The angelic monk builds a school

"There is a certain haphazardness to the way things happen in Bangladesh." A friend of mine who has been doing research here on and off for a few years knows the country well and in a sentence describes the way that life works in this country. For the most part life is simply not something you can plan or anticipate. Life in Bangladesh is not an inert concept but a force of its own--something that happens to you and seems to express its own mad logic and designs.

In perfect illustration of this principle, a family friend showed up in Bangladesh in October to volunteer for a few weeks, having otherwise never set foot in a low income country. Bangladesh is not an easy place to suffer your introduction to urban third world poverty. The streets of Dhaka are grimy and do not spare anyone a glimpse into the realities of waste, filth, starvation, defecation, disease or depravation. This particular friend survived her sojourn to the country, but certainly didn't look back when she finally boarded her plane back to the States. If either of us had been asked to bet on whether or not she would ever set foot on Bangladeshi soil again, I'm sure we would have both confidently put a big chunk of taka against it.

But the Bangladeshi universe had other plans, and after a certain omen-like dream and some correspondence with the two teachers (brothers) whom she had met while volunteering at a slum school in Dhaka, she found herself unexpectedly committed to raising $30,000 to build a primary school in rural Bangladesh. She often comments that she is unsure of how this project or the two guys she works with "fell into her lap," but it is not surprising that in this country she could end up suddenly tied to a project that wouldn't have ever before been conceivable in her wildest dreams.

On this, her second trip to Bangladesh, she whisked in at the beginning of March. When she was in Dhaka she stayed with us, and otherwise spent her time in Pabna, the school site. In the village she discovered rural poverty--a poverty of resources and opportunities, more than anything. She discovered what it is like to be a part of something that will create change in a community. A villager who brought his son to be enrolled in the school described her as "an angelic monk," beautiful and benevolent.

While she was back in Dhaka, she introduced us to the two brothers with whom she was working, and they were an excellent combination of polite, intelligent, and proficient in English. The older one is prone to engaging people in long and rambling debates, often philosophical or political in nature. He is completely self taught in English, and has a bizarrely specific vocabulary peppered with "dude" and "honey," terms of address he has learned from the hundreds of English movies he has watched and the airline stewardesses who volunteered at the school he used to run. He is currently pursuing a masters in development (while teaching college economics), and is infinitely better read than any of the people I studied development with. The younger of the two, Russell, is much shier and quieter; he seems content to let Firoz do most of the talking and simply observe, occasionally bursting out with a series of high pitched giggles. He teaches accounting classes and offers private tuition; his salary, combined with his brother's, supports their parents and the majority of their 8 other siblings, siblings' children, and siblings' significant others. Though they are burdened with the financial responsibility of raising an entire family from an average rural existence to an educated and informed middle class urban existence (their house is open to all members of the family, and any number of siblings and nephews and nieces live with them at a given time while pursuing studies or jobs in Dhaka), they remain focused on the bigger picture of poverty and development in Bangladesh. Together they are a powerful team: ambitious but grounded, devoted to providing experiential education in their own community.

When last weekend our plans to visit another village fell through (with little fanfare, as they usually do), we suddenly found ourselves invited to go with our friend on her last visit to Pabna. Already fascinated by the brothers, we jumped at the opportunity to meet the family that raised them (or, alternatively, which they are now single-handedly raising) and the site of their dream school.

What officially was meant to be a site visit ended up being a 36 hour celebration of sorts with the largest and most welcoming family I've ever encountered. When we arrived late on Thursday night we were met by Ama who, already thinking of our friend as a daughter of her own, put her arms around us and escorted us to the courtyard of her house complex. There we were greeted by forty or so villagers, who had been cajoled into the task of comprising our welcome committee. Each of us was presented with a bouquet of beautiful local flowers and then subjected to a parade of children and young boys welcoming us with small gifts in the best scripted English they could conjure. In the pitch black (the power had already been cut) the show seemed a bit excessive and forced, but Firoz was parading around with so much pride (and even Russell, standing in the background, seemed pretty pleased with the presentation) that there was some sort of charm to it all.

Predictably, we were then shuffled into one of the houses in the cluster, where we were quickly fed fried potatoes and two kinds of rice pudding. Afifa, the oldest of the daughters living at the house, was instantly comfortable with us, demanding that we eat more (as all good Bangladeshis do) but also acquiescing when we told her to eat with us (which most Bangladeshis will adamantly refuse to do, even if they are starving). I had assumed that we would primarily communicate with Afifa in Bangla, as most 30 year old women who live in villages in Bangladesh have low levels of education. Afifa, however, is a product of her brother Firoz's drive to educate the new generation. Although neither of them received formal education in English, Firoz taught Afifa as he learned, insistent that she too would need to have this vital tool to survive in Bangladesh. Eventually Firoz found Afifa a job at the Dhaka Project, the slum school of which he used to be the director (at the age of 23) and where he and his brother Russell first met our friend. There she found not only the opportunity to practice English and have her first job, but also the space to exercise self-realization and a growing consciousness about social injustice. For a woman who wears a burka when she leaves her home and covers her head both inside and outside of the house, Afifa is quite comfortable talking about her pride in her work and her dreams to some day run a nursing home for abandoned women. She has two children and is the sole earner in her family. When I asked her if her husband had ever worked she responded dryly, with a sense of sarcasm that is rare among the usually demure women of Bangladesh: "I've heard that he used to work before we were married, but I've never seen it with my own eyes."

After a night's rest we spent Friday in the village being fed and paraded out to a variety of important sites. We met endless numbers of nephews, cousins, and neighbors. I spent a good portion of my day alternately making ugly faces with small children and fielding questions from the curious, old and young. "Why is your hair red?" "Why are your eyes blue?" "Why don't you eat meat?" "Why do you only wear bangles on one arm?"

We watched the roof of the "pilot school" being installed (classes will take place here for a smaller number of students while the main structure is being built), toured the plot of land where the school itself will be built (with an accompanying garden for applied learning and sports fields for both girls and boys to grow physically as well as mentally), and met Nani--Firoz and Russell's 100 and something year old maternal grandmother, whose coke-bottle lenses were the same color as her mint-chip sari. She shuffled out of her room bent at a 90 degree angle, supported largely by Russell. After feebly but carefully sweeping the dust from the chair that was brought for her she sat down and looked straight at Firoz. "Who are you?" Firoz says it’s been years since she was able to recognize any of the grandchildren, but the fact that she is still alive in a country where the average life expectancy for women is 65 years is testament to her incredible physical and mental strength.

After making the rounds and eating lunch (vegetables and chicken picked and killed fresh from the lands behind the house) we surrendered the rest of the afternoon to doing absolutely nothing--the best way to enjoy a village visit. As preparations whirled around us for the evening's cultural performance, the three of us chatted with various brothers and played with various children. Eventually the day's anticipated event began to shape. One of Firoz and Russell's older brothers--a former national boxing champion of Bangladesh and current self-taught film maker--is launching a cultural organization that will promote health, education and community development in their village of Shrepur through song, dance and drama. The cultural organization will work in tandem with the school to contribute to Firoz's vision of multi-faceted and intensive community development. Parents as well as children will be encouraged to participate, and will benefit from the enrichment of their culture as well as the process of communication and social advancement in the community.

With the tent pitched, the generator set up, and the microphone sufficiently tested, the show kicked off at 6 o'clock. What we thought was going to be a few local kids singing the national anthem turned out to be the biggest thing that Shrepur has seen in years (and certainly the most entertaining event I've witnessed in months). A 17 year old singer (with the kind of round light-skinned face and kohl-lined doe-eyes that Bangladeshis love) was brought in from a neighboring city to woo the mostly male audience with traditional Bengali love songs. She was accompanied by a lively collection of local musicians, who played tablas and flutes with just enough energy to not distract from her sassy dance moves and high pitched lyrics.

By the time the sun had set the initial crowd of a few hundred had easily exploded to almost a thousand (local and national police had shown up to ceremoniously sit around and show off their large weapons in the name of crowd control). The first posse of 5 girls had slowly grown, though the women continued to watch the show with some reservation from the sidelines. Parendi and I (ever advocates of adolescent and female empowerment in Bangladesh) had continued to be the perpetual gender thorn in Firoz's behind, and had demanded a separate section for women to sit. But even with a portion of the fenced off VIP section (yep, that would be us) set aside for women, they were maintaining their distance. Eventually I convinced a group of a few adolescent girls to come sit with me, and before we knew it they had set a trend and the entire VIP area was packed with village women in saris and little girls in frilly patterned dresses. There was only maybe one woman for every 10 men, but according to Firoz he had never seen so many village women out of their homes at such a later hour. He promises that this is the first step in a long process of improving the mobility of independence of the women of Shrepur.

The male members of the audience were--in complete contrast to their female counterparts--absolutely uninhibited. Every time I worked up the courage to turn around and scan the audience that was spilling over from the official tent grounds into the fields and the parallel road I saw men violently bouncing their shoulders (hands raised victoriously to the sky) and thrusting their pelvises. When our friend and Firoz stood up at one point to join in on the impromptu dance party the crowd literally roared in approval (nothing like a white girl in a salwar kameez shaking her hips to liven up rural Bangladesh.) And when we were eventually ushered onto the stage to make more room for the ever growing crowd of women and children, we too were forced to dance a few numbers for the crowd of simultaneously entertained and confused (no doubt, by our strange corruptions of South Asian dance moves) villagers.

I had expected the weekend to be a tame one: eating with families, talking about community development, strolling on village roads. But as is always the case my expectations were turned on their heads. There's no telling what my future in Bangladesh holds, but if I make it back here over the following years of my life I look forward to dancing with the women of Shrepur, perhaps in the community center of the school grounds that were once just an open field and the space for holding a lot of dreams.

---

---