A tourist vists Bangladesh

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Peter Trent - Bangladesh - October 2010

October 25, 2010

I am in my 4th day in Bangladesh, and what an adventure! A quick spin through Dhaka (12 million and counting), then a heart-stopping drive to Chittagong, where we saw an amazing open fish market, then on to Cox's Bazar, in the southeast corner of the country, on a 120 km long wide sand beach.

This country is beautiful and the people are so friendly. Beautiful children - no child labor laws and they are doing heavy lifting at an early age. No visible tourists. I have seen only one white face since arrival, a sergeant at the WWII grave site. Hotels are adequate to on the edge of luxurious. Food is passable if you can pick out the green chilies, which are dynamite. Weather is hot and humid; sunny skies except for one brief downpour.

October 28, 2010

Here almost a week, and many adventures and mishaps. The countryside is beautiful and the people are very friendly and attractive.

Dhaka is the pits: at least 12 million people, all in continuous motion, on foot, by pedicab, tuk-tuk, ancient buses and an occasional Toyota. Then traffic jams are unlike anything I have ever seen. We left the airport at 4:30 for a 10k ride to the boat dock for the "Rocket" paddle wheeler to the Sundarban and by 7:00 we had still not reached it and gave up because it had already sailed. We turned back to our hotel in Dhaka and reached it after 10PM.

I am now in Khulna, to take a 5:30 AM boat for two days in the mangrove forest. Hope to see a Bengal tiger before it sees me!

Two days ago, at Cox's Bazar, I was tipped off a sampan into the Bay of Bengal. Other than a bump on the head, a few scratches, and some loss of dignity I survived, but one of my cameras did not. Fortunately the stick is ok so I didn't lose the photos.

Prices are unbelievably low. Dinners run about $4 to $9. The food is undistinguished at best. Liquor is not generally available, hotels are $30-50 a night for plain but perfectly decent, clean accommodation.

November 12, 2010

I am back, from one of the most challenging and interesting trips I have taken. The country is beautiful- lush green rice fields, verdant jungle and swamp areas, very friendly and attractive people, particularly the children, It is teeming with people (160 million in an area just slightly larger than the State of New York). It is the seventh most populous country in the world, and the fourth largest Islamic country. 90% of the population is Islamic, mostly Sunni, the balance are Hindu, with a smattering of Buddhists and Christians.

Most of the southern part of the country is either water or low lying, swampy area. Not hard to understand that the water lily is the national flower. Rice is the main crop, and there is lots of lush jungle-like area. I was one of two, traveling with a driver and guide. After an early morning arrival we took a brief tour of Dhaka (population 12 million) and got our first exposure to its incredible traffic. There are thousands of pedicabs, motorized tricycles, trucks and crammed buses, also vying with a few cars, almost all reconditioned Toyotas, and daredevil pedestrians trying to thread their way through the massive traffic jams at great peril. Most of the city is old and dilapidated. One exception was the striking government complex designed by Louis Kahn. There is some building going on, mainly apartments and office buildings, a lot of which is financed by repatriated funds from overseas workers. Almost all of it is financed by equity rather than debt. There is, by the way, a surprisingly large and active stock market. We drove the next day to Chittagong, the second largest city (3.8 million) and main port. Upscale a bit from Dhaka. On the way we visited a small, tidy and moving WWII cemetery, and then the boat yards where they cut up massive ships for scrap, a very controversial business.

We spent some time in the sprawling Fish Landing, one of the largest fish markets in the entire country. We also made a brief stop at the only Christian church we saw, a RC cathedral originally founded by the Portuguese in the early 16 century. It has a lovely cemetery and two schools, one for boys and one for girls.

The trip to Cox's Bazar took the rest of the day. We had an hour wait for gas, as they turn the power off for parts of the day and the pumps were not working. Then we had a breakdown with the car which ate up another 1 1/2 hours. We reached Cox's at sunset, and checked into the best hotel we stayed at. Cox's Bazar is the northern end of a broad white sand beach which extends for 125 kilometers, to the border with Myanmar.

Our trip to Moheshkhali Island to visit the local tribe there was a fascinating look at a tribal culture hardly touched by civilization, except for a scattering of satellite discs. No cars. The return trip was the occasion of my unexpected dunk in the Bay of Bengal, being tipped out of a sampan while disembarking.

We flew back to Dhaka and then Jessore to reach our boat in Khulna, on which we spent three days and two nights exploring the Sundarban, at 10,000 square kilometers the largest mangrove forest in the world and the home of the largest population of Bengal tigers, of which we saw none. It is a low lying preserve which extends up to 80Ks inside Bangladesh, and is mostly water and swamp. We took some silent boat excursions into some of the smaller waterways, The flora is so thick that we saw few animals, mostly spotted deer and birds. We had one grueling trek through the slime of a tidal flat, and a 10K walk on a sand beach, fording a tidal canal in knee deep water. We were turned back at one grassy field which was overrun with snakes. We were 18 on the boat, plus crew: 6 Aussies (5 of whom were working for various NGOs, three Swiss who were involved in an agricultural project in Afghanistan, two females from the UK, three Bangladeshi couples. Only three of us could be considered as tourists. These people were the only Western faces I saw throughout the trip, until we got to the airport for departure to Doha.

The final highlight was 24 hours on the "Rocket,' a large paddle wheeler built in the 1880s, which is the principal mode of transportation of people and goods throughout the delta area. I had a comfortable private cabin, but a good bit of Bangladesh were bedded down just through the door to the main part of the boat, from babies to grandparents and an occasional live chicken. Watching the flow of people on and off the boat was truly amazing.

Our final stop was in the tea country, 200Ks north of Dhaka: large groves of tea plants, and a very interesting rain forest. Food throughout was basic, the best meals were on the boats, but it is not a culinary destination. As a sign of how un-touristy things are, I could not find a postcard anywhere in the entire country, and requests for same were generally greeted with blank stares. Sorry everybody. I do have some unused stamps for any collectors out there.

There are at least two English language papers which are quite good. Their emphasis is on local and national issues. Sports are featured, with cricket and worldwide soccer most prominent. Key current issues are stalking; the selling of children and daughters into prostitution or other servitude, mainly to India and the Middle East, and the widespread corruption of the bureaucracy and the courts. The stalking issue is quite serious, because the stalkers killed two people while I was there, one a mother and one a 'good Samaritan' who had intervened. The police had not intervened or apprehended the perpetrators. I am glad I went, I don't expect to return, and it is definitely for the more intrepid traveler. I am editing pictures and hope to have some available in the near future.

Peter

November 16, 2010

Faces of Bangladesh

The thing is

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The Thing Is

by Ellen Bass\

to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you've held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,

your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.

"The Thing Is" by Ellen Bass, from Mules of Love. © BOA Editions, Ltd., 2002

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Like a river

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One of the most widespread superstitions is that every man has his own special, definite qualities; that a man is kind, cruel, wise, stupid, energetic, apathetic, etc. Men are not like that. We may say of a man that he is more often kind than cruel, oftener wise than stupid, oftener energetic than apathetic, or the reverse; but it would be false to say of one man that he is kind and wise, of another that he is wicked and foolish. And yet we always classify mankind in this way. And this is untrue. Men are like rivers: the water is the same in each, and alike in all; but every river is narrow here, is more rapid there, here slower, there broader, now clear, now cold, now dull, now warm. It is the same with men. Every man carries in himself the germs of every human quality, and sometimes one manifests itself, sometimes another, and the man often becomes unlike himself, while still remaining the same man ...

Leo Tolstoy

Forgotten but not gone

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Kerrying On

One-tooth Ree

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About six months ago, as I walked into church I was warmly greeted by my two neighbors, Betsy and Howard Nielson. The two warmly shook my hand, gave me a weekly bulletin, and smiled as they politely moved to the people standing behind me. This charming pair in their late 60s had been appointed to the newly-created position of "greeters." Each Sunday it would be their job to stand at the chapel door, smile, hand out church bulletins, and make small talk.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kerry Patterson is the coauthor of three bestselling books, Influencer, Crucial Conversations, and Crucial Confrontations.

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By profession, Howard had been a chemistry professor and Betsy a lawyer. Both had been retired for about five years. When I first met the two at a neighborhood gathering I discovered they lived in the Bay Area in the early 70s at the same time I had been stationed there in the Coast Guard. As we shared memories of the area and era, the conversation somehow turned to the marvelous regional theater. I enthusiastically explained that one of the highlights of my stay in California had been a local theater competition I had attended. The theme had been "One, Two, Three" and one of the ten-minute skits that competed was aptly re-titled "One-tooth Ree." As you've probably guessed, it was about a poor fellow named Ree who had but one tooth and the challenges he faced trying to find a girlfriend. The music, lyrics, script, and staging were delightful and I gushed over its creativity.

"One-tooth-Ree!" Howard exclaimed. "Why Betsy wrote the play, the music, and the lyrics. I did the costuming, sets, and staging." Then the two began singing the theme song as I stood there with my mouth agape. Somehow, after thirty years of moving about the country, I had run into the people who produced my favorite mini-musical of all time. The three of us laughed about the coincidence and I marveled that a chemist and lawyer had crafted such an incredible production. Both were modest in their response and eventually went on to talk about their other surprise talents—the books she had written and the photo contests he had won.

"Actually I've written quite a lot," Betsy enthused, "but over the past few years nobody has asked me about my work."

From there the conversation turned to the fact that aging, along with its physical challenges, was putting them out to pasture despite the fact that they still wanted to be yoked. It turns out both Betsy and Howard had been (in their own words) "given the bum's rush" into retirement. And now within their own parish, two vibrant parishioners who had once run the church's charity drives and led the youth camping programs had been politely released from their volunteer jobs and appointed "greeters."

"It's a token job," Betsy explained with a sad smile. "You can't exactly fire people at church so you make up some position and move them to that."

"Not that people don't need to be greeted," Howard added. "It's just that we have so much more to offer."

Since talking with Betsy and Howard that day, I've made it a point to converse with each of the retired people in my environs to learn what it's been like as they moved into their "golden" years. Some have loved the transition to a life of less stress and more free time, some report a hollow feeling they can't seem to fill, and all allude to the fact that once you reach a certain age (or look), people don't exactly view you as a cauldron of wisdom. Friends, family, and neighbors don't seem to care a whit about the photos you shot back in the old days or the books you wrote back when the earth was still cooling, or for that matter, the advice you might want to proffer today.

What must it be like to be bubbling over with ideas and never asked for your point of view? How does it feel to stand on the sidelines and crave to be sent back in the game? "Put me in coach," you think to yourself. "I can do it!"

But nobody calls.

At some level I understand why today's senior citizens aren't always valued for their years of priceless experience. Centuries ago, when people worked in jobs like saddle maker or silver-bowl master, it took years to learn the craft. Consequently, older people were quite likely to know more about how to complete a job than just about anyone. Two hundred years ago, skilled craftsmen remained rock stars right up until the day they died.

But things have changed. Today's older generation isn't going to pass on the wisdom of five generations of haberdashery or the finer points of millinery arts. Nowadays, technology moves so fast that almost no form of expertise remains relevant for very long. For instance, my folks learned how to sell radio advertising space and process black-and-white photos, but those fields have long since been replaced with new technologies. Nobody cares much about them any more.

But that doesn't mean that today's more senior and experienced citizens don't still have a lot to offer. I know this is true because I took my cue from the Nielsons and started making it a point to talk to older people—no longer making small talk—but now making big talk. In church, between meetings, and after exchanging greetings, I ask: "What's the most interesting thing you learned in your career?" or "What advice do you have for me as a new grandparent?" or "What's the most important book you ever read?"

From there the discussion always turns lively and interesting. It's like opening the door to a library. For instance, last week when my neighbor George (a retired geologist) stopped by to take a look at our remodeling project, I took him over to the new granite countertops and asked him to teach me about the stone.

"If I were still teaching Geology 101," George enthused, "I'd bring my students by your place just to look at this! Examining this stone is like reading an ancient manuscript. The granite you see in the field is covered with dirt and even when it's exposed it's hard to examine. But when you slice and polish a massive piece like this, you can peer back into the very formation of the earth. For example, you see this dark brown scar that runs across this slab? The stone had a crack in it and millennia ago magma poured into the void. And you see these tiny marks that look like ancient writing, they're called 'glyphs,' but they're not made by man, they're made by nature. It all starts when . . ."

After enjoying several equally enlightening conversations with several other friends and neighbors, I decided to ask Betsy Nielson to share some of her writing with me. She had suggested that nobody asked her about her work anymore, so I asked her. Within hours, Betsy appeared at our front door with a large book in hand. She reverently opened it to a picture of a smiling young man standing at attention in full flight gear. It was her brother Roy and he had just graduated from flight school.

"In this book," Betsy explained, "I contributed a story about my brother Roy's flight experience in World War II."

Then I noticed Betsy cradling a letter in her hands—holding it more like a religious artifact than an epistle.

"It's a letter Roy sent me," Betsy said as she fought back a tear. "It starts out, 'Dear Sis.'"

She then paused to regain her composure.

"Roy was eight years older than me, and kind enough to write his kid sister about once a month. Receiving a letter from him was the highlight of my youth. In this particular letter Roy makes small talk about his daily goings-on and ends by hoping that his flight scheduled for later that day will be successful. He and his crew were hunting down enemy submarines and that was always dangerous."

"So what happened?" I asked.

"You'll note the date on the letter." Betsy answered. "You're a bit young to know this, but it was the last day of the war."

"And?"

"And Roy's plane was shot down. He and his entire crew were lost. My brother and his buddies were among the last soldiers to die—they may have been the last soldiers to lose their lives in the war."

No wonder Betsy was cradling the letter. It was a poignant and tender piece of history. Tears ran down our cheeks as we discussed Roy's sacrifice and Betsy's feelings. It was a cherished moment for me and it had been the result of asking a simple question: "Would you share some of your writings?" I had called Betsy back into the game and both of us were blessed for my having done so.

And what did I do to get Betsy back into the game? How did I open the library door? First, I took the time to talk with an older friend. Second, I traded small talk for big talk. Third, I listened intently as my friend shared a story.

In Betsy's own words, unlocking untold treasures had been as simple as One-tooth Ree.

A hard stone in the wilderness

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Sunlight That Transcends Prison Walls

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October 9, 2010

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When some of the very few Chinese who can see international news services in four-star hotels saw their screens go black for six minutes yesterday, they knew: Liu Xiaobo had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Mr. Liu is 54, a writer who became a dissident because, as he said, "an honest writer must live by his words." In his essay, Philosophy of the Pig, he praises ordinary citizens who challenge China's totalitarian rule, and castigates intellectuals who, he says, "feel brave because the government lets them write about sex, incest and human defects. In China, everybody has the courage to shamelessly challenge morals. Rare are those who have the courage to challenge reality."

He's given his life to a cause, but kept a human touch. When Mr. Liu was a leader of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, he negotiated with the Chinese military, which had run over protesters, to give students a chance to leave the square before they could be killed.

He has been in prison for seven of the last 20 years, convicted of calling for free speech, democracy and independent courts in China, where that's called subversion.

The Nobel Peace Prize makes Liu Xiaobo a symbol. But this week, I was struck by utterly personal words Mr. Liu wrote when was sentenced to 11 years in prison last year. They are the words of a man who doesn't seek to be a symbol, but a full, warm-blooded human being who craves, as W.H. Auden once wrote, what we all do: "Not universal love/But to be loved alone."

He writes to his wife, the painter Liu Xia, and says:

Sweetheart ... I am sentenced to a visible prison while you are waiting in an invisible one. Your love is sunlight that transcends prison walls and bars, stroking every inch of my skin, warming my cell, letting me maintain my inner calm, magnanimous and bright, so that every minute in prison is full of meaning.

Given your love, sweetheart, I look forward to my country being a land of free expression, where ... all views will be spread in the sunlight for people to choose without fear. I hope to be the last victim.

I am a hard stone in the wilderness, putting up with the pummeling of raging storms, and too cold for anyone to dare touch. But my love is hard, sharp, and can penetrate any obstacles. Even if I am crushed into powder, I will embrace you with the ashes.

The Chinese government has not just locked up a symbol named Liu Xiaobo, but a human being who cannot hold those he loves.