All up in my krill

Sometimes, working in the field of global health requires people to make big sacrifices in comfort and quality of life. Other times, it requires you to unquestioningly go into the depths of the field to see what's **really** happening on the ground. The field can be a scary place, away from the A/C and "highspeed" internet at the head office. A week in the field, can I do it?

In this case, "the field" began in Chittagong, Bangladesh's second largest city and extended down to Cox's Bazar, advertised as the "longest sea-beach without breaks", Cox's Bazar is beautiful. If you turn south instead of heading up to the main strip, you meander through thick forests of tall palms, interspersed with groups of pine trees. It looks uninhabited at first, but then you notice the crops, and then the long, almost barrack-like houses made out of dried brush that create a camouflage for the small, but steady population that lines the coast. We stopped at Inani beach and walked the sunset. It was "empty", but Bangladesh standards. We stayed at BRAC's Training and Resource Center, which is located right on the water. I drifted off to sleep listening to the waves crash.....

I went for a walk early this morning, and other than a few guys out catching shrimp in their smiley-faced shaped boats and one hungry dog that almost made me reconsider my recent advocacy efforts, I really did have the beach for myself. What a luxury! Global health is a rough life, let me tell you.

I was also forced to try the local variety of bananas (short and sweet!), a lot of very fresh fish prepared in a number of tasty ways (fried, stewed, curried), fresh chipati, and, a vegetable that's slowly coming into season much to my delight: okra! No forks to be found, so I had to dive in local style straight with my hand, but definitely makes eating with gusto fairly easy.

Now back in Chittagong, enjoying the sounds of rush hour traffic. You can take the girl out of the honky-tonk, but you can't take the honky-tonk out of the girl. Wait a minute. . . .

(full disclosure: this is two days old--bandwidth in paradise was too slow to load the pictures). So I'm safely back in Dhaka and contemplating what to do this weekend!