Going to Thailand for 2 weeks was certainly a good introduction to the ‘reverse culture shock’ phenomena I will undoubtedly experience on arrival at Heathrow airport.

Imagine it:

Me standing immobilised at Bangkok airport, for at least 15 minutes, gazing in wonder at:

-all the flesh

-all the white people

-all the things

-the clean: floors/toilets/shops/people/air et etc etc and so on (as Minar Bhai would say)

Me discovering the existence of Boots The actually real life god damn Chemist:

-Tampons

-No. 7

-wet-wipes

-THINGS

Missing my boat to Ko Pang nang so checking into a 3* hotel for the night on Christmas Eve:

-A hot shower

-PILLOWS

-WHITE SHEETS!!!!!

-A MATRESS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Had Rin, the land of hedonism. Buckets full of rum, fire throwers, bikini’s, me in a bikini, me looking at my actual body on display, Full moon parties, New Years Eve, midnight swims in the sea, bacon, bacon, everyday bacon.  Shocked eyes. People asking me if this is the first time I’d been away from home, what with my pale white skin and my inability to quite comprehend how there could be so much sun and so much booze and music and UV lights and just so many foreign people having so much fun and being just so misbehaved in one very small space.

Basically, if you seem me in those first few days and weeks after my return, please don’t be concerned by the odd yelp or groan when I see things like:

-Cheese

-The Bus

-Cheese

-Eastenders

-A Sofa

-A bath

-Lanes in the road

-Roads

-Cheese

Please don’t be concerned if I point vaguely in a slightly random manor and shout

-Bideshi! Bideshi!

It means I’ve seen a fellow foreigner.

Please don’t be concerned if my English seems a bit odd. If I say things like:

-I’m very much tired

-Take rest/take fresh, to mean I’m going to sleep/to shit/to pee

I’ll probably use the word’s:

-‘maximum’ and ‘too much’ often

As In:

-I Am too much excited to see you

-this is my maximum favourite pub.

Please don’t be concerned if I have to be carried out of the pub kicking and screaming at closing time.

Please don’t worry too much if I seem a bit stroppy that: the taxi-driver/the bus driver/the man at the corner shop didn’t pay me any attention. Please don’t worry too much if I stand on oxford street singing just to get someone to notice me. I may have developed a bit of a celebrity complex. Take my hand and lead me away and remind me that I am not famous.  DO NOT LET ME AUDITION FOR THE X-FACTOR.

Please don’t be surprised if I seem to have turned into a little bit of a victorian prude:

-if I stare at your low cut top and your actually not that short a skirt and shake my head

-If I go to buy a pint of milk with my orna on.

-If I try to surreptitiously smoke on the street without anyone seeing, even though no one is:

a. on the street

b. In the slightest bit concerned that I’m smoking.

Here’s what you can do to ease the transition:

-allow me to bath at a worryingly frequent rate, every hour if necessary

-allow me to spend a large amount of the day in a bed with white sheets and a duvet and a fluffy pillow

-never come to visit me without cheese

-and a bottle of wine

-and maybe a crack pipe.

And my friends, to conclude, I’ll leave you with the big one, the most serious warning of all:

DO NOT GIVE ME RICE TO EAT

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE DO NOT GIVE ME RICE TO EAT.

Its quite possible, if I see rice, I might not be very nice.

Thanks for your patience, I look forward to bathing with you imminently

Having stewed on this for 2 weeks in Thailand, I had just about reached crisis point by my return to Dhaka. It’s been a pretty tough few months all in all. Again for so many reasons that would fill the whole internet, never mind one blog. The hardest thing, though, has been being in such an unfathomably poor place and being able to do absolutely nothing.  Zero. Zilch to contribute.  It’s felt a bit like a perverse form of poverty tourism at many points. Whilst I’ve met some amazingly inspiring people and seen some incredible projects, I’ve essentially spent 3 months sitting in a room playing solitaire, playing with Facebook, and getting more and more de-motivated and at times rather depressed by the waste of it all. I feel like I came here with a lot of energy and a lot of commitment and have ended up almost, but not quite, hating the whole dam affair.

And so today was D-Day. The big meeting with the VSO big wig. It was a bit of a relief to hear that she agrees that things have been handled badly, that my placement was perhaps never viable, and that “lots of learning needs to be done”. We went back and forward for 3 hours and I was at least given a chance to say what I needed to say, what had been bubbling under the surface for all the weeks of incessant Solitaire playing.

And then I just did it. I resigned. Finished. Shesh, as they say in Bangladesh. She offered me another placement in the South of the country, in the middle of nowhere, trying to do the same sort of thing that I’ve been trying to do in Dhaka and I just couldn’t. The though of starting all over again, moving to another place, a new home, making new friends, building relationships at work, and so on and so on, on the vague off-chance that this placement might actually work out, is just a bit more than this frazzled brain can handle right now.

So, after spending months packing and unpacking and packing again, closing down bank accounts, 56 leaving parties, tears and more tears and a last cup of actually proper tea with proper milk for what would be two years-I’m coming home. At the end of January.

You know what? Writing that is the happiest I’ve felt in months. I suppose that’s what it’s about really…whilst this was always meant to be hard, and at times incredibly hard, it was never meant to be an endurance test.

So dear friends, that’s me . I’m coming home. Am I glad I did it? Without doubt. It’s been the most incredible experience, despite the bad bits. But yes, I’m really looking forward to the next step, new challenges, different types of adventure, and of course seeing all of you. And a fucking cup of tea. Put the kettle on peeps, I’m coming home…

I was secretly glad, then, when arriving back in Dhaka from a sweltering Bangkok, to discover that it was bloody freezing. Actual shivering in your flip-flops freezing. And, best off all, mass hysteria has hit Bangladesh…

It’s oddly comforting to arrive at work and spend the first 20 minutes discussing the weather with your colleagues. I feel rather at home!

Particularly exciting is the fact that the cold weather has made it totally acceptable for me to wear my jeans to work (yes, still with an Orna and Kameez but still, jeans in the office!).

Perhaps more problematic is the fact that I don’t have any shoes, so have committed, I’m ashamed to admit, the cardinal sin. Yes, I am now officially a Brit Abroad. I have worn black socks and red flip-flops. Together. Please don’t tell anyone…

Ok, I know it’s not as cold as the U.K., not nearly as cold. But the problem is, see, that I live in a concrete house with concrete floors. Great for hot weather, not so great for the cold. Of course, of course, there is no central heating, or in fact any heating to speak of. More problematically, I do not have hot water. Yes, I can just about bare to rapidly wash my bits of a morning, but hair washing is a total no no. Tonight I’m going to have to do the whole boiling water on the stove thing because if I don’t sort out this barnet ASAP, I’m going to commit an even bigger sin. A wanky development worker who moved to Bangladesh and came back with dreadlocks.

Its all worth it though, for the outfits. The winter is so short here people don’t have a winter wardrobe, as such, and so are particularly ingenious about keeping themselves warm. In a country so obsessed by gender, and gender clothing, i’ve been astounded to see what the cold weather has done. Suddenly men are wondering around with big flowery scarf’s tied around their heads. The lungi (male sarong) is still on show, but this time accompanied by the most feminine of cardigans (think sequins, pink flowers, hearts, lilac stripes, to name just a few of the wonderful ensembles I’ve seen this week).

I think the towel is my particular favorite. I was recently presented with a towel as a gift, which I though was lovely but rather odd, until I realized that I was meant to wear the towel as a shawl. Yes, I wondered around all day in a green silk Sari and a pink and white towel.

Its not the same as going up ally-pally tobogganing, or finding yourself actually TALKING to people on the W3, but its been kind of fun doing cold weather, Bangladesh style.  

 P.S. (the cold weather lasted for about 5 days, it seems to be warming up again, which is a bit of a shame. I’m not quite ready to give up my towel yet; I’ve grown rather attached to it).

I’d really like to get in touch with that photographer, to find out what they know that I don’t. I’ve visited a few beautiful and exotica lands. I have never visited a beautiful and exotic toilet. Ever. But, I think, Bangladesh wins the prize…

At 16 I thought I’d seen it all as I went to pee on the last day of a rainy Glastonbury.
At 18 I thought I’d seen it all on a farm, in Cuba, sharing a bathroom with 100 Europeans with stomach problems
In Bolivia, I thought, this is it. No toilet can be worse than this.
Then I moved to Bangladesh.

Illustration One:

I have just been on a four day field visit to a rural area. Stunning, exotic, beautiful, etcetera.

In the villages drinking tea at little tea stalls is mandatory, cup after cup of sugary tea.

This means I need to pee, often.

Every time we left a place where a bathroom ‘suitable’ for a Bideshi lady was available, I was told to pee. Or “take fresh”, to be more accurate. I would then drink another three cups of tea, and of course need to pee some more.

One particular afternoon, I was being taken on a sunset tour down a beautiful river, had just been force fed 5 slices of cake and made to drink two cups of tea, and I really needed a widdle. We were by a little market. My chaperones started to panic.

“There is simply not toilet space available”
“I really can’t get on this boat without going”
“Why you not take fresh before leaving house?”
“I did but you just made me drink four cups of tea. Look, i’ll just go behind those bushes over there”.

*really long silence*.
*frowning*
(For the record, I’d just like to point out that men pee outside, on the street, in full view, absolutely everywhere all over this country)

“Would you prefer if I didn’t do that?”
“Yes thank you Rojie, please very important you are not doing this”
“Right, ok”
*rapid conversing in bangla*
“ok, come with us”

So we walked through the market, right to the back, and arrived at a foul smelling area

“wait here”
*rapid conversing in bangla with random man. Man goes into the fenced off, foul smelling area, after a time men come trouping out.*

My friends explain:
“This is market toilet and showering area Rojie, we are making all men leave and cleaning toilet then you may enter”

Oh Jesus. No matter how hard I try to just fit in, quietly getting on with things like everyone else, I ask for what I think is the most simple of things and cause the most enormous fuss.

So off I went…I’ll spare you the details, I’m sure you can imagine though. A whole market full of men, and this was their only place to shit and shower.

Illustration two: Dhaka, one Tuesday evening

Me and a friend had just been out for dinner with her glorious boss. There was wine involved. He drove us home. We got stuck in traffic. I started to really need a wee. Traffic at a total stand still. Look at friend and she is gripping the door of the car. “What’s wrong?” I whisper. “Desperate for the toilet” she whispers back. “Oh Jesus, me too”, I reply.

Boss leans his head back:
“What’s wrong with you two? You are being really quiet”
“We really need the toilet”
** Prerequisite panic begins. Rapid conversation with the driver about where we might pee**
“Ladies I am so sorry, there is nowhere to go”
“Can’t we just get out and find somewhere dark?”
** This suggestion is so insane, he grasps the seriousness of the situation. Gets on phone, rapid Bangla**”

“Ok, I have called the police commissioner and we are going to the police station right now”

**we both start cracking up. Glorious Boss, who knows absolutely everyone in the whole country, has, against all odds, hooked us up with a toilet**

So we arrive at police station and the two of us are escorted in by an armed guard, and we hobble up the stairs, through the police station, and the looks on peoples faces are like nothing I have ever seen. We are lead through the dormitories; it appears the policemen live there. I’m not sure I can possibly begin to describe to you what that was like. And then the door to the bathroom was opened and…We couldn’t. We just couldn’t.

As with many things in this country, amusing anecdotes, little annoyances, have a more serious undertone. If I need something, for example the toilet, everyone around me will go out of their way to make sure I get one. For most women, however, such luxury is simply not on offer.

As we walked away from the market toilet, my colleague informed me that there is an incredibly high rate of urinary and bladder infections amongst women, especially poor women. Women must go to the toilet only in the home; they may not pee in public places, behind bushes, in market toilets, in police stations. There is a high rate of sexual assaults against women who try to pee in the few public toilets available.

To me, needing the toilet has always been a non-event: a basic, fundamental human need, one that all people can fulfill, without question. Aren’t I the lucky one? I am reminded for the millionth time since I arrived here how lucky I am. I have never been told to shut up, cross my legs, suffer in silence. Suddenly the worst toilet in the world doesn’t seem so bad.

“How are you Rojie?”
“Fine thanks”
“No you are not fine”
“I am, really, I promise”
“No, you are looking very sick”
“Really? I feel fine”
“Especially your face, your face looks very bad.”

Last night I went to a wedding so woke up this morning with my hair looking, I thought, rather nice from all the coifing and styling. I had some fresh flowers left over, so put one in my hair, put on my favorite Sari and nice new Pakistani shawl and off I went. I thought I was looking pretty good, all things considered. The office thought otherwise.

People in Bangladesh are painfully truthful. Having grown up with painful English politeness this is rather difficult to get ones head round. The smallest detail of ones appearance will be picked over, available for public consumption:

“Oh look she has a spot today”
“Aren’t her arms bumpy?”
“Look, her nail-vanish is chipped”

Part of the problem is that my idea of what looks nice and their idea of what looks nice are often rather different. Especially in terms of matching. My lovely bottle green Sari and my black and red shawl go perfectly, I want to scream. You, on the other hand, are wearing 42 patterns and every color in the rainbow all mashed up together.

I’m thinking of leaving my precious copy of Grazia lying round the office.

Mostly though, Its quite ammusing being told your face looks sick, that you are terribly absent minded, that you are not good at dressing yourself. Really, to be fair, i’m not very good at dressing myself. I have come into the office with my Sari upside down, with my Sari inside out, with a broken shoe, with my hair so insane even I had to laugh-no wonder they need to give me a quick once over when I arrive in the morning.

Perhaps I’d better buy some more make-up though? And a Bengali fashion magazine? Or maybe i’ll just try to learn to live with a few home truths…

If I’m totally honest, before moving to Bangladesh I found it hard to get passionate about the whole climate change thing. The stereotype of middle class hippies eating organic food and dreading their hair is, I’m afraid, one I secretly bought into. I’ve found it much easier to get passionate about other things: housing for the homeless, sex worker rights, the immigration system, IMF policy in Latin America; these issues seeming much more tangible and much more pressing.

Moving to Bangladesh has made me wake up, take notice a bit more, and I have finally found the human story behind the science, statistics and organic locally produced apples.
Watching hundreds of students march suddenly became moving for me, as moving as hearing a refugee talk about why they fled their country, because I’ve suddenly realized how much of this country will be displaced if we let things continue. To me talk of rising temperatures and sea levels has never meant much. Suddenly it is hyper-real: if sea levels rise by 88cm, 170 million people in the country I live in will be displaced. Here’s an exert from yesterdays Daily Star:

“’The weather has changed, the sea has changed’ says Sushil Jaladash, an old fisherman who has stopped going to the sea for the last two years. ‘Waves have become larger and the sea is strangely warm, storms have become frequent’. The money lenders who gave him loans have taken his boat, he failed to complete trips to the sea because of the frequent storms. What will he do now? He has no answer. He looks blank. Just as Pia Rani and Ranjan and hundreds of other fishermen and their families at Taros Vanga village”

As climate change washes away much of Bangladesh, millions are left without land, and are unable to feed themselves. Mass migration to urban areas takes place, and you are left with cities like Dhaka, big sprawling urban messes that simply cannot contain the number of people who flock to it. Electricity cuts become more frequent; slums grow; more and more children become orphaned adding to the already 600,000 plus street children living in Dhaka. More women will travel to the capital to work in garments factories as a way to feed their children, working 7 days a week, 12 hours a day, for less than $30 per month. Family networks will break-down; clinic waiting times will be longer; schools full, stomachs empty.

I have only been here for a short while but I can already see that Bangladesh is a country teetering on the edge of disaster. The social costs of even one more village being displaced by climate change will be devastating, the cost of millions displaced impossible to comprehend. So i’d like to raise my voice with those of you who’ve been doing it for a while, the ones who didn’t get that easyjet flight to Paris with me, the ones who told me off for throwing food in the bin, for letting the tap run, not turning off the hall light-you know who you are. I’d like to commend you for not being as short sighted as me, for seeing that the things I got passionate about were totally and irrevocably connected to the number of flight I took, to the number of Argentinean steak’s from Sainsbury’s I ate. Sorry. Thank you.

Over the last few months I have developed a slow but growing hatred of the orna, the long scarf draped across the chest to hide ones womanness. Nothing seems to fit quite right, and I have spent many hours in the back of CNG’s during onek jam jealously eyeing up all the women who seem to effortlessly carry-off the Shalwar kameez. I recently decided that it was time to branch out, and wear a Sari in public for the first time.

Sari shopping is fun, really fun, particularly as there is no brain power involved, you just pick the design and material you like, and off you go: no matching of material, and no trips to the tailor. My sari got its first outing on the evening of Eid, I had been invited to a friend’s bosses house for dinner and decided to go all out. Eventually I managed to get the Sari on, and off I shuffled. During Eid cows are slaughtered all over the city, so my street was full of blood and guts and sawdust and water. My Sari was so long, and I dear friends so short, it had to be wrapped and tucked so many times I could barley walk. You can imagine the amused looks of my neighbors as i attempted to avoid the pools of blood in the street whilst shuffling like a Geisha. Even more amusing were attempts to get on to the rickshaw, which involved an odd jump, leg swing type dance, it really was a funny sight: an insane looking Bideshi desperately attempting to jump onto a rickshaw without bending her legs all the while avoiding the bits of cow in the road.

Feeling rather brave after the cow/rickshaw experience I decided to give the Sari an outing to the office, and oh was it an outing! I arrived at 10 am sharp and said hello to people who normally just nod, but the response that day was very different. Everyone was so over excited about the fact that I was wearing a Sari I had my picture taken a number of times, and was thanked for making such an effort, and told I had made the office feel very proud of their Bengali culture. I Swaggered-shuffled up the stairs glowing from the thrill of my new culturally sensitive/glamorous look.

And then I wlked into the office of three ladies I had become friendly with and they all burst into hysterical laughter. My large and ever growing ego deflated totally. “Rojie Appa” they howled as I shuffled in “why have you tied your sari like that?!”. It turns out I had tied my sari the way you are meant to tie wedding Sari’s, i.e. so that it is almost impossible to walk and certainly impossible to climb onto Rickshaws. Chuckling to themselves my friend’s evicted the men from the office, and began untieing my sari.

As they unraveled my mess they all went silent, looked at each other with wide-eyes, and burst into even more hysterical laughter. “Where is your petticoat” they whispered manically, incase a band of merry men should be listening at the door, and faint at the though of the bideshi sans petticoat. Now, I had made a very conscious decision not to wear a petticoat (which incidentally is nothing like a petticoat but is rather a full length cotton skirt, exactly the same as what an Amish woman might wear), so I set about explaining my rationale. “Well, um, I’m not really sure what the point of the petticoat is, and I get quite hot you see, and um the Sari has been wrapped around me so many times its not like any-one can see anything is it?”. To this they burst into more hysterical laughter, “but what if it falls off?” they demanded. My initial reaction was to say “so what, i’ve only got on horrible Marks and Spencer 5 pack knickers anyway”, but though it best not to add fuel to the fire, suspecting I might already become known as the harlot of Bangladesh. In my defense, dear readers, there was no way that sari was going anywhere, knotted and tied so many times it had become like the worlds best chastity belt. But like the good culturally sensitive Bideshi that I am I nodded and promised I’d absolutely never leave the house without a petticoat on again. Drama over they did something quick and complicated to my Sari, involving loops and folds and tucks and pins and oh, the glory, suddenly I could walk again! A bindi was proudly place on my forehead and I was declared fit for consumption. Men were invited back into the office to admire my new-improved look, and everyone giggled away at how inept I was at tying a sari.

Getting a bit carried away by the generally light and festive atmosphere that my sari had induced I forgot myself for a moment, and made a little joke about my lack of Petticoat. Suddenly a group of women surrounded me, grabbing me, shoving their hands over my mouth and glancing nervously around to check that none of the men had heard. Thankfully it seems that I had spoken quietly enough, and my modesty was, for the moment at least, saved. “Rojie Appa” they whispered in horror “never tell man no petticoat maximum bad things will happen”.

 I’ve since learnt how to tie the sari the proper way, but I’ve had to start wearing the petticoat because my friends like to randomly shove me into empty rooms and check I’m wearing one.

The novelty of me and the sari has not worn off, even though I’ve now worn one every day for a week. This might have something to do with my recent purchases at the second-hand sari stall, allowing me to saunter about in silk and beaded numbers that should cost a months salary, but which I bargained down to 3 quid!

So this morning I arrived at the office and went in to see my new found friends and they ooohed and ahhhed at my green and purple and green favorite new Sari. “ooooh” they cooed, “how much did it cost Appa?” “Two hundred and fifty taka” I cried in delight, “its second hand” I proudly announced.

The prerequisite pause came, followed by the hysterical giggles. “You’re not meant to tell anyone its second hand they shouted, that’s the whole point!!”

“oh” I replied, looking slightly deflated

“Don’t worry” they replied, and I brightened up “you can tell us” they said, “we’re your sisters!” “But don’t tell any other ladies, and definitely no men Rojie”, and they shook their heads at me sternly. They patted me on the back and placed a Bindi on my head and shook their heads at each other “250 Taka” they said in amazement, “only two months and she’s turning into a Bengali girl”.

All jokes aside, it was a pretty great moment. Having spent rather a lot of the last two months wondering what on earth I’m doing here, questioning how adaptable I really am, and wondering if I’d ever feel a part of things, I seem to have past some sort of test. Since wearing the Sari I’ve been invited to numerous colleagues houses, been asked to eat lunch each day in the dinning hall with my new friends, and best of all, today I was told I am now ready for a proper field visit for 3 whole days at a village in the North!

It seems that all I needed was a lot of patience, bit of perseverance, a few days of shuffling down the street looking ridiculous, a whole lot of humor and a couple of new petticoats. Another important lesson learnt: before any of the grand plans to save the world can begin, I need to calm down, chill out, have a cup of tea and a gossip, earn the trust and respect of my colleagues. If that means wearing a new sari everyday of the week, lucky me!

If only, oh if only. I have now been on a total of 2 x 3 hour field visits. Had 3 x 15 minute meetings with my boss, and achieved absolutely nothing else. Things are becoming a bit desperate. I also seem to be having rather a bad run at Solitaire, you would think after 6 weeks of determined play I’d be getting better. But no. I sincerely hope this is not a sign of things to come.

I’m starting to get a bit more of a picture of my organisation, Bangladesh and development, and I’m becoming ever so slightly disheartened. A few facts:

• Bangladesh is only about 30 years old, the country came into being in the 1970’s after a bitter liberation war fought against Pakistan, millions were killed, and many more raped.
• Bangladesh is one of the most corrupt countries in the world
• Bangladesh has one of the highest numbers of NGO’s and international NGO’s operating in any country.

Combine these three elements together, and you have, basically, a development disaster waiting to happen.

Lets take the corruption point and illustrate how this affects my organisation:

In Bangladesh HIV/AIDS infection rates are relatively low compared with other countries in the region, particularly India. However, statistics are unreliable for a number of reasons, particularly because, with HIV infection rates such an emotive issue, particularly considering that sex before marriage is illegal in this country, the government likes to hugely underestimate the figures. It is widely acknowledged that, in terms of HIV infection, Bangladesh is a bit of a time bomb waiting to happen. Mass migration to the cities; an uneducated illiterate rural population; risky sexual behaviour amongst commercial sex workers and the general population; risky injecting practices amongst IV drug users and a climate in which women are not empowered to negotiate condom use with their partners means that infection rates could rise rapidly and quickly. A number of NGO’s work with ‘at risk groups’ like commercial sex workers to encourage condom use: large numbers of married clients have unprotected sex with multiple sex workers, other partners, and their wives, meaning that the disease will spread rapidly and to a potentially large demographic if the client is infected. There are 13 designated brothel areas in Bangladesh, the largest with over 3,000 sex workers registered to work, and many NGO’s have focused their HIV/AIDS prevention programmes in these places.  A lot of work is done through peer-educators, former sex workers who continue to live in the Brothels and who are paid a small stipend (about 30 pounds per month) so that they have time to distribute condoms, liaise with madams and pimps, and run workshops for the residents, without needing to take on clients. From what I have read and heard, the programs are really quite affective, reaching a large number of women and clients in a sensitive way. However, funding is a hugely complicated issue in Bangladesh, and corruption is a major problem. At the moment, 3 very large, well-known and ‘well respected’ international aid agencies are funding the HIV/AIDS programs in Bangladesh. However, for reasons unknown to mere-mortals like me, the funding is dispensed through government. And hear lies the problem. The brothel based intervention programme run by my organisation has had no funding for months and months. No one in the head office team has been paid. I found out last week that one of the programme officers committed suicide recently because he got so desperate, he could not find another job and it just became impossible to feed his family. Field offices are closing all over the place, landlords have not been paid rent, condoms are not being distributed and peer-educators have had to return to sex work as the 30 pound stipend cannot be paid. Apparently this is not a new story in Bangladesh, projects are constantly collapsing because funding is not getting through. It’s perhaps best not to use the internet to speculate on what has happened to this money, but I’m sure you can use your imaginations. Aside from the obvious issue of corruption, it’s also important to remember that, politically speaking, Bangladesh is still a country in it’s infancy. The ruling party has been in power for under a year, and before that there were years of caretaker governments, military rule and of course a bloody liberation struggle that tore the country apart. I suppose it’s unrealistic to expect the wheels of bureaucracy to turn efficiently at this point in the countries history.

Eventually some of the money will make it into the bank accounts of local NGO’s, and the whole programme will start up again from scratch. New staff will be hired, new peer-educators trained, new offices found. What a waste. What a terrible awful waste. But such is the development cycle in Bangladesh, around and around the work will go. Teams of dedicated people, hard work and commitment circulate round and round, from one funding crisis to the next, and the most vulnerable are left to their fate for the days, weeks, months, years it takes for the money to slowly filter through. It’s hard to talk about progress when faced with a reality like that.

Lets look at the third point: the volume of NGO’s and INGO’s in Bangladesh. As with much of the world, Development in Bangladesh has become big business. A job with an international NGO is the most coveted job in the country, closely followed by a national NGO, like the one I work for. NGO jobs mean better pay and better working conditions than any other sector in the country. There are so many NGO’s here, many of them doing incredible awe-inspiring work. But there is a huge amount of overlap, and as many new NGO’s open each day as they shut down. Some NGO’s have their own ways of generating income, but almost all are reliant, over-reliant, on funding from the big Aid agencies. And, of course, the money comes at a price. There are stringent guidelines imposed, understandably I suppose when you consider the levels of corruption in this country, but the result is that there is very little room left for creativity. Once a project proposal has been submitted and accepted, that’s basically it for the duration of the programme. Staff have very little room for manoeuvre, and are unable to respond to changing circumstances. In addition, there are arbitrary rules imposed from above by people who have very little understanding of the grass-rootes reality in Bangladesh. For example, a government official who has never visited a brothel-based HIV project, has decided to increase proportion of sex-workers to peer-educators from 50 to 200.  All the staff at the project level know this is utterly insane, and totally unworkable, but decisions come from on-high and that, I’m afraid, is that.

The other issue I’ve come across, amongst many, with regards to funding is that NGO’s replicated projects left, right and centre in order to secure more funding. An example, two projects with exactly the same remit provide sanitation schemes in local slums, Move around some wording, find a new project name, and you have two donors funding two projects at one organization: that’s 2 managers, 2 administrators, multiple trainers and field officers, business cards, glossy reports etc etc-2 projects which are absolutely the same. Talk about a waste of resources in a resource poor environment. The thing is, its hard to blame the NGO’s, they need the donors to survive-or so they’ve been taught.

The more I come across these little story’s, discover these little tiny micro-examples of the problem with this business that is international development, my thoughts turn to some of the community organisations I visited and worked with in Bolivia.  None of them had any funding to speak of, but they also did jaw dropping awe-inspiring work.  In Latin America social movements unconnected with big aid agencies, who in fact lobby against organisations such as the IMF and world bank-big funders in Bangladesh, have re-written the rules of development. They truly practice the two buzzwords that are spoken too often and enacted too little: grass roots and sustainable. That they do it without cars and computers, without researchers and trainers and advocacy officers and headed notepaper makes it all the more impressive. Certainly it is harder, in the short term, but it means their work is not at the mercy of decision makers who, at the end of the day, are pushing certain values and ways of living, economic and social systems that support the modes of thinking of the western countries in which these organisations are based.

The organisation I work for runs about 50 projects, but there is a big disparity between projects. There is no pay scale, rather wages are determined by the donors, some projects have new motor-bikes for field visits, new computers and plenty of staff, others are running on pure hard work and little else. Others are not running at all. The problem is, basically, that the organisation doesn’t really exist: rather a collection of projects are housed under one roof, with little dialogue between projects and departments.

And my job is, to work across all departments and a large number of projects to strengthen the capacity of the 4,000 + volunteers engaged by the various projects. Whilst there seems to be an ‘academic’ interest in improving the quality of volunteers training, staff ability to work with, motivate and retain volunteers, and the managements ability to mainstream volunteers voices into the organisation, I’m struggling to see where the resources to achieve all this work will come from-and so is everyone else. Although many projects are well funded, the organization as a whole is not, and what we really need is a team of people working on this, at least a volunteer manager that I develop the programme with, so that when I leave something is left-it makes no sense at all for me to carry out extensive research if there is no one at all to implement the findings,  and for me to implement them myself would be more about my own ego than anything else, there’s little point doing anything if it won’t last beyond the time that I am here. And the joke is? A full time volunteer manager would cost about 200 pounds per month.

Its hard not to become disheartened when faced with this reality; I often look around my office and see all these hard working people grinding away, and wonder, what is the fucking point? But then I see a street-child at a drop in centre who’s learnt to read, or a pregnant mother getting a free check up in a slum clinic, and I know its right to carry on. I think its best not to look at what’s above me, at the bigger picture, because the weight of the mess we have created becomes too heavy to bear.

And so I’ll troop off to work tomorrow, and I’ll see children with no arms and old ladies with eyes missing and men so malnourished I can’t look anymore, I have to turn away, and I’ll keep my fingers crossed that this will be the week that I do something, anything, the tiniest thing that will make some sort of difference to something…

In Bangladesh purchasing everything involves an incredible amount of thought. First there is the haggling. Although it’s sometimes annoying, especially when you suddenly forget your numbers in the middle of a crowded market, its also quite fun, and there is generally lots of humour involved. Buying veg is a new experience because I don’t really know what half of the things are, there are no informative labels telling you how to cook it, you just have to chop it up and throw it in and hope for the best. Of course, first you have to wash and peel everything if you don’t want to spend the next 24 hours on the toilet, also, you have to boil and filter all the water you use-for similar reasons. The kitchen must be rapidly cleared away and everything tightly sealed or the ants will ruin all your hard shopping work.

Then of course there are clothes. First you must match the material for top, bottoms and scarf. This is actually much harder than it sounds, particularly when the man selling you the material keeps confusing you with weird combinations which your not quite yet ready for because you still have a secret copy of grazia you brought over on the aeroplane and have this bizarre idea that you are going to float around in ‘this seasons look’ only translated to the Bangladesh context. Whew. Then you have to purchase the material, take it to the tailors, get measured, and pick it all up 5 days later. And then you have to iron it. Yes, I have now become an iron-er. The problem with buying lovely cotton from your favourite stall in Mohamadpur market is that it gets all crinkled up every time you wear it. What happened to good old synthetic clothing is what I want to know!

Getting a little bored of the tailors, and of wearing the same thing every day, I recently decided to branch out into Sari’s. Sari’s are great except they also need ironing, and there is a lot of material! I literally spent an hour and a half ironing my special Eid Sari at the weekend. Before the ironing you must first wash the Sari to get all the starch out, and the excess die, and then try and work out a way to hang up the Sari to dry, because it is double the length of your balcony. Most probably the whole neighbourhood will watch you stumbling about on a chair getting strangled by wet Sari.

There is of course no washing machine.

Then of course there is the electricity, which normally goes off for at least an hour every night.

And I kind of like it. Yes I curse when I’m still ironing a sari after an hour, and when the lights go off, but I also like that I’m much more connected with the things I consume. I like having particular stalls I go to in the market, and wading through piles of Sari’s, and sometimes I actually like sitting on my balcony when the powers gone and just listening to everything. I don’t want to buy things all the time because it’s a hassle. And I’m glad of that. I seem to be moving more towards the buying things I need state of mind, than buying things because they catch my eye. Do I really want this enough to spend 15 minutes discussing the price? No. Do I like this Sari enough to iron for an hour every time I wear it? No.

I suppose this is the way it should be. If its not easy to grow then eating it shouldn’t be, if its not easy to sew then wearing it shouldn’t be. Its good to be reminded of the hard work that goes into the things we pick up off shelves and throw into baskets and put in draws and let rot in fridges.

I wonder how long my new Zen-like non-consumerist state will last for on my return? I seem to remember experiencing similar feeling before. And then going to Topshop. Here’s hoping…

Today I tried to engage the tea boy in a conversation but it didn’t really work. He gets quite nervous around me. Also, the bloody CNG driver who brought be home wouldn’t haggle! I was relying on exercising my voice box with him but he inexplicably quoted a totally fair price, so that moment was lost.

Tonight, as a treat, I’ve had pasta and pasta sauce and Dhaka cheese. I ate too much chocolate. I forgot to buy credit so now cannot phone anyone. It’s dark so I’m not allowed out to buy some, in Bangladesh women turn into pumpkins if they leave the house alone after 8.

Dum de dum. The strange thing is that I don’t really mind. Yes, it is totally annoying not to have someone to go out with in the evening. But then, saying that, there’s not really anywhere to go except to the supermarket and the credit shop and the pharmacy.

Its quite nice really, just pootling around the flat on my own, singing quite loudly to check I still have a voice. The only problem being, really, is that Bridgette Jones’s Diary is not the best thing to read. She spends most of the book worrying about dying alone being eaten by Alsatians. The street dogs here are really big and scary. Ok, I know logically that there is no way they can get into my flat (I live on the second floor and have double bolted the door), but still, you never know.

I think I might go and just knock on my landlord’s door and have a little cup of tea. They might get the photo albums out and show me random streets in London and ask where they are. And read out London postcodes to me out of their address book. Seriously. Maybe on second thoughts I’ll watch another film from the ‘Julia Roberts: 5 films on one very special bonus disk’ DVD I bought yesterday.

Oh God.

This is possibly the most boring blog post ever written ever. Forgive me, I had to talk to someone.