Hello All!
I cannot wrap my head around the fact that it's late in November and that Christmas is just around the corner! I'm accustumed to feeling time pass but seeing and feeling the seasons change so when "winter" here consists of 85 and 90 degree days, it doesn't really indicate that time has past. It has cooled off a little bit and the evenings and mornings are nice and cool-you even need a thin sweater sometimes. Amazing. I think about what would be happening back home right now and the town's Christmas decorations would be going up just about now, Christmas commercials would be bombarding T.V. sets and Christmas would just be everywhere as the last leaves fall and the coldness of winter sets in. We don't have any of that here and I'm not really missing it-they go so overboard with it at home.
Two weekends ago my roommates Donna and Kasey and our friend Kristen went to the H&M garment sale because they have their headquarters here and Bangladesh. They have garment sales 2 or 3 times a year where they unload all the stuff they've made too much of or have small defects. You can get sweaters and t-shirts and stuff for a dollar. It was absolutley crazy though. Mozib drove us to the headquarters and all these white women were already lined up outside a half hour before it even started. It was a very hot day and we were all clustered together with the sun beating directly on us. Women had bags to hoard clothes in and some even had boxes, shopping for their whole families. I felt like women were sizing each other up before we even went in, like "Bitch, I'm gonna get more clothes than you!" The Bengali workers who were working on rooftops thought it was crazy to see all these Western women lining up for their western-style clothes and they laughed and chatted about us from the rooftops, smoking their bindy cigarettes. Kasey, who has lived in Dhaka for 2 years was prepping us on the madness and I was getting anxious just listening to it. When they finally opened the gate, there was a mad rush into this super tiny outdoor space, covered by a tent. There were long tables, some lining the outside and some in the middle with huge heaps of clothes on them. Women rushed to claim their spots and starting digging, clothes being glanced at and then flung into the air. Before they could even land on the pile someone had already scooped it out of the air, looked, and either hoarded in the cardboard box, or discarded into the air again. It was madness. All kinds of manners and human decency were completely flung out the window. We don't have any western shopping malls here so this is one of the only chances to get this type of clothing-and for super cheap! I was definitely not good at pushing people aside to I could get to a table. It took me quite a while to find a spot and start rooting through clothes. Even then, you can only look at the square patch between your elbows and right in front of you. I got some good stuff in the end, some sweaters for London at Christmas, and some basic tee-shirts. There was absolutely no room to try anything on so I had no idea how things fit until I got home. Watching other women, they had obviously done this several times before and had it down to a science! They had their huge cardboard box and their hands whipped through clothes, knowing instantly whether it would be right for someone in their family or it could be discarded. Sifting through one area they would then kick their box across the area to another spot and then follow it, elbowing their way into another table spot. When I had finsished, the worst part was waiting in line to pay. I was drenched with sweat, had no idea whether the clothes in my hands would fit and just wanted to get away from the pushy women acting like animals fighting over raw meat. The people at the checkout desk had forgotten to give me a ticket when I finally did pay which was the only way to get out of the door. The guardsmen only spoke Bengali and couldn't understand what I was trying to explain. I had a moment of panic as I thought I would never get out of this place until they finally let me go. I had gotten a text from Donna 10 minutes after we had gotten into the sale and had been seperated from each other saying, "Can't handle it, in the car." haha I joined her and gave a huge sigh of relief to be out of there. Kasey and Kristen were still in the middle of everything. I don't think I will ever look at a piece of clothing from H&M in quite the same way. This had not been a relaxing shopping experience at all. I feel like had I tripped and fallen in there that I wouldn't have even been helped up, only trampled over by women and their cardboard boxes searching for one dollar t-shirts for their children. Craziness.
Later that weekend Donna and I were feeling like we needed to give back to the community after we had just acted like sub-humans to accquire a cheap cotton t-shirt so we volunteered our time with the ABC school kids. These kids go to a local school but come on the weekends to AIS/D to play on our playgrounds. They don't have any facilities like this at their school or many resources like books and art supplies in general. It is really great that they can come to our school and have lots of space to run around and play. A teacher volunteers every weekend to make lunch for them-chicken curry and rice. We went over at around mid day and there were about 40 kids on the playground. There was one other volunteer there, John, who goes to AIS/D and works with them every weekend. We all "lost" in the statue game and had to do a little skit for all the kids. The kids were so sweet and ranged in ages from 3 to 16. We taught them the songs and clapping game we knew-Ms. Mary Mac, Ring Around the Rosey, Twinkle Twinkle, Down by the Banks, London Bridges, and they taught us songs and clapping games in Bengali. We played these with the younger girls while the older boys played soccer. We all played tag together. They were so sweet and appreciative and loved having us. At lunchtime, we helped serve their chicken curry and rice and they ate in the traditional Bengali way, with no hands-a very messy affair! The kids ate ravenously. AIS/D does a lot of work with the ABC and often has charity events, giving the money to ABC.
Last weekend we went on Saturday night to a Bengali play called "The Communicator." It was far away in a part of the town we hadn't been to. There was lots of traffic at this time too and it took us an hour to get to where we were going. When we got there we were some of the only white people there and got lots of stares. We bought Mozib a ticket and he came with us. The play was really good even though we couldn't understand most of it, we could still get the idea of it from the images and dances and Mozib translated bits of it for us. They used lots of different mediums in the play. I thought the dancing and the outfits were really good. It was all about how the leaders of the world control a lot of the money and the press and they often times don't pay attention to the masses of poor and how they have to live. There were lots of images of George Bush, including the one of him getting shoes thrown at him, to which everyone in the place errupted in cheers and applause. He doesn't appear to be a very popular character on this side of the world. Saturday is a school night for us because our work week is Sunday through Thursday and with all the traffic we got back late but we were all glad we had gone and been around non-school people and gotten out of the bubble for a bit.
No comments:
Post a Comment