Durga Puja

Tonight was Durga Puja. The hindu celebration of the 10 armed goddess Durga. Our cleaner’s name is Lovely and she invited Muzi and I to celebrate the festival at her house. I think Lovely is my favorite person in Bangladesh. She is always smiling and hugging us telling us that we are her sisters. An amazing woman. Her house was simple with tin walls and a bamboo roof. It was colorful and warm. All of the women in the nearby households were related to Lovely and we all piled onto the bed to braid one another’s hair and talk our women talk (it needs no translation.) Lovely set out a table and chairs for us and a beautiful meal of fish, chicken, rice, cucumbers and vegetables. We ate and ate and then stretched out on the bed and watched the younger girls practice dancing like the Bollywood stars on TV. They were a rambunctious lot and it made me miss my sister and her friends.

At night we walked to the nearby temple which was adorned in Christmas lights and puja offerings of flowers. It seemed like the entire town was there and they all gathered around us clapping their hands for us to dance. A hot drum beat started and a large circle formed around us. I could only demurely refuse their clapping twice before I jumped into the circle

letting my hips sway and hands feather about. I didn’t care about the men watching or the women cheering or the heat or being so far away from my friends and family. The drum beat was fresh and my feet were stomping. My hair came out of its bun and I let go.

Nomoshkar,
Chelsea

A day in photos

Woke up in the morning feeling like P-Diddy. Went downstairs for breakfast of some super fly peanut butter on toast. Then Muzi decided she was going to cook today! So we asked Jahangir (the cook) to bring us to the market so she could pick out her needed items.

Muzi found a fish in the fish market larger than her head! Please examine for proof.

The fish market smelled awful. The floor was slick with blood and scales making a thick mud. Men squatted with their fish selection and butchered the fish right there for you. The fish was fresh, fresh, fresh.

A man bent over scaling a fish with a blunt, rusty hatchet. I found scales in my hair when I took a shower later.

The chicken section. Men sat on cages of clucking packed chicken. You pointed to your clucker in the cage and a man reached his hand into the hole and brought out your chicken to be weighed. You can see our lunch on the scale. I nearly fainted in here. The smell was overwhelming and we were surrounded by men ripping off chicken skin feathers and all. The thought of lying in the blood and feathers kept me standing.

Meat section! We only bought chicken so we didn't linger. It was delightfully horrific to walk through there and see de-skinned goat and cow faces staring at you upside down.

Muzi making a delicious delicious meal of heavenly mushrooms (she brought them dried from china) with our fresh chicken, chili, ginger, soy sauce, and mushroom broth. And another dish with more mushrooms (from China), sauteed cucumber, garlic and egg.

After our long week we really really wanted a beer. So we cracked open a $3 bottle of dusty 0% alcohol beer and enjoyed the sunset.

Asalam Walaikum,

Chelsea

Escaping Inwardly

I used to dread the trip to Rangpur on the weekends. An hour and a half of unpaved roads, butt clenching close calls with speeding trucks, arm to arm, leg to leg with 11 other people in this Landcruiser. No kidding 11. The back is converted to have seats face inward for maximum person stuffage. Needless to say I tend to get brutally car sick.

Now I have found a way to actively look forward to these trips. The trick is to save all my most delicious thoughts all week for the car ride. Then I turn on my music, look out the windows, hold back the throw up and day dream.

My favorite day dream is to put on some hot dance number and imagine I am in the center of some club breaking down my sweet dance moves. Everyone goes “Who is that girl? Where did she learn to move like that? I want to meet her! How could ANYONE be that cool?!”

I like to imagine I’m lying in bed on a rainy Sunday morning, fingers sleepily tracing the body next to me, feeling like I would be happy to stay in bed forever. Luxuriating in happiness, warmth and love.

If all that fails, I put on an audio book. I’m currently working on Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris. Sometimes I crack up so suddenly that I wake everyone in the car.

The BMRC (Bangladesh IRB) application has become a monty python skit of stupid minute nit picky problems. It deserves its own soundtrack of prat falls.

Did the application but it was the old format so sent back to me changed it to the new format and it’s missing a signature so it was sent back to me but now our guy in Dhaka who is handling all these is in Gaibandha and we have to wait a week to re send it and then we can get the signature and send it in and then wait.

I’m thinking about going to Dhaka to handcuff myself to the office until they read and accept my application.

Asalam Walaikum,
Chelsea

Where Have I Learned to Learn?

Johns Hopkins Institutional Review Board has approved my project!!! Now I just have to wait for the Bangladesh review board to approve it…

In more important and relevant news:

I have embraced the ants. Ants on my skin? Little exfoliators. Ants in my hair? Make my hair seem alive. Ants in my teeth? One less trip to the dentist. I have mastered the gentle hand swipe of clearing ants off a surface without killing them.

A friend who is starting her MPH at Hopkins asked me what classes I found the most relevant now that I am in a public health job. I would have to say community trials. Because…this is a community trial and also because my PI taught the class. So it was more than relevant. Also, Water and Sanitation is so prevalent here. Completely useful information. The rest couldn’t be taught in school.

No one could teach me how to sit in a management meeting trying to foresee every single problem that we may encounter in the field. Or how to motivate a coworker to share a passion in a project. No one taught me how to breathe deeply and make a pretty hair tie out of the red tape thrown at me. In that respect, I appreciate that Hopkins had such a long internship period and rushed academic period. This is really where the learning is. The lectures just give you the language to understand it.

Asalam Walaikum,
Chelsea

Jute Bag Adventure

Muzi and I found a shop in the marketplace that sells jute handbags and rugs. They’re really fantastic. Jute is a vegetable fiber harvested, and then laid out in the sun for days until a thick, dried, fiber. It is then spun and threaded into bags and rugs. We went back twice now to get hand bags. (Right: The jute bags I have purchased. Left: A truck carrying Jute)

After the bag adventure I decided we should go try to find a music store. The marketplace was so crowded because we went after work…and so did everyone else. The power was out and we were just a moving, pulsing, sweating mass. We got stuck behind a traffic jam where a rickshaw was trying to carry 3 refrigerators and moving at the speed of an ant. While trapped, we made friends with a man who helped us find the music store. I kept slipping and falling in mud, which would be fine with me if the mud wasn’t a concoction of dung, fumes and garbage. We ran across the street in front of cars, and motorcycles when we saw the music store.

I don’t know what I was expecting. Actually I completely do. I wanted to find a little unique instrument that like a Lifetime movie I could ask a Bengali to teach me how to play and then I could go back to the states and win over the nation known as “the girl that plays that little unique Bengali instrument.” The music store sold Harmoniums and guitars. That was it. Harmonium is too big to bring anywhere and it’s hard to be amazing at an instrument every mother’s sister’s kid’s dog plays (guitar).

But now we were on the other side of town, in the dark, and we had the traffic jam to pass back through. We stopped by a store to have an ever pleasant 7-Up and made friends with a man who lived in the US for 5 years working at an Amoco station. Now he is a very influential market owner. His wife is applying for a position at JiViTA so maybe I’ll meet him again.

Back through the mess of town and we found a rickshaw to drive us home. He was the fastest driver I have ever seen/felt. He whizzed past cars and trucks and darted between traffic, in the dark. Every time I would scream “slow down!!” he laughed. Did I mention he was 100 years old?

I am happy to be alive. Even if I will never be loved by the world for my tiny unique instrument playing skills.

Asalam Walaikum,

Chelsea

Food Stuffs

I was in a food slump. It got so bad I started to spontaneously rhyme. It was scary.

To fix this, Jahangir (our cook) made me an Italian dinner! It is: ramen noodles with egg and chili, beef curry meatballs with chili, and a hot spicy tomato ketchup. And I ate every bite.


Then I decided to get creative. Today I dug into the bowels of the marketplace. And look what I found! Total came to around $25 which is a lot but that's because it's all imported.
From left to right: Mango Bars-Delicous healthy bengali snack, I got a box!, Oatmeal!, Wrapped in paper are little cakes the store owner and his handsome son kept giving me because they were thrilled I kept buying expensive items, Thai garlic chili sauce, kraft canned cheese (I'm going to use to attempt to make macaroni and cheese), honey, Mango juice, Mayonnaise, Orbitz (!), Caramels, Grape cordial, peanut butter.

The grape CORDIAL is not juice. Thought it was. Took a swig of this syrup and now am feeling loopy.

Asalam Walaikum,
Chelsea

Ode to the Food

There are nights I dream of macaroni and cheese. Please oh please can I just have some cheese?

Or maybe a burger so juicy and round. Has anyone found a burger around?

How about some twizzlers chewy and sweet? Do you have a twizzler I can eat?

I would cry for just one pasta dish. I would trade a kiss for this, I wish!

A morsel of chocolate or snifter of wine. A small glass of red wine would be divine.

My mouth will water and my stomach will plead until I can feed on this food that I need.

I guess I’ll go eat some more curry.