Such Great Heights
I took my first in-country vacation this weekend. Alison and I went to the Srimongal, a town in NorthEast Bangladesh that revolves around the cultivation and processing of Tea. As with most great trips, it's impossible to explain it. "How was your trip?" "Great." Even if you, like Annabel, will sit down next to me for a while, hearing the tales and seeing my pictures, the actual experience is impossible to convey. The best I can do it say "Go see it yourself!" or not.
The biggest draw to Srimongal was cycling. The Lonely Planet guide recomends Srimongal for cycling. For all I know Sylet is just as nice, or it might be just as inappropriate in Kamalghar, but the LP suggests it and that is what we have to go on. Part of me knows this is "culturally inappropriate." Bengalis already find white foreigners (and thus Christians, as all white people are obviously Christian) to be terribly immodest, with no sense of what is appropriate. On the other hand, why can't I, like Victorian women of old, declare women's rights by mounting my cycle and enjoy the delicious freedom of going where I please and the speed of my choice?
While in town, waiting for the cycle rental place to open we decide to get hats to keep the sun off our heads. We get on a rickshaw for a ride, planning to stop inconspicuously at the market when we seen where to buy the hats. The rickshaw didn't pass any markets or hat sellers, so we tried a more direct approach. We stopped a rickshaw wallah who had a hat like we wanted and asked him to take us to the appropriate place. This he did, but it also drew a huge crowd. Ali and I successfully bargained with the hat vendor, insisting that the chin ties be included in the agreed upon price, and we were set.
As we cycled along the road, the perpetual audience had mixed reactions. Most just stared. Some men shout out howareyou? or bhery nice! Others Salamed or pressed their hands in Nomoshkar, respectively the Muslim and Hindu greeting of peace. Several old women laughed, some encouraging, others crazy cackling. As we got on smaller, more isolated roads the reactions were more extreme, until Ali and I stopped to rest under a tree on a dirt road. We smiled at a little boy playing in a garden. He stared, eyes bugging out of his head, stopped what he was doing, screamed and ran into his house. I don't think he had ever seen white people before. Definitely never white women on bicycles wearing rickshaw wallah hats.
Our second goal, the distant second to cycling, is to tour a tea processing plant. On Saturday we had found the Tea Research Board, but it was closed. Friendly guards told us to come at 9:30 the following day and speak to the Director. He would give us permission. Sure enough, when we presented ourselves, upon hearing we were from Canada, he arranged for one of his English-speaking scientists to give us a tour.
Each plant is harvested once a week. Tea pickers pick 50 lbs of tea per day each, for which they earn 30 tk. Processed tea leaves, the shriveled dark granules in your teabag, are heaped in dark piles on the floor according to grade, before it is sent to the southern-most city in Bangladesh to be sold at auction to the different brands.
Our guide was keen on explaining the subtleties of growing tea. He was also very curious about why our husbands were not with us, learning also about tea. Ali missed the gist of his question, insisting that we were there because WE were interested in learning about tea. His line of querying remained futile, and we biked off into the morning.
I love finding the back roads. No cars, less audience. The brick road fades to packed mud until we are following little more than a cow trail. At some point we found a shrine under a Banyan tree. It looks like Buddha, sort of. As Ali and I rest from the fierce sun a crowd gathers from nowhere.
Nomoshakar. Is this shrine Buddhist, or Hindu? Hindu. The old woman has red bracelets on, but not white shell ones. She must be a widow. Her skin tells the tale of many hours in the sun, picking tea, yet she stands perfectly straight during our conversation. No hunch from picking, no shyness. Is this your grandson? How many grandchildren do you have? 20! How many children do you have? 1 son and 4 daughters.
Yes, we are staying in Srimongal. We live in Dhaka. Everyone told us we must come to your area. They say this is the most beautiful part of Bangladesh. Yes, we like it. It is so niry-billy, peaceful. What is up this road? Tea gardens and hills. Forgive us for leaving so soon, we must be getting along.
At another break we meet a Pakistani man who immigrated to Bangladesh in his childhood. Under his black umbrella, he reminisces about the days when we (he assumes we are British, even after we clarify that we're Canadian) were in charge of the tea gardens in the area. Things were better, money went farther...aah, the good old days. He gives us directions down the dirt road and we are off again. The trail forks, then forks again. The narrow hilly path is less and less perfect for cycling on. We look desperately for a way to get to the main paved road which is laughing at us on the other side of a small river. How to get there? Our attempts to find a place to cross the river only result in getting muddy feet and pants, without having crossed the river. We are at the bottom of the river gorge with steep walls all around when a Bengali man sees us and show us a dirt path that leads to the bridge. He carries our bikes up the ravine in his bare feet while Ali and I clamber up behind him. We give our tea garden angel ten taka for his trouble and cycle off.
On the last morning I convinced Ali of the necessity of a Dawn Patrol. There is so much happening in the early morning in Bengali villages, and I didn't want to miss it. Additionally, the night before some Danish people told us about a rain forest a few kilometers down the road in a direction we had not gone yet. We set off at 6:30, passing men pushing carts laden with jackfruit, limes, guava and pineapple.
Having seen the rainforest (nice trees, vines, wetness, snakes) we braved the stares of the Bengali men at this little outpost and had a cup of tea.
Sulema, the only woman we seen in the area, came out to serve us. She shyly washed out our tin cups and filled them with steaming black tea mixed with sweetened condensed milk. Sulema and her husband have run this tea stall and the attatched corner store for 15-20 years. She stands near to us, inquisitive as to our origens, marital status, and miraculous ability to communicate in Bangla. After a few minutes, she turned to the crowd of men who had gathered and answered their various questions about us. Queen for a moment.
As we entered the train station on our way back to Dhaka we passed an old woman laying in a corner covered in flies with her legs and torso exposed. Poverty reasserted itself like a slap in the face. Safe inside the train station Ali looked at me asking "What can we give her?" I shrugged, but Ali was already digging in her backpack. "I have water and some chips." She went back outside to help the woman, while I stayed inside with the bags. Through the window I could see a crowd gathering, watching Ali and the lady. A minute before the crowds had walking past the corner without registering the human being there, now they were helping her sit up, pulling her sari down to cover her properly. She was clearly out of her mind, barely registering the water or the chips. She tried valiantly to communicate, but her Bangla was too village-y to understand. After a bit Ali came back, glad to have made the effort. A half second later the crowds returned to their regular patterns, oblivious to the frail bit of person sitting in the corner, drinking her water.
The biggest draw to Srimongal was cycling. The Lonely Planet guide recomends Srimongal for cycling. For all I know Sylet is just as nice, or it might be just as inappropriate in Kamalghar, but the LP suggests it and that is what we have to go on. Part of me knows this is "culturally inappropriate." Bengalis already find white foreigners (and thus Christians, as all white people are obviously Christian) to be terribly immodest, with no sense of what is appropriate. On the other hand, why can't I, like Victorian women of old, declare women's rights by mounting my cycle and enjoy the delicious freedom of going where I please and the speed of my choice?
While in town, waiting for the cycle rental place to open we decide to get hats to keep the sun off our heads. We get on a rickshaw for a ride, planning to stop inconspicuously at the market when we seen where to buy the hats. The rickshaw didn't pass any markets or hat sellers, so we tried a more direct approach. We stopped a rickshaw wallah who had a hat like we wanted and asked him to take us to the appropriate place. This he did, but it also drew a huge crowd. Ali and I successfully bargained with the hat vendor, insisting that the chin ties be included in the agreed upon price, and we were set.
As we cycled along the road, the perpetual audience had mixed reactions. Most just stared. Some men shout out howareyou? or bhery nice! Others Salamed or pressed their hands in Nomoshkar, respectively the Muslim and Hindu greeting of peace. Several old women laughed, some encouraging, others crazy cackling. As we got on smaller, more isolated roads the reactions were more extreme, until Ali and I stopped to rest under a tree on a dirt road. We smiled at a little boy playing in a garden. He stared, eyes bugging out of his head, stopped what he was doing, screamed and ran into his house. I don't think he had ever seen white people before. Definitely never white women on bicycles wearing rickshaw wallah hats.
Our second goal, the distant second to cycling, is to tour a tea processing plant. On Saturday we had found the Tea Research Board, but it was closed. Friendly guards told us to come at 9:30 the following day and speak to the Director. He would give us permission. Sure enough, when we presented ourselves, upon hearing we were from Canada, he arranged for one of his English-speaking scientists to give us a tour.
Each plant is harvested once a week. Tea pickers pick 50 lbs of tea per day each, for which they earn 30 tk. Processed tea leaves, the shriveled dark granules in your teabag, are heaped in dark piles on the floor according to grade, before it is sent to the southern-most city in Bangladesh to be sold at auction to the different brands.
Our guide was keen on explaining the subtleties of growing tea. He was also very curious about why our husbands were not with us, learning also about tea. Ali missed the gist of his question, insisting that we were there because WE were interested in learning about tea. His line of querying remained futile, and we biked off into the morning.
I love finding the back roads. No cars, less audience. The brick road fades to packed mud until we are following little more than a cow trail. At some point we found a shrine under a Banyan tree. It looks like Buddha, sort of. As Ali and I rest from the fierce sun a crowd gathers from nowhere.
Nomoshakar. Is this shrine Buddhist, or Hindu? Hindu. The old woman has red bracelets on, but not white shell ones. She must be a widow. Her skin tells the tale of many hours in the sun, picking tea, yet she stands perfectly straight during our conversation. No hunch from picking, no shyness. Is this your grandson? How many grandchildren do you have? 20! How many children do you have? 1 son and 4 daughters.
Yes, we are staying in Srimongal. We live in Dhaka. Everyone told us we must come to your area. They say this is the most beautiful part of Bangladesh. Yes, we like it. It is so niry-billy, peaceful. What is up this road? Tea gardens and hills. Forgive us for leaving so soon, we must be getting along.
At another break we meet a Pakistani man who immigrated to Bangladesh in his childhood. Under his black umbrella, he reminisces about the days when we (he assumes we are British, even after we clarify that we're Canadian) were in charge of the tea gardens in the area. Things were better, money went farther...aah, the good old days. He gives us directions down the dirt road and we are off again. The trail forks, then forks again. The narrow hilly path is less and less perfect for cycling on. We look desperately for a way to get to the main paved road which is laughing at us on the other side of a small river. How to get there? Our attempts to find a place to cross the river only result in getting muddy feet and pants, without having crossed the river. We are at the bottom of the river gorge with steep walls all around when a Bengali man sees us and show us a dirt path that leads to the bridge. He carries our bikes up the ravine in his bare feet while Ali and I clamber up behind him. We give our tea garden angel ten taka for his trouble and cycle off.
On the last morning I convinced Ali of the necessity of a Dawn Patrol. There is so much happening in the early morning in Bengali villages, and I didn't want to miss it. Additionally, the night before some Danish people told us about a rain forest a few kilometers down the road in a direction we had not gone yet. We set off at 6:30, passing men pushing carts laden with jackfruit, limes, guava and pineapple.
Having seen the rainforest (nice trees, vines, wetness, snakes) we braved the stares of the Bengali men at this little outpost and had a cup of tea.
Sulema, the only woman we seen in the area, came out to serve us. She shyly washed out our tin cups and filled them with steaming black tea mixed with sweetened condensed milk. Sulema and her husband have run this tea stall and the attatched corner store for 15-20 years. She stands near to us, inquisitive as to our origens, marital status, and miraculous ability to communicate in Bangla. After a few minutes, she turned to the crowd of men who had gathered and answered their various questions about us. Queen for a moment.
As we entered the train station on our way back to Dhaka we passed an old woman laying in a corner covered in flies with her legs and torso exposed. Poverty reasserted itself like a slap in the face. Safe inside the train station Ali looked at me asking "What can we give her?" I shrugged, but Ali was already digging in her backpack. "I have water and some chips." She went back outside to help the woman, while I stayed inside with the bags. Through the window I could see a crowd gathering, watching Ali and the lady. A minute before the crowds had walking past the corner without registering the human being there, now they were helping her sit up, pulling her sari down to cover her properly. She was clearly out of her mind, barely registering the water or the chips. She tried valiantly to communicate, but her Bangla was too village-y to understand. After a bit Ali came back, glad to have made the effort. A half second later the crowds returned to their regular patterns, oblivious to the frail bit of person sitting in the corner, drinking her water.
1 Comments:
Thank you so much for taking the time to write about your vacation and the woman in the corner. What a powerful statement "poverty reinstates itself like a slap on the face". I would love to go on that dawn bike ride with you sometime. mom
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