Here's Jasra and Audrey on Eid day, with their gifts that my mom and dad sent them! They were absolutely thrilled with their gifts!
I went to a wedding the other day--the secretary of our department got married. It was a fun get together with other faculty and students! Here's some pics of me with some colleagues and students. And Salma got dressed up in a sari for the event too! The top photo is of Salma with one of my favorite students, Nadia. The middle photo is of me with some of my students and colleagues. The bottom photo is of me with two colleagues who are close friends--Michelle and Sabahat, and Sabahat's cute son Zarar (who is, by the way, Salma's boyfriend). Ain't I gorgeous in my sari? This is a great sari for showing off my belly-button piercing(tee hee).
Eid was on Sunday, and we had a great family celebration! Azfar's sister Rosy and her husband Shafique came down from Rajshahi, and their son Akash (he's in the picture with Azfar above), and Azfar's (6 months pregnant) sister Rumi was there, and of course his brother Dipu and sister in law Urmi, and their kids Jasra and Audry and amma and abba. I bought matching saris for the sisters and I (we're wearing them in the picture below). 
And I got Salma and Jasra some matching saris too. (Check them out in their saris in the photo below--with belly buttons protruding and all...aren't they cute?)
Salma and Jasra got a bunch of matching outfits as gifts, so we spent half the day dressing them up in their matching outfits and taking photos of them. And we ate lots of food, of course. Everyone breaks their month-long fast on Eid day, so hence the FOOD is a big focus for the day--everyone pigs out! And the food was fabulous. My favorite Eid dish is a dessert called "shemai" which has milk and sweet vermicelli. I ate a bunch of it! Anyway, we spent about a week at amma and abba's house, and we generally had a fun time just spending time together as a family. Now school is open again, and it's back to the grind! (Sigh...)
Anyway. That means that we are now living for a while in a place that has a PHONE! So that means friends and family can CALL US please! (Is the hint strong enough yet?) Really, we'd love to get some phone calls. We haven't been able to talk to most of our friends in a long time, and we miss you all. It's way more expensive for us to call the US from here, so we'd be better off buying a phone card for some friends to share to call from the US. So. Hope that makes some folks motivated enough to call! |
Salma and I made a 5-day trip to Rajshahi last week to visit some of Azfar's family there. On our way there, we could see effects of the flooding. Many of the green fields that I saw by the road on our last trip were either heavily waterlogged or completely underwater. Some of the worst flooded spots stretched for miles--I couldn't see any dry land except for the road we were on. In Rajshahi, Azfar's sister Rosy took us to the Padma River one evening, and we could see how overflowing it was as well. The last time we saw it, it was barely a trickle. This time it was almost overflowing its banks. We enjoyed watched the sunset cascading over the river. 
We also met a baoul musician (see the last photo) at the riverside (they live rather ascetic lives and their philosophy mixes music and religion). Also, Salma had a great time playing with her cousins Rupunty, Abundy and Nil. The downside of the trip was that it was SO HOT. Rajshahi is famous for its scorching hot summers. On top of that, the electricity was going off all the time. It was so hot at night that it felt like the sheets were burning. So in order to be able to sleep, I had to drench a towel in water and lay on it. Now that's hot! Anyway, that's it for our adventures out of Dhaka for right now. We decided to wait until December to take our trip to Delhi, when there's 
cooler weather. So for the rest of this break we're just hanging out in Dhaka, trying to catch up on some work and spending some time with our family here.
For those of our friends and family who have been worried about the political situation in Bangladesh over the past week, I just wanted to let you know what's been going on. Last Wednesday, students at Dhaka University got into a clash with Military personnel which then spread into country-wide clashes between students and police and military. The whole thing started over a very small incident--some students were blocking the view of a few military personnel at a football game, and the military personnel yelled at them and told them to get out of the way. And this led to a scuffle, and then erupted in violence. (The photo above is of a restaurant that students set on fire in Dhanmondi, Dhaka.) Basically, students at Dhaka University have been having to live with the military camping out on campus since the state of emergency was declared in January. So the military has taken over the students' gym, which means they have no place for sports activities. Plus, of course, they are not happy with the constant military presence on campus. So this situation was basically a time-bomb waiting to go off. And once students at other universities heard what was happening, they staged protests. So anyway, last Wednesday the government set in place an indefinite country-wide curfew. It was then lifted on Friday for the daytime, which was lucky for us, because Salma and I were visiting Rajshahi and needed to get back to Dhaka! Anyway, the night curfew continued for several more days and now it's been lifted. So the situation is better now. But the government made some rather alarming moves--for several days, they shut off all mobile phone networks and internet connections. Also, several teachers at Dhaka University and other schools were arrested, and are still being held in undisclosed locations. This is rather alarming as well. But our university was not a part of all of this--it just so happened that our summer vacation started on Monday, and the clashes broke out on Wednesday. Anyway, we're doing fine, and the situation seems to be better now. If you want to read more about what happened, check out the link to this article from The New Age, one of the Bangladesh newspapers: http://www.newagebd.com/2007/aug/23/front.html#1
To friends and family back home worried about the news of the flooding, don't worry. We are staying high and dry. But yes, there is severe flooding going in the country, especially in some of the northern districts. And parts of Dhaka near the rivers are getting inundated. Check out this photo taken yesterday--this was taken in South Badda yesterday, a part of Dhaka relatively close to our neighborhood (Banani). Luckily, we are on high ground, and so our area hasn't been flooded. We do live by a lake which has risen significantly, but it hasn't reached the "danger" zone yet. So many people have lost their homes and livelihood due to the flooding. The death toll is going up--from what I've heard, around 40 people died from the flooding last night, and so far around 120 people total have died. The stories of babies and children being whisked away from their mothers in the fast currents are the hardest for me to hear about. If anyone wishes to donate some funds for relief for the flood victims, talk to me and we'll figure out a plan. I know several groups who are working with flood victims and are in desperate need of more funds.
I have sad news...our cat Shonna ran away a couple of nights ago. I think she ran out when the front door was ajar, and went downstairs and out the front gate. We haven't seen her since. We've looked for her all over the neighborhood, but we haven't had any luck. She was such a sweet cat. We're all going to miss her, especially Salma.
Salma and I have been going to a baby group that meets every Wednesday. All the folks who go are from other countries--the UK, Germany, South Africa, Sweden, Australia, Canada, Belgium, etc. We meet at a different person's house every week. It's been a great way to get to meet new folks in Dhaka and make some friends. This week we had the baby group at our place! Salma was so excited to have all her buddies come and play at our house.
Here's Azfar's sister-in-law Urmi and I, all dressed up in saris for a wedding--Dipu's friend's wedding. Urmi let me borrow her jewelry for the wedding. The basic rule for jewelry in Bangladesh is: the bigger it is and the more sparkly it is, the better! I can't say that this is exactly my taste in jewelry, but I don't mind getting decked out every once in a while. I still can't get the hang of a sari, though. It's one huge piece of cloth wrapped around you (and the secret behind holding it together is using lots of safety-pins). I still have no idea how to put one on. I always need help. And I tend to feel like it's going to fall off if I move the wrong way. I'm definitely into the salwar-kamis, though. They're extremely comfortable, and my favorite part is: drawstring pants! I'm don't think I'll ever feel like going back to jeans again.
Azfar was on TV again the other day, giving an interview on the poet P.B. Shelley. Here's the famous man himself!
I've been going to this "Interfaith" group, which is a discussion group composed of people of different religions (such as Muslim, Christian, and Baha'i) and also people who don't necessarily subscribe to any organized religion but are interested in spirituality. Anyway, the group discussions are really interesting. We've discussed all kinds of topics over the past few months, such as what it means to live an examined life, the relationship between science and religion, politics and religion, spirituality and religion, and patriarchy/sexism and religion, the meaning of "equality," and the concept of universal education. As you can see, we've covered quite a lot of ground! Some of the folks in group are leaving Bangladesh, so we took a group photo last week before they left. Anyway, here we are (there are more people in the group, but these are the only ones who showed up that day)!
We just celebrated two birthdays in a row: Jasra's second birthday was in May, and Audry's tenth birthday was in June. We had fun partyin' and dancin' and eating cake! In fact, that's how I broke my camera--I was dancing and taking pictures at the same time, and somebody ran into me a bit too hard and the camera went flying. Oops! Anyway, there's more birthday fun to come--in about three weeks Salma will celebrate her second birthday...so stay tuned!
Here's a shot of one of Azfar's TV programs--for this one, he was talking about one of his favorite books. He did this "book of the day" program for a couple of months, in which he discussed one of his favorite books each day of the week. That quickly added up to a lot of books!
We met up with our old friend Anwar the other day! We went to Washington State University together, and we used to get together with him and his wife Lois to have some real Bengali food. (Anwar is a fabulous cook!) And he made some delicious curry for our wedding dinner. Anyway, he came back to Dhaka last week for his brother's wedding, and he looked us up. Here's a photo we took with him at the wedding. It was so nice to see him after such a long time!
Ok, so yesterday Dhaka got 4 inches of rain in 6 hours. It was insane. I borrowed this photo from the Daily Star website. This is on Mirpur Road, which is on the way to Azfar's parents' house. This is the same spot we had to drive through on Thursday night when we were trying to get to their house--it was flooded then too. Yesterday, alot of the streets in Dhaka looked more like canals than streets. In front of our apartment, there was at least two feet of water in the road, and we watched cars trying to plow through and getting their engines flooded. I didn't feel brave enough to go through the flooded street to class, so I cancelled my classes yesterday. The thing is that when the street is flooded, you can't see where the potholes are! Many of the streets have huge uncovered potholes and it would really suck if your rickshaw hit one or if you fell into one. So I decided not to chance it. Anyway, there's a cyclone storm over the Bay of Bengal that caused the heavy rain. We're supposed to get more rain like this for the next few days. Today it rained pretty hard, but not like yesterday. The streets are clear again now. Let's see what tomorrow brings...
The other day we had some crazy monsoon rain in Dhaka. The streets were flooded. We happened to have quite a dramatic experience this time, because we were trying to get home while the streets were flooded. Our friend was giving us a ride home. There was at least 3 feet of water in the road. And the water started coming into the car--we had about 5 inches of water seeping into the car under our feet! It was quite a scary experience. I was amazed that the engine didn't flood and the car didn't die because at times it felt like we were literally floating down the street instead of driving. Many of the cars around us were dying and the poor drivers were trying to push them out of the street in the massive flood. And when busses went by, they created waves that would wash up against the car. It was like nothing I've ever seen before, although I know flooding like this happens on a regular basis in Bangladesh. Anyway, since my camera has broken, I borrowed a few images of the flooded streets from some other websites. By now the water has gone down and the streets are clear again, but we're supposed to have monsoon rains for the next 5 days, so they may get flooded again.
Here's a photo of some paan leaves that had just been harvested, that we came across on our tour of Srimangal. Paan is something people lots of people here chew. It's a big cash crop. It gets combined with some white paste stuff and bits of betel nut, and then you chew it all together. I've tried it, but I'm not a big fan. It makes my tongue go numb. There's some kind of drug quality in the leaves and nuts. Lots of people are addicted to it in Bangladesh, and have all kinds of dental problems as a result.
From Joy Harjo’s A Map to the Next World.
As part of their crack-down on "corruption," the interim government has been tearing down the slum housing of the poor, leaving them with no alternative housing plans. These are photos of the rubble left behind after the military came in the night to tear down the poor people's homes right down the street from our apartment. Now they are all homeless, wandering in the streets to find somewhere to sleep at night. I have no idea how this has helped reduce corruption. If anything else, it will increase violence in the streets as the poor get more desperate.
Jackfruit is the national fruit of Bangladesh. There were a bunch of jackfruit trees right outside our bungalow in Srimongol, so I took a few pictures. Jackfruit is a very interesting fruit. It can range from the size of a grapefruit to a watermelon. They grow right off the trunk of the tree. The shell is very hard and spiky. Inside, it has sections kind of like an orange. The texture is unlike anything I've tasted before. The closest I can get to describing it is that it is a cross between a banana and a mango, with a bit of extra slime. I can't say that I'm a big fan of jackfruit, but it is quite an interesting taste. Given the choice between that and mango, I'd definitely go for the mango.
