Of course coming to Bangladesh, I hadn’t actually met Robin yet, but she’s been inexplicably helpful over the last couple months amidst last-minute planning. So, like I said, she connected me with the Jennings and I stayed with them for my first night in Dhaka. The next day, there was a “western style” baby shower thrown at the house for Dipty, a family friend, and then I met up with Robin and we headed to Mirpur 11 – home for the next five weeks.
It’s a nice little spot, and Robin and I were greeted by her newly adopted kitten Mishti (the Bengla word for “sweets”) as we finally made it into the house late on Thursday night. Bengla weekends span from Friday to Saturday, so Robin and I got up early on Friday morning to head to church. We made a pit-stop at the Hand & Cloth office on the way to pick up some of the kantha blankets that had been completed and were ready to be dropped off at a coffee shop to sell.
After church, we went to the Jennings for lunch then to a delicious coffee shop (apparently the best “real” coffee anyone’s been able to find in Dhaka), then we made a couple stops by garment stores before catching the bus home.
Life in Bangladesh is strangely similar yet so different what I experienced in Nepal. At first glance, things are very much the same: crazy traffic, lots of people, fruit carts, busses, smelly markets – all that good stuff. But Bangladesh has with it a whole new set of challenges and new things to get used to. First off? I thought Nepal had a lot of people (particularly pedestrians, walking along the streets)… Sure, I might’ve been right. But it’s nothing in comparison to the masses of people in Dhaka. Bangladesh is the most densely populated country in the world. And there are people everywhere. Traditional dress (the salwar kameez – identical to kurtis in Nepal - or a saree) is expected, and also the most convenient way to abide by the country’s expectations of women’s modesty with a long shirt and scarf included. As a general rule: cover the butt and chest twice.
Language is also a difficulty. For one thing, very few people (particularly in Mirpur) speak any English at all, and all my time spent learning Nepali is far less useful ajaabholi. But the fortunate thing is that Bengla and Nepali are very similar to one another (some numbers and foods are even identical), and working with the women has helped me start to pick up things pretty quickly. More than anything else, it’s just a matter of me facing the fact that I am really “starting over” in a sense. I’m in a new country, and that means there’s a lot of learning to do, both cultural and linguistic.
Traveling to work is always an adventure – it’s a little over an hour’s walk, or a bit shorter if we opt for a combination of rikshaws (bikes with a buggy attached) and/or busses. We went into the office on Saturday, but Sunday was my official first day as an intern at Hand & Cloth. My first task was essentially figuring out exactly which projects I’d be focusing on during my five weeks here.
Hand & Cloth is a business that produces kantha blankets, quilts made from two used sareees stitched together by hand. It was established here in Bangladesh only a month ago, meant to provide a means of employment for a group of women who have undergone training and counseling at Children’s Uplift Programme (CUP) for the past year. As CUP’s website explains, a mere year ago the women at CUP (and now Hand & Cloth) were “living on the streets surviving through begging for money or selling sex. Many have been trafficked abandoned by their husbands, suffered violence and exploitation. All were sexually exploited or at high risk of being so… a year later these women’s lives have been transformed.
I’ll be spending the majority of my time between teaching English to the women, doing “art therapy” activities with them, activities with their children in the daycare upstairs, and photographing and assisting with Hand & Cloth’s marketing. On my second day, I had the women participate in a sort of “therapeutic” art activity with the help of Jenny who translated for me. I had the women do finger painting in an effort to encourage them to practice expressing their emotions in a different way. But the catch was, their eyes had to be closed. We explained that we wanted them feeling what they were doing, expressing their thoughts through movement. It was a difficult task, particularly with something so unfamiliar to them. After the initial “blind” painting, they were allowed to open their eyes and continue their work. It all turned out beautiful. But more than that, I was stunned by what they had to say about their work afterwards. When asked what she painted and why, Jala said that she painted the moon and the stars because she used to look up at them and wish for a better future. A wish come true.
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