from Bogra

Visiting the village

2011-12-31T17:09:00.004+06:00

While the whole family was together for Christmas, we all went out to the village to visit my host family. Elias & Maia loved being outside and seeing all the animals.

Khala (Aunty) had made three different varieties of the the pitha sweets that are special winter treats. Made from milk, date sugar, coconut, and rice flour, they were a hit -- and not just with the kids.

Thanks to Hanna for the pictures -- I think the first 2 are hers.

map

2011-12-31T17:03:00.001+06:00

The relief work described below was in the Dumuria and Dakhin Bedkashi areas shown -- right on the edge of the Sundarbon forest (dark green)

View Larger Map

Water after the cyclone

2011-12-24T14:57:00.003+06:00

[Note: this was eventually put up on the MCC News site. Because it took a while to go up, I put it up here in the mean time. It is a report on a recent trip to survey MCC-funded cyclone relief work.]

Shahanara beams as she works the pump lifting water from the village pond into their new sand filter. She is one of seven women who are in charge of maintaining the filter, and her sense of pride and ownership is obvious. But mostly she is happy to have clean drinking water within a hundred yards of her house. Before the filter was put in last June, all the women of Pathorkhali village had to walk several miles and pay for pump water, or make do with murky pond water.

Water before and after the filter.

Pathorkhali village is in the center of the area worst ravaged by hurricane Aila in 2009. In the coastal belt of Bengal, it is not just the wild sea and storms that remind villagers of their vulnerability to nature: tigers often cross over from the Sunderban mangrove forest to carry off livestock -- or people. A young man of Pathorkhali was recently mauled by a tiger, and early they found remains of a child in the mangroves. The village is built along the embankment that protect them and the surrounding farmland from the tidal flows. On the edge of the village, a hundred yards of the embankment, torn out during the hurricane, is still missing. After almost two years of remaining open to the daily tides, the embankment was finally patched further back from the river earlier this year.

The broken section of embankment, and Sunderbon jungle beyond

Dead trees stand as testimony to the damage wreaked by two years of saline water inundation. Over much of the region, only date palm trees were able to survive the standing salt water. Rain water is only slowly washing salt from the fields, and much of the region is still barren earth at a time when it should be laden with ripening rice.

In search of water to drink

As the people of Pathorkhali and surrounding villages struggle to get back on their feet after Aila, drinking water continues to be a big burden. Especially for the women who sometimes spend half their day collecting it. In a country blessed with abundant water, this is an place where finding suitable drinking water is particularly difficult.

In most of the area, attempts at well drilling either stall at rocky layers, or else fail to bring up sweet water. Beside the pond in Pathorkhali is the rusting stump of a well that was sunk to 800 feet, then abandoned when it only brought up salty water. And the ponds that had been the traditional sources of drinking water were filled with salt by Aila's tidal surge.

Abandoned wells are a common sight in Koira

The pond that supplies Shahanara's filter has been a source of cooking and drinking water for three generations. The grandfather of the local patron landowner dug the pond as a gift for the community. When MCC's local partner Uttaran surveyed the area, this pond was a natural choice because of the community ownership, naturally low salt content, and lack of other drinking water options.

The pond sand filter is a simple system: a hand pump lifts water from the pond to let it slowly filter down through layers of sand and aggregate. This filtration, along with natural biological activity, renders the water clean and safe for drinking. The only maintenance needed is periodic rinsing of the filter bed, which is the responsibility of Shahanara's committee. But installation was not just a matter of building the filter -- most of the work was on the pond: emptying it of salt water and excavating it to build up the banks above flood level.

A pond sand filter with the inlet pipe visible in the background

Ongoing needs

Pathorkhali's pond filter now attracts women from all around, serving about 400 families by Shahanara's estimate. Rashida Begum is one of those who comes from furtherest away. She walks an hour from her village, trying to keep up with the needs of her extended family of 12. "We use six or seven kulshis a day, so getting water can take most of the morning," she says as she sits resting beside the well. "Sometimes my grandchildren come to help me. But when they are in school, I come alone."

Rasida leaves the well with her kulshi full

Rashida tells me of a pond in her village that also has sweet water, asking if they could not also get a filter there. I'm here just to see the MCC-funded filters. But the staff from our local partner, Uttaran, assure Rashida that they will remember her request and see what can be done. Uttaran is well aware of the continued need for drinking water in this area -- especially water sources that are designed with future flooding in mind.

Flooding is likely to happen with increasing frequency in this area. A rising sea level is a culprit in the long term, but more immediately -- and ironically -- new flood embankments are to blame, due to the changing siltation patterns they cause. But compared to the struggle with flooding, the drinking water problem is a relatively easy problem to solve.

No trainer wheels!

2011-12-11T21:45:00.005+06:00

My many-talented nephew now can ride on 2 wheels, at just 4 1/2 years old. Yesterday he also learned how to start all by himself. Learning to stop is hopefully next...

a bike that fits

2011-11-05T15:00:00.002+06:00

Being about 10 inches taller than average in Bangladesh has its problems, many of them related to transport: my legs don't fit into tightly packed local bus and three-wheeler seats, I can't stand up straight in most busses, and bicycles frames don't fit. After riding for 2.5 years on a too-small bike, it is nice to finally have a frame that fits a little better.

I had the frame made at a bike shop in town, and fitted it with mostly local parts. Only the seat, bottom bracket, cranks, freewheel, and hubs are brought from the US. The final total was Tk. 5,100 ($69) for the local parts, and about four times that for the five US drivetrain parts.

(The flashy red was not intended: I wanted it to look like a normal 'China Phonix', but they were out of black and silver rims.)

Trees

2011-10-31T08:49:00.000+06:00

…they grow fast here in Bangladesh. These were all planted from relatively small saplings just over two years ago.

a time to build and a time to tear down

2011-10-26T13:50:00.003+06:00

After Masud and his family left (see the previous post), the demonstration farm project was re-evaluated. And it was clear that we were not going to learn a lot more with the farm, so it was not worth the effort and expense required to keep it going. So yesterday a team of carpenters came to take it down -- the same team that had put it up only 2 1/2 years ago.

By evening there was only a few concrete pillars standing among the scattered rubble. A sad sight. I know the project was more effort to maintain than it was worth, and the buildings were hastily built, nothing pretty. But the farm had slowly become home to Masud and his family, and slowly become a part of our lives.

Masud

2011-10-25T19:05:00.004+06:00

Next to the workshop and guesthouse/office of our Sustainable Technology Center has been a small demonstration and research farm. The idea was that the farmer family would live there rent-free but also use the technology and farming methods our staff recommend. The cash flow from the farm would also help us better understand the economics of our crops and farming methods.

The economic monitoring part was doomed from the beginning. It was in the farmer's advantage to show a loss: the loss would incline MCC staff to help out with free seeds or free straw or other various marginal assistance that was excusable because of the experimental nature of the arrangement. So it was always rather hard to tell how well or badly they were doing. After several threats to leave over the last year, our staff decided not to agree to any more special allowances, so the family finally did leave 2 weeks ago. Their claim of not being able to make a living was a stretch, given that they purchased land in their village and left with several more goats and cows than they came with. And it wasn't a week before they were calling us asking if they could come back.

But thankfully, I wasn't involved in the money issues. So I knew Masud and their family as our most friendly neighbors. It took months before I started to catch on to their thick, coarse village dialect. But we shared many evenings talking with our guards, many hot days working together around the project site. Masud took me out to his village home, and had me over for dinner and iftar and snacks. I patched up more cuts and scrapes on their kids than I can remember. Every afternoon, they brought over fresh milk from their cows. Often when working at my desk, I'd hear a "bhai…" ('brother') and look over to see Masud grinning in between the window bars. I'll miss that big goofy smile.

[Thanks to Joey for these two great pictures.]

The farm had been christened the 'adorsho kamar bari' (Ideal farmstead), so our staff often jokingly referred to Masud as our 'adorsho kamar,' ideal farmer. Ideal or not, Masud was a farmer through and through, a real village man, with no pretense of being educated or sophisticated. One day, when I offered him tea, he told me about how tea was the vice of the cities: "In the cities, a man will sit down at a tea stall and drink one, two, three cups of tea. Before you know it, there's 10 taka wasted!" (10 taka is about 8 cents.) Another day he asked to borrow my phone, but asked me to dial the number for him. While I was dialing, he told me about his brother, the educated one in the family, who knew all about pressing buttons. Other times he would ask me to come along to the local haat (weekly market) -- just to be part of the crowd, and see the wares, which he would describe with big, excited gestures.

Eid

2011-09-03T22:42:00.001+06:00

The Eid-ul-Fitr came last Wednesday in Bangladesh. By Tuesday afternoon I heard it was official: TV news channels had annouced that the national Moon-Sighting Committee had confirmed sightings on the new crescent moon in the south of the country -- thus marking an end of the month of Ramadan. This was the first year I've been in my village for Eid-ul-Fitr, and it was fun to see the eager anticipation and then the excitement when the day was finally called.

Kids in the village were out looking to see the moon themselves, and got busy with their stockpiles of firecrackers. For the men, it was a time to catch up with friends and relatives back for the holidays. But for others, the announcement meant that preparations began in earnest. Khala, the mother in my host family, was cooking all evening, and then up again at 3 a.m. to start work on all the sweets that made fresh for the day.

Eid day began with dressing up in the new Eid clothes -- long panjabis for the men. And then after the morning Eid prayers, the visiting began. I was taken off to town by one neighbor, and then on another tour by Shuvo and Anwar (below). By the time I finally got back home that evening, I had visited a half dozen homes, two historical sites outside town, a zoo & park, the operator's room at the Bogra cinema, a foundry and a textile mill. I'd also eaten sweet shemai in every home, plenty of sweet tea, and had four very rich meals of pulau rice and meat curry.

Thankfully the next couple days of the holiday were a little more relaxed: mostly just at home with the extended family who were visiting, and a couple dawats (invitations).

elections in nondokul

2011-07-05T19:26:00.006+06:00

The excitement had been building for weeks, with evening campaign meetings, posters going up everywhere, and lots of talk at the village stores. When it got down the last week, it was all-out: miking (campaign slogans blared from rickshaw-mounted loudspeakers), missils (marching, also with lots of chanting of slogans), and motorcycle rallies.

Work duties and rainy weather kept me partaking in the missil merriment, but such things didn't keep everyone away. Rabi from next door -- who had been complaining that he couldn't make it to his school in the next village because of muddy roads -- nevertheless managed to march in the rain around most of the union during several days of missil-ing. (He had been paid for hanging up posters, but the missils were purely for the fun of it.) I did get in on the campaign tea -- drinking courtesy of two competing candidates on the last two days of the campaign.

When the big day came, voters trudged through the rain and mud to the village school, where they lined up to stamp a ballot card by their candidate's marka, or party logo. When I stopped by after work, the voting was finished. But I think every umbrella in Nondokul was out in the school field as the votes count began.

Every now and then a policeman would step outside the schoolhouse to announce an update. Immediately one group or another would burst out with shouting and dancing, unperturbed by the drizzle and ankle-deep mud.

When the final count was in, Tubewell marka had been elected as Council member for Nondokul's ward; Waterpot marka was vice-chairman for our block of 3 wards; and Ink-well & Pen marka was chairman for the 9-ward Union. Yesterday, Tubewell marka slaughtered two cows to feed his new constituency in the 3 villages of our ward. Tomorrow, I hear it is the turn for Idris Ali of the Ink-well & Pen (below); I haven't heard how many cows it will take to feed all his 9 wards.

picnic

2011-05-20T20:54:00.003+06:00

This week was a picnic with our immediate neighbors -- my host dad's three brothers and their families. Here a 'picnic' means that you cook and eat outside with music playing (perhaps the Bangladeshi equivalent of a backyard bar-b-que). In this case we were just in the open area in front of the house. It was very good biriyani with sweet yogurt for desert. Before and after the food there was a lot of singing and dancing, so it was a very lively and long evening.

Rabbi, in the center below, is my substitute room-mate. When roommate Shuvo is on night duty, Rabbi comes to stay over ...so I'm sure not to be lonely.

A mango storm

2011-05-14T14:42:00.004+06:00

Last week I was at our main office when a storm blew up. Hungry for katcha am (unripe mango), I hurried down to the entrance, where several others were already waiting. We watched for several minutes as the wind whipped the mango trees in our courtyard ...then finally a couple mangoes fell, and I rushed out in the the rain to grab them. But the wind kept getting stronger, and soon mangoes were falling from all the trees, along with leaves and branches. Then suddenly, in a fierce gust, the tree in front of us snapped in half and filled the courtyard with its branches.

So what was looking like a record mango crop suddenly was cut in half. I think many other areas also had similar losses.

But the mango did not go to waste. Lots was eaten fresh with salt, and much more was pickled as spicy amer achar.

Harvest

2011-05-14T14:23:00.003+06:00

It is harvest time for the irrigated rice crop, and this year it is a good harvest. Most of the harvest work is done by hand, but the larger farmers use simple motorized threshing drums to speed up that work a little.

During harvest time it seems like everyone is busy, and the roads turn into straw drying floors, and cycling takes a little extra effort.

Being uncle

2011-05-14T12:37:00.002+06:00

This is from Easter weekend, which I spent over at Jacob & Hosanna's. The picture is from their blog.

...and a bidi factory

2011-05-06T16:34:00.002+06:00

Just behind the CNG station is a bidi factory, owned by the same family. ...the same family, in fact, that owns the land MCC leased for our project site. From what I'm told, this bidi factory was where they started and the base from which they later got into other business and real estate.

Bidis are handrolled, unfiltered cigarettes -- sold for Tk 6 per pack of 25. That's 4 for a taka, or 3 a penny. So getting your nicotine fix doesn't cost you much here in Bangladesh.

...and making the bidis doesn't pay much either. I was told these Mukti Bidi employees are paid Tk 16 per 1,000 bidis rolled, and that they can roll up to 12,000 per day. That would close to Tk 200 per day (over $3), and I doubt they actually get that much. Whatever it is, I doubt any of these employees have made it big like the factory owner ...or are getting free (mukti = free) of financial worry any time soon.

A CNG station...

2011-05-06T16:10:00.002+06:00

My new room-mate Shuvo has a job at a CNG station (Compressed Natural Gas). Most of Bangladesh seems to run on CNG; as low as gas prices are, it ends up being much cheaper than diesel or gasoline. It also runs much cleaner, so this has been great for Bangladesh's urban air quality. But Bangladesh hasn't kept up with exploration & drilling, so the gas supplies can't keep up with demand. This summer Bangladesh's big fertilizer plants, which use gas as feedstock, are shut down, and CNG filling stations have to shut down for several hours a day of rationing.

Because of frequent power cuts, the compressor can't be run off of the electric grid. It has its own 500 kW generator -- inside this building:

Here we all are in front of the generator. Shuvo is second from left. His cousin Anwar, 3rd from left, is the station manager, and got Shuvo the job. He also often stays over in our room.

Durga Puja

2010-10-20T18:08:00.002+06:00

This is the first year I've been in Bangladesh for the Durga Puja festival. It is the biggest of the Hindu pujas, but I've never been in the country to see what a big event it is. Now, staying with a Hindu family, I got to see the full experience.

Day 1 & 2 (সপ্তমি, অষ্টমি)

After weeks of discussing travel plans, ordering clothes, and general excitement about the upcoming puja, the first day of the puja arrived, and the festival cooking began. Below is my breakfast plate the second day: puffed rice mowas and smaller naru -- made of coconut or sesame mixed with sugarcane molasses (and delicious, a new favorite of mine). New saris, pants, shirts, shoes, ...and even a new showcase made their appearance.

Day 3 (নবমির)

This became the temple tour day. After sunset, my host family rented a CNG (CNG-powered little 3-wheeler), and we were off for the first mondop -- the tent set up for the Durga figure. At the first one, I took a few pictures and then was suprised to discover everyone was already headed back to the vehicle. After a couple more visits, the routine was clear -- everyone walked up the the mondop to do pronam (greet it) -- and then headed right back to the CNG, perhaps grabbing a snack on the way. By about midnight, we had visited 26 modops ...and spent altogether way too much time crowded into the CNG (7 passengers in a tiny vehicle designed for 3).

Day 4 (বিজয় দশমী)

On the last day, the festivity began late afternoon, with loud music and dancing around the mondops. And vermillion red was everywhere -- with people smearing it on each others' faces and clothes. Before sunset, Durja and the other images were loaded onto vangaris (flat-bed rickshaws) and taken over to the river. At the river's edge the dancing continued, even more vigorous than before (from the smell, obviously fueled by some sort of liquor). Finally after the sun set, Durga was carried down the bank and laid down in the river; and after a lot of splashing around in the shallows, was released to float downstream.

cobra in the kitchen

2010-10-11T17:17:00.004+06:00

This morning my work at our project site was suddenly interrupted by an uncharacteristically urgent cry from Kalam, the cook. Reaching for some food on a lower shelf in the kitchen, he was startled by a noise. Pulling his hand back and looking down, he found himself staring at the raised hood of a black cobra.

Here's a little clearer picture taken a few minutes later -- after it was lured outside and then clubbed with a bamboo pole. (The final job was done by the only woman on the premises -- our farmer's wife)

The Naja kaouthia, or Monocled Cobra, contributes it's fair share to the making this part of the world the highest density for snake bites.

(From Wikipedia - Snakebite)

So now we can add cobras to the list of occasional house-mates -- along with mice, shrews, geckos, spiders (some 3-4 inch diameter variety), cockroaches, various ant species, and sparrows.

host family

2010-09-27T18:49:00.002+06:00

I've been at my new host family's place almost a month now, but still haven't got pictures up. I'll probably have to wait till a puja day to get a picture of everyone... but here are few in the meantime. Below is the verandah where cooking, eating, and talking happens. Like village homes, their house is a set of small room around this central courtyard area.

The old couple have two sons and one grandson -- Piash. I always get a warm welcome from Piash when I get up in the morning, and he's also been a good language tutor. (For a 3-year-old, he has very clear Bangla.)

And a fish-eye view of my room. On my bed I have a shitol pati, a reed mat that feels cooler in the summer than cloth sheets. When I told a student friend that I had slept on one for the first time, he was amazed -- how could I have survived the hot seasons before without one?!?

Eid with family

2010-09-18T09:45:00.002+06:00

Last weekend was Eid holiday, the end of the Ramadan fast. I headed over to Rajshahi to spend a couple days of holiday with my brother's family. My niece is growing up fast, and the big recent change is that she has grown out of her extreme clingyness to her mom. Now she comes to me to play, even when Hosanna is in the house. Here she is talking into a jambura peel

...and Elias laying into the special Eid sweets (paiesh).

Newbigin

2010-08-07T19:55:00.002+06:00

I just finished reading Lesslie Newbigin's 'The Gospel in a Pluralist Society.' It is a book I should have read back in college: an excellent discussion of pluralism, as well as the related epistimology.

Newbigin looks at pluralism's roots in the secular Western worldview, with its characteristic division of knowledge into fact and belief. "Facts" are explained through empirical science and philosophy, and everyone is expected to agree on them; there is no room for differing opinions. "Belief," on the other hand, is private matter of personal choice. Religions are tolerated and all equally valid, as long as they are confined to the belief category. So pluralism is limited these beliefs and values, any attempt to challenge the reigning secular worldview in the realm of facts is an attempt to "impose values." (Though tolerated, religions are understood as a sociological phenomena -- which are relevant when talking about human values and superstitions, but irrelevant otherwise.)

This approach fails to see that religions are entire worldviews, or 'plausibility structures' (patterns of belief that determine what is deemed plausible or reasonable within a society). As such, they deal with all knowledge, and they do not make the have same fact/belief divide as the dominent secular worldview. These worldviews are embodied in languages, which are only partially translateable. We have a vast array of religious books available in English, allowing us to get a superficial understanding of other religions, and a "illusion of having an overview of all these different traditions without having had the actual experience of seeing the world through any of them" (p. 57).

In the first few chapters, Newbigin deals compares the ways of knowing and thinking in secular worldview vs. Christian worldviews. Belief is often set against reason: science and philosophy is built on reason, while religion is a matter of belief. But really, each worldview is a tradition of reasoning; a person learning the tradition accepts the theory 'in faith,' until he has enough of the pieces together to be able to think through that tradition. This tradition forms the basis for reasoning and dealing with experience. Comparing the secular and Christian worldviews:

The difference between these two traditions is not that one relies on reason and the other on revelation. Both are inconceivable apart from their rationality. The difference lies at the point of contrast between the two ways of expressing the original experience: "I have discovered" and "God has spoken." (p. 60)

In the Christian tradition, reason is employed not by an autonomous or sovereign individual, but in relation to others and God, as part of His ongoing story.

death in the village

2010-07-16T15:05:00.003+06:00

Lal Miah (Mr. Red) lived just across the fields from us. Four days ago he died of rabies. One of our guards, Chan, knew him well and told the story:

When a mad dog attacked two months ago, Lal Miah came away from the fight with lacerations, not just bite marks. But no one could persuade him to get the rabies injections. "God let this happen, let his will be done," was Lal Miah's response to Chan's pleading. Everyone knew Lal Miah as kripon -- a stingy hoarder -- so guessed the 2,000 taka price tag for the injections may have had more to do with his refusal. (To illustrate just how stingy Lal Miah was, Chan described how he ate wheat bread for every meal -- big slabs of wheat may fill your belly, but imagine giving up rice to save a few taka on food!)

Soon after his death, Lal Miah's relatives came from Dhaka to take care of his stuff ...and what a lot of stuff there was. Four van-rickshaws loaded up the scrap steel and other sell-ables. After they were done the house was a pile of ruins.

So the man who didn't want to pay for medicine, had everything he owned sold to pay for his funeral. Today was the milad, the prayers for the dead, which were followed by a meal for everyone in the village. The Tk. 30,000 they earned from selling Lal Miahs stuff paid for a cow and 120 kg of rice. He had no children, so his land will then be sold to provide for his wife and old mother.

Lal Miah's was the second untimely death this month. Just a couple weeks earlier, a young girl from the other end of the village committed suicide. She was from a poor family, and had a boyfriend in another village who was more well off. When the parents found out, they intervened, and she hung herself. Her grave is in a bamboo grove right across from our house.

flags

2010-07-03T18:35:00.003+06:00

Since the start of the world cup, I get asked "which team do you support?" almost as much as I get asked "where are you from?" (which is a lot). Everyone has there team ...and, as you can see from the flags, there really are only two options. Half of the country is in mourning after last night, and the other half is holding their breath for tonight's match.

Even the gypsy camp on my bike ride to town was flying their colors.

Gazpacho

2010-04-14T18:22:00.003+06:00

I made this for the first time this week -- a perfect meal for Bangladesh in March & April, when Tomatoes are down at Tk 5-10 a kilo (3-7 cents/lb) and the weather is at it's hottest. Along with Middle Eastern yogurt-cucumber soup, it is now one of my favorite hot-weather foods. Any other good cold soup recipes?

Cambodia

2010-04-14T18:02:00.003+06:00

The MCC annual retreat this year was in Cambodia. After the retreat time was over, several of us headed up to Siem Reap, in the NW part of the country. This was the capital of the old Khmer empire, and the area is dotted with stone temples.

Until recently many were overtaken by the jungle, but now there were restoration projects everywhere. The scale of the buildings was amazing -- Ankor Wat (above) is the largest religious building in the world. Despite the scale, the walls are covered everywhere with some of the most intricate carving I have seen.

Another highlight of the time in Cambodia was lots of good strong coffee. (The white is condensed milk.)

Lilahazir Foundry

2010-02-28T22:04:00.003+06:00

Yesterday I was biking my usual route home, coming through one of the more rural sections of the route. In a clump of trees, between several acres of rice fields and a pond, I saw a red blaze through an open door. I stopped to look, and soon was invited for a tour of foundry ...as the sweaty bustle of the pour kept up its pace.

Molten steel and slag were pouring out of different sides at the base of a 20 ft furnace. The steel was caught by men in T-shirts and lungis with steel buckets on 4-ft poles. After tossing in a chunk of silica, they hauled it over to the sand molds, set into the floor all over. As they poured, others held the mold lid down with bamboo poles.

Most of the castings from this foundry are for tillers and threshers and other locally produced farm equipment. This foundry also had about 10 lathes for machining the castings -- all within a space about the size of my parents' apartment.

Toward the end of the pour there was a explosion of sparks from one of the molds, and I looked over to see an old man frantically shaking out his shirt and lungi. My guide told me they hadn't held the lid down hard enough; gas can build up underneath and then blow back with steel and sparks. The amount of safety equipment at the foundry was about the same as the ship-breaking yards. (And with the intense heat, they probably have even less motivation to wear anything more than their lungis.)

Ship breaking

2010-01-09T13:29:00.004+06:00

This last week I spent in Chittagong, and it finally got to visit the ship breaking yards, just north of the city (clearly visible on Google maps). These are where ships go to die, and they are a booming business in Bangladesh. About 700 ships are decommissioned each year, and most of them end up in Bangladesh, India, or Pakistan. With it large tide variation, the Chittagong yards are well suited for the larger ships, and takes about 70 of them a year (the number is growing as new yards continue to open).

The ships are run aground under their own power during high tide, and then stripped of all the valuable smaller parts. They are then cut up into sections that are pulled up onto the beach with cables and winches. After a lot more cutting, moving, and sorting, the steel and parts are hauled off by truck. Almost everything is done by hand and with hand-held torches; The trucks and winches are often the only machines around.

Some of the steel hull plate and pipe is reused intact, but most of the steel goes to re-rolling mills or other steel re-processors in the area. Several miles of the Dhaka-Chittagong road, just inland from the yards, is lined with shops selling various other ship parts: pipe, valves, stainless steel galley (cooking) equipment, furniture, fire equipment, electric cables, generators, tools, insulation, lifeboats...

It is an amazingly efficient recycling system, with just about everything being reused. About 100,000 are employed directly or indirectly by downstream industries. Estimates at fraction of Bangladesh's steel supplied by ship breaking range from 30-80%. On the other side of the country, in Bogra, all the electric wire I've bought came from the ship yards.

The first two pictures above are not my own; the second yard we visited agreed to let us in, but only without cameras. As the number of ship breaking yards grows, newspapers have been reporting the pollution from the yards, mangrove forest destroyed to make room for them, and the appalling worker conditions. Ironically, my best buy from the ship breaking stores was safety equipment -- eye, ear, and breathing protection. Those seemed to be piling up and serving as mice homes, while all the yard workers worked without any safety equipment, sometimes not even shoes.

Eid, poisoned fish, and stolen cows

2009-11-29T18:09:00.003+07:00

Yesterday was Eid al-Adha, the feast of sacrifice. I woke up to a commotion over by the village pond. It was full of people and nets, pulling out fish of all sizes ...and all rather limp. Someone had poisoned the pond during the night with pesticide, so this was the rush to get them to the fishmonger's cold storage as soon as possible. The owner sent off at least eight 3-wheeler tempos before the remaining dead fish were left for whoever wanted to dive for them. This picture was taken today, when there were just a few kids left hoping to get lucky.

One proud fisherman with his catch. (As to whether the pesticide-killed fish would be eaten, there was no question.)

Through the bamboo grove behind the boy, our neighbour family had lost 3 cows just a couple nights before. Thieves had broken in during the night to steal them and sell them at the inflated Eid prices. The chance of these thieves or the fish poisoners being brought to justice is pretty much nil. Like Isaiah 1, Eid at Nondokul this year was lots of sacrifice, but not much justice.

Hiking

2009-10-06T21:54:00.003+07:00

With the Eid and Durga Puja holidays falling close together this year, everything was shut down for about a week. Together with my house-mates, I headed across the border to India, up to Darjeeling for the week. From there we set out hiking up to Sandakphu (3600 m, 12,000 ft). Behind Nate and Phil is Kachenjunga, third highest peak in the world.

Here it is again with our trekker's hut in the foreground.

Looking the other way is our trek for the next day, following the ridge that divides India and Nepal. Everest and the Annapurna range are in the background.

We didn't meet many people that day of hiking -- just a few Nepali boys out taking care of their sheep and yak ...or playing football (soccer). Here's one of their fields, with the Nepal/India border stone in front. What you don't see in the picture are the thousand meter drop-offs on either side of the field.

Looking back on the day's trail and down on our second night's stop, the trekker's hut at Phalut. Sandakphu is the last bluish hill in the distance. That day along the ridge is certainly one of the most beautiful walks I've ever done.

The fall

2009-09-01T20:37:00.002+07:00

By now most have heard about my fall. The panel broke under me and I ended up unconscious on the floor with a fractured wrist, cracked rib, and lots of other bruises and scrapes. It was over 4 m down, so it certainly could have been a lot worse. I'm thanking God I came through as well as I did.

I'm told I was only unconscious for less than 5 min, but I don't remember anything for about 6 hours of last Monday. One of the mysteries the memory loss left me with is how I decided to go up on the roof in the first place. I had been looking at it for the last week, but never was planning to go up myself. The last I remember is being anxious to get to lunch, waiting around for a colleague to finish mixing some roof repair cement for the carpenters.

About 1 mile from our project site is the Bogra medical university hospital, with a nice new CT scanner. So they had my brain scanned within about half an hour. Evidently things looked ok there. I'm still having some headaches, but I guess that is normal.

Monsoon

2009-08-19T21:57:00.002+07:00

We've finally gotten some real monsoon weather. A slow start and very little rain in July had people worrried and set the rice planting back. But now it has been raining all week. Today it let up some after lunch, so Nathan, Rana, & I headed out to our project site:

In the flooded sections of town the roads looked like canals and bikes and rickshaws owned them.

Solar eclipse

2009-07-23T22:12:00.004+07:00

I was all ready for this once-a-century eclipse at 6:58 a.m. But the time came and went with nothing but a little dimple of shadow in the sun. After I gave up and was getting breakfast around 8, it suddenly darkened to a yellowish glow. ...and yes, I should have guess it. It was then 6:58 a.m. of the old, non-daylight-savings time.

Bangladesh introduced daylight savings time for the first time a couple months ago, and it has largely been a fiasco. Most people still seem to operate on the old 'actual' time, rather than new 'digital' time. (Phone companies cooperated with the government, so everyone's cell phone did switch over.) Universities protested and refused to switch time. The eclipse is not the first scheduling mishap it has caused.

The picture is bbc's -- but that is somewhat like what I saw at 7 a.m. digital time.

Cry, the beloved country

2009-07-22T23:01:00.002+07:00

Cry for the broken tribe, for the law and the custom that is gone. Aye, and cry aloud for the man who is dead, for the woman and children bereaved. Cry the beloved country, these things are not yet at an end. The sun pours down on the earth, on the lovely land that man cannot enjoy. He knows only the fear of his heart. (Chap 11, p. 74)

Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply. Let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs through his fingers, nor stand too silent when the setting sun makes red the veld with fire. Let him not be too moved when the birds of his land are singing, nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or a valley. For fear will rob him of all if he gives too much. (Chap 12, p. 80)

I finished reading this novel of Alan Paton last night, and it is the best I have read in a long time. Set in South Africa in the '40s, the story is full of this fear. Fear threatens to overwhelm all the characters, but they respond so differently to it. Some run from it, try to block it out, or overpower it. And a few struggle to love despite it, and overcome it with love, not fear or hate. For the black main characters, this love must deal with the injustice that has broken their tribe and land, yet as one says:

I have one great fear in my heart, that one day when they turn to loving they will find that we are turned to hating. (Chap 36, p 276).

The introduction quotes a speech by Paton which ends with his belief that a solution to his country's profound problems will come, not in the use of power, but in the the "weak thing, tender thing" love. This was a conclusion that came out of a life dedicated to working with the prison system and with those hardest to love, and probably also a reflection on 1 Jn 4:18.

Maia, 6 weeks

2009-07-22T21:31:00.005+07:00

The smile is definitely coming. She gave me a couple fleeting ones, but not for long enough to get a picture.

Jackfruit

2009-06-24T18:46:00.003+07:00

Here's another fruit post. The jackfruit (কাঠাল, kathal in Bangla) is an incredible fruit -- it grows right off the trunk of the tree and can get up to 80 lb.

I have lots of good memories of jackfruit eating contests, but the season has been overshadowed by the mango season, so I only bought my first one yesterday. Here my roomate Nathan and I are finishing up the dissection....

I haven't been buying jackfruit because they come in XXL & up; not in convenient one-snack-size packages like most fruit. Fortunately both my roommates enjoy jackfruit, so this small was finished off in one day. Many foreigners, and quite a few Bengalis, are put off by the smell or consistancy. But it has an important place in Bengali culture -- even getting the spot as 'national fruit.' I've just been learning the dozen or so different names for the soft and firm varieties.

Everything on the jackfruit is used -- the seeds are great in curry, and cows eat the outer skin.

Mango season

2009-06-13T14:32:00.003+06:00

I'm in Rajshahi during mango season, and there's no better place for mango. Rajshahi is the the big division (state) capitol, where my parents and brother's family live. It is also at the hub for the mango growing region -- and any Bengali will tell you that the best mangos come from here.

So this morning my nephew Elias and I walked over to the nearest mango market. For over 50 meters on either side of this road there are unbroken lines of mango sellers -- and this is only one of several mango centers in town.

I restrained myself after filling a couple grocery bags, as I'll need to carry them back with me to Bogra. At Tk. 35/kg (about 25 cents/lb), even a MCC food budget allows for a lot of mango.

With mango in cereal, in salads, in smoothies, in popsicles, and after every meal, our garbage usually ends up looking like this:

Maia Jubilee Thomas

2009-06-13T13:46:00.000+06:00

My new niece, born June 5 at 1 a.m.

Maia timed her coming nicely. I was just finishing up Bangla classes for the week when my brother Jacob called with the news that she was on her way out. They were staying near a hospital just a few hours north of Bogra, so I was able to jump on a bus that afternoon, and made it up there just before they went in to the hospital. I got to take care of Elias then and the next day while Jacob & Hosanna recovered.

Here she is a few days later with her older brother Elias. He likes to kiss Maia, but his tricycle and balls are still more interesting than a sleeping sister.