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| the very wonderful Animesh |
What an amazing day! Last night I arrived on the train quite nearly terrified - alone in the dark, a dark rikshaw ride, a winding dark alley drop off… but, I was so lucky to meet Animesh who works with the YWCA.
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| Me and my VERY large bedroom |
This morning I went downstairs and found that breakfast was waiting for me, some naan and a fried egg. Animesh and I chatted over breakfast while I ate and after we had tea together we started to walk to the local Cultural Academy.
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| Birisiri YMCA |
On the way we stopped to visit the local YMCA and the staff there - another place that you can stay if you come to visit Birisiri (but I’d say check out the YW first!). We sat and chatted at the Y for about an hour, one of the young men made coffee so we sat and visited and it was very nice.
At one point I'm quite sure the young man (whose name I will omit!) told me that if I ever divorced my husband he's be up for me to come back and look him up, lol. This made Animesh mad (I think he thought I innocently missed the insinuation as he scolded and chastised his friend in Bangla - it's easier to let those things just go right over your head and not take them personally here, I've lost track of the number of marriage proposals I've gotten since coming to Bangladesh!) so it was time for us to continue on our way, which I was happy to do!
After the visit we continued walking to the cultural centre. The man I should have met to talk with about the Garo tribe was not there; his wife had taken ill and he took her to the hospital, so I met with another man briefly before touring a small cultural museum they had onsite. It showed the types of rocks and sands local people used for building, different types of pots and tools and musical instruments, as well as some art and jewellery items.
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my naive brain thought this might be how
tribal peoples still lived - of COURSE, it is NOT
(just like at home) |
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| Art items |
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Garo Alphabet - Most of the tribes
have their own language |
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| My favourite stop: tea!! |
Afterwards we went to a market stall restaurant and sat down for tea and a snack. We ate little poppadoms made with potato and curry, kind of like samosas but with a nicer shell, they were delicious! Animesh wouldn’t let me pay for anything which frustrated me (I’m the westerner with all the money, and he’s the one paying for tea when we’re out!). However, he wouldn’t be moved and absolutely insisted so I thanked him and on we went.
As we were walking out of the Cultural Academy earlier I noticed a grandmother and a young boy through a window collecting nuts or fruit from tall palms. My picture didn't work out so you're going to have to use your imagination! The grandmother was using a tall bamboo pole to shake and poke the trees, and the little boy was running around collecting the fruits that fell.
Animesh asked if I wanted to go down and visit the houses there so of course I jumped to say ‘yes!’ We walked the long dirt paths from the cultural centre while Animesh occasionally shooed away curious onlookers that started to follow us. “They are all curious about you, looking you two times up and down” he said, I just laughed.
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| big black pigs in the dirt and the shade |
We strolled down the village as he greeted most of the people we passed. We wove through the forest like it was a clear sidewalk easily marked and I got to walk through some of the daily living of some of the Garo people.
When we reached the grandmother’s home we went up and sat on a bench on her front porch after Animesh said hello and chatted a bit. Grandmother brought us a plate of small apple-looking fruits (which is what I had seen them collecting earlier) with a small pile of salt and a couple of hot peppers. The apple-like things were soft inside, mushy in a dry kind of way and quite sour. When I got past the first one they were quite nice, especially dipped in a bit of salt, and I had a handful of them. I ate the first one quite slowly taking small bites to see if I had any tummy grumbles, but when it seemed fine I resumed eating like normal. The peppers were very hot, and the grandmother sat on the floor as we had our snack and sat quietly on the porch.
We sat peacefully while I watched the calf in the yard get excited as grandfather brought her mother back in from the field, and watched a young girl of about 12 or 13 spreading buckets of rice out on a tarp to dry using her feet to flatten it out on the tarps. I watched the little boy play in the dirt, he looked tired and in need of a nap. Animesh asked me a few times if I was bored but I couldn’t have been more content sitting there and doing “nothing.”
After some time sitting we meandered back toward the Y. We walked the long way around and it was very nice, pastoral doesn’t even begin to cover it. We passed the girls’ school and the World Vision worksite as well as the new Habitat for Humanity offices - the project has built a number of houses in the community. We also passed a few guesthouses and of course many curious people before arriving back at the Y.
I went up to my room after thanking Animesh for the tour and took some time to wash my face (and feet!) of the dirt and dust of the morning. About half hour later he knocked on my door and told me my lunch was ready. It was so good (and I was just getting the idea that my meals were being provided during my stay, I’m a little slow, lol)… I had rice and daal with curried chicken - yum! It was so nice to eat local food not American-style food. I ate slowly enjoying my meal and then we had tea together and chatted awhile. Animesh was good company and I quite enjoyed our chats.
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In our many chats I have learned many things about the Garo people. Animesh laughingly told me (after we’d seen something on a news story in the paper) that women hoped that by having many children that their husbands will be happy. Many people watch reams of videos and read lots about other countries to learn about the world, they are very curious people and their school curriculum doesn’t give enough information to sate that curiosity. People in the area are primarily Christian, and the local church was built in 1890 by Australian missionaries. Times are changing so attitudes are shifting to the west for many family values and dreams. The extended family has shrunken and the family is now primarily nuclear outside the villages for Bangladeshi families in the cities.
In the local villages people still live more communally as a family within a group of houses, and there is little worry for the children during the day. You might find them off playing beside the river or climbing a tree to knock down a coconut, or swinging a sharp curved blade to cut open that same coconut and pour out the sweet water.
When I commented that in my own community at home mothers would be scared or worried about their kids if they didn’t know where they were, Animesh said, “we have many children. If we lose one we can just make another baby. Our women are as fertile as our lands.” He laughed as he said it, and I still don’t know if he was joking or being serious.
There is a belief that very bad people come back as ghosts to haunt and scare people (but only very bad people), and some people in the area practice a kind of black magic, others claim to keep pet ghosts. There is one village crazy man (“he’s just mad”) and he likes me very much. He’s friendly and seems harmless, he speaks in rapidfire English stringing strange combinations of words together. When we see him he follows along spouting a flurry of mixed up English like “
Biscuits! I like biscuits do you enjoy biscuits because I like biscuits I’ll give you some money and you can busy some biscuits but do you like biscuits?”
A couple of times he did cartwheels by us to get our attention, his shoe flying off across the field to the delight of the children who were looking on. He has a never ending smile and he’s probably in his mid-thirties. Animesh told me that he was the only “mad” person in the village and that mental illness wasn’t thought to be common in the country. There’s just one mental hospital in all of Bangladesh (and I‘m betting it‘s scary, but that‘s just me!).
We took a short break (me retiring to my room to write awhile and Animesh to do some of his work at the Y) and then at 3:30 we headed up the road to the next village so I could try some of the local rice wine that the Garo people make. Alcohol is very uncommon here so local people have developed their own system of boiling rice down and then storing it somewhere cool for a week after “adding some medicine”, stirring it a lot and then pouring the liquid from it.
Along the way we passed some boys climbing trees and playing, and lots of people out in the fields tending the rice paddies. At times the road was being rebuilt so there were piles or sand and crushed red rocks dumped awaiting the road builders. We walked past many curious villagers who occasionally asked Aimesh where I was from or why I was visiting, mostly he shooed them on protectively. We walked again through village roads that were no more to me than random paths through the forest, but he always knew where we were going. When we got there it turned out to be his sister-in-law’s younger sister’s house (try to figure out that relationship!!), where they make rice wine as an extra source of income.
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| sandy roads connect villages |
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| people travel by rickshaw most everywhere |
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| the scenery takes my breath away |
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| just for Sadie - goats abound!! |
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| the village was beautiful in the trees |
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later they were smiling,
but I was too busy making them smile to take a picture! |
We sat outside the house on a bench on the porch quietly, me absorbing more of village life again, them discussing family stuff. Though they live very close together and have no prescribed office hours in their work lives they still don’t see each other as often as one might think, Animesh says once or twice a month. They are also in the next village, which is across the main road and a 15-minute amble through rice paddies and farm fields.
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| Baby animals are everywhere, they always make me smile! |
People in this village don’t wear saris or salwaar kameezes, many of them wore skirts and tshirts. There was a girl around 17 with a new baby (45 days) wrapped on her back while she went about her chores (she was washing dishes at the time) while grandma looked on. The baby was oblivious to the world, napping on mom’s back. Before mom went off to the field Grandma took her and carried her inside.
Heaps of children poked around, first one and then that one grabbed another and so on until there were about 10 of them in the yard; it was quite cute as they tried to appear disinterested while they oozed curiosity.
The sister eventually invited us into her home for a drink and some snacks that she had one of the kids fetch. Her home was made of sheet metal with a dirty floor. We sat where I would have said was the table - I don’t know that it wasn’t the table, but they were saving me from sitting on the floor, I’m not sure.
The home was divided into two rooms and was furnished with a china cabinet filled with dishes and the table we were sitting on that was draped with a cloth. I couldn’t see into the other room and I didn’t want to pry, but I think it was bare as it was the sleeping area for the family. Laundry was strung up drying around the walls in places, just small things like towels and shorts. The only decoration on the walls was a calendar hanging on the door along with a Christian poster with a smiling and friendly Jesus, arms outstretched.
She bought the drink in a silver pitcher with 2 clean glasses. Animesh didn’t try any. He said that he’d heard from someone else that it wasn’t very good so he had never tried it and had no plans to. They watched and waited expectantly as I poured myself a half glass and brought it to my lips and tasted it - it was good: yay!! I took a couple of small sips, again waiting a moment to see if it was going to upset my stomach and all was fine so I finished my glass and poured another half glass.
I snacked with my right hand on the small dish of crisps and nuts she had put out, sipped the rice wine with my left, and happily just enjoyed the warm feeling of my surroundings. I had a very happy quiet mind as we sat. Animesh and his family discussed family stuff and I snacked contentedly, a foreign fly on the proverbial wall.
Out the front door (the doors never seem to be closed in village homes) I watched the kids play with a puppy, climb trees, and hack open a coconut with a curved knife. He (a boy of 8 or 9) chopped off the top, reminding his playmates to step away from the space so he didn’t cut off their toes while they watched him.
The rice wine, before I forget to mention it, tastes like the Korean drink makkoli, also a rice wine. The Garo version is a little bit sweeter and much more delicious - it also has far less alcohol in it. Animesh said that when the farmers come in from the rice paddy in the heat of the summer they drink it like a tonic and it cools the body and relaxes and refreshes the mind - apparently they can drink as much as they like with no ill effects because the alcohol content is so low (around 2%).
When it was time we moved on, walking a new way again back to the Y along the riverside. Some of the children from the village followed us, about 5 of them, straggling behind with the sister as she walked us to the edge of the village before saying goodbye. I convinced the kids to take a picture with me, it was very cute - they love to see themselves on the camera screen. They followed behind us as far as the river before heading back for home.
Animesh and I continued along between rice paddies along the river, and the landscape was really breathtaking. A couple of times he had to stop to see if I was still following when I had stopped to stare at the view around me, it was really beautiful.
We came upon many people working in the paddies as we walked. He showed me a strange spikey vegetable whose name I have forgotten (correction: it's Korola, thank you Chris!). When I bent down to look it it the nearby farmers came to check me out and see what I was so fascinated by. Everyone is so friendly and curious - they came right up to stand in front of me to see what I was up to, smiling when I showed them the vegetable, I felt like a little kid and they laughed and laughed.
There were many goats and cows tied up in the field, and even a cat or two roaming around. There was a small boy around 4 or 5 who was trying to pull a sunken canoe out of the water all by his lonesome, he was very cute. A man came along shortly after to play with him and they worked together to pull at the boat, not really making any progress but having lots of fun.
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| I can't help it, I like all the animals! |
I couldn’t help think about the way parents in Canada might react if they knew their child was down alone at the edge of the river. I would freak out, I'm sure! This is when Animesh commented about children being replaceable and women fertile. In the Garo village children are expected to learn about and survive in nature, they are not protected from every bump and fall. They learn about the world by living in it, and for those families, that is enough.
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More things I learned about the Garo people…
Kids go to school in the village until grade 5, and then about 80% of them quit. Another 10% quit after 10th grade to get married and have children, and a very small percentage attend college (grades 11 and 12) and post secondary in the cities.
Marriages can be arranged but in these villages the choice of partners is often the choice of the young people. A couple will come to an agreement on their own and then tell their families. Animesh says that parents don’t always approve of their child’s choice, but that their friends and families will likely encourage them to accept the will of their son or daughter. If the child is unrelenting in their choice the parent will submit because they have no other choice. Animesh says that it is rare that marriages are arranged for political reasons between villages.
Living arrangements vary. In the Garo tribe it is women who lead the household, so most often the man moves into the place of the woman. This being said though, there is no set rule and there are times when the bride moves into the groom’s home.
When the man proposes he gives a ring and the engagement (if the bride accepts) last from a few months to a year, this giving the couple enough time to collect money for the wedding (an expensive affair). For the ceremony itself a couple may have 4 or 500 people come by, as some invite everyone from the neighbouring villages in addition to their own friends and family. People believe that the larger the number of guests the stronger the couple’s commitment will be to one another.
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| India's border is within sight over the mountains |
The night before the wedding the groom goes to collect the bride and they spend their first night together, the “pre-wedding.” Each is responsible for giving the other their wedding clothes as a gift to one another (whether they choose their own or choose for one another is up to the couple), and they and the family pay for the meal. It takes about a week to make wedding preparations, from fixing up the house, the yard, preparing the food and such. Then, during the wedding after the couple makes their vows to one another before the priest in front of their guests there is a huge party (much like home with many more guests) - it sounds so beautiful!
But, I digress!!
After the river we came upon the village church. It looked abandoned from the outside but Animesh assured me that it’s full on Sundays. Another cool thing he told me was about when a member of the congregation dies. The church rings the bell, and everyone goes to visit the house of the family of the person who died. They have a small ceremony to remember the person and they carry the body together to the cemetery in a simple wooden coffin to the cemetery to be buried. No special funeral parlour, no special ministrations or autopsies, just a simple burial. When the cemetery ground is full (it’s a very small plot of land) the community adds a new layer of soil to the ground and they begin again on top, a new layer on the old. After one year the family holds a memorial on the anniversary of the death and guests gather once more for a celebration. It’s a lovely tradition.
As we walked through the church grounds and the yard of the boys school the sun was beginning to set.
We headed back to the Y from the back and were met once again by my mad friend. He is so joyful it’s really impossible to be annoyed with him. After shaking my hand hello he hovered at a respectable distance until our paths parted ways again. When Animesh stopped at a little spot for tea he cart wheeled around the outside, shoes akimbo with a group of teen boys playing volleyball nearby. While we had tea he came up and put 2 fruits in my hand and said, “A gift for my lady.” He made me smile. The fruit, which Animesh had to show me how to eat, tasted like a Korean persimmon. The difference though is that when they are ripe they are soft and mushy inside and you have to scoop the fruit out with your fingers or get it all over your face while you try to eat it out of the shell.
We tried a new kind of tea (maybe called “raw” tea?) and it was delicious. It tasted of ginger and cinnamon and some other thing I couldn’t identify and I loved it. When she went to get the ginger for making tea she actually
pulled it out of the sand underneath the bench. She said that if she keeps it in the sand it keeps the ginger fresh longer, perhaps like refrigeration? Ingenious really. We had a couple of small cakes with a second glass of tea before heading back to the Y (which, it happened, was right at our backs!).
When we arrived at the Y the generator was not so there were no lights in the dining area for us to sit and have dinner. Electricity is not always available in Bangladesh, especially in a small village like Birisiri compared to a big city like Dhaka. The groundskeeper came and lit the lantern in the dining around and we lit a couple candles and had tea and cookies. Dinner had already been set out in warming dishes, but I wasn’t hungry yet so we just sat and chatted awhile longer. After awhile I figured it was time to eat, but I asked Animesh to join me because they always made too much food just for me. He told me that I eat like a child, I told him to never mind and sit down and eat with me or I wasn’t going to eat at all, so of course he relented and joined me.
When I told him I didn’t want to see the food go to waste Animesh found it odd because food is inexpensive and available all over here, so it was considered no trouble to throw it away. His guess was that for westerners we worried more about it because food is more expensive so it feels more wasteful. I’m thinking he’s right.
Bangladesh, or at least in the Garo tribe, nobody goes hungry because food is readily available all around from fruit trees and vegetables growing wild everywhere. Bananas, papayas and the persimmon-like fruit, the mini bitter-apples, coconuts, mangoes - fruit is all over and plentiful.
We had a nice time eating dinner and chatting about all sorts of things (many of which I just shared with you). He had a lot of questions about Western life, because what he knows comes from popular movies and such, and he has no other source for information. When I marred Canada’s pristine image in his eyes by telling him that we had homeless people and poverty and hunger in Canada he was shocked, and I’d even say he was confused. “Why? Why don’t people have homes? You have so much land and not many people!”
I explained to him about the cost of having a home in Canada, and explained that the government wouldn’t be likely to allow huts to pop up as they do in Bangladesh, but I couldn’t make him understand why because I don’t really understand it myself. I explained that people had to have a lot of money to own land and that they needed to own the land to build on it, and about the weather and the difficulties of surviving if you lived outside during harsh winter months. In the end though, I didn’t have a good reason for him.
Animesh has been such a good friend to me during my time in Birisiri; very kind and considerate, and very much treating me like a personal guest rather than just a random stranger staying at the Y. When I thank him for anything it makes him uncomfortable and he told me at one point today that if I thank him again for anything else (anything, at all) he was going to consider me as having a disease. I laughed forever and wondered what my mom would say to that!!
Anthony came by and chatted awhile and we watched a bit of cricket (he’s a big big fan), we actually watched some of the Canada vs. Kenya game (which Canada won).
About 9:30 I decided to go to bed, or at least up to my room as I was having a hard time paying attention to the conversation. I wrote for awhile until my face was falling into my book and I finally gave into sleep. Another marvellous day!
I walked down the dusty streets of Srimongol toward what looked like would be the centre of town and I passed a phone shop where they sell mobile phones and recharge pay-as-you-go phones. I saw a landline phone sitting there so I pointed at it and then at me and said "phone?", and he did that funny side to side head thing people do here when they mean yes - YAY! Victory!! I can use the phone!!
