Jeni as a Bangladeshi

You know,

As I help to create curriculum and coordinate training programs for the students here in Bangladesh, I am often reminded of my teaching experience at Hope Chinese School. Of dragging myself out of bed on Sundays mornings to my 9AM classes, pulling late nights on Saturdays (okay, sometimes due to procrastination) correcting homework and quizzes, and eating in the car while rushing from one campus to the other (and *ALWAYS* being late for my afternoon classes).

And as I think back on all of it now, it strikes me how much of my out-of-class college experience was from the time spent with my students (…and their homework). It’s also interesting how my perceptions about teaching evolved through those years. What began as a chore gradually turned into a personal, emotional responsibility - the highlight of my weekend was knowing that my students enjoyed class that day, and I took offense when I heard anything negative said about them (the adult Chinese community loves to gossip - it’s inevitable).

During those years, teaching for me had never been about drilling my students on mathematical formula or improving their test scores. They were already over-achieving and smart and under academic pressure from growing up in Chinese-American households. I didn’t see it my job to traumatize them more (well, academically). I wanted to make sure that the students also saw the other side of a classroom - that teamwork is important even in math, that it’s okay to challenge their teachers, that their hour with me is not to memorize the pythagorean theorem, but to learn how to think.

It’s been years since those days where my mornings began with quieting down hyperactive boys and reassuring female students that there’s no such thing as cooties. But thanks to technology (a.k.a. Facebook), I am updated as some of them graduate from school, travel around the country/world, or repeatedly list themselves as single-unsingle-single-unsingle, etc. As we all grow and mature (and get old), I hope that they, like myself, have kept a part of those crazy classroom days with them.

So this entry is dedicated as a thanks to my old students. Thank you:

• for being patient while I try to explain extremely dry material - believe me, I didn’t enjoy it either,
• for participating in our weekly "challenge questions" (such as "good-guys bad-guys"! It was hard explaining to your parents why there were shreds of paper with smiley/angry faces all over the room),
• for being on time even though I’m always late (but I always had an excuse, didn’t I?),
• for politely laughing at my corny, corny jokes…
• and then letting me make fun of you in return.
• for understanding that verbal class is not about early vocabulary; it’s about playing games and making huge posters (I still have them with me!)
• [and for those who came to my little Summer Camps] for going along with all the ‘lesson plans’, when it was clear that we were all there to have fun and eat bad food.

One of the inconveniences we have to put up with when working here in Bangladesh is the unstable access to the internet. Like the random electricity outages we experience, being able to connect through the web is usually a hit or miss. As political events recently have proved, its weak infrastructure makes it possible to, at any point in time, completely disconnect an entire country from the global network.

Did you know that fiber-optic broadband appeared in Bangladesh only two years ago? Here’s a little background. Remember the bubble back in the mid 90’s? During the excitement, all the telecoms went crazy and began investing ridiculous amounts of money into laying fiber optic cables all over the world. Because of this, countries that couldn’t afford the technology got it for free, and the entire world became connected on the investor’s dollar. This played a huge part in shaping the world as it is today: the cables sat around largely unused for a while, but when the bubble burst, panicking companies scrambled to stay out of bankruptcy by looking for ways to reduce cost and do business on the cheap. They looked east, and found countries, namely India, that not only understood the English language and had highly skilled workforces, but also, now thanks to the freebie fiber optic cables, made communications seamless and extremely cheap. Welcome to the birth of offshoring, and the rise of Asia.

Amongst all the commotion, Bangladesh, straddled between India and China, was largely ignored. Apparently, when all the foreign money was being poured into laying cable across the continent, Bangladesh had resisted, because of bureaucratic, political reasons that even its people aren’t able to understand.

Finally, sometime around 2005, its government finally woke up and decided that in order for Bangladesh to play any real part of the world economy, it needs to first connect itself. So it spent about $100 million (of its own money this time) to catch up. A decade later.

Now, sit back, and think about how our lives have changed in the past 10 years because of the internet (remember that horrible dial-up modem?). Think about the way in which our global economy has changed because of it. A full decade - and Bangladesh had missed out on the entire thing. Although more attention has been paid to this country recently as companies look beyond India/China for affordable labor and untapped markets, it’s still sad to think about how Bangladesh might have been today had things been different.

But I’m determined to end this entry on a positive note. Despite all of this, and despite its share of natural disasters and political mess, there’s a momentum of positive energy here. The people seem to be less dependent on the government and keen to make progressive changes with their own hands.  The majority world may have first heard about it when Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace prize in 2006 for his invention of the microcredit model, but development activity has been happening years before, and continue to be a huge focus for everyone - rich or poor. The energy is contagious.

A few other random things:

• Thanks to the speed of the postal service, I’ve begun to receive birthday packages, a month later!! My friends and family are amazing - what would I do without you guys?
• I was trying to break a record for being here the longest without being ‘affected’ by the food. That didn’t work out quite well - several weeks ago, my body finally decided to take revenge, and rewarded me with an entire week of keeping absolutely nothing down, fun hallucinations, and an exhilarating trip to the hospital. My local colleague/client, with whom I’ve bonded well with, accompanied me throughout the experience. This, although deathly embarrassing, also means that I can say to all my consulting friends out there - hey guess what? My client is cooler than your client!
• Lastly, and somewhat importantly, Starwood just opened a five-star Westin in downtown Dhaka! Although I can’t even imagine checking into a hotel like that with my current budget, I visited it this weekend to reminisce about my past life. I jumped onto the Sweet Sleeper bed on display in the lobby, rode the escalator up and down a few times, and discovered…food! My friends, you simply cannot begin to imagine the rush of seeing all that familiar food, all together, all at once. I mean, these people were not joking around - there was: REAL BAGUETTES. SMOKED SALMON. BROCCOLI. CHEESE. AVOCADO. REAL CHOCOLATE (Yes, I’m yelling in my head). Nevermind that a baguette cost the equivalent of $4, and the buffet cost us 2,500 TK ($35!). I know, I’m in a developing world, doing development work, experiencing the local lifestyle. But guess where I’ll be this weekend? In the buffet line? You bet!

The internet connection all over the country was cut for the past 24 hours, and apparently has just been repaired. Here’s an entry I wrote while offline yesterday:

I went downstairs and waited for the car that usually comes to pick me up for work, which did not show up. Someone who spoke a little bit of English told me the curfew, which should have ended this morning, is ongoing and may extend for a "long time". I called my local sponsor, my most dependable contact here who’s fluent in English - couldn’t get through. I called my other ADP colleague living a few blocks down the street - no connection. I called everyone on my contact list. What the heck is wrong with my phone? I asked to borrow the phone at the guest house, and was told that the phone networks in the city have been shut off. I logged onto my computer, and the connection was deathly slow, borderline nonexistent. It took me almost 30 minutes to log onto my company network to let my contacts know of my situation. Shortly afterwards, the connection died - and is still dead. I came decently close to having a panic attack.

So I admit. I’m not as mature, stable, and brave as I’d like to be in a situation like this. The English speaking guest house staff hinted to me that I’m overreacting. But since these are the same type of people who can watch fatal accidents in front of them without much more than shrug (as i wrote about in the previous entry), their words do not bring me too much consolation. No, I’m not exactly afraid that the rioting will directly put my life in danger. The terror that welled up inside came from the realization that I am right in the middle of a major national crisis, and yet at the same time am completely detached from it because of the language barrier. With all that’s going on a few blocks away, with all the talk on the news and amongst the neighbors, I alone am clueless to their words. It’s a workday, and yet there’s not a sound outside my door - imagine midtown Manhattan completely empty at 8 in the morning. I turn on the TV, and flip through intense Bangladeshi news channels I can’t understand to pause on the English speaking ones - Discovery Channel is showing a special on monkeys. Another channel’s airing an old Seinfeld episode. BBC was giving the sports update. It’s the calm right before a huge storm. It feels almost surreal.

The panic is also brought on by seeing that both access to communication and transportation I’ve come to rely on can all of a sudden, and all at once, become nonexistent. If something were to happen, I can’t physically get anywhere - streets are closed, no cars, no rickshaws. I can’t reach an agent to book a ticket, I can’t make a call to let anyone know of my situation, I can’t use the internet to send a note out. In such a situation, I am flat out of options. It’s claustrophobic. The realization is debilitating.

Yes, I’m long overdue an update. Here’s a quick one - I’ll write more in the evening.

This is a note to say that I am safe. After hearing from some of you from back home, I’m surprised to see that news of the violence here has made it back so quickly. Here’s a quick recap of the situation from my end. Over the past few months there had been several riots and protests over the political situations here, but all of them were put under control quickly. All of a sudden, on Tuesday, there was an extremely violent riot at the downtown University here (extremely close by). I was told that student protests here are quite different from those in the States. Instead of symbolizing the exercise of public opinion, student demonstrations are almost always promoted/instigated/backed up by political influence from either side of the two opposing parties (and that’s all I’ll say about that here). Apparently the violence continued until yesterday evening, and led to several shootings. Most of us were largely unaware of the relative seriousness of it (since this wasn’t the first public protest) until early afternoon when the military declared an 8 PM curfew for the entire city. Office buildings were shut down early and we all go off work around 4.

It was extremely quiet at night - almost eerily so. I did hear a few loud whistles now and then, but beyond that I was more or less safe and oblivious in my room with my dal, naan, and old episodes of the Sopranos.

The concept of life and death is a bit different here. Maybe it’s because death is seen as a natural part of the cycle, or perhaps it happens so often here that the shock of individual deaths is absorbed by acceptance that it’s just one more death. But for me, this is still largely frightening. Once, we were driving on the highway and witnessed a traffic accident, where a taxi car was almost completely buried under a truck. To my complete bewilderment, traffic went on as normal, and those who stopped did so briefly before moving on. I was told that although ambulances and emergency rescue teams "exist", the chance that they would show up within 2 hours, or at all, is slim. That is if they could be reached in the first place.

Another time, a few of us were on a train to visit some nearby tea plantations.  Halfway on our journey, the train made a sudden stop, and we were temporarily stationed in the middle of nowhere amongst farms and rice fields. Curiously enough, no one bothered to get out of their seats or stray from their conversations. Likewise, we oblivious foreigners followed suit and continued with our card games. After more than an hour, we (ok, I) got a bit cranky, so a friend who knew some Bangla went to investigate. From what he understood, there was either something wrong with the train or we had hit something on the tracks, but the train’s sudden stop caused the operator to fall out of the car. The last hour was spent clearing the fatal accident and looking for someone else to operate the train. Just like that. I was sick to my stomach the entire rest of the ride. And what’s most disturbing to me is that I doubt either of these incidents made it in the local newspaper, which dedicates half its space to political news and the other to describing the ‘latest’ news on reducing calories in meals while advertising "American-flavored potato chips."

And on that note, I should now go get ready for work. The curfew will likely last for a few days, so I’ll use the extra time tonight to give some other, less morbid updates. 

Somehow being 7867.90 miles away from home actually makes it easier to look at my country and appreciate it for all its beauty. I know, flip through any newspaper or current events magazine, and we’d see that in many ways we’re probably not where we’d ideally like to be. We’re not perfect, and perhaps in some ways we’re pretty far away from it. But the beauty lies in our ability to define what we think means to be perfect, and in the choice to strive towards that definition. The beauty also lies in our ability to understand, to know. For example, I know that being a Chinese American does not mean I am a Chinese living in America, but that I am a type of American. I know that not aligning myself to a religion does not mean I am not a spiritual person, but that I have the freedom to critically think and decide for myself what I want to believe in. I know that freedom of speech, press, and petition, are not just words on paper but powerful, tangible rights of mine that no one can take away from me. From half a world away, these are things that are the most obvious to see.

I remember learning to say the pledge of allegiance in school shortly after I moved to the states. I learned to recite the entire thing without even knowing which syllables belonged together in a word, or what any of the words individually actually meant. But I guess to a child, with a hand over her heart, and her eyes on the red, white, and blue hanging above, it doesn’t have to mean anything more than just that.

You’re still a beautiful grand old flag. Forever in peace may you wave.

It’s easy to take for granted that which is right in front of us. People. Places. Things. Places, especially. As I box together and tape shut traces of my last three years here, I think about all that makes this city special. Humid subway stations in the summer. Freezing winter winds at every intersection. Blaring sirens and angry confrontations. Eight million people searching for beauty, for significance, and for a connection that at times may turn into $15 martinis on Saturday nights and headaches on Sunday mornings. And yet, we get back up, grab Sunday brunch with all-you-can-drink mimosas, and begin again with that same vigor. And that energy permeates through to everything that comes our way. Through the blackout, the mass-transit strike, and countless others. We learn to deal. And while we deal, we learn to make things extraordinary.

At the end of the day what makes the most lasting of impressions is not the good or the bad; it’s the intensity. They say New Yorkers are intense. Well, we have a right to be.

Goodbye, New York. I’ll see you in a blink.