me to a really neat temple not too far away (but that we got to by weaving through fields of maize and jute – really a cool experience). It’s just a local temple, again to Kali, and the building itself isn’t much to see. But inside (behind a fence, that is) there’s an amazing and intricate sculpture of Kali which I found really beautiful. Here's a photo, which can’t really give you a proper sense of the size, but oh well.

Kali, in a local temple.

On another walk, Bidan and Noruttam (another student we were with) suddenly pointed up excited into the tops of the trees. I looked and was gleefully surprised to see bats. But not just little things flitting around like you see during an Ontarian evening. These were huge, like the size of a crow or something. I thought at first that they were flying squirrels because they were so big, but they were definitely actively flying, not gliding. So cool!

Big bat!

Work is still going well, but I’ll save the few stories I have from that for another post.

For now, that's all I have to tell! I know I've been pretty bad at posting regularly, so I'll try to get back into things with more regular postings. I think you’d all agree that shorter but regular is better than almost-never and dreadfully-long. I’ll try my best (I’m busy, you know)!

By the way, we’re at day 50! Exactly halfway through! I really can’t believe I’ve been here this long, or that I only have less than a month left in Rudrapur!

-C