Paying the Cost to Be the Boss

Every day the floors need to be washed. The sweaty cumbersome clothes need to be beaten against the floor, hung on the line to dry and ironed. The vegetables have to be brought from the market, chopped up, boiled and fried. No microwave meals or fast food here. As I work during the time this work would normally be done, I have hired Sheuli to do this work for me. (Global Women would say this is me hiring a woman to do "woman's work" so I can work in a "man's world". But that's another topic for another time.) It is very nice to have a kept house. To come home to a made bed and tidy apartment is a wonderful feeling.

The flip side of this wonderful feeling is the awfulness of managing personal staff. It's uncomfortable to have someone with access to everything in my house and who knows my personal habits and idiosyncrasies like a family member, but who is mostly a stranger to me and who washes the floor while I read the paper on Saturday morning. How should I pay someone who's labor allows me to work? How should I relate to someone who is basically a servant without denying her and her family's human rights?

It came to light last week that Sheuli, my housekeeper, and Ali, my room mate, have had a misunderstanding concerning a huge amount of money that Sheuli came to expect upon Ali's leaving. Every time I've tried to sort things out with Sheuli, she says "I am so poor, and my girl is going to college next year." Ali claims not to have promised Sheuli anything, though between the two of us we had been discussing what compensation would be appropriate for the extra work Sheuli has done while Ali's been around. Each thinks the other is lying, each feels taken advantage of.

I know that compared to other Bangladeshi's, I pay Sheuli well. I pay her more than most foreigner families pay their house staff. If I give her a significant raise she would be paid more than an Office field staff. Wouldn't it be wrong to pay her more than them? They are more experienced and work much longer hours than she does.
Yet, the woman who employed Sheuli before I did gave her a raise every time she visited Sheuli's house. It feels so wrong that Sheuli lives in a meager house, and the salary I pay her keeps her there. Her one room is too small to keep both her teenage boy and her teenage daughter so her son lives in a dormitory in the city.

Yesterday when I brought it up she replied, "Please help me. I know it is so easy for you to give, so many taka make no difference to you." It astonished me when she said that. Then it started to make sense. She knows I spend as much on groceries as I do on her salary, every month. And that does not include rent, the times I eat out, or my flights out of the country. It must seem to her that I have limitless resources. I told Sheuli that it does indeed make a difference to us. That Ali is a volunteer, and I am little more than a student. But that we wanted to be fair in paying her for her extra work. I don't know if she understood the difference between paying for her work, and giving charity.

My Bangladeshi supervisor helped me come up with an answer, but it still feels so wrong. Sheuli had counted on getting the extra money, and I will only give her half that. It's a lot of money for me, as much as a weekend trip to Shrimongal. But for Sheuli it's her daughters application fees to college, or an expansion for her husbands business. Part of me feels as though Sheuli is trying to manipulate me. Another part longs to give with open hands. We as Christians are called to give freely, but really, to what extent?

Sometimes I kick myself for becoming so friendly with her as to visit her house. If our relationship was less personal, maybe I would be able to look at it more objectively. At the same time she is a person with a family. And made in the image of God, like me. Maybe it should be personal.

Meet Me In The Middle of the Town

Ali is in a mad hurry to see all there is to see in Bangladesh before she leaves. Many of the traditional tourist attractions I have yet to see, she must fit a few short months. This Saturday we set off to see the ancient capital of East Bengal, Sonargon. Though nothing remains of the original buildings, the site has continued to be habited by the wealthy right up until The Partition in 1947 when the Hindu's fled the country.

Here is the palace of the area. It has been restored a la pink palace (for those of you who have had the pleasure/misfortune of being introduced.) Pleasure because it is neat to be in palaces, misfortune because both palaces are poorly restored and house incredibly tacky museums.

A bit further away we found a street that was the rich neighborhood 100 years ago. The brick mansions were decaying from neglect and the tropical weather. These houses were overflowing with poor Muslims, squatters who took over when the Hindu's left. Some are so poor as to sell the bricks from their home (these ancient mansions) to break for gravel.

The third story of this mansion looked entirely overgrown with trees. I asked the woman holding her baby if we could go up to the roof, and she obliged. The stairway was falling apart, the bricks forming the steps often missing or crumbled.








The third story turned out to be a facade. The roof was wide open. Parts of the roof had fallen into the rooms below, but that didn't stop us from poking around the edges to look in. The woman we were with refused to have her picture taken, something about Islam's injunction against images of animals or people. She told us about the 5 families, 25 people, who lived in this building. She showed us her rooms, where her sister and brother-in-law had set up 2 sewing machines and made 1000 tupees (Muslim prayer hats) a day. We were invited back to her little boy's 3rd birthday, July 22nd. We refused, explaining that Ali was returning to her country, but promised to send the pictures she let us take of her child.




We returned to the street and poked our heads into the dilapidated mansion across the street where we were surprised to see a popular Bengali band filming a music video.


Another mansion housed a poultry farm. Our friend who showed us her house told us about the rumor of eviction going around. Apparently the government is going to restore the old buildings to make Shonargon a better tourist attraction. I have mixed feelings about that - part of the awe of visiting here is the ramshackle-ness, the decaying splendor. However, if preservation efforts are not made in a few years it will all be gone. Too bad government-restored things always turn out so tacky.

On the way back we seen a sari loom. Ali had not seen one of these before so we stopped the taxi to get a closer look. Up close we realized that it was not sari's being woven but metal netting instead. The set up was exactly the same as for sari's, but must be much harder to work with. Can you imagine how bad the weaver's hands must hurt after weaving fences all day?

Days of Miracle and Wonder

One of my favorite parts of living in Dhaka is all the immense cultural diversity found here. People from every continent, except Antarctica go to my church. I speak Spanish with a Mexican who sings with me in choir. I've learned that New Zealanders call a tank top a "singlet." Sometimes stuff gets lost in the accent. It gets embarrassing to ask my South African friend to repeat "pahty" for the 3rd time, because we pronounce "party" differently. But for the most part, it is excellent fun, and I love the juxtapositions of different cultures with each other.
For example, my Chinese-American friend threw a traditional Swedish Midsummer's Eve party complete with dancing around a Maypole singing Swedish songs on a roof at sunset in Dhaka. Was it strange, YES! But also it was a nice time of meeting the Scandinavians in Dhaka who enjoyed the challenge of preparing pickled herring flown in by diplomatic pouch from New York.

What the Water Wants Is Hurricanes

Ali went on an adventure to find Seven Domed Mosque the other day, and upon finding it took me to go see. The oldest Mogoul style mosque in Bangladesh, dating from 1680, is surrounded by training centers and hostels for the madrassa (Muslim boy's school). The mosque's courtyard was full of tupee-wearing boys playing ball, who hardly even noticed a pair of bideshi girls staring at them and their mosque.
It was fun to find such a thing right in my own neighborhood - just past the bazaar, down a few back streets, up a hill (a hill! in the middle of Dhaka!), and past a factory. The factory was pretty sketchy - lots of people working with glowy hot chunks of metal with absolutely no protection. Next time I'm going to get off the rickshaw for a closer look.

Another day the dark sky turned wet. From dry sky to POURING. Big, fat, thick drops fell down so heavily that we all sat at the office window, watching it. The wind started to blow and that’s when I remembered that all of the windows in my 5th story apartment were open. So I headed home, just across the street, to close the windows. I ran through a full foot of water in the street, but it didn’t matter, because by the time I got to my building my whole body was as wet as my feet. The water was streaming down the stairs as I sloshed up them, from the roof -which must not have a high enough step in front of the door. My apartment was almost as wet inside as outside...almost. Nasty black lines streaked the walls from the dirty screens on the windows above sizable pools on the floor, and a rather unfortunate soggy mess on Ali's desk.
That’ll teach me to leave the windows open during the storm. Welcome to the South Asian Monsoon.

Washing 50-100 ants out of the water tank of my coffee pot is not my favorite way to start the day, yet I've had to do it all week. How do they get there? Why doesn't the coffee filter catch the ones I miss? Floating ants in my coffee - extraordinary is not always excellent.

Giving Substance To Shadows

Did I get iTunes this weekend? Oh yes I did!
I tried for two consecutive hartal days to download it, getting 5 hours through the 10 hour process 3 times before the line disconnected. Indeed, the internet here is slow and unreliable. Saturday I went down to Computer City and picked up iTunes for 50 taka on a disk with the 100 most popular music programs for computers. Now I can listen to the "heaps" of music I got from Annabel in wei'd iTunes format.
Computer City is the only mall I've been in that has escalators going up, up each of the four floors, but none going down. You have to find the steps in the out-of-the-way corners to get out.

Any Colour You Like

I simply can't resist the chance to forage into Old Dhaka. On Friday, I was going to have a slow morning before church, but Ali ambushed me with a plan to go to Bongo Bazaar, and then search for Rickshaw Art. "Oh please can I come?" "Sure"

Bongo Bazaar is where they sell garment factory extra's. Often they are imperfect, or not "export quality." It's the ultimate thrift store. If you want to rummage around inevitably you can get a great winter coat for $10, or next season's jeans for $2. You'll also find gloves with imperfections like skinny wiggly fingers (someone's first attempt at using a sewing machine?), or T-shirts over which two or three different designs have been screen printed.

We breeze past the first few stalls quickly - saris and baby clothes. Soon we are in the women's western clothes section - cute shirts, skirts, jeans. "Madam, come here!" "You want?" "Foreigner!" The shop keepers are excited to see us.
Almost as soon as we find the women's section, we leave it, finding ourselves in the men's section. Hey! Where are the rest of the women's clothes? It dawns on us. No Bangladeshi women wear these clothes in the country. Millions of Men, on the other hand, can wear the western men's clothes here. Thus, there are only 40 stalls selling women's clothes, and 1500 selling men's clothes. Argh!
We continue looking through the bazaar. There are cool T-shirt shops where Carolyn stops for a while, picking out gifts to take back to North America. Across the way there are walls and walls of football (soccer) shirts. Most are Green and yellow, or blue and white. Brazil and Argentina are obviously the only two teams that matter. I browse the shirts, looking for a Spain, Mexico, or anything else that catches my eye.

"England!" the shopkeeper hollers. "No, Spain" "England will go farther [in the tournament]" "Maybe, but I love Spain." "No, England!" He pulls out a shirt with England emblazoned on the front. It is definitely the cutest shirt I've seen in the market. I want it. "No, I don't like England" I say, looking at the shirt. "Yes, England, they will go far!" "Well how much is it?" "250 taka." "No. I don't really like England, and all the other shirts here are 50 tk." "OK 50 tk."
Just then someone brings a shirt with "España" from a far stall. "Oh!" I grin. "Now you've blown it" Ali groans. Sure enough, when I ask how much it is they say 400tk. I bargain and cajol and walk away. "I won't pay more that 50 tk." "Ok, 60 tk." So now, by virtue of a shopping trip, I am an England supporter, unless they are playing Spain.

After we finish in Bongo Bazaar we decide to try finding the rickshaw art places. Last summer a friend and I spent 2 or 3 hours looking for rickshaw art, to no avail. However, when I took some friends on an Old Dhaka tour early last December I spotted some shops as we rickshawed out of the old city. Could I find it back? We decided that it would be best to start from Hindu Street.

Hindu Street is one of my favorite places in the world. The overcrowded, built up, dusty heat of it (which my mother hates) excites me. It's so Alive. Since we are already there we walk around for a while. It is Friday, the day of rest, so the street is less crowded than normal.












We gaze at the Hindu Temples, in which old men are discoursing on religious or social matters. I poke into the kite shop and get some paper kites, including 3 Lime green ones with a yellow diamond in the middle - Hooray for Brazil!

We try on enormous Styrofoam Hindu Wedding hats.

We watch a man cut, sand and design a shell bangle. Carolyn buys a set of ankle bells that traditional dancers wear to create rhythms.
Then we hop on rickshaws to find the rickshaw art place. The rickshaws pass out of the Hindu quarter in into a mostly Muslim area. Hundreds of men and boys in their white punjabi's are on the street. Most of the stores, however, are closed. The part of me that wants to find the rickshaw art today is disappointed, another part of me recalls its Reformed upbringing and applauds their decision to take a day of rest. We'll get rickshaw art another day.
When we get home there is just enough time to shower and put on my new España shirt before heading out to church.

(There is more about Hindu Street, and Old Dhaka in general in the August 2005 archive)

Fish Heads Running From Rain

Today is officially the beginning of the monsoon. It has already been raining daily for a few weeks, but today "Borsho kal" (Rainy Season) starts.

The beginning of the monsoon marks the time of year when most everything starts to mold- Clothes on the sari rack, the outer walls of my apartment, My cool Rajasthani leather shoes mold. Eww. Last Monsoon I got a light bulb put in my cupboard. It keeps the air dry enough that my clothes in there don't mold. Horray!
Monsoon is a mood. Ali caught it well in the first few paragraphs of Monsoon Season, as unflattering of me as it is.

The beginning of the monsoon also is when the Dhaka Exodus takes place. All the teachers are on holiday, many go "home," wherever that is, some never come back. In the next few weeks the MCC'ers will finish their terms and go home. Ali will go home. Everyone continually leaving is the worst part of living in Bangladesh. I'm happy that next year at this time I too will be preparing to leave, maybe that will make everyone else's leaving better.

Tonight there is a Thursday party at my house. Company, cocktails and card games should help make the monsoon mood go away.

Assorted Boxes of Ordinary Bones

Hartals are Boring. I skip over across the street to work in the office, since my room there has Air Conditioning (since last week!), but I lock the padlocks behind me, so that it looks like no one is there. The office is empty. No Maria to bring tea and snacks at 9, 10:30, and 3:30. No Nurul to run errands, no Nirob or Ashim to joke and sing with, no efficient Apurba to make us get things done. Yawn! The fun part is blasting out "Tender Prey" from my computer speakers as loud as I want without annoying anyone.

Bangladeshi's have a peculiar way of expressing world cup fever. They fly the flags of their team from the roof of their house. Not the Bangladesh team - We didn't quite make it. ;( It's either Brazil, Argentina or Germany. It's odd looking over the rooftops of my neighborhood in South Asian Country and feeling like I must be in Latin America

In other news, my land lord, or someone in his flat was arrested this morning. As I went down the stairs this morning there were 7 police at his door, and one on each landing with huge beating sticks. Hmmm....

There Was A Riot On The Streets

The headline in today's newspaper said "Dhaka put under siege, streets turn into battlefields: 500 including senior leaders injured, cops surrender to mob, rail lines uprooted, vehicles set afire"

The "country situation" is not good, to say the least. It is strange that so much drama hardly affected me. I still went to the office all day and then across town to hang out with my friends in the diplomatic zone. It was a little hard to catch a cab and CNG, but generally I was not affected by the drama of the city I live in being under siege by the opposition party.

The next two days will be a hartal - a general strike. I may not leave the neighborhood till Wednesday evening around 6 pm, neither can anyone else. The office is closed, so people will work all weekend, both Friday and Saturday. But I will work from home tomorrow, since I don't have the distraction/demands of a family and I value my weekends too much.

I recently cancelled my summer trip to Sri Lanka because my parents asked me to. They heard about the civil war there and are worried for my safety. When I explained this to the family I was going to visit they laughed: "I have been praying for the safely of all of you guys in Bangladesh because we KNOW the danger that exists every time you go out the door!.....Well, if it makes your parents think you are safer to stay there than come here, I understand...but a corner of my mind says that you should come to Sri Lanka to be safe for a while"

Pray that peace and democratic process will prevail in the lead-up to the elections for the next few months.

Keep You From Doing What You're Supposed To

The weekend is best described in pictures. It was much more like a great American weekend than I've had in a long time - complete with coffee houses, football (soccer) games, sleepovers, playing guitar- singing along with a friend, high school plays, and sloppy after parties. Ahh.

I Married My Wife On The Day Of The Eclipse

"Tomorrow my brother* is getting married. I cannot come tomorrow." Sheuli, my cook, informed me on Tuesday. "We finalized it yesterday. I was up until the early hours of the morning, making all the arrangements with the other family, and now it will be good. You must come to the Bou bhat (Bride's Rice) at my house." I asked when the Bou Bhat would be, but that either hadn't been fixed yet, or the answer was obvious, because Sheuli didn't answer that question.

Today Sheuli came in half hour early. "I'm not coming in today. I have to cook at home all day. Today you will come to my house for lunch to eat the Bou Bhat. I will pick you up at 1 pm at your office."

So at lunch Ali and I dressed up in our sari's and went off to eat party food and see the bride and groom.

*I think this might be the brother who I met the first time I went to Sheuli's house. She gave him my cell phone number and every night after that for months I was endlessly entertained by text messages that said things like
WISH U TO BE AN ACTIVE QUALIFIDE, NOBLE, GREAT, BEST, CUTE, NICE SMART & BE MORE SMART INTELIGENT SWEET & ADVENTURSOME.U MAY SHEARING IN UR JOY WITH ME. ONLY
Needless to say I didn't reply.

Ordinary's Just Not Good Enough Today

As our CNG passed by the beggar girl she seen our foreign faces and ran after the vehicle until we stopped at the light. She poked her face in our space "Please give alms, Allah will bless you." I turned to look at her, winced inwardly and looked away. The 12 year old had a huge tumor where her lip should be. It had pushed her teeth all crooked and protruded from her face making it almost impossible to look at her, because my eyes wanted to slide off away from the disfigurement.

As my eyes slipped off Shuli's face, Ali piped up beside me. "What's your name?" "Shuli, please give me some money, to buy some rice" "Oh!" said Ali, "My friend's name is Shuli!" "Really?" Shuli's eyes light up. "Yes, be careful" we urge as the traffic started moving.

Our CNG moved up to the front of the line, but the light turned red before we could go. Shuli caught up with our CNG and poked her face in again. This time my eyes could find hers. "Shuli, do you have brother's and sisters?" "Yes! We are three, I am the middle one." "How old are you?" We chatted for a few minutes before the light changed and we moved on, off to a better neighborhood to visit Carolyn who was sick.

By the time we got to Carolyn's both Ali and I were in tears. Shuli was so happy when we started talking to her. Her eyes were shining and her disfigured mouth turned up into a smile. It hurts to know that a girl like that has no future in Bangladesh. She will forever be a beggar. Those who organize the beggars keep her hoping to gain sympathy for her disfigurement. She will never get married because of her misshapen face.

Her situation isn't fair. But neither is it fair that we, who are relatively rich and powerful, can do absolutely nothing to help her. The situations of beggars doesn't usually get to me so badly. I blame Ali, who allows, even demands, verbally processing this stuff, so that I internalize and attempt to make sense of these difficult issues that otherwise slide off my happy veneer, regulated to office hours.

So often I am jealous of John and Peter who heal the crippled beggar in Acts 3.
Ali puts it differently. Imagine how crowded Jesus was. Moved by sympathy He was healing those crippled people, and they just kept coming. There were always more people who needed healing. Crowding Jesus.
I think of how overwhelmed I am with people who perceive me as rich and powerful, even though I can't do anything. How the people must have overwhelmed and crowded Someone who was actually healing them.

A Trip Upon Your Magic Swirling Ship

This morning I left directly from the house to our Lalbag field office, a 20 minute rickshaw ride. As the rickshaw started moving the rickshaw wallah said, "It'll be 40 taka." "That is way too much. Stop, I'm getting off!" The rickshaw braked hard, throwing me out of the rickshaw, head first into a mud puddle. I picked my self up, my kameez torn, my purse muddy, my foot sprained. "I'm not going with you" I growled at the rickshaw wallah, as I hobbled away, back to my house to change. It was my first serious fall from a rickshaw in all the time I've been here.

A change of clothes, a light rain shower and 25 taka later I arrived at the Lalbag office. Visiting Lalbag is fun. The staff are chatty. Which team to you support for the World Cup? (Well, Brazil will win, but I'm also rooting for Spain and Mexico) How was your trip to your country? I told them how much fun everyone in my country had dressing up in the clothes of Bangladesh. We laughed about how I made Bangladeshi food and made my family eat it with their fingers. My little brother Jesse didn't want to at first, but then had the leftovers later, and ate them with his fingers. We Bangladeshi's know that food tastes better when we eat with our hands! I spent a few hours helping Lucky, my adolescent educator, with her impact monitoring and went back to the office.

I love the rickshaw ride back. Rickshaw riding is one of my favorite Bangladesh experiences. The tinkle of rickshaw bells, the perfect 80 degree weather, the bustle of people going places. It is exotic and perfectly normal at the same time.

The layers and layers of clothes I'm wearing take on a life of their own. My orna flies up, exposing my "feminine bits". As I pull it back down where it belongs, my kameez flips back up into my lap. I tuck it firmly under my knees to keep it down, but that hikes up my shalwar, exposing my ankles. By the time I've got that sorted my orna has slipped all the way to one side, flying out behind the moving rickshaw, and again uncovering my chest. Eventually I am clutching at all my clothes in an attempt to keep them where they belong.

The rickshaw pass the bazaar with all it's luscious exotic fruit. We get stuck in a rickshaw jam outside the best primary school in Dhaka. Little kids in the other rickshaws stare at me, pointing me out to their parent. I stare and point back and we both laugh. The joy of traveling by rickshaw

To Be The One's To've Seen

I love my job. Being "actively engaged in redeeming Creation." Teaching young teens to "establish and sustain healthy relationships." The words themselves are exhilarating.

The first Tuesday of the month the theory comes to life. The Peer Educator meeting! The five Bangladeshi educators I work with meet with me to reflect on the month past and prepare for the month to come. It is, without a doubt, my favorite day every single month.

We've been working together for 2 years, exploring topics that range from vaccinations to problem solving to the character of God, so that they in turn can teach these lessons to our 785 adolescents. We can ask each other any question without shame or fear of ridicule. I ask them about their life expectations, or how they manage shame in their cultures. They ask me to explain in detail what to expect on their wedding night. And then ask accusatorily "How do you know all these things??" It's a fun day, full of laughter and learning.

We celebrate the successes each field has experienced. This month's successes included a teenager who quit school and mixed with bad friends. His mother couldn't get him to change, so she appealed to the educator for his group- Taslima. Taslima talked with him (in a complicated story my Bangla didn't follow) and he has returned to school. His
mother is ecstatic, and our reputation is built a little more solidly in that slum.

We consider the challenges the educators face in the field. How can we keep the six groups affected by the slum demolition intact? What should the guidelines be for savings groups? How will our program adapt so that it can expand? They are questions I can't answer on my own, since I don't have an adequate grasp of what is happening in the field. Together the six of us, and a "grown-up" staff (if we ask for one), work to clarify the problem and identify solutions.

At the end of the day I fall asleep, exhausted from a whole day teaching and problem solving, drained from the effort of communication in Bangla. Regardless, meeting with them remains my favorite day of the month and I celebrate that.

Go Away From My Window

A bunch of us went to the movies last night at the grandest mall in Bangladesh. It's strange to see so many middle and upper class Bangladeshi's in one spot, dressed to the nines, promenading as much as shopping. The escalators are a particular spot of entertainment. Some people have never been on one and it takes a long minute before they dare place a foot squarely in the centre of one of those moving rectangles that is about to turn into a step. Even those who have done it before are very deliberate about placing their feet perfectly on a step, as though the escalator might get out of control if we aren't careful with it.

The movie was about a British Bangladeshi returning to Bangladesh. The footage of Dhaka was impressive, giving a decent impression of riding a rickshaw and the crowdedness of Old Dhaka. The emotional journey of the young man got a little tedious though. We got bored towards the end so Annabel and I took a picture.

As we left the Theatre Charlene and Sandra conspired to get Ali and myself home in a car, instead of leaving us to catch an illusive cab outside the mall in the middle of the night. (Thanks guys!)

The street kids outside the mall took advantage of the terrible traffic to beg through the car window. "Hello-money-bakshish, Hello-money-bakshish, Hello-money-bakshish! Two, no, ten! Ten piece moneys!" The kids are persistent. They run after the car during the green lights so that they can hang on our windows during the red lights. They make us uncomfortable, but we don't give any taka. We do talk to them.

"What is your name?" "Sulema" (a girls name) says the little boy.
"How old are you?" "one, or maybe two. Give me money, the baby is crying" He started to fake cry, which as we started to laugh turned into giggles.
"No, I won't give you money, do you study in school?" "yes...no, I don't have money, give some bakshish"
"No, I don't give money, but can I take your picture?"
He and the little girl next to him had fun posing for pictures for a few minutes before the traffic picked up and left them far behind us.

It's hard to treat these kids like real people. They are annoying and persistent and guilt-inducing. It's so hard not to roll up the window and ignore them, or give them two taka (4 cents) and let them move on to the next car.

It's hard to think that these kids have families and relationships that matter. To grasp that it is equally horrific when they are beaten or raped as it would be for one of the adolescents I work with. Yet "they" say that 100% of street kids are physically and sexually abused.

What is the right thing to do? I try to convince myself that the work we are doing- to change the systematic injustices, to empower the poor, to create caring communities might help change the situations of street kids one day, but the truth is I don't know.

You Were My Fugi

The scabs on my knuckles from are slowly healing. When I first got here a week ago there was only one week left in lichu season.. Today my cook informed me that there are no more lichu in the market. They are DONE! As I have been eating about 100 lichu a day this is very sad news for me. On the bright side, now my knuckles will no longer be scraped and bleeding from the efforts of prying apart the rough lichu skin to get to the juicy sweetness inside.

My bedroom smells like camp, or so Ali informs me. Sheuli, my cook, washed all my western clothes, of wool, denim and heavy cotton after I got back. The first day they didn't dry on the line. The second day continued in being icky humid and overcast as the whole week has been, so they didn't dry then either. So the clothes are now dangling from my mosquito net rack attempting to dry under the fan in my room. By now they have acquired a rather powerful mold smell, causing my entire bedroom to "smell like camp."