Greetings from the bay of Bengal. It is amazing here, visually it's very exuberant, The textiles are remarkably colorful, murals are strange and the bicycle rickshaws are all decorated with floral and animal, designs and Bollywood cinema stars. The humidity hovers between 95 and 100 %. Bangladesh has half the population of the U.S. in a nation the size of Ohio, one could say it's crowded. The food is familiar Indian fare, but with a different name. We're at the beginning of monsoon season, I hear 80% of the rain comes in the next 3 months, followed by serious droughts. Life is tough here but the Bengalis are resilient. We start teaching in 2 days, and we're anxious about how our methods will translate. We feel very fortunate to have this opportunity, and we're not on vacation. It will be a lot of hard work, but everyone talks about how great the students are. They're from Afghanistan, India, Nepal, Palestine,Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Vietnam and perhaps a few exotic others. All classes are taught in English, but the Bengali accent it pretty difficult to understand: Taka, the currency and Dhaka, the capital, sound identical to me. I saw some interesting paint brushes, but any attempt to find out what kind of animal the bristles came from was comical and impossible, try acting out "badger" sometime. One gives up on certain lines of inquiry. I did learn that "okra" means nothing, but "lady fingers" will get you the familiar, slimy green vegetables. Buying bath towels the first night required an animated mime routine, with every component of bathing offered prior to my grand finale of drying off with a rectangle drawn in the air.
I smell lady fingers cooking, so I'm signing off.
Peter
No comments:
Post a Comment