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Paddy fields in Bangladesh
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What is my job was a question raised by one of my reader.
Well other then gallivanting around this part of the world and carrying out
some character assassination of those who make my life difficult, I do actually
have a job to do for one year (9 months left now). My job as a textile adviser
is to pass my designing knowledge to the in house designer - namely Roxanna
My NGO has many programmes for adults, adolescent and
children. One of the Adolescent Empowerment Project (AEP) aims to equip young
people with the skill they need for income generation and therefore a better
future. The students, mainly girls receive one year's training in embroidery,
tailoring, tie dye, batik, block printing, basket weaving, and bamboo and food preparation.
Roxanna’s job is to create new designs for the students to work on, also check
the quality of the work and market it. She joined the NGO as a kitchen helper,
had flair for designing and with no training or qualification she was appointed
as a designer three years ago. She is 27, very attractive and comes from one of
the wealthiest family in Net……... Not
only has she the flair for designing but her 10 years unhappy love marriage has
led her to gain flair for flirting with all the men in the NGO. Not a very
uncommon behaviour amongst Muslim girls in Bangladesh, never mind in little
Net……… where everyone knows, everyone else! For this reason, my workload has
been increased to giving Roxanna advice on fidelity. Such advice coming from
me, an Eastern girl with Western values, foot loose and fancy free, is hard for
Roxanna to swallow. She does not and will not accept her fate and continues to
question her unhappy married life? Divorce is out of question as she comes from
a well known family and the only alternative she feels she has is to kill her
self and she is not the only one with
such predicament. The NGO has shelter homes for women who have gone through
difficult married life. Roxanna is hoping to join the home one day if death
does not come first.
I also work closely with posh Lady Jane, born in
Leeds but had lived in Somerset
for many years. She is 60 and she is really an ' old bag' and she has been a
pain in my neck (or dare I say pain in......) ever since I first set eyes on
her. However, she is doing at snail
speed, an excellent job in creating new vegetables dyes for yarns and fabrics.
I am praying that she will leave at the end of April when her contract with VSO will run
out? I can then happily continue to
create new designs for the western market and hopefully you will all get to see
the products and hopefully you will all buy something to help my young girls
earn a penny or two?
My Boss previously described as a control freak, continuous
to be one and still lives next door to me and my contact with her is now 24
hours. I have become her blue –eyed girl, since I now dress, look, talk and
smell (I use mustard oil on my body and hair, good stuff, try it?) like a Bangladeshi
girl. How long I shall stay her little pet, I do hope until end of Nov. when my
contract will run out? My Boss can be a real dragon to those who question her authority.
She and her right hand man have both broken all the human rights rules and
publicly humiliated and sacked people in her NGO. She goes into hysterics when
things don’t go as planed and she is a real ‘drama queen’ with tears down her
eyes when she wants to make an emotional statement or two. I have seen it all
and been there to hold her hand. She will not accept that her married brother
is secretly meeting my lovely Roxanna. However, fortunately, for me my Boss and
Lady Jane are always in loggerheads with each other, so I can see every reason
for Lady Jane to be given dismissal papers at the end of April. I, in the mean
time will continue to pray 5 times a day for Lady Jane’s return ticket home to England soon.
The winter only lasted few days
really for us foreigners. Now the spring is in the air with lots of baby goats
and chicken roaming the countryside. The rice fields are muddy and green again,
it is growing season and a lot of hard work. We had to endure our 2nd eid
celebration on the first week of Feb. and we had 7 days off from work. This eid
known as ' koribani eid' meaning sacrificial eid which we renamed it ' bloody
eid' because thousands of bulls are slaughtered in every court yard by those
who can afford to; other have to do with goats, ducks or handouts. I decided to
escape Net......... for 5 days and managed to get a 40 minutes flight to Jessore (
west of Bangladesh) to meet up with Lillian ( from Norway). It was a good
decision and I enjoyed roaming around the clean city of
Jessore and Lillian’s hospitality. The city
is near the Indian border and I was horrified to discover that thousands and
thousands of bulls that were to meet their crunch time in
Bangladesh were imported from
India! The land
of holy cow, vegetarianism. Shame on
India.
Burka outfit for me in Jessore
I often feel that my flat in Net……..
is probably seen as a brothel by the outsiders because I am for ever having
foreign men and women
( some visiting
the NGO some living here) for get together to eat, dine , sometimes with wine
and lot of gossip goes on, but nothing much else happens to pass the dull evenings.
However I do not know if there is a real brothel in little Net…….., but Jessore
seems to have several !! Apparently the brothels are common sight around the
border of
India
and the Bangladeshi blame the Indians for creating the industry, but both the
Muslims and the Hindus use the service. Several N.G.O. s including Sally's Army
visit the brothels to give advice on safe sex, AIDS and also look after the
children born to the prostitutes. I just about managed to scout around the
outside vicinity of one of brothel in the centre of Jessore. It was not a
pretty sight, heavily made up women were waiting for their punters and few
pimps (I guess) asked me what business I was in? I escaped the scene fairly
quickly and decided to stick to my trained profession where I am paid a lot
(£ 80
a month).
Finally, I have invited all of you
to come and visit me; however I now withdraw my offer for few very good
reasons. Having experienced living here for 4 months, I can assure you that
travelling here is bad, I mean really, really bad. No wonder this evergreen
beautiful land is not on the tourist map. Who wants to come to travel to a
place where 3 hours journey might just take 9 hours? In order to fly from
Dhaka, I had to leave little Net……. three days in advance because there was
going to be road blocks on the way due to Muslim festival; then when I finally
took the flight to India, they had lost my luggage and first port of call for me was to
shop for M&S look-alike knickers and of course I don't find any.
Who wants to travel to this land
where every other day is a general strike day (they call it HATTAL) and
everything stops to work, including the transport. Currently there is a great
amount of political unrest in
Dhaka, which is
affecting the rest of the country.
Thus
travelling has not been easy at the best of time; important people have been
shot dead and kidnapped. We the foreigners are watched all the time by the
private police and currently we are not allowed to visit number of areas in
Bangladesh including Bandraban, the place I visited last Oct. (the M.D of the
travel agency with whom I booked my journey was kidnapped few week ago)
.If you really want some of those Eastern promises I shall see you all in my
lovely India in November2004 or back home one of these days?
Love,
Davinder xxx
PS
After 3 months of separation, I
shall be meeting up with my 3 men...John, Mick and Sam on 4ht March ....... I
wonder what sort of reception I shall be getting from them..... all hugs and
xxx ?
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