What’s black and white and red all over?

Building containers for rice in Manikganj

Some days, my job is kind of boring, to be honest.  I have a great view from my office on the 19^th floor, but at the end of the day, it’s still a lot of desk work.  Emailing, scheduling, etc.  The best part is getting out of the building and into what we fondly call, “the field.” For BRAC, the field is the gold standard.  You earn your battle stars by spending time building programs from the ground up, not in the comfortable, air-conditioned cubicles of the head office.
So I go out to understand what it is BRAC “does.”  Ask questions of staff, volunteers, and clients.  Sit and observe how life looks in a village.  But mainly to entertain the locals, who rarely come across foreigners, especially white girls that are getting pretty decent in Bangla.  Now that opens up a world of opportunities for questions.  Earlier this week I went to Manikganj to learn more about BRAC's work with dairy farming.  While there, I had the following conversation (translated, so also realize that there’s still a little magnetic word game going on here as my vocabulary is evolving):

Bangladeshi man: What color am I?

Maria: You are brown.

Bangladeshi man:  Not black?

Maria: Nope.  Only people from Africa are black, in America.

Bangladeshi man, pointing to two other Bangladeshis: What are her? And him?

Maria:  They are also brown.  Essentially everyone from South Asia is brown. 

Long pause for this to sink in.  We change the subject to mangoes, eventually, since they are overhead.  But then we come back to the obvious: ask the foreigner about Dhaka.

Bangladeshi man: You are from a developed country.  Do you really like living in Dhaka?

Maria: I do.

BM: How is that possible?  What about the traffic?  Don’t you hate it?

Maria: I do.  But, I live close to the office, so I don’t really have to deal with it.

Nodding, but still skeptical BM: But……what if you want to go to New Market? (Major bazaar that’s on the other side of town)

Maria: Then I go on Friday or Saturday morning when there’s no traffic.

BM: Hmmmmm.  Do you a car?

MM: No.

BM:  Really?  Do you have an AC?

MM: Yes, one.

BM: But wait, how do you go to New Market? By rickshaw?

MM: In a CNG (auto-rickshaw), usually.

BM: But CNGs don’t have AC!!  How can you manage?

(Mind you, we are sitting outside on a hot day during this conversation, so I find this question rather ironic)

MM:  I manage.

BM:  Hmmmm.

Those green fields that MBAs are always talking about!
With my colleague, Samina.

I tell this story to point out the layers of unknowns we have about how “the others” live.  My life is as foreign to these guys as the “village life” is to me.  My questions probably are about as outlandish and presumptuous as theirs.  But this is how people learn—they ask the funny or stupid questions and someone answers. The most common question I get here is, “Why are you so tall?” It’s hard to say, “I’m not really that tall,” when I’m towering over the inquiring mind.  Perspective matters, and I have to keep that in mind when figuring out how to answer the question (sometimes I say, “My parents are tall” and that seems satisfactory). These questions are enlightening to me; what we choose to ask about says a lot what we see as important, as worth discussing, or as relating to satisfaction and happiness.  My bangla is still very much a work in progress, but it’s these types of small details and chitchat that is my major motivation to learn.  The sociologist in me is hungry for the “thick” experience of Bangladesh, and you just can’t get that through translators.  It’s nice to start to have interactions that are “humanizing.”  I.e. in which I distinguish myself from an animal at the zoo via language, that powerful tool we people have created.  For example, when 10 kids lined up to stare at me for a few minutes, I finally said, “Chupchap keno?” (Why are you so quiet?).  Their eyes got wider, and they ran away.  Then I noticed that they were still there, just peering up over a fence.  I guess if I have to be a zoo animal, better to be a tiger than a warthog.

Our host kept adding green chili to see if that would slow
me down.  Nope.

For best results, I suggest these conversations over a cup of tea, a popsicle, or green mango (I had all yesterday just to be on the safe side).