Greetings from Dhaka!

Dhaka is the capital of Bangladesh

Just where is DHAKA?

July 31 Here I am at the Vice Chancellor's farewell dinner in our honour, earlier this evening, with our faculty. We're a pretty good-looking bunch, don't you think!

July 28 Wouldn't you know it: no sooner do I tell you that the monsoon's pretty darn close to failing here, than we get 333 mm of rainfall overnight! And quite a storm too. The thunder and lightning woke me up around 4. I fell back asleep, pretty sure I wouldn't be able to get to the pool to swim this morning, but had no idea what I'd find when it was time to head to work.

We took a rickshaw the 3 blocks to the office. Water was nearly knee-high in our own street, but not quite so bad (maybe mid-calf) on the road where our office is. A good day for the rickshaw drivers, as they were about the only ones who could get through the deep water safely.

I'm attaching a few photos that Atif Safi, one of our teachers, took from his neighbourhood. He lives in the southern part of the city (we're up in the northeast), where the roads were even worse than they were here; he tried to come to work this morning but when he found himself sitting in one place for two and a half hours, decided (wisely) to just go home. Our students took it all as a great adventure (sort of like Indiana kids when it snows) and showed up for class with their pants rolled up to their knees, and we somehow limped through the day with only half our faculty, but in good spirits all around.

July 23 The latest excursion we had in Dhaka was to visit the Liberation War Museum. Bangladesh became an independent nation in 1971, after a 9-month war but a decades-long struggle for recognition of their national language. That means the liberation movement is very much a part of everyone's memories, and even students too young to have lived through it, know what their families were doing at the time and how they were affected by it all.

The museum is full of newsreel footage, newspaper clippings, and some disturbingly graphic photos of the period surrounding liberation, and all our students were visibly moved by the visit, trooping out one by one looking very somber. They had already learned a great deal about the history of the time from our various guest lecturers, so they had a context to which to pin this. http://liberationwarmuseum.org/

It's all hard for most Americans to imagine. Pakistan had prohibited the public use of Bengali here, and made Urdu the official language. Funny thing is, Urdu isn't a majority language even in what was then West Pakistan! And the one thing that unites people in what is now Bangladesh, is their language, with its rich and long history. So telling Bengalis they can't use their own language was a really stupid move.

This weekend we're heading to the campus of Dhaka University to look around and hang out with students there. We'll be visiting the nearby Language Martyrs' monument, and then ending our outing at Aziz Supermarket, a large mall full of book shops and tee-shirt stalls, I'm told. One of our teachers, Atif, has an impressive t-shirt wardrobe and has promised the students to take them to his favourite shop.

The photos I've attached show the U.S. Ambassador to the People’s Republic of Bangladesh's visit to BSI.

One is of me looking on as our student Jessica beams proudly as Ambassador Moriarty admires the card she designed for him, which all the students signed;

and the other is of me with the Ambassador and Vice Chancellor Chowdhury. "Vice Chancellor" is the same as University president, and he is the VC of Independent University-Bangladesh (yes, another IUB), where our program is housed.

June 30

We took the big IUB (that's Independent University - Bangladesh!) bus out of the city Saturday morning, past the lumber yards (including bamboo) and garment factories out of town to the southeast.  The first thing we saw was a folk arts and crafts museum, in an old mansion.  It's a very large house arranged in a square, with verandas opening onto an inner open courtyard in the middle.  That's typical of this part of the world.  Even in the rural areas where houses are made of mud and thatch, a family will usually have several huts arranged around a central inner area (i.e., open only to family and close friends) where people cook, hang laundry, etc.), with each nuclear family assigned one of the small huts, and maybe one will be for housing animals.

The funny thing about the museum is that while it did contain a lot of Bangladeshi artifacts, very few of them had anything to do with Sonargaon and its history.  But the grounds of the place were lovely, with ponds, and trees that a few of the students climbed.  We roamed around for a while just enjoying all the greenery, then got back on the bus to head for Panam Village, where we took the photos.  Sonargaon was the Turkish provincial capital back in the 14th century.  It changed hands many times, and became the muslin capital of the region.  These are the very fine muslin (cotton) fabrics that European traders bought; they say you could fold up an entire sari (6-12 yards of fabric) to fit into a matchbox; that's how fine the weaving was.  And still is.  I'll come back to that.

In the late 19th century Panam was home to a lot of East India Company (British) employees, and the architecture reflects a sort of fusion between European architecture of the time, and Mughal architecture.  The houses were once magnificent, with soaring columns, beautiful tile floors, arches along the interior walls, etc.  Now all you can see is bricks walling it all up.  Between the squatters and the so-called renovation, the place has really been abused.

We visited a replica of the Taj Mahal that some business man recently built out in the middle of nowhere, that has quickly become a tourist attraction.  As we were heading toward the entrance we stopped at a little jewelry shop, where we saw a man extracting pearls from oysters.  Several of the women bought necklaces and earrings from him, so captivated were they by the pearl extraction.  The Taj was pretty hokey and while the gardens were laid out something like those of the real thing, the flora was quite different and the building didn't really look like the Taj.

A pearl salesman with Afia Kader (in black and white), our head teacher.

The last stop was at a Jamdani weaving village.  Jamdani saris are the finest made in Bangladesh, and they're that very fine muslin I mentioned above.  The material is transparent, and just shimmers with whatever colours they're using.  We saw one workroom with about a dozen looms in it, two people working at each, and every one had a different colour sari in progress.  Some of the students got to sit next to the master weavers to get a taste of what the work is like.  And then of course they hauled out saris and fabric for us to look at and buy.  This has to have been the world's fastest sari-buying expedition:  25 of us were in and out within half an hour!  Normally sari-buying is a lengthy process.  You look at lots of them, pick a few, then start negotiating prices.  Our best bargainer handled all the negotiations for us, and everyone came away happy.

Tomorrow I'm off to Kolkata for the weekend.  Bangladesh is one country, India another, just like the US is one country and Canada is another.  The flight from Dhaka (capital of Bangladesh) to Kolkata (capital of the Indian state of West Bengal) is about 20 minutes, but because it's an international flight, you still have to show up at the airport 2-3 hours in advance.  Then you get on the plane, fasten your seatbelt, drink a soda, and you're on the ground.  Anyway, I'm going to visit academic contacts and some long-time friends, now scattered, who are coming to town to see me.

Bangladesh exports a lot of bicycles to Europe!

Delivery vehicle

More to follow!

June 19 Greetings, The big news here is that Bangladesh is going on daylight savings time tonight, for the first time ever. Everyone's all in a tizzy trying to figure it all out, because it's a totally foreign concept. But it should help. As it is, it gets dark around 6:30 but most businesses are open til 8. Now it'll get dark around 7:30, which will mean a lot less use of power. Some people think that'll mean the power goes out less. During the week it cuts out several times during the day, and then around 7 pm for an hour, and again around 11 pm. In this heat, that can get pretty miserable.

We've had a good week at Bangla Summer Institute. A few tummy upsets, given the change in diet and the adjustment after the long hard trip to get here (for the students), and then readjusting to the new time zone. About half the students did not learn the writing system before they got here, as we'd told them to do, and so they really struggled the whole first week. But now we've matched them with local students as conversation partners, and they're getting more help and working harder to communicate. I'm seeing new shirts on the guys and new salwar kameez outfits on the women, so there's been a lot of shopping going on. Several are thinking about having some things made, too, so I'll be taking them to the tailor I know over in Road 7 (we're on Road 11), very close by.

This week we had two local heroes in to lecture about the independence movement. Bangladesh became independent from Pakistan in 1971, after decades of struggle. The government of Pakistan, located in what was then West Pakistan, tried repeatedly to impose Urdu on the Bangladeshis - to forbid them from using their native language in schools, businesses, government contexts, etc. - and that didn't go over well. For one thing, Urdu is not and never has been a majority language even in Pakistan! More people speak Punjabi than speak Urdu there. But for another, Bengal (both parts, that is, what's now the state of West Bengal in India, and the country of Bangladesh) have a long and very rich literary and cultural heritage, of which they are justifiably very proud. For someone to tell them they can't use their mother tongue, then, was simply outrageous, not to mention really stupid. Bangladesh is in fact the only nation in the world ever founded around a national language.

Our first speaker, Anisuzzaman (he only uses the one name), is a retired professor of Bengali literature at Dhaka University. I worked with him quite a bit while I was writing my dissertation, but somehow back then nobody told me that he'd also written the manifesto for the Language Movement, way back in the fifties. He talked about those years, when he was about 20, and a student, and all the political activity he and his classmates were involved in.

Two days later Shamser Moveen Chowdhury came to speak. He was an officer in the Pakistani army, and when Pakistan launched an attack on Chittagong in 1971, was one of seven Bangladeshi officers to mutiny. That launched what's known here as the Liberation War. Chowdhury spoke movingly about his experiences during the war, the horrors he endured as a Pakistani prisoner, and the horrors of war in general. Many of us were in tears at his graphic descriptions of the situation. He eventually went into the foreign service and served as Bangladesh's ambassador to the US, and also as their rep at the UN, so his English was idiomatic and American, so the students could follow him quite easily.

Now that they've learned about the country's recent history, they'll soon be learning more about ancient and Mughal times here, through other speakers and site visits. But tomorrow it's party time. Jamal Ahmed, an outstanding local painter and close friend of our program director, has invited us all for dinner and a party at his house. He's promised musicians of some sort, and his wife Tuli is a wonderful cook. We'll get to see his studio, too. The teachers have told me they'll all be dressed up in saris, and suggested rather strongly that I should, too. I'll try to remember to take my camera so I can send you some pictures of us all in our splendour.

dekha hobe (see you later),
Rebecca J. Manring
Associate Professor
India Studies and Religious Studies

A river scene Buri Ganga

June 5, 2009 Greetings from a very steamy Bangladesh!  Today's the first day of the weekend here, and after a very intense week of workshops and curriculum prep, I was sure ready!  So this morning I went down to Old Dhaka with a couple of friends to look for some books and some office supplies we thought we could get down there.  We did all that, and then spent nearly an hour in a fabric store that's not quite as big as your office, looking at beautiful fabrics.

A street scene in Old Dhaka, from the walls of Lal Bagh (Red Fort).

May 25, 2009 Greetings !  I got here yesterday (Monday) morning around 8:30, after a very long but not too eventful journey.  The new assistant manager for our program met me at the airport, with a driver and minivan from the university (Independent University-Bangladesh; another IUB), and brought me to the apt I'm sharing with Matt (our lead instructor) and his wife Rokeya.  It's very nice, completely furnished down to the beautiful china in the glass china cabinet, to towels and bedding, and comes with someone to do the cleaning and laundry and any cooking we want.  Rokeya's doing a lot of cooking, too.  We have two bedrooms in the apt, each with its own bathroom, and then the third bedroom has been designated as my study, though apparently it's also the ironing room for the maid.  It also seems to be the only room that doesn't yet have air conditioning, so I'll have to get them to put one in there.

I managed to stay awake through the day yesterday and not take any naps til regular bedtime here.  I met with our program director and our head teacher in training, and then after the last meeting, Matt, Rokeya and I went to Computer City to get a wireless internet router and the surge protectors we need for the computers.  Computer City is a huge multi-story building with nothing but electronics shops in it.  We roamed around for a while til we found what we wanted, going to several different shops and no doubt attracting lots of attention:  2 westerners and one local woman in burqa, which Rokeya wears in public.  Traffic was awful coming and going; we were gone about 3 hours, but that's because of the traffic that slows you down so much.  Computer City's really not very far away from where we live.

Our classroom building is around the corner from the apt bldg.  This morning I went out for an abbreviated version of my usual morning walk.  It had been stormy much of the night so the streets were still full of puddles, and it's breezy, but not unbearably hot.  I almost didn't go out, but then realized that I desperately needed some exercise, and also the sooner I start moving around, the sooner I feel grounded and can get over jet lag.  I slept through the night and didn't wake up til around 5, my usual rising time.  I walk around our neighbourhood, which is the diplomatic enclave but also lots of very wealthy Bangladeshis live here.  Every building - and they're all high rise apts or condos - has its own guard and a parking garage on the ground floor, and after a while you sort of get to know the various guards in your area.  And lots of people go out walking in the mornings, even women by themselves, and in groups of 2 or 3, so it's quite safe.  There's a lake with walking paths at one end of our street, and at the other end, a park not far away.  But early there are few vehicles on the roads, so walking's easy.  After a few days I'll start recognizing the other faces I see at that hour, or at least, the ones I can see.  A lot of the women are in burqas so you can only see their eyes.  This morning I chatted with an elderly gentleman who told me he has one son in Minneapolis and another somewhere in New Jersey, and he's driven through Indiana so he knew where I live.

There's also a (plant) nursery not far away, and it's fun to walk past that and see the gardeners tending to the plants in the early hours.  You also see people coming to work in the neighbourhood, the maids and drivers and the like.  Yes, life here is pretty easy for anyone who has means, and any of us would be considered pretty darn rich here.  Makes you realize how lucky we are.

Today I'm going to spend the morning working on my presentation for our 2-day workshop that starts tomorrow.  We've invited everyone we could find, who teaches Bangla to foreigners, so that we can all get acquainted and share some resources, techniques, and just talk about what we all do, and how and why.  Should be good, and no one's ever done such a thing here.  Then next week we've got an in-house workshop to finish things up for our summer program, and then our students arrive June 8.