Pohila Boyshack

Happy New Year! The year is 1415 and I hope it’s going to be a belter. 14^th April was Bengali New Year and I’m not sure how they measure it but that’s the year here. Although really they just use the same year and calendar as us on a day to day basis. I know I know, I haven’t written for ages. I have been writing a lot but non of it is suitable for this blog because it’s often angry and overwhelmingly dull and self-indulgent. I could have written about my holiday to India which was lovely and infinitely bloggable (if it really is an adjective). Indeed that was my intention on my return here but then I was mauled by Bangladesh. I’m going to spare you the details because they involve visas and half finished houses and funding and all manner of things I won’t bore you with, suffice to say that the last two weeks have been perhaps my toughest here so far and so I’ve been in no mood to write.

Now with that said, New Year came as a breath of fresh air. In Bengali it’s called Pohila Boyshack, hence the title, and it is by far the most fun I’ve seen Bangladeshis have en masse and in public. I was invited by my good friends at Rajshahi University to come and spend a couple of days with them so off I went. One of them insisted that if I was going to attend the festivities I had better look the part and so they bought me a panchabi and a dhutti. The panchabi is a long sleeved gown that is either made of cotton or silk and comes down to the knees. The dhutti is a very traditional, if slightly antiquated form of dress that is worn around the bottom half. It’s starched white cotton and is folded intricately around until it resembles a skirt or a kilt or something of that ilk. Needless to say that I looked pretty daft, and yet I drew compliments for the entire day. Apparently I looked like an old Bengali prince so I wasn’t really complaining. The first thing I noticed on our walk around the university campus where the festivities were taking place was that this was first big gathering I’d seen that didn’t appear to have any overtly religious overtones. There is a real divide here between Hindus and Muslims and so it was great to see everybody congregate together as Bangladeshis. The day seemed to allow everyone to meet on common ground.

I’ll be honest, that wasn’t the first thing I noticed, rather the thing that struck me were the women. Women here have a habit of being tucked away, out of the public gaze, either in the house or behind the burqa. And yet today they weren’t just visible, they were stunning. The vast majority were decked out in saris of all colours and patterns although most opted for the traditional white and red, often with a gold trim. The fabrics shimmered and shone in the sun and seemed to accentuate the grace with which the women here move. All around us there was the sound of laughter, singing and of traditional music, the harmonium, the khol (a type of drum), cymbals and bells. The air was heady with the smell of cooking as the food stands thronged with people eating ilish mach, a prized river fish, and rice out of earthenware bowls. I found it utterly enthralling and overwhelming. My friends did their utmost to make sure I was included and that I was comfortable but they couldn’t stem the almost constant tide of people coming up to talk to me and to take my picture. Almost all of them were polite and courteous and merely wanted to know where I was from and what I thought of the place but it felt a little bit like some kind of state visit and by five o’clock I was exhausted. I took my leave and went and sat in my cool dark room for a couple of hours in a rather serene daze.

Bangladesh is in the news again. This time for violent demonstrations against women’s rights. It’ll be in the news again, when the floods start, or when another ferry sinks, or to show lines of people queuing for rice. Bangladesh is plagued by poverty but it is not defined by it. It is an incredibly complex and diverse country and yet it is squashed into a strange two dimensional parody of itself in the western media. I want to tell you about my time here because you should know that Bangladesh is more than its poverty, it’s better than its Islamic extremism, it contains beauty and life and it’s these things that I want to cherish and preserve from my time here, things that I hope to share with you.

Development according to me.

Give a man a fish and he can feed himself for a day. Give a man a fishing rod and he can feed himself and his family for ever. Amen. If development had a Bible this would probably be on the front cover. The old mantra is well known, even to those who know nothing about development. Indeed, development itself has become such a powerful idea, and effects so many people that some could argue that it is a kind of religion. Now despite what I’m about to say I remain a priest, as it were, of this modern church. However, I am a rather troubled new convert and the catechisms of ‘gender mainstreaming’ and ‘rights based development’ don’t rest easily on my mind. It’s like I’m back at school singing hymns in assembly. Some around me are singing with complete conviction while I mouth the words half-heartedly, shuffling from one foot to the other, sniggering quietly with my friends. In short, I just don’t buy it.

My opinions are not formed on the basis of books; they are taken from my admittedly brief (5 month) stay in Bangladesh. I can’t speak about what I don’t know, development may be a very different thing in other countries but here it’s a bit – how shall I say – it’s a bit warped. To explain I’m afraid I’m going to have to give you a dry, but hopefully quick, crash course in how development works here so bear with me.

Right, first you have poor people. Now this lot are really important. You might assume that because they don’t have TVs and shower gel and things like that they’d be quite a demanding bunch. Well let me tell you they’re not really. You see we tend to shout quite loudly when we think we’re missing something but that’s because we think we have a right to it. This is really the thing here, the crux of the matter: rights. There are millions, literally millions of people in Bangladesh who don’t have any concepts of human rights, or the rights of the citizen, or the rights of the child, or any of those other things that Geldof and his monkey side-kick Bono carp on about. This means that they are just passive recipients of aid. This, of course, is far from ideal. To go back to that tired phrase; if a man or woman doesn’t realise that they have a right to a fishing rod then they’ll be bloody happy with a fish. And so what happens here is that lots of NGOs and donors, who I’ll come to later, have been throwing (not literally) latrines, and tube wells, and anything else they feel that the ‘poor’ need. In turn the Bangladeshis take what they’re given, whether they actually need it or not, and go about their business. The problem is that nothing actually changes. You get a few short term benefits but the people stay poor.

Now here comes ‘rights base development’. This is a very new and shiny idea with cool words like ‘duty bearers’. What it basically says is that until people are aware of their rights and are organised enough to demand them collectively then no real development can take place. Why? Because people need to be empowered so that they can develop themselves. They must become active citizens rather than passive recipients otherwise the body politic will whither and die. The social contract of the Enlightenment must be restored. You see? Lovely isn’t it.

So what’s this got to do with Bangladesh? Well as you may know the government here ranks as one of the most corrupt on the planet and doesn’t really function in any real sense to provide its’ citizens with the services they have a right to like healthcare and a clean water supply and a fair trial. So what in theory is happening is that NGOs (Non Governmental Organisations) are trying to work with the people and the government to ensure that the former can advocate for their rights and the latter can deliver on those rights. Fair enough. Where does the money come from? The donors; who are quite and eclectic bunch. They include big multinational organisations such as the IMF and the World Bank, they include the UN, they include the developmental arms of various governments from Canada, Britain, and the EU, pretty much anyone. They also include familiar names such as Oxfam, and Save the Children. If you want to develop a country you have to have serious amounts of cash. Oxfam et al. have serious amounts of cash. And this is really where the problem lies. You can talk about rights based development all you want but the problem is that you need money, or at least control over money, before you can have rights. The situation in Bangladesh now is that development is led completely by the donors. This is hardly empowering to the people.

Let me explain. If an NGO wants to do a project, for example, a women’s education project in ten communities, it needs money. What it does is it goes to the donor with a funding proposal detailing what it wants to do and how much it’ll cost. The donor then says yes or no. It sounds simple but actually what it creates is a bidding war. There are thousands of NGOs, employing hundreds of thousands of people who are all competing for the lucrative contracts with big donors. Each donor has its’ own policies and approaches and so what the NGOs end up doing is proposing programmes that they know the donor wants to hear. And what voice does the community have in all of this? Effectively none. They have no money and so usually a cursory study is taken to canvass their opinions, just to make the project look legit. Each programme is short term, usually for no more than a few years, and so all of these NGOs are effectively free-lancing. There is no job security and so they frantically create new programmes and, when trying to monitor the effectiveness of their performance, i.e. how much they’re actually helping the poor, they twist and bend the evidence until it comes out positive because they’re terrified that a failing project will lead to the funding being cut. And funding is cut here all the time. The thing is that there are no formal, legally binding contracts between NGOs and donors and so donors can effectively break deals on a whim, with no legal repercussions or compensation to be paid.

I fear this is becoming a rant. Am I losing you? Are you getting bored? There is a lot more to say but I realise I’m probably a lot more interested in this than you are so I’ll try and wrap this up. What we have here is a kind of blurring between what is a government and what isn’t. Bangladesh has become so saturated by development that it’s utterly changed the political and economic make-up of the country. All of the money, all of the services, are coming from outside. There are some exceptions but they are few and far between and merely serve to prove the rule. If we’re serious about development we have to rethink our entire approach in this country. Giving a man a fishing rod is fine, but we’re also supplying the fish.

The Family. Part Two.

An update on the family I know if you read the last blog. I was looking at the last one I wrote and how lamentable the ending was. Rather sad and lonely you see. Well I decided I didn’t want to leave it like that so I bit the proverbial bullet and made contact with them. I’ve been learning a lot of Bangla recently and so my confidence with language has increased. So I used the old tactic of making friends with the kids first as they larked around on the roof of the house. The ploy worked. The indomitable Sheela came over and chatted to me. I understood in my own muddled way that she’d seen all the plastic bottles I’d accrued and that she wanted them. So I said, why don’t I bring them over? She said fine so over I went.

The change in perspective was revelatory. For a start I saw a world that I’d only seen from above from ground level. The goats and cow were bigger than I imagined and the people were smaller. Perhaps that wasn’t the most astonishing discovery. It was actually feeling I was experiencing the family and being a part of it rather than just peering at it from the outside. They invited me to eat with them and so I finally got to taste the source of the beautiful evocative smells that had come drifting into my window for so many months. It was delicious. Piles of steaming rice accompanied by potato curry, meaty pieces of fresh fish and stewed green vegetables peppered with aromatic cumin and coriander. They kept forcing more food on me until I genuinely feared I was going to bring some of it back up. My protestations finally stemmed the relentless tide of food and I subsided into happy burps (which is fine here) and chatting in very broken Bangla. I went over the next day and started taking some of the pictures you see here. I also went to the shop and gave them some of the copies which they were dead chuffed with. It felt like a nice way to repay them for their hospitality.

Maybe I was shooting myself in the foot because now I’ve finally got to know them it’s even more of a wrench leaving them. Still, I’m glad I did. It can be a risk making friends when I have to do so much travelling because I’m always sad to leave them but I can’t really see the point of shutting myself away just because my life here is transitory. I feel honoured and privileged to have been taken in as a friend by that family. And memories of Sheela’s cooking will stay with me for a long time to come.

The Family

I suppose that now I’m leaving Rajshahi I should write about the family. The family I know better than any other in Bangladesh and so it’s really the closest thing to a family I have here. Not that I’ve ever been to their house or have ever had more than a perfunctory word with a few of them. My front room overlooks their house and yard and as my desk is in front of the window I’ve had many hours to be distracted by the view. I honestly think that they kept me sane during my time here by providing such a brilliantly human dimension to my experience which has sometimes been lonely and somewhat existential. I’ve felt somewhere in between an anthropologist and a Peeping Tom (although what is the difference other than perhaps a professional/amateur interest and approach?) watching them over the days. I have become aware of their relationships, of their dramas, of their daily lives and rhythms. The matriarch of the family is the indomitable, charismatic Sheela. She is probably in her early thirties, has incredible bronze skin, dark black shiny hair, and a powerful body after years of housework which, in Bangladesh, involves feats of strength and stamina that would confound most English athletes. She has two small children. She worries though because they can’t read or write and she doesn’t have the money to give them the education she wants for them.

Whilst I find the life very interesting from the outside the fact is that it seems to be somewhat of a treadmill with no spare money or time for social advance. There are nine of them in total consisting of three generations as far as I can count. However, even Sheela’s mum, the eldest of the family, is probably only in her fifties and so they’re a young bunch. They get up before I do and go to bed later than me and it would appear that the entire day is spent keeping the house ticking over. This is, of course, only a job for the women as the men go out to work long hours driving trucks or pulling rickshaws. And so, for the most part, this is a female domain. Indeed I feel privileged to be a party to this as the Bangladeshi house is a rather restricted zone for men. We are usually confined to the front rooms with no access to the inner workings. And so I get to see these women relax. I mean they are visibly more relaxed when the men are away; less shouting, more time taken over things, they laugh together and enjoy each others’ company. From my understanding this family still follows the rhythms of a rural household. There are two goats and a cow in the yard. They provide muck that is taken onto the roof and dried into patties which are then used as fuel for the fire to cook the food. Also on the roof beautiful clothes of every colour are dried, as is the straw that provides food for the goats and cow. There is a well pump which they use for drinking water and for washing themselves and their clothes. At the back of the yard there is a toilet. This is really just a bricked off area to provide a little privacy although privacy is not really an issue here. Indeed I’ve been confronted by blank stares when I’ve tried to explain to people here my need for privacy and how sometimes I just want to be by myself.

The children here are also fascinating. In England there seems to be a current trend to treat children like incredibly fragile objects. Not so here. The kids quite happily play on the roof, race up and down the bamboo ladder, balance precariously on brick walls, and are expected to help with many of the household chores, some of which involve using knives around twice their size. And yet the only times it ends in tears is when they get ignored for a while. One of them is a 'dushto chele' (cheeky boy) who tears around on the roof scuffing up the straw and throwing sticks. Here's a picture of the little bugger.

I’m really sorry I’m leaving this family behind because I feel genuinely attached to them. I believe I’ve learnt more about Bangladesh by observing their comings and goings than I ever would had I not seen it. What they think of me I don’t know. Probably a strange Gollum-like creature (if they’re conversant with the works of Tolkien) who peers from behind his laptop at them and who can only say one or two sentences before sheepishly retreating into his lonely prison cell.

A New Nation

I’ve been trying to write about women and the situations they face in Bangladesh. Lord knows I keep trying but it always descends into a swear-ridden rant. And so there is a back story to this that I promise to post eventually but I want to do justice to it first because its affecting me quite deeply. Needless to say that the situation is bad and very complex. So with that said I will continue. Now, I had a very interesting discussion with Mahmun, a Bangladeshi who works at VSO on the way down to Khulna where I’m currently staying. And what he said was this:

The situation that women are in now is a recent occurrence that has developed in the last thirty years in Bangladesh. You see Bangladesh was founded out of the Bangla language movement. Indeed it was this movement against the imposition of Urdu from Pakistan (which hardly anyone here could speak) that drove the independence struggle that culminated in the Liberation War. All countries require the foundations of a national identity on which to build. For Bangladesh this was not Islam but was the Bangla language. Sheikh Mujib was the first leader of Bangladesh and steered its people from armed and bloody insurgency to nation state around the idea of secularism. Indeed secularism is enshrined in the constitution. However, just three years into his rule Sheikh Mujib was assassinated in a plot designed and carried out by some disgruntled mid-level generals from the army. And thus the war on secularism began. From that time until the present powerful, conservative, and often radical Islamic groups have undermined the spirit in which the country was founded in their advocacy of a crude form of Islam.

But enough of the politics for the time being, its time to include some humans. Around thirty years ago, when Mahmun’s mum was young she took part in theatre and would go and play with her friends in the local park. Like most of her friends she wore the traditional Bengali sari. However, Mahmun’s sister, about the same age now, feels under a lot of pressure to wear the niqaab. On my arrival in Bangladesh I saw many women wearing the niqaab; that's the type of hijab that covers the entire body and the whole face other than the eyes. I assumed it was a ‘Muslim thing’. It didn’t cross my mind that this was not how things had always been. In fact the niqaab has no tradition in Bangladesh, it is an import from the Persian Gulf along with many Islamic ideas and practices that come under the common banner of Wahabbi Islam. This is the form of Islam that many believe Al Qaeda advocate and it appears to be corroding and corrupting Islam globally. According to Mahmun, women used to enjoy many of the freedoms that men did but that they have since been intimidated into their current state of servitude and fear.

Back to the politics I’m afraid. For even longer than Bangladesh has existed there has been a political group known as Jamaati Islami. Founded whilst Bangladesh was still part of Pakistan they are a group of conservative and often radical Islamists who actually fought against the Bangladeshi freedom fighters and who, despite growing calls for them to be put on trial as war criminals, enjoy not only freedom but prestige in many parts of society. It is this group who have been growing ever more powerful at grass roots level. One of their main practices is to make people choose: ‘Are you a Muslim or are you a Bangladeshi?’ The problem is that the Bangladeshi nation is a new one and so a national identity still doesn’t have deep roots in people’s hearts and minds. It is thus easier to dismantle this feeling of collective national identity and supplant it with a new international one based around religion.

So why do people opt for Islam over other identities? After all they are rational people who have their own minds to make up. A big issue here is the lack of education and widespread illiteracy. While it would be over simplistic to say that you need an education to have a critical mind a lack of it must certainly leave people less well-equipped to challenge new and powerful ideas sold by articulate and persuasive people. If people are not won over by sheer force of words then they may well be by material benefits. You don’t need to work in development to know that Bangladesh is one of the poorest nations on the planet. It is also one of the most corrupt. As I right this, the country’s two biggest political figures are facing charges and potential imprisonment for the huge amounts of money they embezzled during their respective terms. That would be like Gordon Brown being in a prison cell and David Cameron being on bail...........

Sorry I wondered off into a fantasy dream land there. Where was I? Oh yes, so mainstream politics is completely discredited and the government is only going to look after itself and to hell with the poor. It is in these conditions that Jamaati Islami (you remember them?) can thrive. With their incredibly wealthy supporters from some of Bangladesh’s biggest companies they can ply communities with healthcare centres, social services and, most importantly, Mosques and Medrassas from where they can inculcate more people. It thus becomes more understandable why the poor are siding more and more with this crude version of Islam. There have even been some allegations here that the head of the Red Crescent (the equivalent of the Red Cross) in Bangladesh is a supporter of Jamaati Islami and has been using disaster relief for victims of Cyclone Sidr to further the group’s cause.

All of this is rather worrying for the secularists of Bangladesh. Not to mention the Hindus, the Buddhists, the Christians, the Animists, and many Muslims to boot. So what is to be done? This is where I throw in my two pennies worth so you can stop reading now if you don’t want to hear me (by reading?) carp on. It seems fairly obvious that government must be made to work in Bangladesh for no national identity can take root without a national government that people can trust and that they feel can protect them from natural disasters, disease, and poverty. It also needs to be fair and grant people justice and for Allah’s sake politicians must stop pilfering millions of pounds that are supposed to be going into developing the country. I would also like to see Bangladesh learning some of the lessons from Britain. Now I know there were the train bombs and that bloke with a hook and the Daily Mail but other than that and Nick Griffin I think the UK is doing pretty bloomin’ well as far as curbing radical Islam goes. I don’t know much about it but I know whole communities are working together to take on the issue and have met with all kinds of successes so lets get some of these community workers out here and let them have a look. Maybe there won’t be any parallels but their might be and perhaps there are some things that could be applied here.

I know I moan about this place and Christ knows it bloody well deserves it sometimes but the people here a fantastic. Not in that Lonely Planet kind of way that’s gushing and usually features native pipe ceremonies. They’re REALLY fantastic. And they deserve better. And it would be a fucking shame if this country went down the drain because of some self-aggrandising, sadistic wankers. So come on, in the words of the great philosopher, musician and semi-professional footballer: ‘let’s get together and feel alright.’

Exercise

I’m actually quite an active person. I enjoy things like sitting and watching TV and stuff but I go a bit funny if I can’t exercise regularly. Fortunately I have opportunities to exercise here but there are some interesting elements to it that I don’t experience at home. First the big benefit: my running route takes me along the banks of the Ganges River and I can see India on the other side. If I catch it during sun rise or sun set which I usually do the sun is a huge red orb that actually looks like the Bangladeshi flag, it hangs suspended in the calm warm air, its doppelganger mirrored exactly in the glassy water.

The next rather lovely thing is that on my run the other day I came across a bunch of lads playing football. I’ve been looking for someone to play football with since I got here and now there are loads of them! Now, this struck me as a good thing but after five minutes on the pitch I was beginning to have some doubts. Firstly I hadn’t realised quite how unfit I was. My heart was palpitating in my chest and I was drenched with sweat. This wouldn’t be so bad if I could have sat back and let the game go on but I’m a ‘Bideshi’ you see, a foreigner. This of course means that I’m incredible at football, my legs a dizzying blur of step-overs and shimmies, able to score from fourty yards with my arse. And so every little bugger on my team immediately passed the ball to me expecting me to run and score. I did nothing of the sort. I stumbled on the uneven ground, gave the ball to the opposition and looked tired and apologetic. Luckily this tactic worked nicely as within twenty minutes they were barely passing the ball to me at all and I was able to feel my legs again. I love playing though because, for the time I’m on that pitch, nothing else really exists. Any problems and work I have to catch up on are left on the bench, there’s only the game.

Back to the jogging. When I’m at home in England I generally find jogging to be quite a zen activity. Here though it’s become...well...really weird. I’ll use the run I went on tonight to illustrate the point. If someone is running and looking very tired and puffed-out then the logical thing would not be to try and strike up a conversation with them. Not here. I am thus bombarded with questions and attempts to engage me in light-hearted banter. Today I was asked what country I’m from a total of ten times on a half hour run. I counted. Another feller rode next me on his bike and implored me to stop so that he could talk to me. I thought, ‘No! Why should I stop? If you want to talk to me you can bloody well keep up.’ Then there’s the heckling youths who, in fairness, plague many-a-run in England. There was one young lad who was posing on his motorbike with a girl riding on the back. He thought he would pit himself and his bike against me and my trainers. Is it just me or does that sound like a waste of petrol? All I can say is that I hope the girl was duly impressed. Then there’s the gaggle of smaller kids who cheer and clap me along. Now this is nice but I suddenly feel obliged to run like a marathon runner to live up to such a reception. So in between dodging motorbike racers, water buffalo, hecklers, fans, rickshaws, serial conversation-seekers, and a whole host of beautiful women in saris who I want to impress I’m actually getting pretty fit.

Christmas 2007

So that was Christmas. And what have we done? Gone through countless military checkpoints; been stopped and questioned endlessly by plainclothes police; drank enough rice wine with Tripuras, Chakmas, Marmas (indigenous groups) to do permanent damage. Only in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. This is the bit of Bangladesh with hills, indigenous communities, Buddhist temples, endless parties, alcohol, and an insurgency that ended ten years ago. Naturally the military government is against all of the above, being generally a flat funless bunch intent on turning the country into a Joyce novel; a convent of austerity, self-repression, guilt, frustration and (to coin the title of a book) a quiet violence. The area is thus tightly controlled by checkpoints, restricted communications and constant police harassment which, I can tell you, puts an abrupt end to carol singing in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve. Farther Christmas would deliver here if he could get a permit I’m sure. On the bright side, of which there are many, this is by far one of the most stunningly beautiful areas I have ever seen and, rather snobbishly I know, there is an extra allure to the place because it is utterly undiscovered by any tourism. Jungle-clad hills swathed in mist rise and fall for as far as the eye can see.

But really now, this needs a narrative. I’m trying to clap and hold on for dear life at the same time as our jeep hurtles through village and field and forest. The women are tucked in the back and I’m on the roof with the other men singing traditional Tripura songs. Greens of every hue blur by around us, broken by the odd shaft of golden light as the sun catches its reflection in a lake or river. The jeep grinds to a halt and everyone piles out. We’re on our way to a party hosted by a man called Dinosaur. Unfortunately the party is on the other side of the river we’re facing. This is the dry season and we are able to wade across easily. Crossing rivers and tearing through jungle certainly builds up an event. I recommend putting more natural obstacles in the way of events at home; people always party harder when they think they’ve earned it.

The welcome we get in the Hill Tracts is always incredible and, as usual, we are treated as honoured guests and made to feel like part of the family. We enter the back room of one of the immaculate mud houses. The rice wine is poured and we sit chatting although we can already feel the weight of expectation building in the room. For this is a Tripura party and it is everyone’s obligation, nay duty, to perform something. I have, once again, been roped into bringing my guitar. You see, everyone is to bring something; Miriam dances, I sing and play the guitar, and Rich...well Rich claims he plays cricket. And so, with enough rice wine in the system to steady the nerves and fuzz the edges I play a local favourite: ‘Last Christmas’ by George Michael. This is followed by some Bob Dylan, a host of Tripura songs that I hopelessly try and play along to and an Irish song that I don’t really know other than it has to do with a bell in Belfast City but that I can build up to such a tempo with the clapping and dancing that everyone eventually collapses. There are bars over the windows and the local children look in. Plied with alcohol, guitar in hand, and currently sporting a beard I resemble a performing monkey or a missionary or a bizarre combination of the two.

We emerge blinking into the sunlight, half cut and full of food, so not really different to Boxing Day back home. Crossing a river, however, should only be undertaken sober. The things you learn. I've put some more pictures on my Flickr account just to make you more jealous. Happy New Year.