Journey Within A Journey

Last week, a small group of students and teachers and myself went on a trip to the Bangladeshi Hill Tracts and Chittagong. It was amazing.

I'll be honest, I was a little nervous about the trip. Actually, while I'm on the topic, let's talk a little about my struggles against comfort-seeking and worrying in my time here. I'm going to be embarrassingly honest here and admit that I had some non-nonsensical anxiety-ridden thoughts before the trip, all of which are symptomatic not only of being my mother's daughter, but also of the upper-middle class American lifestyle I have grown up in and through which I have always been able to and have learned to need to protect myself from anything potentially challenging, different, or uncomfortable, even if it meant separating myself from other worlds and people. I wondered things like where were we going to get clean water? Will the food make me sick? If the food makes me sick is there a hospital I can go to? Am I going to be able to poop? (if you know me well, you know this is a pretty predictable question for me when traveling, right, Josh Franco?)... I am not proud of these thoughts, and I'm not proud of my fears and my tendency to associate difference with danger and unwanted discomfort. Trust me, I would much rather see everything as a potentially beautiful encounter with life and its diversity. For one thing it would allow me to move out of my head and back into this place; so often I have realized that I haven't really BEEN here. I've been stuck in my head thinking, worrying and being generally overwhelmed by the experience of so much newness and it has often kept me from taking in moments and developing relationships and events. Plus my academic and feminist training hates that worrying, change-avoidance voice in the back of my mind because that voice immediately compares everything to American middle-class comfort, or it plays some sound clip from NBC Nightly News about germs; that voice always feels icky, like reading early nineteenth-century ethnographies by European anthropologists about "Hindoos" or "Mohammadians". The thing is if I'm being totally honest, I am struggling against a xenophobic and elitist narrative that I have internalized, even though I have sat in classrooms for nearly 10 years learning about the evils of such narratives. THAT's why the voice in my head sounds like 19th century douchebag-I've learned how to be a nineteenth-century douchebag. How does one undo such learning so that one may inhabit and embrace a new place ....

What, did you think I was going to have an answer after 9 short weeks? Yeah, right. I fail every single day to counter my middle-class American douchbagery but I have my moments and I see other people around me do some pretty sweet conquering of their elitism and xenophobia. There are people in my group who are beautiful models for me for the kind of approach to a new place and new culture. Rather than immediately approaching challenges and difference in a comparative manner or one that calculates the potential danger of an event, they approach these events in a manner that appears to have allowed them to move deeper into the heart of Bangladesh and to form much tighter bonds with this place and the people they encounter here- they just straight-up dive in, do that different or potentially dangerous thing, and talk to people who've done it their whole lives about it. I have my days when I momentarily inhabit this mode of being, but my lifetime of being the comfortable American individual means that its been difficult to teach this dog the new trick of embracing the new. But sometimes I am just so overwhelmed in a moment that I am not aware of what is really happening until it is over, and in those moments I pretty much always wish I had done something differently and I pretty much always wish that I had just talked more. I will say that the language barrier is one of if not THE greatest challenge to connecting with and inhabiting Bangladesh; my speaking has definitely improved but I have alot of trouble hearing Bangla, which makes shared communication really difficult. I'm definitely coming back next year because I have alot of work to do if I want to really be able to connect with Bangladesh and people I meet here.

This entire experience has been good for the worry-wart, comfort-seeking, change-avoidance part of myself. Back home, Travis is really good at pushing me out of the shell that this part of me creates, but I've always known that I was going to have to do some pushing myself if I was ever going to change my tendency to seek comfort over, well, real life. I've learned that traveling in Bangladesh will also help push you out of your comfort zone. I can say I certainly did some things I would not normally have done and I managed to inch myself, at least a little, out of that shell and move out of my head and into a state of just being here without worry or comparison-which is good seeing as how I want to spend alot more time in Bangladesh after this summer. I've got alot of Bangla to learn, alot of cultural norms to unlearn and alot of neuroses to kick, but at least, for now, I have learned what I need to do to more fully be here in the future. Ok, with that aside, lets return to the original catalyst for my meditation of learning how to really BE in Bangladesh: our trip to Rangamati and Chittagong. You will have to forgive me for the length of this post; we did a lot and went to a lot of places so bear with me.

We took an overnight bus to Rangamati. It was a really nice bus but it was hard to sleep on. The road we took to Rangamati was a two-land highway and our bus driver really loved to pass the trucks, buses and cars in front of us. So we did alot of dangerous passing which often meant that we ended up on the side of the road, or we pushed other vehicles onto the side of the road. Needless to say, there was a lot of near-accidents that made sleep difficult, mostly because the driver kept stopping the bus with incredible ferocity. I had a sleep patch over my eyes, so I actually had no idea that we were in many near-accidents; I just thought there was a lot of traffic...ignorance is bliss.

When we arrived in Rangamati, we hadn't really slept or eaten in a long time, so our breakfast of cheera (flattened, toasted rice), mishtie dhoyee (sweet yogurt), bananas (kola), omelets, pickled vegetables and cha (tea) was definitely one of the most delicious I can remember. I'm not sure how we managed to have the energy to do everything this first day without any sleep but we were running on a combination of Tasty Saline (an oral hydration powder that is a must if you are sick or if you are spending more than an hour outside) and sweet tea which seemed to work just fine. It was a long day so I will just share the highlights. We had a super awkward visit to a village school. The school was amazing and we had the opportunity to talk with the students, which was helpful because my Bangla is at about a 2nd-grade level...if that...so when the students spoke with me I could actually communicate. And we sat in on one of their Bangla literature classes; the teacher asked us to read aloud a selection from their book, which was awesome because we totally sucked and the kids totally kicked our asses at reading (although they were really polite as we struggled through the reading and didn't laugh). The awkward part of the trip was when our tour guide ( a rep from Rotary International) had us pass out books and school supplies to the kids and take our picture while doing it. We didn't even buy the books (and if I had I would have purchased something other than "Why the Chinese Are Thin"- the book I had the opportunity to hand to the teacher...uggg) and yet we were posing for photo-ops illustrating American charity and the sorta ugly kind where you stop in at a village, give some crappy school supplies and peace out.

Then we went to a women’s village cooperative funded by an American NGO, whose name has now escaped me, which helps women to earn an independent wage creating and selling fabrics. The cooperative was housed in a small clay building. The product of the work, though beautiful, took painstaking patience to produce. Two women asked me to try it out. They patiently helped me weave a few lines of fabric into an orna. The physicality of the work was insane; the loom was attached to a wooden plank, which you held against the wall with your feet. The strands of silk extended and attached from that plank to another wooden plank that had a rope attached to it, which you wrapped around your back. So basically, the loom and fabric were held taught entirely by the posture of your body. You had to hold your posture in a very specific manner for the loom to work. The two or three stands of silk that I wove into the orna took a good 5 minutes to weave and I was dripping with sweat at the end of it.

This is a very old pattern of fabric, originating from the Hill Tract village groups specific to Rangamatti, particularly the Chattma groups. The Hill Tracts have become the site of a good amount of political controversy for many reasons. The different groups living in the Hill Tracts do not identify as “Bangalee” ;they are supposed to have their own political representation separated from the rest of the country, although we learned that often either their voices are often not heard or their “representatives” are assigned by the state and then fail to provide the kind of representation they desire. Their struggle is linguistic, agricultural and cultural. They must work to preserve their languages, way of life, autonomy (what’s left of it), and land ownership all of which are often threatened by state language curriculums, Bangla cultural dominance, the lack of economic opportunity in the villages, the shift from substance farming to cash-crops in a globalized economy, and the decisions of the Bangladeshi state concerning land rights. Land ownership has been and continues to be a huge portion of their struggle for autonomy. In the recent past, the Bangladeshi state has used colonial land right protocol to argue that the land in the Hill Tracts in no longer owned by the groups who have always lived there; instead, the state claims, they are either owned by no one and therefore become the State’s, or they are inherently the State’s. This has led to events such as the creation of Kaptai Lake. In a misguided effort to provide a hydro-electro energy source in Bangladesh, and in cooperation with US AID (oy!), the Bangladeshi government flooded a huge portion of Hill Tract lands to create Kaptai Lake and its accompanying hydro-electric dam. This displaced numerous Hill Tract groups, who then had to move to higher grounds, which, in turn, permanently altered their way of life because on their new land the crops they used to grow in lower lands were no longer sustainable. We visited with one Chattma village the next day (we actually needed a Chattma translator because they don’t speak Bangla) and they explained that the greatest problems they now face are the lack of economic resources available to them with which to sustain the village. On higher ground they can grow pineapple and jack fruit and can fish in Kaptai Lake, but they cannot grow the other crops they used to grow and survive on. It was an incredible opportunity to hear from them about their lives and their perspective on Bangladeshi politics and the Bangla state. Before our trip I knew nothing either about Hill Tract culture or about their struggles with the Bangladeshi state so I wanted to share a little about it with you too.

On our first day we also visited a school for children from the Hill Tracts. They attend and live at the school either because they are orphans or because they cannot receive the proper education and resources in their villages. The school is funded by BRAC, one of the largest NGOs in Bangladesh, and is run by a small group of Buddhist monks. I forgot to mention that most of the Hill Tract groups are not Muslim, another facet of their identity that marginalizes them in Bangladesh. Many of them are Christian but a very large percentage in Rangamatti are Buddhist. There is a rather large and beautiful Buddhist temple on the ground of the school. Our visit to the school was probably my favorite part of our entire trip. After a completely delicious meal cooked by the school staff, and some cha with a few of the monks in the school’s leadership, we took a tour of the school and were able to meet some of the children. The children welcomed us into their bedrooms and we talked with them about their school and education and their everyday life; they asked us about learning Bangla (they too learn Bangla and English at the school, which is likely a politicized issue amongst the leaders of their home villages) and a little about our schools and country. It was, as with most experiences in Bangladesh, humbling and eye-opening. The girls were so generous with their time as we struggled through our Bangla words to talk with them; and they were so excited to talk with us. On the second floor of the complex there was a row of 6 or 7 large rooms, each of which houses around 8 girls. As we walked down the hallway, the girls piled up in a big group in the entrance to their rooms and each time we left one room and finished speaking with one group of girls, another group would excitedly ask us to come in. I actually witnessed through the window of one room, the girls jumping up and down as we came in.

Bangladeshis are often very excited to meet and speak with us bideshies, but we’ve never done anything to earn this very generously and lovingly given attention. Its just a crappy fact that white folks from the developed world don’t often give much time or attention to Bangladesh (there is, of course, the imperial exception, but they aren’t great examples of how to find “interest” in Bangladesh). So when Bangladeshis or people from the Hill Tracts see a foreigner, they very often want to talk to you and ask you why you’ve come to Bangladesh. We very often draw crowds of folks who ask to take our picture with them or say hello to their little daughter (both of which occurred last night at dinner). When you tell them you are there to learn Bangla, or when you ask them a question in Bangla the reaction is total shock and delight. Of course in America we expect everyone to speak English, and we chastise those who can’t speak it and tell them to learn it if they want to live there (even though America, unlike most countries like Bangladesh, doesn’t actually have a national language). This is one result of Western cultural dominance- the sense of language entitlement- we expect to be understood and to understand others at all times and we get in a huff when that doesn’t happen (this entitlement exists contradictorily with our narrative of the American “melting pot”, a narrative that is often forgotten amidst debates about immigration or the separation of the state and the Christian faith). I never feel like I deserve the excitement that is expressed at my presence or at my remedial language skills and I am always reminded of how crappy it is that so few foreign folks know this country. (This reminds me in a round-about way of the current slogan for the Bangaldeshi Tourism Board “Get Here Before the Tourists Do”…)

Sorry for that self-righteous rant. Back to the girls.

They stay in a large room together and have very little to their name, but they told us how happy they were to go to school and they clearly had formed beautiful, tight bonds with each other, creating the family that they no longer had or saw. It was delightful talking to them, in part because my Bangla is at their level and I could actually understand them and they could understand us, which meant that we actually connected in a way that I wish I could connect with people here everyday. It was this connection that made the visit so special, but it was also just their general joy. Amidst the loss of family and their experiences with poverty, these girls were so optimistic and joyful. They asked us about college and what colleges were in America and Bangladesh because they wanted to go to school. I have no idea what kind of potential they have for actually getting into college in Bangladesh; it’s a very well known school in the country so perhaps they have a good chance. But it didn’t matter what actual chances they had, because they just seemed so optimistic and joyful about it.

That night we had dinner with some of the girls from the school. Some of them performed dances that were traditional for their home villages. I haven’t quite managed to think through the politics of this event-having them perform for us is perhaps a little like cultural consumption/tourism, but at the same time they are purposely taught the dances at school because in leaving their home villages, preserving traditional practices through dance is an important avenue of cultural preservation. I guess I will just admit that I really enjoyed the evening. They invited us to dance with them, and Margot and I danced one of the dances they taught us for everyone.

As I said earlier, the next day we visited a Chattma village and learned about how the creation of Kaptai Lake had caused so much struggle for them. Ironically, we had to get to the village via the lake so we spent most of the day on the lake, which was admittedly very beautiful. But after the visit with the village, the lake seemed a lot less serene and beautiful.

Oh, at this point it is fun to share that for this entire second day that we spent visiting with Hill Tract groups, we were accompanied by police officers with giant guns. This, of course, is not the way to create trusting bonds between you and the people you are speaking with; they probably wonder what the hell you are up to if you walk into their place with a giant rifle. I’m not sure WHY the police accompanied us, but we were required to have them with us. We were told by the tour guide that it was for our safety. In other Hill Tracts, foreigners have been kidnapped (I have heard that this has more to do with the small terrorist cells that reside in other areas and not with the Hill Tract people’s resistance to land right issues). But I suspect that there was also some governmental interest in sending the police. The officers didn’t listen to our conversations with the villagers about their struggles with the government, but I can’t help but think that there may a hint of state intimidation that is hoped to come from their presence. That being said, the police that came with us weren’t intimidating at all and they mostly hung out on the boat, enjoying a nice security assignment with the pampered bideshies. I got some sweet photos of them relaxing on the boat with us, sock sand shoes off, giant rifle resting against the side of the boat, leaning against each other.

We had lunch at this crazy, hole in the wall lake-side restaurant that I honestly cannot believe that we didn’t get sick from. We sat in huts constructed entirely from bamboo that were raised off the ground. Even our tour guide was a little unsure about the architectural soundness of the structure, but it held us all just fine. It was a totally delicious lunch. I had my first taste of bamboo chicken, a dish traditional for this region of Bangladesh in which chicken is cooked with ginger and spices inside of a bamboo root. Its very gingery and delicious. After the meal we had an adventure in the outhouses, which housed the most enormous spiders I have ever seen. I was told they weren’t technically tarantulas but they were the size of my hand and there were 4 or 5 them that stared at you while you peed. I will be honest and admit that I myself did not conjure up the courage to pee there but I gave some emotional support to Annie and Misha; they peed with the door open so they could run out at any moment if necessary. It was awesome. Now any time Annie is tired or is having a bad day I just remind her of that time that she peed with tarantulas (I think they were tarantulas) staring at her and it gives her a little strength.

The next day we headed to Chittagong. It was hard to leave the Hill Tracts and return to the chaos of a city. For all of the worrying I did before our trip about staying in a remote area of the world for a few days, I actually enjoyed Rangamatti much more than any city I have visited in Bangladesh. Aside from the natural beauty and the lack of Dhaka-city chaos, I loved Rangamatti because we had a chance to see another, and completely different side of Bangladesh- not just environmentally, but culturally. And my knowledge of the country was shamed when I met with and heard from the people living in the Hill Tracts; their identity and experiences in Bangladesh are in some ways similar to those of the people living in the big cities, but, in other very intentional ways, strikingly different from them. When I come back to Bangladesh, I am coming back to the Hills (if I get security clearance).

Chittagong was a lot like Dhaka. We spent a lot of time in traffic in a car so I didn’t really get to do or see much in the 16 hours we were there. The highlight of the trip was our visit to a garment factory. It definitely illustrated the theory of commodity fetishism. The factory was obviously one with some of the best working conditions in Bangladesh (otherwise why would the let a bunch of bideshies in with cameras). Even so, it was quite similar to the image of industrial life, mass production, and the division of labor so often critiqued by modern scholars: rows upon rows of women working silently to meet their daily quota, each assigned with a separate task which they will do every single day until the factory is given another garment assignment- one woman sewing a label, one woman sewing on a decorative border, one woman folding the product, one women stuffing the product into plastic packaging. They are all separated from the final product and separated from each other. They didn’t talk and I don’t know if it was because there was a general rule against it, because we were there or because talking cuts into work time and makes it difficult to meet quotas. In that way, it seemed quite different from the women weaving separate pieces together at the co-op or at the Rosey Foundation, chatting as they worked, producing new and interesting pieces every week and then selling them directly out of their homes. Of course, whether at the factory, or at the co-op, there are difficulties to the work that my naïve and pampered bideshi self is not used to; I’m not used to working in an un-airconditioned room over an intriicate piece of fabric everyday. I read books in an air-conditioned office, and then I bitch about grading tests…spoiled brat.

One interesting facet of the visit was considering the irony of the product that the workers were making. This factory specializes in women’s undergarments. I say this is ironic because these are not commonly seen or discussed products here. Obviously, yes, of course, Bangladeshi women wear undergarments, but its less likely that they will wear the type of undergarments that this factory was making for the American market: thongs with little messages written across the back triangle that read “love” or “hottie”; huge push up bras; lacy lovw-rise hiphugger panties. It is difficult to find any underwear in stores in Bangladesh; actually its hard to even see the outline of a woman’s body in the everyday shalowar kameej. And should a woman’s orna (the scarf you use to cover your chest) falls from her neck, the common response is to look away, maybe in the same way you might look away if a busty gal leans over and reveals a little too much cleavage. All of these cultural clashes made lingerie a rather ironic product to see being made.

While the standards for working here are considered good for the average garment factory (work days are never longer than ten hours, work is never done at night, fire drills are practiced each month, there are two tea breaks and an hour-long lunch break), it was clear why Kohls, Target and Wal-Mart, each of which have contracts with this factory, chose Bangladesh to make their products: although the working conditions are satisfactory for Bangladesh, in America wages would be higher and conditions would necessarily be much better, which means higher cost. I was also struck by the amount of work that went into one pair of underwear. Commodity fetism has trained me not to think at all about where a product comes from, who made it or all the work that went into it. But I saw incredible processes of mass production that I hope will always make me question such flippant thinking while purchasing anything. There was a huge room with a 40 yard-long table with stacks of fabric that a man was using a giant knife to cut the patterns of fabric; from there, women sewed each piece together separately in different groups; then a group would sew in the lining; then a group would add the bow; then a group would add the lace border; then a group would add the label; a group would fold them; a group would stuff them into packages; a group would finally stuff those packages into boxes- so much work and so many people that I never consider when I pick it up off the shelf.

If that experience wasn’t surreal enough, later that night, the owner of the garment factory took us to dinner at the nicest hotel in Chittagong- The Chittagong Club- a private club that began as a facility for colonial officials and the Chittagong elites to hang out at. As proof of its colonial roots, check out this sign posted outside the restaurant giving the guidelines for their dress code. You will notice that the panjabee collar which would only be found in traditional Bangalee dress is not allowed, but the Western dress shirt collar and the safari shirt (the old uniform of colonial police and army officials) is allowed.

It was admittedly really nice of the owner to take us to dinner, and I don’t mean to suggest that he was a bad dude, in fact he probably chose the fanciest place in the city because he thought that it was what us bideshies are used to. It just felt strange for a couple of reasons; the first of which was that we had spent the previous two dinners with people from the Hill Tract villages talking about their struggles against global economic processes and now we were sitting in a fancy place eating Chinese food with one the more wealthy people in the city- it was an experience of extremes. The second reason it felt strange was because, if I am going to be honest, many of us did have some critiques both of class dynamics amongst the workers and managers at the factory and of Bangladesh’ splace in entire global economy, but no one felt comfortable asking accusatory questions of a man we didn’t really know anything about. So we basically spent the dinner in silence. There was this really funny moment when we were eating soup and all you could hear was the clinking of spoons and the sipping of soup; it was like one of those stereotypical moments in a movie when an uptight British married couple only manages a few words across a giant, porcelain laden table. The dinner sealed our trip with a reminder of the feeling I discussed weeks ago that Bangladesh is so often a place of dualities…often based on economic power and oppression.

We headed back home to Dkaha on a really nice air-conditioned train. As I sat on the train, I ran across a Bible verse that I found very fitting for so many of the things I had seen on the trip and on my larger journey to Bangladesh. In 1 Corinthians 1:18, Paul writes about the ignorance of God being wiser than the “wisdom” of the world and then in 3:18-23, Paul states that the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s eyes; one must become a “fool” so that he may become wise. In his particular context Paul is talking about the stupidity of the infighting going on within the early church. However, I think it rings true with so much of what I have seen. In our modern and Western logic, mass production makes sense; class divisions are understandable results of an economic exchange between the first and third world that is seen as reasonable; people can argue that giving to the poor makes them lazy; people can produce tons of trash and pollution as a part of consumption without even thinking about the long-term effects on future generations; people can argue that with hard work all social barriers can be overcome despite the reality that hard work is often not enough overcome extreme poverty; someone like myself can have everything she needs and wants while someone outside on the street hasn’t eaten for days…these are the results of our “wisdom” that is so much based upon achieving individual economic success over the communal well-being of others and our planet. So often during our trip I couldn’t help but think, as Annie so eloquently put it throughout the trip, “This world is bananas”. We have some pretty crazy logic; some pretty insane practices with sad and absurd results.

I got on a soap box. Sorry. I certainly don’t mean to suggest that I am not guilty of taking part in or benefiting from this wisdom. I navigate my every day existence using individualistic worldly wisdom, not just in economic exchanges, but in all exchanges. But I believe in a divine wisdom that is the complete reversal of this logic, where individual is made communal and painful results of worldly logic are healed through communal compassion and love; Jesus said that the kingdom is a reversal of worldly logic- the last become first and the rich man will find it difficult to live this kingdom. As the rich dude, being able to live this divine wisdom- embracing poverty, letting go of attachment to self, individual comforts and materials in order to place my life in God’s hands and in the service of others- is no easy command, especially seeing as how I have learned my entire life to live a worldly wisdom. But it has been incredibly energizing, and at the same time painfully convicting, to see and experience what I have seen and been a part of on this trip. It has helped me recognize my privileges and my blessings and my call to live differently, as scary and difficult as that is.

I will admit that I am excited to come home to see family and friends. The hardest part of the trip has been being apart from you. If I’m being honest, I am also looking forward to taking a shower with my mouth open, shaving my pits and drinking water from the tap. Basic sanitation is a priceless gift y’all. But Travis and I are also excited to see each other to start attempting to live a new wisdom in community with the people of Bloomington. I hope I can let go and become a fool; I’m pretty sure I’m gonna suck at it for awhile…like maybe my whole life, but its good to know I’m not alone in the struggle.

Thank you all for your prayers, especially for prayers for health and safety; I cannot tell you how much they are needed and appreciated. Please do keep them coming for this final week; I am hoping to get a few more posts in between now and my return next Sunday. Thank you for loving me and showing me how to live divine wisdom through your service and love.

With all my love from the city of mosques,

ashlee