Faridpur 2

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Wednesday July 18, Faridpur

Today my field team was to drive up from Dhaka. Turns out there were terrible traffic jams and so what took us 4 hours on Monday, took them 8 hours! There was a long back-up to take the ferry. So, my survey work won’t start until tomorrow.

However, Jon had a lot of administrative work to do and I tagged along. He had already gone to the national forestry department and received official permission, today he stopped in at the local Faridpur district forestry office. Bangladeshi’s have such a strong sense of hospitality, and so there is no such thing as just stopping in. The discussion starting in English but quickly changed to Jon in broken Bangla commenting on what Shanez and the man were discussing in Bangla. It’s hard to me to read people’s reactions here when everything is in Bangla; they don’t smile much while discussing and I interpret their expression as a problem or an issue. Turns out its always ok, and they are really happy to have us here. After getting the discussing over, we had to meet several veterinarians who were based there, and had to be served tea. The people here really really want to always be serving us something. We said “ok” finally to tea and bananas and biscuits (the English digestive biscuits, obviously left over from the colonial days), the joke being westerners can only eat bananas and biscuits and the tea is boiled so that’s ok too… However, they drink their tea very strong and very very sweet, I have to say its pretty awful like that! The bananas are the very short kind, and they are amazingly sweet and flavorful.

We then went to the market area next to the bat roost to visit the local veterinarian and ask if we could use his office. His office, it turns out is a little shack with no electricity, and not running water, although running water is not common in these parts - deep tube wells are very frequent though. And it smelled a bit like urine. But, it was perfect for Jon’s purpose as a shelter in which to anesthetize and work up the bats. We then had to find the vet; we had a very large crowd watching us from the door, they all tried to call him. Eventually we found him and we just had to visit the district veterinarians office to get official permission! Phew!

Wherever I go, a chair appears and the host insists that I sit. As soon as we arrived here, this happened, and then the chair followed me wherever I went! We were again offered to be fed something. They asked if we’d like green coconut juice. After we said yes, they said the only problem was the coconuts were still in the tree. So, we sent Gofer, one of the bat catchers, up the tree for us. He basically walked straight up with his machete hanging from a rope around his waist. He sent bunches of coconuts down on the rope. They then cut them open by holding them in their hand and whacking the tops off with the machete. Eeek! Green coconut juice is very tangy and doesn’t have the coconut flavor yet. I really liked it, but struggled to finish one. As soon as I had it was whisked away and another appeared. Bored with the discussing, I talked to some men in their very limited English and my nonexistent Bangla. We didn’t get much past leaning their professions and where they live!

My team arrived in time for dinner. This hotel’s restaurant is a Chinese restaurant, it’s a real struggle to get them to make us Bangladeshi food. We always seem to manage though, but we seem to eat the same thing at every meal! And they never ever have vegetables. Saludin, the other veterinarian, has warned us that the large fish that are sold in Bangladesh have likely been preserved with formalin. So we refuse fish. The chickens here are scrawny little things, not the Arnold Schwarzenegger style American ones! So, we have a lot of rice with dahl (lentils) and chicken curry!

Jon and I went off on an expedition to buy chain; there are essentially no large stores here, just small stalls that sell a variety of goods. We asked (using charades type demonstrations) in a hardware store; someone there offered to lead us to the place. Next thing we are dashing through Faridpur, trying to keep up with the man in the green shirt. We dove into all the markets; fabrics in one, spices in another, vegetables and fruits in the next. We came out on a busy street that had three stores in a row selling chain. That seems to be the MO here, put all the competing stores right next to each other! Our guide head back before we did, and we tried to retrace out steps, but it was truly a maze of markets in there! Of course, we stand out for a billion reasons, not least of which is that we are both way bigger than the average Bangladeshi. Way bigger, Jon is tall by American standards, and I’m bigger than basically all the men here. We decided that instead of wandering or, horror of horrors, having to ask for directions, we’d just take a rickshaw home. So, I had my first rickshaw ride, though the two of us, our 20 lb. of chain, and several bottles of water were definitely a strain for our poor rickshaw-wallah.

Tomorrow I will go with my team to search for a village to conduct the survey in!

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