Happy (Bangla) New Year

Monday, 14 April 2008

The year is 1415. According to the Bangla calendar, that is. We rang in the new year by doing what we always do. Heading out to work at 8AM and returning for a meeting at 6:30PM. But we also went to the town field to take in some of the festivities that evening - a large performance stage, booths selling snacks, and a sea of Bengali men reveling in it all. It reminded me of the huge fields of men and cows for the Eid festival back in December, sans bovines. Strangely, I think it was more comfortable to have the cows around.

Our group of about 6 volunteers quickly gathered a crowd of gawkers, nothing unusual there. As we huddled in a tight circle and sweated profusely in the density of human mass, I felt a hand grab my butt.

I have never been groped or grabbed before, not at a club or concert in the US, not while traveling in any country, not on a crowded train, nothing. I kind of considered myself lucky to have avoided it, and I kind of felt like I carried myself in a way to discourage it as much as possible. The wave of emotions that hit me in that instant is indescribable. In the grand scheme of things, a one-handed butt grab is a rather benign physical violation, but still.

I whipped around, saw the hand slip through the crowd, traced it up to a face, and slapped him with my left hand. Then I started punching him on the shoulder, screaming at him not to touch me, and then, because I couldn't think of what else, I yelled at him "jiao! jiao!" ("Get lost!") He just stared back, and then slipped off.

Because of the crush of people around us and all the noise, most of the other volunteers with me hadn't even noticed what happened. I struggled to maintain my composure, while my mind reeled through all the things I could have or should have done. I was constricted by the crowd, and thus only flailed about with my left hand. I should have punched him in the face with my right, surely a stronger shot, made him bleed, or grabbed him by the shoulders and kneed him in the crotch, stomped on him on the ground, spit on him. Or grabbed his arm, not let him go, screamed at Valla to take a picture of him, and then find him later and "give him beat." I surprised myself with how violently I wished I could have reacted.

Fundamentally, I felt drained and upset, and where he'd grabbed me felt persistently dirty. Ugh. How shitty that all these adorable girls who live here will grow up and have to deal with men like that. Plus there's all that rioting going on in Dhaka with men freaking out about proposed (not even) equal rights for women. Bangladesh seems caught somewhere between 1415 and 2008.

Blug. So the only thing to do is focus on all of the good, kind, respectful, helpful males I've interacted with in Bangladesh. Mr. Ayub from Agrodut, who helped us on our very first day of assessing in Rayenda. Mr. Nurul, who I can totally picture scooting around San Francisco, with his progressive work, messenger bag, and kicky sneakers. That one bus driver who made sure I had no problems on a solo trip to Dhaka. The fruit guy who always gives me the fair price, and usually throws in a free orange for me too. Mojibur, the first man we built a HODR Half for, who always smiles and shakes my hand, and stops to chat with me even though we both have no idea what the other is saying. Rajib. Rajib's father. And so many others, more than I can name, and definitely more than the minority with whom I've had a negative experience.

Happy 1415 indeed.

Lottery!

Sunday, 13 April 2008

Suz, Valla, Ken, Emma, and Paul have been hard at work inventorying everything in our house - each bed, chair, hammer, spoon, drill bit, everything! - and bundling them into packages for our community lottery. I put together a list of 95 more needy families in our community, and spent the past week distributing lottery tickets. Combined with the party invites that also went out, volunteers have been getting a lot of asks for tickets of some kind, although lottery tickets seem to be preferable. It's kind of odd, when I delivered the lottery tickets, people seemed thankful, happy, smiling. They were excited to be in the lottery. These past four months when I informed people that we wanted to build them a house, they reacted a lot more sedately. Maybe a slow head bobble to the side, a "haaaaang" ("ok/yes/maybe/mmph") of acknowledgement. Bizarro.

Anyway, people started gathering at 8:30AM, even though we weren't planning to begin for another half hour. We'd roped off the yard, stationed volunteers around the perimeter, and used scrap lumber to outline a walkway: first stop, the 1/12 scale model of a HODR Half, where you draw your lot number, second stop, Suz's table, where she logs your lot and records your pickup time, and finally, the prize board, where you see what you've won as Rajib announces it game show host-style to the excited crowd.

Men and women naturally formed two lines, something which I should totally expect in this culture, yet which surprised me nonetheless. I guess it's still not natural for me to see this. Promptly at 9AM, we began. Rajib had told me that people were excited about this lottery because everyone would win something. I assured the crowd that because of the random nature of the drawing, you could be last in line and still win the best prize. This seemed to keep people patient, happy, and relatively orderly. I warned that if there was any fighting in line, I would rip up that person's ticket. Only once did I actually need to threaten this; scrambling for something to rip, I tore a page out of my notebook and shredded it to bits, only to realize that it was my original list of families in the lottery. Oops.

Good prizes started going right away. Tea tables, sets of plastic chairs, bed sets complete with mattress pad and mosquito net, power tools. Yet because we've accumulated so much stuff, all of the lots are actually pretty nice. A lot of scrap lumber that can be used in housebuilding! A set of tools! A kunta (digging bar)! More plastic chairs! A cooking set! Lovely, our housekeeper, and Selim, our wood guy, really got into it even though neither of them was actually in the lottery. The both hovered at the exit, eagerly anticipating Rajib's announcement of each prize. When the first of two bicycles was won, Lovely jumped up and down while Selim screamed and clapped his hands. Teenage boys clamored around the winner and vigorously clapped him on the back, like he just scored a Quidditch goal or something. I don't know why I just referenced an imaginary sport.

Finally, only two prizes were left. One was a bicycle. Neither person was present, so we decided to draw for them. The first prize...some housewares and tools! This meant the second bicycle was left. Suddenly, a woman walked up with her ticket. She lifted the veil on her burka and drew the last prize - the bicycle. The crowd erupted in cheers and she lifted both hands in the air and opened her mouth in what was honestly more of a gape than a smile, but maybe that's an excited reaction in this land of haaang-ers and head bobblers. An amazing finishing to a fun event. Even though it's sad to be ending the project, it's nice that we're going out on such a high note.

Party, party!

Saturday, 12 April 2008

With less than a week left, Project Rayenda is officially in closedown mode. Inexplicably, our numbers have swelled and now we're at 18 people.

Part of HODR tradition is to end each project with a goodbye/thank you party and a giveaway of all our tools and household goods to the community. Tonight was the goodbye party! In typical Bengali fashion, the event included a decorative gate, elevated stage, and monotone Bengali speechmaking. Slightly less conventional was the entertainment provided by the volunteers and a slideshow of photos, complete with a medley of Bengali pop tunes from the finalists of Bengali Idol. I kid you not.

We invited all of the HODR Half families, the families in our immediate neighborhood, and friends/work colleagues from the surrounding areas. Rajib had the fun idea to distribute "kid tickets," cards stamped with the HODR logo which gain the recipient kid entry into the special front seating area of the party. In the days leading up to the event, Saddam, a neighborhood staple who looks like a human incarnation of a Simpsons character, had taken to lurking around the front yard and falling into step with me as I entered or exited the property. He charmingly rattled off the usual questions (what is your name, what is your country), before popping out his hand like a cash register slot. "Ticket? Aamar ticket?" ("My ticket?")

TC volunteered to help me hand out the kid tickets the night before the event, since he knows the names of most of the kids in our neighborhood. We thought that it would be least conspicuous to go out at night and distribute the tickets door to door. We were mistaken. As soon as the first ticket was handed over, a crowd swarmed about us, clamoring for tickets. The kids formed one of those magical Bengali lines, where it doesn't look so long and almost seems orderly, except that it never actually gets any shorter because people keep slipping in the sides. One lady felt no qualms about karate chopping TC in the back to get his attention; turns out this woman was our immediate next door neighbor!

Anyway, the party was a great success. Agrodut Foundation, the local NGO we've done a little work with, was our host. It was so fun to see everyone, community members and volunteers alike, dressed up and treating themselves with more care and attention. The little girls especially were amazingly cute, wearing their finest salwar kameez with as much glittery thread possible woven into the fabric, and with their hair fastened in numerous pigtails. It also seems to be a fashion to dangle what looks like a keychain fob from a pigtail over the middle of your forehead. At any rate, it was really fun.

Highlights from the party included Alan performing a song with John's guitar, finishing off by jumping off the 3 foot high stage onto the lumpy, even lawn below while wearing sunglasses and brandishing the guitar over his head, an amazing Hindi song performed by our downstairs neighbor, and the slideshow. The 15 minutes of photos flew by; people were completely transfixed at seeing themselves, their children, and their community on a 6'x6' screen. (Keep in mind that in this community, a 6"x6" black and white TV screen in a tea shop is high entertainment, and attracts a crowd of about 50 men who cram in to watch.)

At the end of the evening, we served each of our 250 guests a biryani box dinner. In the past, we've been told to keep our expectations low, to manage any sort of distribution tightly, to be careful of stampeding and general disorder. The people here are very used to receiving relief goods, and perhaps have a mechanized impersonal approach to the whole thing. Instead, we asked everyone to please sit and let the volunteers serve them, emphasizing that we had enough for everyone and we wanted to serve them since they have taken such good care of us. It went off without a hitch. Volunteers with tall stacks of boxes fanned out like ants, and within two minutes, everyone had their food. Amazing! Again, it was nice to see people treating themselves in a gentler, more respectful way.

So, with the party done, we have the lottery to look forward to tomorrow. Here's hoping it goes as well as the party!