You'll Want to Join My Team When the Frogs Start Coming Down

If you can’t beat them, join them. Or some saying that more appropriately fits my situation.

I’m spinning my position. My project hasn’t started but that doesn’t mean I have to sit around pulling my hair out waiting for it. I like my curls. I’ve decided to fill my time by continuing my goal to become a completely sustainable person come the apocalypse. I have:

Started to learn CSS and am making a new jiva website.

Wrote a song on the guitar and am writing the lyrics now.

Learning how to stitch pretty patterns in clothing

Teaching myself Spanish

For the song on the guitar I am going to make pile (see picture) to attach to my ankle for percussion. After work I went to the market to search. After crossing over some railway tracks I

saw a man crouched behind his blanket display of razors, mirrors, watches and little bells used to attach to cows necks! I picked up the little bells and started shaking them next to my ear. I tried combinations of bells again picking them up to my ear. It was getting dark and a crowd was forming around me. Men would reach over and pick up the bells I put down, bringing them up to their ear to shake, and then setting them down with a bewildered “I don’t get it” face.

The shop owner did get that I wanted what we had to sell and drove a hard price. We bargained a bit and he wrapped up my bells in plastic. Now dark, I ran over the train tracks, grabbed a rickshaw and head home to sew my bells onto a piece of fabric.

At dinner I got a fish bone stuck in my throat. It was scary and hurt a lot. The Bengalis at the table gave me rice to swallow whole to force the bone down.

Asalam Walaikum,

Chelsea

Waiting in Bangladesh

It has been three months since I arrived in Bangladesh and the IRB still hasn’t approved my project. I’m trying to be strong. I realize that this is the reality of research. I realize that my situation is comfortable and I’m learning a lot regardless. But it’s hard.

Chinese Embassy

I went to the Chinese embassy in Dhaka to get my visa to go to Beijing in January to be in Muzi’s wedding. The embassy doors were closed and a long line of Bengali people wait in the heat and flies until a guard called on a single person at a time to enter. It was very emerald city. An hour later I got in and the surly Chinese person looked at my documents and said “the website has the wrong application. Fill out this application.” And shoved my papers back at me. Then another hour later of waiting and I made it to the front of the line. This time another chinese man told me that my visa would only be good for 3 months. Not 3 months in the country, but 3 months starting today, when I would get my visa. Meaning it would expire before I go to China. So I have to go back.

As I left the embassy I saw a tall handsome guy with a New Zealand accent. He had long hair tied back into a bun, large headphones propped around his neck, and a Big Lebowski t-shirt. “Nice shirt,” I said, coyly flipping my orna over my shoulder.

“Thanks, but it’s not helping me get this visa,” he said.

Tee hee. Teee hee. TEEE HEEE. TEEE HEEEEEE. I think I batted my eyes so hard eyelashes fell off.

I’m so desperate for flirting in this Muslim country that I find myself winking at my stuffed turtle.

The girls and I have gotten into a delicious routine together. Breakfast together, coffee inhaling, leave for the office at 8:50. Work until 6:30, go home. We gather in Muzi’s room and do P90X. The world’s best workout video. Then dinner together, talking with tea and back upstairs to watch something mind numbing like sex and the city. I think I’m falling in love.

Asalam Walaikum,

Chelsea

Dhaka Part II

The next few days in Dhaka passed deliriously with plates of good food, naps and shopping.

At one point, I was in the back seat of a car. My driver rushed around to open the door for me. I walked into the hotel with shopping bags lining my arms and a doorman took them for me to my room. I shooed him away with a limp hand, lit up, and called Bethany at the club for an afternoon spritzer. Or something like that.

The shopping was amazing. I felt like a villager visiting the big city for supplies. Which I guess is true…We went to 2 grocery stores. I stocked up on soups, pasta, pickles, tuna, Gatorade packets, olive oil and even some Parmesan cheese! Oh and boxes and boxes of herbal tea. (If you’ve ever been to my house and have seen my tea collection you’ll feel me.)

I went to two shops that sold handmade Bengali crafts. Beautiful pieces, pillows, and hand stitched tapestries with scenes from the village for such little money. Where I’ll be shopping for me friends/family presents for sure. For now, I purchased a few items to make me happy. A pillow, candle, face cream, pretty skirt, and of course, a stuffed turtle.

I was an addict at the movie store. The movies are all perfect quality and less than $1 each. I loaded up. Bought the entire PLANET EARTH CDS for only $3!!!! And a ton of wild life National Geo shows. PLUS tons of movies and I’m starting Psych (the tv show) upon recommendation.

Then I found it. My haven heaven. North End Roasters in the Industrial part of Dhaka. Their sign points down at you from 4 stories up. You climb some dirty little stairs with dirty little men smoking dirty little cigarettes. And then. AND THEN. You are in a coffee shop straight out of the Park Slope.

Blonde mothers gather on a couch with their children bouncing on their lap. They’re in a “play group.” A man tests his trillion dollar espresso machine and teaches the Bengali staff to take the temperature before serving the cappuccinos. The couple, from America, decided to open the café after missing coffee in Dhaka. The woman is a pastry chef and the husband is a barista from America. I ate a cinnamon bun that treated me better than a man. I bought an Ethiopian washed bag of coffee and a bag of decaf and lounged in working for three hours.

(above, eating a cinnamon bun in North End Roasters)

I ate sushi.

I had a fried pomfret with mashed potatoes and steamed vegetables. The simplicity of cooking I craved. Not weighed down with spices that would have me pooping for the next hour. Just simple food. It tasted like nothing with a side of air. I think my tongue has turned Bengali.

I said goodbye to Dr. L. When he left 2 months ago I felt my throat clench. “Take me with you! Don’t leave in this country where no one knows my name or why I’ve came!” This time I was all “ok bye, nice trip, don’t get too cold and wet in Baltimore.”

I think I’m settling in.

Asalam Walaikum,

Chelsea

Long and Winding Road

I never update enough when Dr. L visits. Too many things happen in too short of a time. Guy is a whirlwind of ridiculous serendipity. Not sure if he creates it or we’re all more aware of it when he’s around.

A group of us planned to go to Dhaka for some meetings and good times. It takes 10 hours by car to get there so we decided to take a plane. Dr. L had meeting until the last possible minute. The plane left at 5pm, the airport was 45 minutes away and we left at 4:30. Not allowing for enough time to get to the airport let alone go through security.

Bishu, our driver, got in the driver’s seat and stepped on the ignition. He didn’t lift it once. We sped through towns and highways weaving in between semis and rickshaws. Nehlee and I held on to each other for dear life, sheltering our eyes from the road ahead in each other’s curls. We got there and ran in to see the airplane on the tar mat ready to go. Dr. L put on his serious business jacket and ran out to stop the plane. It couldn’t be stopped no matter how important the jacket. We watched as the propellers turned and it flew away.

Ok no problem, let’s take the car. So we pile into the car, in the dark, making our way to Dhaka. At around 9pm, the car’s battery starts beeping. “No problem,” Dr. L said. But it was a problem. Slowly the car inched forward and the girls in the back inched toward the edge of patience. Dr. L surprised us all by pulling into a palace disguised as a hotel. 5 star suite hidden in Bogra. We’ll stay here for the night while the car is fixed.

We walk into the hotel with palatial ceilings and staff members oozing with bows and willingness to answer whims. We went into the restaurant and ordered ($12 a can) Heinekens. Oh my bloody goodness. Heineken!! AHHH. Never has a crappy beer tasted so good. We also ordered chicken masala, plates of naan, fried fish, shrimp oh my gosh everything. And retired plumpy and happy to our handsome rooms for the night.

In the morning the car was fixed and we continued our bumpy journey. We stopped for lunch at Bella Italia. A restaurant run by a Bangladeshi who studied in Rome, on the side of a road, in the middle of nowhere. Pinocchio and Michelangelo dominated the walls and it smelled like, I swear, a Brooklyn pizza parlor. We ordered two pies: an eggplant vegetable pie and an anchovy pie. I had two napkins: one to wipe my mouth and one to wipe my tears.

We finally got to the hotel, did a few hours of work, and head out to a Szechuan restaurant to have hot pot. Hot pot, is a ying yang of good and evil. White soup on the one side and a boilng red soup on the other. We cooked greens, fish,

mutton, mushrooms, and dumplings in the boiling pot. My face was red from the steam and spice.

Happiness, for me, comes on a plate.

Asalam Walaikum,

Chelsea

46

Dr L is visiting and 3 more women are coming to join Muzi and I in Bangladesh! It’s like a public health sorority party estrogen bath happy good times. We eat, and talk, and work out together, and eat and talk and all work passionately all day. The three of them are extremely beautiful and smart.

Today Megan and I went into the field to witness a mother verbal autopsy interview. It was so interesting. The woman had extremely high blood pressure, renal failure and was swollen with water for about a month. Finally she went to the doctor who referred her immediately to a hospital in Rangpur. She took a bus the hour and a half drive and died the next day in the hospital of heart failure.

I’m glad we’re here doing what we’re doing but it is so daunting. And all I keep thinking is, maternal mortality is rare. 46 children die EVERY day in this country from drowning. 46. I really hope these little turtles work.

Poor baby couldn't stop crying during one of it's checkups:

Death

We lost a staff member today. She spent 10 years of service with Jiva working to provide better maternal and infant care. She died at a hospital during childbirth from loss of blood during a c-section. There are no government Ob-Gyns in Gaibandha. The irony is devastating.