Faridpur 1

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Tuesday July 17, Faridpur

Away from the city!

Yesterday, after spending many many hours editing my survey, both changing the questions somewhat but also cutting and pasting the Bangla version onto the English (which is hard when you don’t even recognize the type as letters, let alone words!) We finally headed out into the field!! We is myself, Jon my advisor, and two Bangladeshi veterinarians he works with, Shanez (though pronounced Shanay-waz) and Saludin.

The Bangladesh countryside is beautiful, (relatively) calm and I am really happy to be here and not in the city! It took us many hours, of course, to be properly packed and on the way. It then took well over an hour to simply get out of Dhaka! To be fair, that included a stop for lunch, but Dhaka lives up to its reputation and expectations in terms of traffic. The streets are filled with buses, cars, rickshaws (they are all bicycle richshaws here), these mini taxi thingies that are basically glorified scooters with a cab on the back, and people! People have no concerns about stepping out in front of traffic, getting off the bus in the middle of the road, and basically just milling about in the way. Honking is at the peak of south Asian madness, however, instead of just using the horn to communicate anger, it’s used as a kind of friendly “I’m here I’m here I’m here” message. Or something. Anyways, the streets are crazy and loud.

Turns out once you get past the city it only gets worse! Here cars (and buses and trucks) are able to get going at a much faster speed, and yet the roads are narrow and have a steep drop off on either side to the rice paddies below. The sides of the roads are filled with rickshaws, people, bicycles, cows, goats, dogs, and chickens. It definitely was a hair-raising experience, I found it hard to look away, though watching made me certain that either I or some poor sod on the side of the road was about to die… I don’t think our driver let up on the horn for a combined total of more than 5 minutes through the whole trip. He seems to have an extra button for the horn that he can reach while steering. Ingenious! The transition from city to country is slow and basically involves a steady increase in the amount of livestock and open space on the side of the road until suddenly you realize you’re surrounded by green and not concrete.

We took a ferry over the Padma river on the way here. At this point, the road was mostly filled with buses (overtaking buses while there are rickshaws and cows on both sides of the road and a scooter coming at you is definitely a good moment to chose to enjoy the scenery out the side window). We went to the top deck of the ferry and watched in amazement all the vendors who were offering food to the passengers on the buses. The had the normal bananas, mangos, guavas and pineapples (along with a large machete to chop it up with). But there were also people walking around with basket trays full of fish. There was a man with hard-boiled eggs which he peeled and covered in some sauce before handing it up. Us public health geeks enjoyed thinking of all the strains of salmonella being passed back and forth.

We finally arrived (after leaving the center 6 hours earlier, certainly 4 or more hours of driving) in Faridpur; this is the capital of the district and is quite a big town. We’re staying at the Raffles Hotel! While I don’t think it is as nice as the real Raffles, it’s still pretty good. We have fans, not a/c, and basic rooms, but we do have our own bathrooms. There is no hot water (not really an issue when its so hot here!), and there are only squat toilets. I’ve managed so far to avoid the squat toilet, my fancy diplomat hotel of course has western toilets, and the center has both types in the restroom. Oh well, it really isn’t an issue. In fact, I’m somewhat surprised they haven’t caught on in America since so many women refuse to sit on the toilet seat in public restrooms and instead pee all over the seat, this is more hygienic than that!

When we arrived, everyone stopped what they were doing to watch us. As we waited for the elevator, a man came over and took my picture. Then as we unloaded all our supplies from the vans up to our rooms, every time I walked through the crowd of people around the door, someone would see me coming and make the crowd part and provide a path for me. Of course no one wanted to allow me to carry anything!

Toady we went out to look for bat roosts. On a previous trip, Jon found two bat hunters, Pitu and Gopher. He’s hired them to catch (and not kill) bats for him when he’s here. They are very skilled at catching the bats, more on that once I’ve actually seen it! They were rather reluctant to wear gloves and face masks, but they’ve learned now! They live in this district and have been looking for bats for the past few days. In fact Pitu got in a lot of trouble the night before because someone was not happy about him sneaking around a village at night.

The countryside is really, really beautiful. This time of year it is verdantly green. Faridpur district is known for producing jute, a kind of fiber (sort of like hemp) used to make ropes. It grows kind of like bamboo, there are then many stages involved in turning it into fiber, and we watched all of them happening along the sides of the road. They soak it in bundles in water, they seem to dry it out completely in stacks, then they wet it again and strip of the fiber, they wash it by whipping it over there heads and into the water, then it is hung out to dry and then bundled into huge bales. Or something like that! It has this wonderful smell, kind of like sweet milk. Other than the jute, the space is filled with rice paddies. The sides of the roads are filled with cows and goats with rope around their necks, legs, or horns attaching them to a stake in the ground. The goats and cows are all very small, the goats all seem pygmy size to me, I’m told they are generally the Black Bengal breed. The cows of course are all Box indicus, zebu and such. I am really amazed at how good and healthy they look. They are all thin, but they aren’t painfully thin and look pretty good overall. I later saw a man leading his cow into a pond to bathe it, I asked Shanez, and he says this is common practice. No American farmer personally bathes his cattle!! The dogs are also surprisingly healthy. Unlike the masses of mangy street dogs I’ve seen in South America, these dogs seem to be owned and cared for by a village. They don’t look malnourished and there aren’t very high numbers of them. Strangely, all the ones I’ve seen seem to be a similar breed, a kind of dingo-y mutt.

The first roost we stopped at was a school yard. As soon as we were out of the car we were swarmed. Pretty quickly there was a circle of perhaps fifty, perhaps more children around me, keeping a 4 foot distance. They didn’t seem to be at all interested in Jon, just me really. It was, perhaps, overwhelming. Meanwhile, there were 100 or so flying foxes up in a tree, just next to the school yard. It was really amazing to see them! They are so huge! It’s really amazing to have these very large mammals so close! And just hanging out there in plain sight! I’ve learned the word for flying fox in Bangla, it’s baddur. After the headmaster chased off the children, a group of women in beautifully colored saris came over to me and started talking to me. With neither of the two bi-lingual veterinarians who are working with us around, I was left to just say “baddur!” and point like an idiot. This is one of the outbreak areas, and so most people know about Nipah and know it comes from the bats.

After that we visited 7 more roosts, so I had a really great chance to see the beautiful countryside, and difference villages and bazaars, and of course the bats! At one roost, a man asked me, in English, where I come from. When I told him, he said “thank you for coming here to Bangladesh.” They knew we were looking at the bats, and they of course know about Nipah and know its from the bats, and he then said “thank you for coming, are you here to kill the baddur (bats)?”

South Asian people can be stunningly beautiful, and of course they wear such colorful clothes. Traditionally, Bangladeshi women wear sari’s. However, working women and urban women now wear the Pakistani traditional dress which is baggy pants with a long skirt/dress over it (comes down to the knees with slits on the side to the waist) and always a scarf. They don’t usually cover their heads, but some women still do, and some women wear burkas as well. The men in the village wear what are called either logis or longis (not sure) which is basically a long sarong. It’s really fascinating here how people interact with each other. There really isn’t the sense of personal space or privacy that we are used to at home. Whatever we do, no matter how uninteresting, we gather a crowd very close to us who are intently watching. But, it’s also interesting how Bangladeshi people touch each other and communicate by touching so much more than we are used to, men walk holding hands (and yet it is definitely not ok to be gay here, and illegal to be lesbian), and when they are standing watching us, they often have their arms around each other.

Each roost we visited was in or near a village, and each time we were shown around by young boys, and followed by children and women. They are all so interested in what we are doing and why we are there, and are more than happy to help us. I really really enjoyed this time and this exposure to rural life. These people are probably living on very very little money. I’ve been told that something like 60% of Bangladeshi people live on less than $1 a day. But, they have their own livestock, chickens dart everywhere, cows and goats are housed right next to people’s houses, and they collect fruits and vegetables from the surrounding area. It’s a very simple life, but they don’t need much money. Everyone seems very happy, the Bangladeshi’s we’re working with say that people usually live in the same village for their whole lives. I’ve heard it said that Bangladeshi’s are the most amiable people in the world, and so far I certainly believe it!

The bazaar’s or markets are fascinating. You can buy anything! There’s always someone selling medicines, all sorts of prescriptions drugs that I think are usually valid. There are lots of fabric stores, I haven’t seen any clothing stores, but I have seen many shops that are just a man with a sewing machine. I assume everyone has clothing made for them. There are vendors with fruit of course, mostly now it is pineapple, jackfruit, guava and mango. And banana of course. The bananas here are the short and fat ones, we got some that had real seeds (the size of peppercorns!) in them! We stopped at one roost that was right next to a bazaar. They are chaotic and busy places, though we seem to draw slightly less of a crowd than in a village, I guess people are too busy. I saw a cow being lead down a hill to the side of the road, and it was flipped on its side. I was wondering if they trim hooves or something here, when I saw a man sharpening his knife. Realizing what was about to happen, I walked away, but then decided “Hey, I’m going to be a vet, I should be able to watch a cow be slaughtered” and so I turned back. Interestingly this even drew the crowd away from us for a while! It’s so foreign to us westerners to have livestock be such a part of your daily life, including the slaughter of them.

We were in the last village/roost at dusk, and so we stayed to watch the fly out - when the bats leave their roost to forage for the night. They are really so amazing, easily the size of a large hawk while flying. It was such a quiet and peaceful moment, I love that time of the day. I certainly wouldn’t mind staying in these villages, I much prefer the sound of birds and frogs over rickshaw bells and honking and yelling!

It turns out that we were very close to our bat catchers’ home village, so we stopped there to meet their families and see their homes. Unfortunately it was getting very dark so we couldn’t see very well. It was such a great experience to have a connection with the people in this village and to be able to talk to them. They were less shy and asked me questions, with help interpreting. Of course they wanted to know if I was married and if I have children. I’m quite disappointing in that regard, although I do think the older women wanted to marry their sons to me! J Hopefully we will return there and have a meal with them, Jon thinks it is probably best to do this right before we return to the cholera hospital in Dhaka!

It was a very, very long day, but we successfully found a roost, and I certainly had a day I will never forget!

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