intro to bangladesh

9.03.08
Oh wow. It’s only been 4 days and I already feel like there’s too much to update y’all on…first, though – I made it safely to chittagong, Bangladesh – my new home for the next 18 months, last Wednesday!

While we were certainly sleep deprived, the rest of the volunteers and myself were all extremely excited to finally land in Bangladesh. For many of us, we’d been anticipating our arrival for months – I know I found out about my acceptance last May – so I’ve had a while to envision of what I was walking into (and, per usual in life, it’s very little what I expected…)


Anna, our field director, and a few other staff members met us at the airport. Thanks to some of the connections the staff members at AUW has, and the clout they have within the community (and, I’m convinced, the way they carry themselves – with a much-deserved self confidence), they actually met us at the terminal and were able to help us through immigration and customs. Immigration, which was a worry for everyone…we didn’t really know what to expect…went as smoothly as could have been expected and customs even smoother.

I think we all were wide-eyed and open-jawed as we drove from the airport into Chittagong…everything I’d heard about the city is true. Chittagong is a huge port, and there are shipyards full of gigantic tankers and container ships on the outskirts. Poverty is everywhere and rather abject. Beggar kids will come up to you, pull on your arms, bags and clothes trying to get your sympathy and money. The city itself is crazy busy – RIDICULOUS traffic – and rather dirty (the pollution may just be the death of me. Thank goodness for scarfs to use to cover our faces). Most of our group has started to feel the effects, sore throats and coughs that will last, apparently, until our bodies start to get used to the pollution that seems to be seeping into all that’s around us.

What has been the greatest treat thus far, for me, is finally getting to meet the WorldTeach and AUW staff that I’ve been speaking with for months – in person!

I think most people know my deal, but the quick 411 is as follows…
There’s this university called the Asian University for Women. It’s opening in 2009 and has an amazing cadre of people working for the betterment of women across South and Southeast Asia. The university, which has been in the works for over a decade, aims to provide higher education to women from all over the region, targeting that half their student population will be on scholarship, from rural, refugee and impoverished backgrounds.
The Access Academy is a program set up through the University that will provide the students from disadvantaged backgrounds with English, computer and math classes before they begin their university studies --- this is the school with which I’ll be teaching, and during this inaugural year we’ll be holding classes for 16 months before the students matriculate with the first class of the University proper (in the future, AUW hopes that this will constitute one-year of instruction, but things are very flexible right now). WorldTeach had been contacted about providing the instructors for the Access Academy, and that’s how I ended up in Bangladesh…obviously, it’s a real fairytale.

There are 11 other volunteers with me - 1 Canadian, 2 Australians and 8 other Americans, and we’re all the idealistic, “let’s save the world” types. Even in our sleep deprivation and jetlagged states we wanted to get to know each other right away.

Orientation has been planned for the next 3 weeks, and the students arrive on March 28th and 29th…classes begin April 6th…it’s all just so quickly falling into place. And, to be fair, I must mention that we’ve got a pretty sweet setup. We arrived, and we’re in temporary housing for the first half of orientation until our building is completed. Our temporary housing is a fully furnished 5-bedroom apartment and AUW actually wired the place before we arrived to make sure we’d have internet access here.
Our apartments – as we got to tour our future building (where we will be teaching, living, eating, sleeping and working out…10 floors. Possibility of going a bit stir-crazy…very good) – are AMAZING.

And to give the University their due, they’re doing a fantastic job in preparing for the first year of students and teachers. We’ve been supported thus far 110%, and their priority at the moment is to make sure we’re happy and comfortable. We’ve got a rather big task ahead of us…getting women to a university-level ability in English and math in just over a year…but we’re being set up for success. Our classrooms, which have between a 1:12 and 1:14 teacher to student ratio, are all air-conditioned and will be set up with multimedia capabilities. There will be a fully stocked library by the time we move in, a catered cafeteria, a computer lab, a floor dedicated entirely to space for our extracurricular activities, a gym and pretty swank accommodations compared to what we were all expecting. Our apartments looked amazing during our walk-through, and they hadn’t yet been completed. All the furniture is being constructed on-site, and looks beautiful, we’ll have internet in our apartments and air-conditioning in all the rooms…we all have spent a good amount of time in disbelief since arriving.


The view from our roof!

To quickly cover the highlights of orientation (which will give just a glimpse into the amazing culture I’ve thrown myself into), our second day we visited Foy’s Lake…which had been described in the Lonely Planet as a lake nearby our current location in Kulshi Hills, very scenic, you could rent a boat for a nice, leisurely ride, and walk to the top of a hill that overlooked all of chittagong…when we got to the gate, we were a bit surprised to see “FOY’S LAKE AMUSEMENT PARK” plastered above the entrance. Lonely Planet seems to have missed the amusement park aspect to Foy’s lake…although, in their defense, it could have been built up since 2004 when the Bangladesh guide was last published.
The first thing I noticed as I walked into the amusement park was the absence of beggar kids, who’d been harassing us since we pulled into the parking lot, and the immediate increase in women that were fully covered from head to toe. The entrance fee to Foy’s Lake wasn’t that expensive, I think around 100 taka (~70 taka = 1 USD), but obviously even that small amount means a large gap in socioeconomic standing and privilege. It was just a quick glimpse into the larger societal issues I’ll be fascinated with, I’m sure, for the next 18 months.


The entrance...

Saturday (by the way, Fridays here are holy days, so the weekends are Friday/Saturday…my classes every week will start on Sundays) we got to go shopping with one of the daughters of an AUW staff member who teaches English at an English-based school here in Chittagong. She was AWESOME in helping us pick out fabric for our new clothes. Being that Bangladesh is a muslim majority country, and that the standard of dress is very conservative, we’re all pretty keen on donning the local garb as soon as we can…it’s just more comfortable when we’re out in public to at least be in the accepted dress. The most common form of dress is the shalwar kameez – it’s a 3-piece outfit of pants, a long tunic and scarf. One of the first things we all noticed when we were driving into Chittagong was the absolutely gorgeous fashion of the women. The clothes are usually bright colors and patterns, and it seems like everyone has an eye for what will look great together and keeps up on the latest trends for necklines, embroidery, blockprinting, etc. So we were especially happy that once we bought our fabric we only had to wait a mere 18 hours before meeting with THE TAILOR…


searching through the fabric for patterns that catch the eye...

Oh, Bengali culture. There are some definite perks. For example, getting clothes made especially for you! The poor tailor showed up at 10:30, but had forgotten his books of examples and our choice of necklines…got back to the apartment around 12, and ended up staying past 5 to take the measurements and orders for 12 of us. Granted, the guy’s probably going to make a whole heck of a lot of money from getting 12 orders (about 3 outfits each) at once, but I still felt a little bad for him. The 20 minutes I spent with him laying out what I wanted, or think I want (probably more appropriate because we were all like, um, we don’t really know what’s going to look good or not…!?), gave me a very good idea of how personalized Bengali dress is – and might explain why we’ve seen many women really look other women up and down when they cross paths on the street…it’s not necessarily anything other than checking out their clothing, the pattern and decorations, and how it’s all put together. Apparently, I’m going to have to sharpen these skills while I’m here…


This is 'our' tailor, at least the only one we've been introduced to thus far and he's absolutely amazing and accomodating.

While he was still there we had our first BANGLA LESSON…we’re all feeling a bit overwhelmed with learning bangla (and luckily they’ve decided we’ll learn to speak first…write later, once we master the character alphabet down the road…waaaay down the road), but at least we’re all in it together. We also have a volunteer with us who’s originally from Bangladesh, so therefore she’s fluent in Bangla, and Mahmuda has been a lifeline thus far in translating for us.