Out of my element

I've been asked by many people at home and here why I would want to go to Bangladesh. I insisted there was something to learn from the way people live on the land and water here and I had to experience it for myself.
Bangladesh is a small, flat country that is almost entirely a river delta with several rivers converging in the middle of the nation, in the crux of which floats Dhaka, a sprawling, polluted, dense city, the capital. Most of the land of Bangladesh is rural farming- jute and rice are the main crops. This much I knew before I came here.

Bangladesh is essentially a fuedal state. All of the land is owned by wealthy land barons, so the motivation and methods for working the land is by the demands of the baron whose concern is profit. No farmer owns his or her own land. The typical wages for a plantation laborer is 30 taka for an 8 hour day. Assuming they work an American-style week of 40 hours, their yearly salary would be 7800 taka, about $111.

I really believed I could travel across Bangladesh on my own. Everything I thought I could manage like buying my own train ticket, booking a trip and arranging my own transport to the station, I couldn't do it and asked for help from the people who took me in. Here, I am illiterate and unintelligible when I speak.

My morning journey from the tea plantation was quite the classic experience for a foreigner in Bangladesh. With my tour guide waiting on the train platform with me, we were surrounded by men and barefoot children, eyes wide, staring at me. I've grown used to being looked at as it is very common in India and not considered impolite. But here, it was intense. We had to move 3 times down the platform just to be surrounded in an ever tightening circle within seconds.

Somehow I felt like I'd seen these trains before in movies- dark hallway, sliding doors on one side into cabins with hanging bunks. When I found my own cabin, a train employee made sure the screen was closed on my window- for my protection. He half yelled, half told me if I open the window my bag or watch will get stolen. I waited til he left, closed the cabin door and opened the window so I could see out to the passing landscape. A boy came by selling water. I said no, and he closed the door. A minute later the train employee came back, threw open my door, and making sure I was watching, he grabbed the water boy by the hair, threatening to hit him, pointing at me and scolding him for opening my door. He sent the boy away and asked if I was alright. Not another minute later the man returned with two other employees, one in very official conductors uniform. He checked my ticket and all three scolded me for opening the screen. I tried to explain that I wanted it open, but finally I let them close it. They said if I need to go to the toilet, they must watch my bag. All of this conversation took place through hand gestures, some simple English words and a lot of yelling in Bangla.

The journey was 4 hours and those people left me alone after that, but another man, a very tired looking service person kept trying to bring me tea and lunch even after I showed him that I had no money left. (That's another story...) He spoke no English and I speak no Bangla, but still, he insisted I drink each of the 4 cups of tea he brought me. When I was leaving the train, he gave me a photo of himself with something written on the back in Bangla. Then he insisted for 5 minutes that he should give me 50 taka (about 75 cents). He thought that because I had no money in my wallet that I was completely broke. Meanwhile, only I know that I've got years of his salary sitting in my bank account. I refused his money so very gently and persistently, my heart breaking to see the genuine compassion in this man.

At the station stops along the way I covered my head and face with my scarf- a strange feeling to hide your own face from others. It's the only way to not attract a crowd though. At my window a child moaned on the ground; others scaled the train and I listened to them running back and forth on the roof of the train. On the platform there are so many children, dirty and barefoot, tiny bodies, knotty hair, smudged faces. It's hard to turn away from the children and their eyes- pleading, hoping, desperate and hungry. So many of them. They walk on the tracks, they climb under the trains, on top of the trains, babies holding babies on their hips, begging. It's so shocking that one doesn't know what one should do- at that moment or in life.

This is what I'm dealing with here. I am way out of my element, my comfort zone, my simple daily thoughts. There's so much more to contend with here.