People love complaining. Humanity seems to suffer from an irresistible urge to gripe about everything and anything. As a high-school teacher, I have the tendency to balk at ever-growing mountains of papers, grumble about lessons I must plan each night and grouse about meetings I’m required to attend. Ohhh the meetings! Don’t ever get me started on that rant! While I still indulge in the occasional bitching-session at work, one of the perspectives that living and working overseas has given me is the knowledge that I have it easy. Whenever I begin complaining about my job (or hear others griping about theirs), my mind inevitably wanders to Dhaka. While I may grow tired of grading stacks of papers or lesson-planning, I can never forget several groups of people I watched at work in Dhaka and the lessons I learned from observing them. Brick-Breakers In front of new construction sites, small armies of women, children and older men gather to smash bricks with hammers. The brick-shards are used as fill or for mixing concrete. The brick-breakers wear no protection except for worn, leather finger-guards and, if you look closely, you can tell than many of their fingers are broken or flecked with spots of blood. They don’t normally speak, laugh or sing. The methodical clink, clink, clink of their hammers is the only sound announcing their presence. I sat with some brick-breakers and worked with them on a couple of occasions. It is amazing how tiring the job is…I was outworked once by a wiry 70-year old women and my arm felt like it was about to fall off after 15 minutes! Most brick-breakers work from dawn to dusk regardless of the heat or rain and are granted few breaks; many of them sleep on the construction site. They live a brutal existence. One evening, when I was feeling overwhelmed by the pile of essays I needed to grade, I looked out my bedroom window across the street where three brick-breakers had just started on a new load of bricks around 7:00PM and suddenly felt thankful for the opportunity to grade papers. Sampan Ferrymen A central part of any trip into Old Dhaka is a journey on the Buriganga River on one of the small sampan ferries used by locals to get across the river. There is no better way to see the chaos and grit of Dhaka up close, but I always pitied the boatmen jostling for customers on the river-banks. Most have recently moved to the city so many of them live in their boats and work around the clock. They bathe in the fetid water of the river. They risk being crushed by larger vessels who will not stop; apparently, a few boats are sunk each day on the river and dozens of boatmen and customers drown each year. I chose to be a teacher and I could quit and find a new career if I wanted a change of pace. These guys have few options. They are illiterate farmers who moved to Dhaka to escape a life of grinding rural poverty, only to become trapped in a megacity-nightmare that is even worse. Most Westerners have options. We can change jobs if we wish without the fear that our families will starve. Whenever thoughts of how tough my job is creep into my mind, I try to remind myself that I chose this career path and I have the freedom to change my occupation if I want. Not everyone is so lucky. Rickshaw Wallahs According to some estimates, around 600,000 men in Dhaka are employed as rickshaw wallahs, making it one of the most common means of employment in the city. I do not envy their jobs. Rickshaw wallahs pedal costumers all day long in the scorching sun and blinding rain and are paid pennies for the labor. They rarely own their rickshaw, so the bulk of their daily earnings are paid to the owners who lends their fleet out. One time, when I was alone on the back of a rickshaw in a torrential downpour, I watched my rain-soaked wallah strain his skinny legs to pull me through the flooded streets. He was coughing and obviously sick with some sort of lung infection and I remember thinking “this is the saddest thing I’ve ever seen.” I paid him double what I owed but felt guilty that I literally earned more in a single day than he would in several months. I may not be the richest man in the world, but I am paid enough that I have a comfortable life. I need to remember that perspective from time to time! Sewer-Workers Finally (and this job takes the cake), I vividly remember the sewer backing up a block away from our apartment during a rainstorm. This isn’t uncommon in Dhaka; I was used to dodging unspeakable things floating around our streets after heavy rain. What was different was that, this time, a Dhaka City Corporation crew appeared to actually be preparing to fix the problem. This level of efficiency (and by efficiency I mean something, anything being done) intrigued me and I pulled my bike to the side of the road to observe them. I watched as a boy, who looked to be around thirteen or fourteen, stripped to his shorts, wrapped a rag around his mouth, and gingerly lowered himself into a manhole hidden by sludge. He took a deep breath and disappeared into the muck and sewage. He was under for about thirty seconds and he came up sputtering with some soggy wreckage in hand. He chucked it into the street, took another deep breath and dove again. He repeated the process about ten times before I pedalled away on my bicycle. The image of the boy, younger than many of my students, plunging repeatedly into a fetid morass of black muck will stick with me forever. So you think your high-school job at MacDonald’s or shovelling gravel was tough? At least you didn’t have to swim naked in pools of sewage! Living in Dhaka taught me to be thankful for the wonderful jobs that I have held throughout my life. I’ve worked hard. I’ve shovelled gravel, hefted 80-pound bricks, sweated away my Saturday nights in a kitchen and spent hours sifting through horribly written essays and assignments from my students. But when I remember the people of Dhaka, I'm reminded of how grateful I am for all of it.
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With sincerest apologies to William Carlos Williams.
This Is Just to Say I have eaten a dozen donuts from the polka-dot box. Surely this constitutes gluttony. I’ve no regrets. They were delicious, so warm and so sweet. Yes. I ate close to dozen Krispy Kreme donuts in a single sitting at the original Krispy Kreme location in North Carolina. Sigh. There’s not much else to say other than to admit that I probably need help. And yes, every single bite of the Original Glazed donuts was like nibbling on heaven! I love learning. The driving force behind my choice to become a teacher was because there's nothing I enjoy more than exploring new ideas, reading new stories or ingesting random bits of information.
Ergo,[1] I also love university campuses. There is some underlying passion or curiosity I see in starry-eyed students wandering around that is refreshing. Mind you, that excitement is probably geared towards upcoming fraternity parties, a new hook-up or turning twenty-one but I like to be romantic and think that some are passionate about learning. At any rate, hanging out at Wake Forest University in North Carolina for the past few days has reinfected me with a shot of passion for learning and reading. I went for a walk around campus yesterday and I stumbled upon a behemoth of a library. It contains around 1.9 million books of all shapes, colours and sizes…I was in heaven. After twenty minutes of wandering, mouth agape and salivating like a four-year old in Willy Wonka’s factory, I impulsively decided to take action. I found an abandoned corner of the library, shut my eyes and strolled down an aisle of books. I blindly grabbed a book, sat on a chair with my eyes still shut and opened to the first page. I began to read. I devoured several chapters from Tamara: A Novel of Imperial Russia by Irina Skariatina, a novel obscure enough that even Google Almighty struggles to dig up a plot summary or author biography. I was sad to return the book to the dusty shelves of the library where it will probably sit untouched for another decade but I left with an epiphany: I can do this anywhere! The great thing about what I’ve christened “library-adventure” is that I can do it in any city large or small. Wherever a library stands, adventure calls. I can’t wait to replicate my blind-book-selection and I hope that journeys through libraries around the world can become a staple experience as I travel. [1] In my opinion, ergo is unequivocally the ugliest transition word ever invented in any language anywhere in the galaxy. I’ve always wanted to use it in a published blog post just so I could experience the feeling of overwhelming guilt and shame I suppose everyone else who uses it regularly must feel when they see this atrocious word defacing the pages of their writing. The desire to use “ergo” in my writing reminds me of the suppressed desire I feel to pull a fire alarm, don a hockey mask on a trip to the bank or leap from a plane without a parachute. Well, I can now check this exciting, if excruciatingly painful adventure off the bucket list! I wrote this in January, a week after returning from Grandma's funeral. I grew up with an annual summer tradition of traveling with my sisters to visit our grandparents in Mobile, Alabama. As a child from an arctic wasteland (commonly known as Canada), the tropical heat, deep-fried food, warm-hearted relatives and lax fireworks laws transformed my grandparent’s simple brick bungalow into a symbol of childhood adventure. It was just so different from home. And Grandma fed me Reese’s Puffs. I always looked forward to the end of the school-year with mounting enthusiasm. School ended and we each fought to cram as many belongings as we could into a single carry-on bag. After numerous flights and waiting patiently in airport after airport, we inevitably pulled our rental car into the well-worn driveway at 7209 Knollwood Road. We were greeted with smiles, smothering hugs and kisses on the cheek. The love I felt was tangible and that initial greeting always marked the beginning of grand adventures. As a child, even the small backyard was intoxicating. The taste of humidity when I took a deep breath, the torrential storms that sent me scurrying inside to watch in wonder as lightning spider-webbed across the sky and the incessant hum of cicadas all captivated my attention and cultivated an eager curiosity for the world around me. I have far too many memories of my grandparents and the micro-adventures that took place in their house to write them all down but I’ve chosen to relay three that I remember particularly fondly. 1) BUGS! As a kid, I was obsessed with any six-legged creature that crawled on the ground, flew in the sky or burrowed in the earth. I LOVED insects! Mobile was paradise simply because there were TONS of them. In the backyard, if you looked closely, you could find well-camouflaged walking sticks frozen on the trees or praying mantises perched in the bushes. The kitchen was even better; you never knew when a cockroach would scuttle out from under a cupboard setting everyone around off into a frenzy of stomping and broom-swinging! With the help of a borrowed jar from grandma’s pantry, a small menagerie of insects was captured, frozen and transported (illegally, I think) back to Nova Scotia where they still sit pinned in the remnants of my childhood insect collection. 2) Cousin-Sponsored Entertainment My sisters and I were blessed to have a cohort of cousins willing to tolerate four younger Canadian munchkins and entertain. There was often a motif of the singing, of freshly invented songs including the strange mantra “there’s a mouse about in the house.” We re-enacted Snow White and the Seven Dwarves on film, shot at (and, without exception, missed) squirrels with pellet guns, attempted to play basketball, and set off bottle-rockets in ant-hills. Our cousins never failed to make life interesting and most of my fondest Alabama memories center around their generous contributions of time and increasingly creative manipulation of our Canadian naiveté. They also freed my younger sister Michelle of all dancing inhibitions. 3) Donkey Kong My Alabama morning routine was to wake up, eat a healthy breakfast Reese’s Puffs (don’t judge, it says “Part of a Complete Breakfast” on the box) and dive into an enthusiastic game of Donkey Kong with my sisters. I can remember every minute detail of those mornings. Kayla and I tried over and over and over again to beat the giant crocodile on his evil-lair-of-a-ship and finally celebrated our victories with high fives and more Reese’s Puffs. Donkey Kong was the king of my Alabama mornings. I remember struggling to solve the twisted-nail puzzle, questioning why Grandma thought croquet was a thrilling sport, chilling out with Grandpa in his dusty workshop, breathing the smell of the yellowing National Geographic magazines that I pored over for hours on the burnt-orange couch; the list of life-shaping memories could go on ad infinitum.
I visited my childhood adventure-land one final time last week. Saying my last goodbyes at Grandma’s funeral and leaving the little brick house at 7209 Knollwood Road for the last time feels like the closing of a major chapter in my life. It has an odd, throat-lump-inducing air of finality to it. I’ve been fortunate to have some incredible adventures over the last few years. I’ve hiked mountains in Nepal, chilled on Sri-Lankan beaches, explored mosques in Istanbul, strolled the streets of Jerusalem, gazed in wonder at Iguazu Falls and settled into new homes in Bangladesh and Paraguay. Despite all these wonderful experiences, I know I’ll never have adventures as intoxicating and love-filled as my childhood escapades at Grandma and Grandpa’s house. The first week we arrived in Bangladesh, a friend told me “you may cry when you land in Dhaka but you’ll cry harder when you leave.” For us, his comment was prophetic. In 2012, Danielle and I received job offers from two international schools, one in Dhaka and one in Kabul. We chose (wisely I think) to move to Dhaka completely ignorant of what we were getting ourselves into. I knew Bangladesh was east of India and that Dhaka was an impoverished, densely packed city but I naively believed my previous experience in South-East Asia, Latin America and the Middle East had prepared me for anything the developing world could throw at me. As I enthusiastically planned lessons for school, said my goodbyes and packed for the move, I was oblivious to what awaited me. Arriving in Dhaka was a smack in the face. I wasn’t prepared for the sheer wall of humidity and humanity that awaited me. The traffic was worse than my wildest nightmares; the constant auditory barrage of horns and Bengali-screams was disorienting and the garbage-strewn roads and open sewers added an overpowering stench to the mix. Danielle and I were chased by aggressive packs of beggars as we wandered our neighborhood, assaulted by mosquitoes at night and struggled to find simple things like grocery stores or ATMs in the congested maze of Dhaka’s streets. I was utterly and entirely overwhelmed. Our first few days were filled with tears of frustration, stress and an intense feeling of helplessness. Instead of the fun-filled adventure we anticipated, we feared that Dhaka would end up being the worst decision of our lives. Over the next several months however, Dhaka slowly began to grow on us. As we learned our way around the city, made close friends and finally received air conditioning for our apartment, we began to feel at home. Some things continued to drive us into occasional rampaging sessions of anger (commonly classified as “Dhaka Rage” amongst expats) but Dhaka didn’t seem half as bad as when we first arrived. Dani and I learned to love eating burn-your-face-off biryani with our hands, sipping sweet chaa from chipped glasses at tea stalls and gorging ourselves on aloo chaat. We learned to appreciate the warm smiles, friendliness and genuine curiosity of the Bengali people, even if it was overwhelming and invasive at times. We perched at our windows like excited children during thunderstorms, eagerly waiting for the next bolt of lightning to strike. We learned to cling for dear life with a strange mix of glee and terror as our rickshaw wallah expertly weaved in and out of traffic, missing incoming buses by mere inches. We learned to enjoy the riotous colours of the shalwar kameeze worn by Bengali women walking to or from work at the garment factories each morning. We learned how shut our nasal passages to the smells of the garbage heaps, dead animals and open sewers...and continue breathing! EVERYTHING about Dhaka was different but it became familiar. Bangladesh became home. And then we had to leave. Job opportunities elsewhere pulled us away but as the plane lifted off and I watched the shabby grey buildings and green fields disappear under the clouds for the last time, a tear or two…may have rolled down my cheek.
When Danielle and I think back on Dhaka, the frustrations and fears of our first few months fade into the background. What stands out for us more and more as the weeks and months go by is the friends we made, the colourful experiences we had and the fact that we managed to face and conquer the challenges of Bangladesh together. Tom Stoppard, one of my favorite playwrights, wrote in one of his absurdist dramas that “every exit is an entry somewhere else.” That rings true for me now. We left Dhaka for a new adventure in Asuncion. Who knows where we’ll end up next? Whenever Danielle and I move to a new country, we will fondly remember the first-time challenges of Dhaka. We may have cried when we arrived but we also cried when we left. |