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.
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.
posted by Stefanie at 8:35 PM
2 Comments:
i was surprised you even slapped the guy! i'm very proud! was it a soft slap? or a nice smack?
Hello ,
My name is Ben Wiselogle, and I'm the development intern at All Hands Volunteers (formerly Hands On Disaster Response).
Great post you had, and we absolutely love the fact that you're mentioning us in your writings. As you may have heard, we've changed our name to All Hands Volunteers and are no longer using HODR.org.
What we're hoping you'll assist us with is to change a couple of links on your page, just to help us with redirecting people to where we actually are now. Also, it'll keep your post up to date.
The links are:
home: http://hands.org/
donate: http://hands.org/donate/
volunteer: http://hands.org/volunteer/
Here's the pages we found that were still linking to our old site.
http://holegraintravel.blogspot.com/
Thanks so much for your help on this, and if you have any questions at all, just shoot me an email at ben@hands.org.
Sincerely and Gratefully,
Ben Wiselogle
All Hands Volunteers
Development Intern
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