Faridpur 4

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Friday, July 20, Faridpur

We arrived at our village, Shibrampur, this morning to explain that we’d like to spend a week there doing this survey, and to ask permission from the village elders. We said we’d like to visit each bari (cluster of households, usually related) and get a list of the name of all the heads of households in the village. Two young men escorted us around, they showed us through the whole village and introduced us to everyone. They were unbelievably helpful, Rasheda has said that we can and should offer to give them some money at the very end of the study since we couldn’t have managed without their help! Giving money is an issue here, Bangladeshi’s are uncomfortable being anything but amazingly generous, and so the task has been given to Dawlat,my male field officer.

It was really really interesting walking through the entire village. It is very extensive, and I never would have found all the houses on my own. We saw many cows and goats, of course, chickens roaming free and in a large coop that seemed to be shared by the town. We met a man bathing at a water pump. We found another Hindu statue/shrine. We, of course, gathered a big crowd of children. My little friend, Rubel, was at the front again. He’s easy to recognize, as he is pretty much the only one of the children wearing a shirt! J

It took us a couple hours to go through, and we ended up with 59 households. Rasheda was going back to Dhaka that day, and had taken the car when we thought we were 2/3 through the village. We were actually very near the end, and so that meant that we had to wait for an hour or so for the car to come back. Again, chairs appeared out of some house and we sat on the side of the road. I did some more entertaining by photography! A snake charmer came through; Jesmin sprinted away and really didn’t want me to take a picture for fear that the man might then put the snake close to me. I don’t know what kind of snake he has; but John tells me that they way these snake charmers work is to remove the fangs of their snakes, who then slowly starve to death, at which point the charmer gets a new one. Bummer.

After being offered everything under the sun from all the older women in the village, and telling them again that no, I’m not married, we were invited to the house of the two men who acted as out guides. Dawlat and Jesmin, my cultural interpreters, told me it would be good to accept their invitation since they did so much for us. We were told to sit on the bed, and the room filled immediately with people. I’m really not this interesting! 😉 It’s quite embarrassing, except that these people show no signs of hostility or resentment whatsoever, they just say, or so I hear through translation, that they are so happy to see me and they love me very much.

We were brought green coconut juice, jackfruit, and banana. Although I loved it when I first tried it, I’ve never had so much jackfruit in my life! But now here are am and the trees are fruiting and I’m getting an abundance! (If you don’t know jackfruit, it’s this huge, almost watermelon sized, knobbly fruit that kind of looks like a sack of rice, that grows off the trunk of the tree. The flesh is very very sweet and almost bubble gum flavored. But in a good way…)

Last night Jon only caught 3 bats, not a great rate since he needs to catch 100 at this site!

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Comments

[Mom]

all things must end..
Well Miranda, I hope you ahve a whole load of blogs to send once you're back in internet access - we're all suffering withdrawal symptoms! I guess this trip has been more than worthwhile. Hard to beleive you'll be home in a week's time though, but I'm really looking forward to seeing you again. love, Mom