FAQ

Before I get to the post, let me apologize for yet another extended absence.  But, funny as it sounds, I have a good excuse: my parents' long-lasting marriage.  See, it was their 30th wedding anniversary on Wednesday, so for the past couple weeks my brother and I have been frantically putting together a e-scrapbook for them with messages and pictures from family and friends.  (Leave it to us to wait until the last minute to finish a project we started in August.) The book turned out to be a great (but time-consuming) success and now that its done I can resume blogging, so let's get to it.  

Over the past two months, in my conversations with you via Skype, email, gchat and other online mediums, there are certain questions which just keep coming up.  For the sake of efficiency (and consistency) I've decided to address them all here, in a "Frequently Asked Questions on Zara's Life in Rwanda" session. 

On Rwanda

• What's the weather like?  
• Kigali may have the world's most consistent, temperate climate.  The city lies just over 1.5 degrees south of the equator, approximately 90 miles (150km).  Under normal circumstances, this would mean that it would be hot as hell year-round, but thanks to Kigali's elevation of over 5,000 ft (1,560 m), the city stays cool, with an average temperature for the year of about 70 F (21 C), and hardly any variations between seasons.  Apparently, since I got here, we have been in one of the two "rainy seasons" for the year; I haven't noticed.  Having spent the past several summers in places with infamous monsoon seasons (Mumbai, Dhaka, Mt. Cameroon), a few short afternoon thunderstorms hardly registers with me.  In sum, its sunny and balmy.  (I should point out that the downside of living near the equator is that the sun rises at exactly 6am and sets at exactly 6pm and after that it is pitch black.  There are no long, late summer evenings here; dawn and dusk each last approximately 7 minutes.)
• What side of the street do people drive on?
• According to the law, the right-hand side.  And in reality, the right-hand side.  I mention both because very rarely in the developing world are those two answers the same. However, there is no standardization regarding which side of the car the steering wheel should be, so all is not in perfect order on the streets of Rwanda.  Adding to the confusion, here left and right turn indicators don't actually mean you are turning left or right.  These signals have taken on new meanings in Rwanda, creating a complicated new semaphore-esque language of flashing lights.  Pass me, don't pass me, I want to pass you, I'm passing you, I'm slowing down, you're going too slow, I'm stopping soon-- all of these sentiments are expressed through turn signals.  Like with any language (or the code of horn beeps in west Africa), it takes a while to pick up and until you do driving can be a bit dicey if you expect your fellow drivers to use their indicators as the engineers designed.
  
• There is not a lot of traffic in Kigali (except for the one roundabout that constitutes "town") but the (very mountainous) roads outside the city are quite dangerous.  Not only do drivers have to contend with trucks barreling downhill at full speed, but they have to dodge the streams of pedestrians alongside the road, since the single-lane roads have no sidewalks or footpaths next to them.  And in an incomprehensible folly of civil engineering, there are 4 foot deep drainage ditches where the shoulder should be.  Driving on these vertiginous roads you look to one side and can vividly imagine plunging to your death 3,000 feet down, then look to the other side and just as vividly imagine a tire slipping into the ditch and the car plowing into the rocky side of the mountain.  This is why I choose to take a nap on such drives.   

• How do you get around? 
• Well, I walk to work, which only takes 20 minutes.  For work-related travel, embassy cars take us.  For personal trips, I call a cab; I have two great drivers on speed dial.  Of course, if I had that Vespa I wouldn't need them....

On work

• What's it like working in an embassy?
• Like working in a fortress guarded by marines.  Actually, its not as bad at our embassy as I imagine it is elsewhere, but getting your car inside is a minor production.  We tend to have a lot of meetings outside the embassy since its a hassle to get visitors access.  
• What do you do all day?
• Go to a lot of meetings, both within the embassy and outside.  We have meetings with our PEPFAR team, meetings with implementing partners, meetings with Government of Rwanda officials, meetings with other donors.  We have giant meetings with a few hundred people and meetings with just one other person.  We call meetings "conferences," "workshops," "joint reviews, "strategy sessions," "forums," and a dozen other things to trick ourselves into thinking we aren't in a meeting.  Actually, I shouldn't sound so bitter; most of these meetings are very productive and informative.  When not at meetings I'm usually at my desk responding to emails (from the parties listed above) or writing pieces for our official reports.  There's isn't a lot of time for Spider Solitaire or the Onion, alas.  
• What's it like working for a science-y organization like CDC? 
• Like being the a mediocre basketball player on a state championship-winning football team.  I consider myself a relatively bright person, but when we have discussions on the efficacy polymerase chain reaction based testing or debate the merits of using dried blood spots versus dried plasma spots, I find myself sitting slack-jawed and silent.  Of course, when I brought up the concept of diminishing marginal cost in a budget meeting, it was the rest of the team with blank looks on their faces.  But having much more seniority, they could just ignore me and move on.  On the plus side, when you say you're with CDC, people automatically assume you are an MD, as evidenced from the conference name tag below. In those situations I feel like Doogie Howser, which is nice.  

On me     

• Are you there alone?
• Yes, I am old enough to fly by myself, after all. 
• Are you lonely?
• I may be alone, but I am definitely not lonely.  The funny thing about being a foreigner is that every other foreigner automatically considers themselves your friend.  Here's an illustration of this phenomenon.  A couple weeks after arriving in Rwanda my office had me call a meeting of several partners (i.e. the organizations we give money to carry out programs).  There were about a dozen people there, all but one of whom were Rwandans in their 30s or 40s.  The one who was not a Rwandan was a Canadian girl in her 20s.  After the meeting she very kindly emailed me, volunteering help if I needed getting acclimated to the country (she's been here a couple years).  We began an email exchange and she invited me to a Halloween dinner.  I went to the dinner and meet a great group of young, expat women.  I asked them how they came to know each other.  The most common answer: "I saw her on the street and I asked her if she wanted to be my friend."  And so it is.
• Have you gotten fat?
• No, I don't think so.  Blessedly, unlike during my previous stints in Africa and Asia, I am not forced to eat three all-carbohydrate meals a day and have no outlet for exercise.  Beef and chicken are readily available, even though they aren't cheap. (Sadly, bacon, my favorite food, is not so easily found.) I cook for myself and thanks to Dama (see below), I have all my vegetables cleaned and chopped for me, which makes "cooking" really more of an exercise in throwing food from Tupperware containers into the stir-fry pan and waiting 5 minutes.  
• What do you eat?  
• Well, as just discussed, I often make a stir-fry, but I also end up eating out a fair amount.  Pretty much every restaurant here, no matter what they claim to serve (Chinese, Mexican, French) serves pizza and pasta, so I end up eating a lot of pizza, albeit creative, fusion pizza.  As for lunch, I eat at the embassy cafeteria, which serves Rwandan food as well as sandwiches, wraps, salads and other standard fare.
• Why are you wasting your 20s in the middle of nowhere?
• If not my 20s, then when? Right now I have the freedom (and energy) to pick a random country and move there, to go off on a weekend jaunt to Zanzibar, or to climb Kilimanjaro, whatever I feel like.  Kigali may not be the most happening city in the world from a social point of view, but in terms of my career, I can hardly thing of a better place to cut my professional teeth. 
• Isn't your life hard there?
• Quite the opposite--your life (for those of you in the US) is hard! Really, I do zero housework and everything is delivered to me.  My apartment gets cleaned twice a week as part of my rental agreement (they even do the dishes and change the sheets and towels), and I have an amazing woman named Scola who comes once a week and for $9 cleans, does the dishes, washes and irons my clothes, and does all my grocery shopping; she even dices all my vegetables for me and makes me a giant green salad and a fruit salad.  Jealous yet?  No? Well I also get an excellent in-home mani/pedi for $12.  Now you have to be jealous.  Sorry.  

This is my balcony, where I blog from.  Rough, isn't it?

A Shameless Request

Hello dear readers!

Thank you for your continued support and patience with my ramblings! Some of you have recently suggested that this blog eventually become a book.  I think that's a great idea but I need your help to do it.  If you enjoy reading this blog (or at least, tolerate it because my mom makes you read it), please become a follower.  (See right.) The more followers I have, the more likely this blog will get noticed by a travel website and eventually a publisher.  I promise to use any money earned from my travel writing to pay off my student loans and set up a savings account, not to buy the mint-green Vespa I so desperately want.  :)

Your faithful, misadventure-finding blogger,
Zara

Back to the Field

Before I arrived, I had heard Rwanda referred to as "The Land of a Thousand Hills."  Now that I've been here a month and spent some time in the countryside, I can definitively say that "thousand" is a serious underestimate and "hills" a misnomer that misrepresents the steepness of the rises.  Because of this rugged landscape, there is hardly a straight, level road in the country (or at least, the western half).  If you have a fear of heights, get carsick, or have recurring dreams about driving off the edge of a muddy cliff and falling a few thousand feet to your death, Rwanda is not for you.

However, I currently have none of those problems, so when my office suggested that I spend a week doing site visits to health centers in the northwest corner of the country, I very happily agreed to do so.  After spending three weeks running around to "H1N1 Emergency Task Force" meetings and updating epi-curves, I was quite excited to get back to the field, meet real people, and get a true understanding of the challenges facing the Rwandan health system.  I spent most of my time in Cameroon doing sites visits (over two dozen of them), often walking (through calf-deep mud) to remote clinics and spending a few days observing the work being done there.  More than three years of graduate school, it was these visits that gave me an understanding of the difficulties of providing health care in extremely resource-poor settings and an appreciation of the dedication and perseverance of the providers who work under the most challenging of conditions. (For more on my experiences researching the Cameroonian health system, check out my posts from summer 2008.  Spoiler: A baby gets named after me.)


The purpose of our four-day excursion was to conduct an assessment at small health centers around the country.  There were a half-dozen three-person teams doing this exercise, each with representatives from the CDC, the Ministry of Health (MOH), and the NGO currently supporting/managing the health center.  Some teams were based in Kigali, but most were out in rural areas in the western half of the country, along Lake Kivu.  My team was based out of Gisenyi, a stunning, what-passes-for-touristy-in-Rwanda town right on the lake and a stone's throw from the city of Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). (See map at right.)  Gisenyi lies in the shadow of Nyiragongo, a still-active volcano which last erupted in 2002, killing 45 people in the DRC.  It's also 60km from the jumping-off point for gorilla tracking, which is what makes it semi-touristy.

We began our excursion on Tuesday morning.  Although Kigali itself is characterized by its many hills, windy streets, and greenery, the moment you leave town all that becomes much more dramatic.  The mountains are taller, the roads full of hairpin turns, and the land incredibly lush.  There were stunning panoramic views of hundreds of hills, with low-lying early morning fog nestled in deep valleys, and a brilliant pink sky, but what amazed me most was that seemingly every square inch of land was terraced and farmed.  Given that some of these hills appear nearly vertical, this is quite the feat of engineering.  But it also speaks to the scarcity of land here in Africa's most densely populated country, as well as the devotion of people to their land.

Along the four-hour drive there were the standard scenes characteristic of Africa: skinny elderly men in suits riding bicycles, women who look as old as time carrying huge loads of firewood on their heads, small children in faded, tattered cast-off American clothes swinging mini-machetes on the way to the field, babies strapped to their mothers' backs, peeking around for a glimpse at their siblings.  In some ways these scenes are reassuring, a reminder of previous time spent in Africa, and from the comfort of an A/C, moving car, its easy to romanticize the life of Rwanda's rural population.  But the moment you step from the car into the blazing, dusty heat of town or the bitter chill of a mountain-top village, or haul a bucket of water up a hill or cook in the dark over a smoky wood fire, you realize that life is extremely difficult for most people in the developing world, regardless of how "simple" it may seem.

But I digress.

Most of the main road between Kigali and Gisenyi is quite good, although given the large number of petroleum-carrying trucks that alternately bring traffic to a grinding halt (uphill) and fly past dangerously close at high speeds (downhill), perhaps it would be better if it wasn't just one lane.   However, the non-paved, dirt/mud tracks out to the health centers are typically crater-laden.  The resulting ride is so bumpy and jarring it makes you wonder if you can get shaken baby syndrome as an adult.

After visiting one health center halfway between Kigali and Gisenyi on Tuesday, we came back to Kigali for the night.  The next day, even earlier, we set off once more. Four hours later we meet up in Ruhengeri (see map) with some team members who had decided to stay out in the field the previous night. Ruhengeri is the last major town before the Ugandan border and, like Gisenyi, is a hub for UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees) food distribution.  It was around 9am when our two cars meet up on the main road in Ruhengeri.  Given that the people in the area are very used to the presence of wazungu (white people) in the form of UN workers, what garnered us considerable attention was that a bunch of wazungu poured out of two giant SUVs, ran in circles around them, and then piled back in within a couple minutes. Kind of strange behavior.

For the next few days we drove from one health center to another, with my team covering seven.  I know that doesn't seem like a lot of four days of work, but when it takes 3 hours to drive there and two hours to conduct the assessment (with most of that time spent combing through hard copies of various work plans and performance indicators), it was a fairly productive week. And quite frankly, I'm not sure I could have taken much more, given that I saw my life flash before my eyes numerous times during the week, as our car perched perilously over the edge of cliffs and we stared down into the valley a few thousand feet below.  One slip of the wheel on the mud road, one moment of distraction from our 19-year old driver John, one rickety plank in a makeshift bridge and I wouldn't be here right now.  I spent most of these hours alternately calculating the time it would take for a car to plunge 4,000 vertical feet and trying to calm myself down, arguing that if my three other teammates (who had 8 young kids between them) weren't fearing for their lives, neither should I.  Can't say I succeeded in either venture--neither physics nor self-hypnosis have been strong points of mine.  However, to my great surprise, we reached our sites safely and I was on occasion able to appreciate the stunning vistas, daring to look down from the ridge line at the lush, undulating green blanket that is Rwanda.

Overall our visits went well.  Given that most of it was conducted in Kinyarwanda, my job was mainly to check off certain boxes on the assessment when told to, and to smile and seem less like a scary USG official and more likely a helpful ally in the fight for quality health care.  I think I was more successful at the first task. Even though most of the conversations with the health providers was lost on me (15 minute discussions in Kinyarwanda were translated into "He says yes" or "She says no" summaries), I was able to learn a tremendous amount about the logistical, financial, clinical, and management challenges facing the facilities.  Its always amazing (and inspiring) to me how people who may have had very little education, whose pay is 6 months delayed, who are caring for hundreds of patients a day, who are still keeping their records on paper, are able to provide efficient and affordable health care to so many people.  No, it may not be of the quality we expect in American hospitals, but if these providers were unwilling to fight through these conditions, there would be no health care at all in most of the developing world.  Sometimes I wonder if they can award the Nobel Prize in Medicine to "All the Overworked, Underpaid, Working-with-Insufficient-Equipment-and-Training Health Care Providers in the Developing World."  Schmaltzy I know, but no more ridiculous than Obama getting the Peace Prize after less than 9 months in office (and I voted for him!).

But I digress.

There's no need for me to get into the details here, but here's a quick summary of what I took away from these site visits.  One, many of the problems providers face are created by donors (USG, Global Fund, etc) and their endless reporting requirements.  Yes, we have an obligation to make sure tax dollars are going to good use, but when clinics have to maintain their accounts by hand, quarterly reports become a giant time-suck. Two, the "long-run" isn't something most providers think about.  They don't have time to consider strategic plans or sustainability measures-- they are too busy contending with challenges in the short-term.  There are babies to be born, malaria to be treated, HIV to be diagnosed; developing five year performance targets doesn't rate high on their to-do list, and rightly so.  Three, people here desperately want to gain skills and become more efficient, since they know that one day soon (thanks to the requirements of PEPFAR II), they'll have to do everything on their own.  One clinic asked us to write down all the things we thought they could do better.  Most of our suggestions had to do with management and documentation, since those are areas where providers lack skills.  Being a good clinician isn't enough anymore, in any part of the world; you must also know how to run a facility, but I don't know of a medical program anywhere that teaches that.

So that's the work side of things.  I can't say I did too much fun, personal stuff on this little trip.  By the time we got back in the evenings and my heart rate came down to normal, it was time for dinner and bed.  But on my last night in Gisenyi one of my teammates, who was working for the NGO partner, invited us to his house for the evening.  My wazungu colleagues and I went over to his house around 7pm, when pitch blackness has settled over Rwanda.  (This is the problem with being on the equator- very clearly demarcated hours of sunlight: 6am to 6pm.)  After standing outside near a light and getting attacked by moth-dragonfly hybrid creatures, we went inside, only to be surrounded by hundreds more.  They didn't seem to be bothering the 15 local people there, but we started killing all of them insight with our bare feet-- probably not the most appropriate thing to do, but one of my colleagues had a phobia of bugs.  Following greetings, drinks, and speeches, it was "time for the babies."  I knew my teammate's wife had recently had their second baby.  I didn't realize that "recently" meant one week ago.  The poor infant (who had a surprising amount of hair) was plucked from his crib and passed around, followed by his 14-month old sister.  Although being attacked by bugs, feeling disoriented from having been discourteously woken up, and being forced to pose for pictures with wazungu, the little girl was incredibly adorable and sweet, if just a little grumpy.  Who could blame her.


(My teammate was embarrassed by the closeness in age of his children, since so much of the reproductive health messaging here, with he is a part of, focuses on birth spacing.  Its a complicated campaign, but the logic, in short, is if children are spaced further apart, they are healthier and more likely to survive past age 5.  When I told him that my brother and I are only 16 months apart, he seemed to feel much better about things.)

When we finally completed our last site visit on Friday and started heading home, I was sad to go.  There is so much about public health that is impossible to learn sitting behind a desk (not that I've sat behind mine for more than 5 minutes since I got here).  Being able to put a face to the name and a context to the services is invaluable. Readjusting expectations to coincide with local realities is a part of public health that I think often gets overlooked by policymakers.  I know I now have a much better frame for understanding the Rwandan health system and a deeper appreciation for how far it has come from its devastation 15 years ago.    

You can check out all pictures from my trip to Gisenyi at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2144120&id=1012910&l=5e4d1d2b9c.  There are more landscapes, more health centers, more people, and even me pretending to change a flat tire.

Just Dive Right In...

Many of you have pointed out (repeatedly) that I have been delinquent with this blog.  For that I can only claim swine flu.  No, not that I have it, but that it broke the day after I arrived in Rwanda and for the first few weeks I was working almost constantly on the outbreak investigation. It wasn't until my third week here that I finally got a day off (and on that day, I slept, not blogged).  The U.S. government (henceforth known as USG) certainly doesn't make life easy for its low-level flunkies abroad.

Let's start at the beginning. I arrived here on a Thursday afternoon.  Friday morning I went to the office, attended a few meetings, and had a relatively low-key day.  That was to be the last for a while.  Saturday morning I received a text from my supervisor asking if I wouldn't mind being "on call" for H1N1 for the weekend. Not knowing what that meant and wanting to seem eager, enthusiastic and helpful, I said of course.  The next day I found myself at a "Special H1N1 Outbreak Control Task Force" meeting being charged with coordinating and maintaining surveillance of all suspected and confirmed cases.  Now, I am not an epidemiologist or strategic information specialist.  I've never worked on an outbreak investigation.  Infectious disease isn't my forte. Other than the four CDC folks there, I had never met any of the 12 people in the room. Yet for some reason they decided to give me the task of maintaining the line-listing, which is the official record of who is a confirmed case of H1N1 and all their vital statistics.  On that day there were already 7 cases, but maybe they thought that would be all for a while, and that maintaining the list would be not be particularly time-consuming or important.

They were wrong.

Within a few days the outbreak had exploded, with up to a dozen new cases everyday.  Every morning, starting that Monday, I would attend the four-hour daily task force meeting and gather all the data on the new cases from the lab and people involved in contact tracing.* In a country where information doesn't so much as flow as it does come to a screeching halt at the slightest hurdle, filling in just one cell in an spreadsheet can take hours.  Getting a patient's age or date of diagnosis would eat up half my day.  But because this was such a time-consuming process, no one else wanted to do it, which turned me into "The Holder of All Information."  I was, for a few weeks there, the only person in Rwanda with the complete list of all the confirmed and suspected of H1N1 cases in the country-- a very strange position to be in.

Information really turns out be power, so I (or rather, my spreadsheet) became much in demand.  On that first Monday, my second day on the job, we met with the Minister of Health, who was given a copy of my various graphs, charts and lists tracking the outbreak.  Although he was happy with these pieces, he was unhappy about everything else in our (really, the Ministry's) handling of the outbreak and took the meeting as an opportunity to introduce us to the new task force leader.

And so it went for a while-- endless meetings, spreadsheet mania, and an ever-changing person in command.  Each day we would receive news of people been sacked, "resigning," being brought in as yet another "supervisor."  Task force members dropped like flies, only to be instantly replaced by more obliging minions.  Throughout it all our mini-team of five CDC-ers sat by, jaws agape and brains reeling from all the changes.

To say this experience was a crash course in Rwandan politics, CDC bureaucracy, and public health practice would be an understatement.  But by the time I handed over my spreadsheets to the ministry's new surveillance manager in week 3, I could definitively say that I had learned more than I had expected to in my first 6 months of work.  The learning curve was Everest-steep, but I could not have asked for a better introduction to the key players and major problems in the Rwandan public health system.

However, it was a great relief to be relieved of my duties as surveillance manager.  And of course, I was even more relieved to have escaped the experience without having contracted swine flu myself.

*Contact tracing: the systematic identification and diagnosis of persons who may have come into contact with an infected person.

Trivia, Because I Like It

Since we all know I love trivia, here's some facts on Rwanda to throw randomly into conversation*:

• 147th smallest country on Earth, 2nd smallest in Africa (only the Gambia is smaller).
• Slightly smaller than Maryland, but with nearly double the population (10.4 million compared to 5.6 million).
• Most densely populated country in Africa. (However, only the 32nd most densely populated in the world. Asian countries dominate that list.)
• First country in the world to have a majority of women in Parliament, with 56%. (This is also the highest rate of any country currently.)
• Kigali has been named one of the safest and cleanest cities in Africa.
• Plastic bags have been banned outright in Rwanda, making it one of the few countries (and the only developing country besides Bangladesh) to do so.
• On January 1, 2002 Rwanda adopted a new flag (see sidebar), coat of arms and national anthem. The colors of the flag represent peace and tranquility (blue), wealth (yellow), and prosperity, work, and productivity (green). The new coat of arms contains the new motto "Unity, Work, Patriotism."
• Known as "the land of a thousand hills" because of its rolling terrain.
• 3/4 of the population lives below the international poverty line of $1.25 a day.
• 90% of the working population are farmers.
• Approximately 56% of the population is Catholic, 37% Protestant, 5% Muslim, and the remainder are athesist/agnostic or hold animist beliefs.
• About half the world's 700 remaining mountain gorillas live in Rwanda's Volcanoes National Park, also home to Dian Fossey's research.
• The real GDP growth rate last year was 11.2%.
• 44% of the population is under the age of 16.
• Has an annual population growth rate of 2.78%, making it the 17th fastest growing country in the world.
• Life expectancy is 47.3 years.
• Total fertility rate is 5.43 children per woman.
• 70% of the adult population can read and write.
• Of the 44 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Rwanda was ranked 5th on the World Bank's 'Ease of Doing Business' index (so invest here!!).

With that, I wish you success in Trivial Pursuit, trivia nights, and Jeopardy! May there be a category on 'Minutiae of Tiny African Countries.'

*Speaking of random facts sprinkled into conversation, my new favorite, highly-recommended, non-fiction book is "The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World". Plenty of good examples of awkward, trivia-laden conversations.

Rwanda?! Seriously?!?!

In American games of word association, "Nigeria" is to "online banking scams" as "Rwanda" is to "genocide". If you ask people to name countries in east Africa they would probably come up with "Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and Rwandangenocide." Most think that "Hotel Rwanda" is a real place (it's not-- the hotel portrayed in the movie is actually called the Milles Collines). If you ask whether the genocide is ongoing and if the streets still run red with blood, people would likely say "of course." This is what happens when the only things people know about a country are derived from a movie that portrayed events 10 years after the fact.

In sum, there are a lot of misconceptions about Rwanda. To remedy that, here's a brief history of Rwanda (including the genocide) in 5 minutes or less.

In the popular local consciousness Rwandan history is divided into two periods: before and after, with the dividing even being, of course, the genocide. The before time started about 10,000 years ago, when the land was first settled by pygmy (Twa) hunter-gatherers. The origins and order of immigration of the Hutus and Tutsi are not universally agreed upon, but it is generally thought that the Hutus, who were mainly farmers of Bantu descent from the west, joined the Twa approximately 2,000 years ago. Later the Tutsis, cattle-herders of Nilotic or Cushitic origin, migrated to the region from the north.

Eventually the Hutus and Tutsis came to dominate the area, driving the Twa into the forests. Over time the Hutus and Tutsis came to share a language (Kinyarwanda), religion, legal system, and land. They intermarried and lived side by side, and the ethnic distinctions between the groups soon became blurred. Most ethnographers and historians now agree that 'Hutu' and 'Tutsi' do not constitute distinct ethnic groups.

However, the names stuck and became associated with different positions in society, with Tutsis (who constituted the minority of the population) being considered the elite, thanks to their cattle, which was a more valuable asset than any crop produced by the Hutu farmers. Already a fiercely hierarchal society, the stratification accelerated in the 1860s during a military campaign led by a Tutsi king to consolidate the area now known as Rwanda. In the new, even more feudal society, Tutsis were nobility and Hutus vassals, but these categories were by no means binding. Yet each group developed its own culture and sense of identity, largely based on diet and physical characteristics. Eventually European colonizers would come to embrace these categorizations as well.

At the 1885 "Berlin Conference to Divide Africa", Rwanda (and its equal small southern neighbor, Burundi) was designated a province of German East Africa. After WWI, the League of Nations turned the colony over to Belguim as "a spoil of war." The Belgians took a "divide and conquer" approach to the population, who despite their differences had an unusual level of national cohesion, sharing "one language, one faith, one law." (Really, how many countries can claim that?) The Belgians, upon setting foot in the country, started running around measuring cranial capacities, protuberance of noses, forehead width, anything they could use to prove that a substantial distinction existed in the stature, intelligence and moral character of Hutus and Tutsis. Naturally, the found what they wanted to find-- that Tutsis were the "nobler" group (read: having physical characteristics that more closely resembled their own). In 1933 they used this "information" to issue ethnic identity cards, labeling 85% of Rwandans as Hutus, 14% as Tutsis, and 1% as Twa. No longer were the lines between groups porous.

In the new apartheid system, Tutsis enjoyed educational, political, economic and social perks, while Hutus fell even further into poverty. In 1957, fed up with being marginalized in the ethnically bipolar state, a group of nine Hutu intellectuals published the "Hutu Manifesto," which spurred a violent uprising by Hutus, and subsequent retaliation by Tutsis. Desperate to be relieved of the burden of managing a colony in chaos, in 1960 the Belgians announced they were splitting Rwanda and Burundi into to countries and would administer democratic elections in each, as preparation for independence. On July 1, 1962, independence was finally granted and Gregoire Kayibanda, one of the authors of the Hutu Manifesto, was inaugurated as the first President of Rwanda.

Over the next 30 years Rwanda's progress was hindered not only by its own Hutu (French-supported) dictatorship, but by violent events in next door Burundi between Hutus and Tutsis. And to the north, in Uganda, young, disenfranchised Tutsi men were joining the Uganda military in droves in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1986, Paul Kagame, a Rwandan Tutsi who was formerly the head of military intelligence for the Ugandan army (and who had also received military training in the US), co-founded the Rwandan Patriotic Front, a rebel guerrilla group. After years of intensive training, the RPF launched an invasion into Rwanda in 1990, which led to three years of civil war. The war ended in 1993 with the signing of the Arusha Accords and the establishment of a power-sharing government, and for a short while there was relative peace.

On the evening of April 6, 1994, that peace was shattered. The plane carrying the (Hutu) presidents of Rwanda and Burundi was shot down as it prepared to land in Kigali. The assassins are unknown, although rumors abound. Some think it was members of the RPF seeking revenge, while others believe it was Hutu extremists who were either a) frustrated with the president for negotiating with the Tutsis or b) looking for an excuse to unleash extreme violence on Tutsis.

That April night members of the Rwandan presidential guard and the Interahamwe (a Hutu youth extremist paramilitary group) began killing Tutsis and moderate Hutus in the capital. The violence quickly spread, as the military, in preparation for such violence, had installed 30,000 militia representatives around the country, or one militia member for every ten families. Some had AK-47 and others grenades, but the majority had only machetes, and most of the killing was conducted in a low-tech, brutal manner. The radio was filled night and day with songs and speeches urging the young Hutu men of the country to violence, a call they heeded.

In addition to angry young men, priests, politicians, teachers, doctors and community elders were all responsible for killing, some murdering with their own hands and some more deceitfully, as in the cases of priests who promised Tutsis refuge in their churches, only to lead the militias to them for slaughtering.

In 100 days, from early April to mid July, hundreds of thousands of Rwandans were killed. Between 10% and 20% of those slaughtered were moderate Hutus. Official government documents put the figure at 1,174,000, which amounts to 10,000 murdered every day, 400 every hour, or 7 every minute. In just over 3 months nearly 20% of the country's population was wiped out, leaving only 300,000 Tutsis to survive the genocide. Over 400,000 children were made orphans and thousands of widows were raped by HIV+ men.

Throughout the genocide the international community stood by silently. Rwanda, by coincidence, was at the time a member of the UN Security Council, which hampered efforts to send in peacekeeping troops, although there was never a strong desire among the major international powers to do so. The US refused to send troops, and when the African Union offered to intervene as long as the US provided the armored personnel carriers, the US army charged them $6.5 million for transportation, which severely delayed deployment. The UN security force in Rwanda, UNAMIR, was cut down to just 260 men after 10 Belgian officers were killed in early April. Finally, in late June the UN sent a humanitarian mission to Goma, Zaire, on the western border of Rwanda to set up a refugee camp.

The genocide came to an end in July when the RPF, which had been engaged in intense fighting in Kigali and the north of the country for months, was able to overthrow the Hutu regime and seize power. This small force brought a halt to the violence will almost no help from the world's military powers.

In the aftermath of the genocide more than 2 million Rwandan Hutus, many of them perpetrators of violence fearing Tutsi retribution, fled the country, largely taking up shelter in the UN refugee camps of Zaire. Simultaneously, more than 1 million Tutsis in exile returned to the country and set about reestablishing their life in Rwanda.

Okay, so that was Rwanda in the "before" time. Now on to the "after" time, a much more cheery era.

In most countries, intense violence begets intense violence, but strong leadership prevented such a fate in Rwanda. (Violence continued in eastern Zaire, but that's a story for a different post.) A coalition government of "national unity" was established in 1994 by the RPF. Political organizing and "Hutu Power" political parties were banned, but so was any discrimination on the basis of ethnicity, race, or religion, a policy strictly enforced. Discussion of Hutu or Tutsi identity was discouraged. In 1998 President Clinton visited the country and formally apologized for the US's complacency during the genocide.

In 2000, Paul Kagame, former leader of the RPF and vice-president, ascended to the presidency. In 2003 he won the first fully democratic elections since the genocide. He remains in power today, and although is considered by many to be a (benevolent) dictator, he has instituted a huge number of reforms to improve the economic and social conditions in Rwanda. One year ago he decreed that the nation's school system (and the entire government administration) was shifting from French to English in a move to become a member of the East African Community. The policy also represents a break from Rwanda's colonial past and a desire to be a part of the global economy. Next month the country will be hooked into a high-speed, fibre-optic network so it can better compete in high-tech service industries.

Today Kigali, and Rwanda in general, shows few signs of its past trauma. Yet, no matter how hard it tries, it cannot escape its negative image in the West as a land of violence, chaos, and barbarianism. I can only hope that this mini-course in Rwandan history (and future posts on my life here) will give you a more complete picture of the complex, complicated country Rwanda is, and how it is so much more than what happened for 3 months in 1994.

If you want to learn more about Rwanda and/or the genocide, here is some recommended reading:

"We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families: Stories from Rwanda", Philip Gourevitch-- An outstanding, well-researched book on the genocide and how the country coped in the first few years that followed.

"A thousand hills: Rwanda's rebirth and the man who dreamed it", Stephen Kinzer-- Excellent book on Kagame, his ambitions for Rwanda, and the spirit of a country trying to get back on its feet.

"Shake hands with the devil: The failure of humanity in Rwanda", Romeo Dallaire and Samantha Power-- The man left to lead UNAMIR examines his experiences with help from Power, a prominent academic and member of the National Security Council

"Land of a thousand hills: My life in Rwanda", Rosamond Halsey Carr-- Story of an American woman who lived in Rwanda from the 1940 through the post-genocide period. Great long-term perspective on things.

Thank You

As I get ready to leave Bangladesh and close the door on my graduate school experience, I thought it would be good to say thank you to all those people who have supported me in my adventures abroad over the past three years.  This is only a small token of my appreciation for all these people have done for me.  I can only hope to one day more significantly repay their kindness. 

To my parents, who never say "No" when I tell them where I want to go next, no matter how remote or crazy; they just say "Be safe" and "Can we visit?" And for teaching me two very important lessons: a person can adapt to any situation or set of conditions, and if you eat anything and everything people will like you.

To my brothers, Zamir and Akiva, who always find a way to support/harass me in their own special way, regardless of where we all are.

To the readers of this blog, some of whom I have never had the pleasure of meeting, who continuously cheer me on and make me feel like a much better writer than I really am.

To my friends, old and new, who remind of how lucky I am to travel so much by warning me about the perils of life in a cubical, and who pretend to enjoy to endless slideshows.

To my mom's family in Bombay, and Saint Fatima in particular, for showing me both how to have fun in the madness of the developing world and what it means to serve the less fortunate.

To my fellow solo women travelers everywhere, and Haley and Drew specifically, for paving the way, offering helpful tips, and providing much valued emotional support.

To the University of Michigan, which, perhaps unwittingly, has given me an obscene amount of money in summer travel funding.

To my professors, who taught me enough to make me look smart in front of my supervisors.

To the travelers I've met along the way for making me jealous enough of your trips to inspire me to continue exploring the world. And for not stealing my stuff.

And finally, to the kind people of India, France, Brazil, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, Cameroon, Kenya, South Africa, Senegal, and Bangladesh for making my travels over the last three years so enjoyable and enriching. From the anonymous, concerned street food vendors who gave me directions, to my NGO colleagues who taught me about hard work and dedication in the face of challenging circumstances, to the unforgettable individuals who shaped my adventures through their kindness, humor, and generosity (Tree, Grandma tailor, Kim Lai and Grandpa Lai, Bonay, Sun, Sharlotte, Elvis, George, Azad, Robi, and Sudhir, to name a few), I am incredibly indebted. They may not remember me in a few years, but their spirit will remain with me forever.

You Know You've Been in Bangladesh Too Long When...

...you can name all four places in Dhaka where you can get a cold beer (Heineken only).

...you feel self-concious when people DON'T stare at you.

...every time a car honks you instinctively take a step to the left.

...the staff at Movenpick know you...and your favorite ice cream flavor.

...you refuse to get your news from any source other than Aljazeera English. (Seriously though, it's the best 24-hour news outlet by far.)

...you no longer ask for small or large sizes, but rather "Bangladeshi" or "American" size.

...you know all the commercials on HBO, Star World, and Zee Cafe, as well as the order and frequency with which they appear.

...you make promises like Bangladeshis make promises, i.e. intending to keep about 1 out of every 10.

...you've started scoping out rickshaw drivers to sponsor in the Tour de France.

...you walk on the street, even when there is a perfectlygood sidewalk available.

...your sweat smells like garlic.

...you've stopped complimenting people on their food or dress, out of fear that they will give you the food off their plate and the clothes off their back.

My Favorite Topic....

FOOD! And more specifically, STREET FOOD!

So I've been eating pretty well here. Our cook, Robi, used to work in the kitchen of the Centaur Hotel in Mumbai, a pretty swanky place. His time there really shows--I've never seen someone julienne and chiffonade vegetables so perfectly (sorry dad). His knowledge of soup recipes seems endless,

which is great for me. His specialties are Chinese and Thai food, although he is of course an excellent maker of Bangladeshi cuisine.

Bangladeshi food is pretty much what you would expect--a twist on Indian food. Rice is the staple starch, with bread being considered a lower-status food. Meat is a bigger part of the diet than in Hindu India (fortunately) but pork is still verboten (unfortunately for bacon-loving me). Fish and shrimp are also popular proteins because of the coastal location. Dahl (lentils) is served with every meal but seems to come in only one color/flavor: yellow, with extra garlic. Chai (tea) is served anywhere, anytime, and with anything.

Driving around Dhaka you see signs for "fast food" everywhere. Fast food here includes typical Bangladeshi snacks or quick meals, as well as fried chicken (bizarrely popular here), sandwiches and burgers--halal of course. In our foreigner-heavy neighborhood there are also a Pizza Hut, a gigantic A&W, and a KFC which touts its peri-peri, a sauce characteristic of west African cooking--a unique melding of cultures and palates. We've also got decent Korean, Japanese, Italian, Thai, Chinese, and Mexican restaurants around.

But all of this pales in comparison to the delicious treats to be found on the streets and back alleys of Dhaka.  Fried treats of every kind abound: deep fried potatoes, deep fried vegetables, super greasy samosas-- all delicious when they are served piping hot on an oil-soaked tissue.

There are plays on classic Indian street foods, including one of my all-time favorite foods, pani puri.  In the Indian version, the paper-thin, crunchy, hollow shell (the puri) is filled, street-side, with tiny diced potatoes/chickpeas/lentils, a sweet sauce, and then filled with a spicy water (the pani).  Obviously, filling a paper-thin container with liquid is a recipe for disaster, so you have to stuff the whole thing in your mouth as fast as possible after receiving it from the grimy hand of the vendor.  Delicious.  Amazing.  Unforgettable.

In the Bangladeshi version, most of the excitement of pani puri is gone.  The ratio of solid food to liquid is reversed, so the potatoes/chickpeas/lentils comprise the majority of the stuffing and thus absorb all the pani.  Not as thrilling to eat, but still quite tasty.  And the grimy hand part is still the same, so the authenticity remains.

And this being the developing world, there is, of course, my ultimate favorite food item- grilled meat on a stick.  Here it is usually goat (which tastes better than one might think) or beef.  Smoky, spicy, and salty, these kabobs can be found anywhere and everywhere, which suits me just fine.  A good day in my book is defined as "ten meat sticks, ten pani puris, and ten deep fried vegetable balls."  That's quite the well rounded diet.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention the downsides of street food: the potential for traveler's diarrhea, amoebic dysentery, giardiasis, gastric ulcers and the like.  But as someone who has contracted not one but two gastric ulcers from delicious, delicious street food, I think that when you do the cost-benefit analysis, you'll decide that the joy that comes from eating such wonderful food greatly exceeds the the trouble of having to buy toilet paper in bulk.....

The Odd Woman In

I've been stared at my whole life. I've been "the only ____ person" in the room my whole life. I've grown up in places (Maine) and traveled to places (SE Asia, rural west Africa) where there are almost no other brown people around. I've been mistaken for Ecuadorian, Mexican, Middle Eastern, Filipino, biracial, Chinese (yeah I don't get that one either), and an even, most memorably, an albino. I've spent a summer having "hey white man" yelled after me. But all of those were relatively easy, uncomplicated situations---whatever I was in the eyes of the locals, a correct guess or not, I was definitely not one of them. The distinction was clear, black and white, that I was obviously not from there. As such I was treated as any foreigner would be regardless of their race or ethnicity: with curiosity, but also with generosity, kindness and patience.

But Bangladesh is a whole other ballgame. Never before have I had to travel, as an independent adult, in a country where the people look like me. Looking like a local but feeling like a foreigner is a complex and challenging existence.

It started even before arrival. Last year when I was waiting in the Paris airport for my flight to Douala, Cameroon, I spotted a young white woman in the gate area. Being the only two non-Africans boarding, it was almost automatic that we would be drawn together, kindred spirits in our out-of-place-ness. So we struck up a conversation and it ended up that we were going to be with the same organization in Cameroon, and in fact be roommates. I've had similar experiences of befriending a fellow non-local at a transit point a dozen times, in Kenya, Vietnam, Brazil, etc. Its a good way to meet people, hear about their travel adventures, and find someone to split the cost of a cab into town with.

But this year was different. There were about twenty young white people in the gate area waiting for our flight from Amsterdam to Mumbai, most of them traveling alone, many of them women--usually the prime candidates to come up to me and strike up a conversation. But no one did. (And to be fair, nor did I go up to them.) No doubt I was indistinguishable from the other brown faces in line, just another Indian heading home. In contrast, my roommate David, who is white, arrived in Dhaka with a handful of names and contact numbers of interns and graduate students (all white) he had met on his flight from Dubai to Dhaka. This wasn't a big deal, but simply an interesting testament to whom we identify with.

In this same vein I find myself feeling a bit awkward when go to restaurants and bars which are implicitly expat-only. (Local people are usually unable to afford the ridiculously inflated prices at these establishments and know of a better place down the street anyway.) The stereotypical expat in the developing world is white, so my brown face is often the only non-white one in the bunch. This, as we've discussed, is nothing new. But what is different is a sense that I am breaking the "no locals" rule, or people view me (as a Bangladeshi) as having bought my way in to the club. In these moments the phrase "second-class citizen/expat" comes to mind. This may all be in my head, and people may see no distinction between my white friends and I. But I don't know, since I have no non-white, non-Bangladeshi friends to compare notes with.

But more complicated than my relationship with white expats is my relationship with Bangladeshis. Being brown here equates to being a local. (Although there are a fair number of Bangladeshis abroad, seeing me as one of them back on holiday is not the default assumption.) As such people speak to me in Bangla. Not speaking a word of Bangla, and only a mere handful of words of Hindi, I reply (in English) that I don't speak Bangla. This is usually met with one or more of the following reactions: confusion, disappointment, surprise, confusion, mild sadness, and confusion. Then the conversation goes like this:

Bangladeshi: Sister, you don't speak Bangla?

Me: No, I don't. Sorry.

Bangladeshi: Sister, you are not Bangladeshi?

Me: No, I am American.

Bangladeshi: But sister, you are brown like me!

Me: Yes, I know. My parents are from India.

Bangladeshi: Then you speak Hindi? It is same like Bangla!

Me: Um no, I don't speak Hindi either. Sorry.

Bangladeshi: Okay. Hmm, American. I know, Obama!

Me: Yes, Obama. Very good.

If it goes beyond that initial exchange, the conversation inevitably turns to how I ended up in the U.S. and what my parents had to do (which to Bangladeshis means "pay") to get there. The desire to emigrate, which exists in all developing countries, is particularly strong here, not because Bangladeshis don't love their country (in fact they have crazy national pride) but because the competition for resources is so unbelievably fierce--a product of the high population density. And although Bangladeshis are always kind and these discussions never contain overt jealousy or resentment, I sense such feelings must be inevitable. It is a fair question: what have I done to deserve a life of privilege in America when there are so many millions of Bangladeshis slaving away just to scrape together enough savings to even apply for a visa? I have no good answer to this question besides luck, but this is unsatisfactory to all. But what I can offer is an acknowledgment of my good fortune and a sincere promise to make the most of the opportunities I've been given.

Then there is the issue of local celebrity. In Cameroon we would joke that the attention we received walking down the street was as close as each of us would ever get to understanding being at the center of a paparazzi frenzy. Having to shake hands with every child ten times and saying hello to every person who came out of their house to look at you can become tiresome, but its extremely flattering. Here I've traded that fame for the ability to walk down the street anonymously. The only stares I get are because of my gender rather than my race. (I know this because when kids stare at you, as they have everywhere else I've been, its because you look different; when only men (and no kids) stare, its because you're a woman not conforming to gender norms, as is the case with me and my short hair and western clothes.) Although this is a relatively welcome change, there are times when I wish for the celebrity. For example, when we go shopping in the local markets my friends (who are all white) are mobbed by people asking "What is your country? Are you married?" and other invasive, curious questions. I am usually left alone but find myself thinking "Hey! What about me? I'm foreign too!". Vain and bizarre, I know but that's the truth. I think it reflects the fact that to be foreign is "cool" and local is not in the minds of Bangladeshis, and who doesn't want to be in the cool crowd?

Lastly on this front, there is the matter of social norms. Because I might be a local, or at least am definitely from the subcontinent, there are things I can't get away with. I can't feign being unable to eat with my hand in order to get to use a spoon to eat a dish that seems to be 80% liquid--I should know how to do so. I can't wear a tube top under my sari at a wedding rather than a tight, ill-fitting blouse because it's more comfortable, as some of my American friends are doing--I should know better. I shouldn't let my roommate overpay for souvenirs--I should know the price locals get. (Although how on earth am I supposed to know how much an antique bell from a fishing boat is supposed to cost? Seriously?)

Of course, there are several positive aspects of being able to at least partially blend in. First, beggars are much less likely to bother me than they are David, as long as I'm wearing salwar kameez (the local dress). If I'm wearing regular clothes, the odds are even. Second, I can try the "I am your sister, your people; you should give me a better price" thing when bargaining. And if I'm with David or other white friends, the "I am your sister and I brought you my American (translation=rich) friends. You should be good to your sister's friends" thing. This is not a highly effective method of course but it does provide some bargaining leverage and injects the situation with a bit of awkward humor. Lastly, I don't scare babies. In Cameroon babies would either love me and be curious about my unusual features, or burst into panicked tears at the sight of me. It says something about how long I've been scaring babies that when Robi, our cook, mentioned bringing his 2 year old son to visit one day I, panicked, automatically said "Are you sure? I don't want him to get scared of us. Is he okay with foreign people?" which garnered me a blank stare from Robi.

So there you have it. Complicated, messy, awkward, funny. Lots of looks of puzzlement, on both my end and the Bangladeshis'. I guess this situation proves an old proverb wrong. In the new version it would be "If it walks like a local, eats like a local, and looks like a local, you should probably assume its a Scottish-born Indian American short-term consultant."

Where the Ladies At?

Definitely not on the streets of Dhaka, that's for sure.

One of the most striking and immediately noticeable things upon arrival in Bangladesh is the relatively absence of women in public life. There are almost no women walking the streets (except at rush hour), sitting at cafes or restaurants, working in retail, or participating in social gatherings. I have yet to see a woman driving a car, or taking a rickshaw alone. Only after three weeks of being in Dhaka did I see a South Asian-looking woman (other than myself) wearing western clothes, walking down the street alone.

The male-dominated public sphere of Bangladesh is quite a contrast to the other places I've worked. In west Africa, women are ubiquitous and very much the engine of society; one wonders there where the men are and what their purpose might be. In Cambodia all the markets are run by women, with very few men as buyers or seller. Even in India, right next door, women play a major role in all aspects of public life and are prominent in business, entertainment and politics. Yet Bangladesh remains a society where women are neither seen nor heard.

Despite this relative absence, women do play a huge role in the country's economy. More than 80% of the workers in the garment industry, the nation's largest export industry, are women. But an estimated 75% of employed women are unpaid agricultural laborers, as compared to 13% of employed men. Women's labor contribution accounts for an estimated 55% to 66% of total labor per unit output for agricultural work. A recent interesting study found that in one area of the country a pair of bullocks works 1064 hours, a man 1212 hours, and a woman 3485 hours a year per one hectare of farmland. Because women tend to work in the largely unregulated informal agricultural sector, they are afford no legal or economic protections. This arrangement leaves the open to mistreatment and abuse, and does not provide them any safety net in the form of social services such as pensions, disability insurance, and minimum wage.

Given their dependence on the low (or no) paying agricultural sector, its not surprising that Bangladeshi women face extremely high levels of poverty. Approximately 22% of the country's total population is comprised of poor and destitute women, and 95% of female-headed household fall below the poverty line. Although this situation is bad, it is not as it could be, thanks to the help of microfinance projects. The Nobel-prize winning Grameen Bank has given microloans totaling $8 billion to more than 7.87 million women since 1983. The bank has chosen to focus almost exclusively (97%) on women as borrowers since they are not only the most needy, but also the most likely to use the money responsibly, invest in sustainable projects, and repay the loan. In fact, the current repayment rate is near 98%, a level only dreamt of by major Western financial institutions. The bank has now expanded its projects, operating pension programs, health insurance plans, housing projects and many more ventures. In fact, I am able to post this entry because of Grameenphone, which provides our wireless network card, as well as our cell phone plan.

Yet for all the progress made by Grameen Bank and other empowerment projects (like the one we went to see in Manikganj) women in Bangladesh are still second-class citizens. While the country's constitution affords them equal rights in public life, on private matters such as marriage, divorce, child custody, and inheritance, they are at great disadvantage. For example, to divorce a man may simply claim adultery against his wife whereas she must prove adultery and other matrimonial offenses to be granted a divorce. After divorce women are not considered to be the legal guardians of their children, and as such may only keep their sons till the age of 7 and daughters till the end of puberty, if they are allowed to keep them at all. As for inheritance, a daughter may receive only half the share of her brother's, and wives only 1/8 of their husbands' estates. These rules result in limited economic mobility for women and a reinforcement of traditional patriarchal values that further degrade women's social status.

The social values of Islamic countries have come under even more public critique recently thanks to French president Nicolas Sarkozy, who last month called for a ban on the wearing of burqas in public. (To learn about the different types of head scarves, check out this infographic from BBC.) Although only about 10% (in my estimate) of women in Dhaka (and a slightly higher percentage in more rural areas) seem to wear the burqa, all dress very conservatively in public and most cover their heads when in the presence of men. The rules governing the interaction (or lack thereof) between men and women make participation in paid, formal sector labor or institutions of higher education extremely difficult, which in part explains their absence in public life. Of course, the fact that 78% of women are married by age 18 and formal sector employment/secondary education for married women is looked down upon probably has something to do with it as well.

But this issue of the burqa, independent of employment, intrigues me. What some have called "portable seclusion" and others (like Sarkozy) "walking prisons", the burqa has become the most visible icon in the "Islam/conservative versus secular/modern" debate. Yet from what I can decipher from various articles, there seems to be little religious justification for the burqa (as opposed to the hijab). In that case there must be some social or moral justification, right? Well that too is shaky. Modesty, respectability and symbolism of separate spheres seem to be the leading rationales, but they are inadequate explanations of why the burqa over the more practical hijab. But regardless, the overall argument here is that if a woman were to show any part of herself (or even create the outline of a the female figure), she would inflame the passions of nearby men, all of whom are supposedly lacking in any self-control.

So here's the part I don't get. The western line has been that the Taliban and conservative religious organizations, which are comprised of men, imposed the burqa on women as a form of psychological shaming and economic/social immobilization under the guise of modesty and protection. But for men to stress that women need protection from men is to degrade their own sex and heighten the power of the other. Put differently, why admit the savagery of the male sex and proclaim your powerlessness? And why imbue women with such mystic that if they dare show you their face or even a wrist you must, by definition, be filled with lust and rendered unable to think logically. If you don't react that way you've discredited the need for the burqa and if you do, then heck, women everywhere should flash some wrist and take over the world. Its an odd, delicate paradigm that is difficult for an outsider to understand but I think the key point is that the debate over the burqa and women's autonomy isn't black and white. Yes, it can inhibit participation in education and employment. Yes, it does offer women privacy and demonstrates their modesty. Yes, it was made mandatory under the Taliban. But yes, some women do choose to wear it of their own free will.

So what does all that have to do with Bangladesh? Like I said before, Bangladeshis aren't big into the burqa. But they still value the general overarching principle of purdah (i.e. the practice keeping women segregated from--or unseen by--men), at least as the ideal, even if they can't afford to in practice. (As we've seen, women are key to the economic survival of most Bangladeshi families.) Purdah operates under the same logic as the burqa--a demonstration of modesty and protection from men and their lustful ways. And it is largely this strongly-held belief that has prevented Bangladeshi women from entering male-dominated spaces; unfortunately this translates to being excluded from the public sphere in general. Purdah and patriarchy are the two pillars of Bangladeshi society, and in their manifestations, whether it be the burqa, early marriage or inequality in the law, have served to supress and oppress women.

Progress is being made thanks to the media and economic need, but there is still a long way to go. The revolution will be comprised of an extra year of school for young girls, the delay of marriage by a year or two, continued employment after marriage, the first paycheck in a lifetime, and yes, the flashing of a wrist or two.

(For anyone interested in learning more about the status of women in Bangladesh and the role of Islam there are three great reports I would recommend. One is the Asian Development Bank's country briefing paper, another is Healthbridge's report on women's contribution to Bangladesh's economy through unpaid labor, and the last is a more general study of women's position in Islamic countries by Bridge.)

Village People

A couple weeks after arriving in Bangladesh, we got a call from Azad, the young, Bangladeshi consultant for UM who set up our work here. He knew we were getting Dhaka-fever (a combination of boredom, claustrophobia, and sensory overload) so he invited us to come out to Manikganj, a small village a few hours away, to see one of his other projects. Based on similar model to that of Heifer International, the program gives a milking cow to extremely poor women as a means of both generating income and empowering them in household decision-making. All of the recipient families lost their land 10-15 years ago because of river flooding and erosion. (Every year the monsoons bring vast floods which cause villages to be wiped out and the river to change their paths, drowning former farmland and displacing thousands of people.) These families have since struggled to earn a living and many have been forced to take their children out of school, as they can no longer afford essential supplies such as pencils and notebooks. This program, still in its pilot stage, selects motivated, responsible, entrepreneurial women and provides them with training on animal care and business management, as well as giving them the milking cow. They are encouraged to save half the milk for their children (and/or grandchildren) and sell the other half in the market. The women are also required to save 25% of all their earnings and attend monthly meetings on social empowerment issues, such as domestic violence prevention and the importance of educating female children.

On this occasion Azad was going to Manikganj to check on how the women were doing six months after receiving their cows. We set out from Dhaka with Azad and his niece at 11am for a"1 to 2 hour" car ride. The translation of "1 to 2

hours" turned out to be 3.5 hours, but it was a beautiful drive so we didn't mind. Beyond the chaotic "suburbs" of Dhaka the land is rich, lush, green. The scenery was a welcome change from the packed crowds and madness of Dhaka, the villages seemingly serene and quiet, and the brickfields offering the contrast of the deep red of the bricks and the verdant green of the rice paddies. Disrupting the tranquility was the honking of the trucks, cars, buses, rickshaws, and motorcycles as they came careening towards us, trying desperately to overtake another truck, car, bus, rickshaw or motorcycle. It was a road sorely in need of a median.

As we pulled off the main road and starting winding down the side streets barely wide enough for a single car, it became clear that we were in for a serious storm, the sky nearly black even though it was the middle of the day. In the quickly fading light the women standing along the side of the lane were bursts of color against the dark forest background, popping in their saris of saffron, turquoise, and violet; the men, clad in white lungis (sarongs) and button-downs glowed like skinny phantoms. As we went further into the villages, the low hanging trees became even lower and denser, forming an impenetrable canopy above us, blocking out the light, as well as the heavy rain which had begun to fall. In that moment a phrase came to mind usually reserved for another part of the developing world and I found myself thinking that we were entering "the heart of darkness," at least in a highly romanticized sense.

Finally, at 230pm we arrived in Manikganj and were quickly escorted in the downpour to a house formerly belonging to Azad's grandmother, a small three-room dwelling. The power was out so we toweled off in the dark and said hello to the family (distant relatives of Azad), including a 10-month old baby whom everyone swore never cried, a couple 9 year-olds as tall as I am, and assorted 20-something young women whose husbands had left for work in the city. We were

then presented a feast of a dozen dishes, most of which were made with seafood, including fish head curry, whole deep fried shrimp, and tiny sardine-like creatures in mixed vegetables. We ate by the light of gas lamps, adding to the haunting atmosphere created by the rain and our remote location. Of course, I ate everything--it was delicious.

After lunch we sat with the family until the light came back on, then started out on a walk to see

the seven women in this village who had received

cows, out of a total 15 participants at this stage. We attracted a crowd of shirtless children who followed us as we greeted the families. Each was exceptionally welcoming, and extremely proud of their cow and their resulting economic prosperity. All seven women had done very well for themselves, with all of them sending their kids to school again, some having saved enough to expand their farm to include chickens and others purchasing sewing machines with which to start a small tailoring business. One woman proudly told us how her new earnings has inspired her husband to stop drinking and working harder to match her income. All of them were extremely hard working and resourceful; one had found a farmer with fields in need of cutting so they had all starting working for him and taking the cut grass to feed their cows, a practice which had more than halved the costs of feeding their cows. Before we left one woman gave us a papaya she had just pulled from a tree in front of her house, the only one on the tree; another sent over a few litres of milk for Azad, even though he begged her to sell it in the market instead. The sense of pride and confidence among these women was palpable and the progress they had achieved in moving their families out of abject poverty was remarkable.

After a quick game of in the rain/mud soccer with the kids (all of whom were far better than us) we got back in the car for a harrowing ride home in the dark. It seems almost no one in Bangladesh has discovered headlights, or if they have, believe they are used solely for flashing frantically to tell oncoming traffic to get back on their side of the road. Despite the peril we reached home safely at 10pm, tired but inspired by the women of Bangladesh, and the village of Manikganj in particular.

In the A/C Box

After spending the last few summers riding in the back of ancient pick-up trucks, being coated in sweat, and wading knee-deep through mud (or at least I hope it was mud), getting used to our relative life of luxury has been difficult, and at times, downright frustrating. Now, I'm not saying that you should feel sorry for me, what with our private car and driver, overly air-conditioned apartment, and personal chef--that would be obnoxious. But for those you like me who enjoy having total freedom of movement, don't mind being disgustingly filthy, and consider themselves adventurous (some may say stupid), you may sympathize with my frustration over being so overly protected and sheltered. No doubt Dhaka is a city where one (especially a woman) can't just going running around wherever and whenever desire directs, but neither is it a place that can be truly experienced from the confines of a cool, locked Toyota Corolla or a gated compound in the foreigner district.

Because I spend so much time locked in the A/C box (as I refer to our life of privilege) I've had to come up with unique ways to entertain myself. Sadly for you, that includes writing terrible, ironic poetry. Therefore I subject you to two haikus on the A/C box, one slightly positive, the other a bit more of a lamentation.

Two Haikus to the A/C Box:

cool, clean, and sterile

makes life into a movie

gliding through traffic

home to car to home

keeping us isolated

this is our Dhaka

Oh, please forgive me. Poetry is not my strength. I apologize.

(Ak! That was another haiku! See, I just can't help myself. Really, I'm sorry. I won't do this again.)

You Might Be a Bangladeshi If.....

Having been here for a little over 3 weeks, I've taken note of a few peculiarities of Bangladeshis which I think are defining qualities. So beware, you might be a Bangladeshi if.....

...you can cross the street (without nearly peeing yourself out of fear).

...you don't appear to sweat, even when the heat index says its 115+ degrees outside.

...you wash your clothes in dirty river water yet they always come out impeccably clean and white.

...you would have the physique of a body builder if only you had access to a proper, protein-inclusive diet.

...you have an intense obsession with all things 'Chinese' (ex Fu-Wang's Pizza, Wu's Bowling Alley).

...you have superhuman peripheral vision. (Drivers only.)

...you love watching Slamball (i.e. basketball played on trampolines).

...you own at least three skin-lightning products.

...you eat your body weight in rice every four days.

...you get your electricity by splicing into the wire of a government office/shopping mall a couple miles away.

...you can make anything fit (and balance) in a rickshaw, and then manage to ride on top of it.

...you ask every foreigner the same three questions: "What is your country? What is your religion? Are you married?".

...you hold your motorcycle helmet in your lap on your way to and from work instead of wearing it.

...your car has an extra metal bumper on the front, since fender benders are an everyday occurrence.

...you won't pay attention to a presentation or lecture, until they get to the singing and dancing parts, of course.

...you appear to have no sense of smell, as you are not made nauseous by the stink of rotting garbage in the sun...or jackfruit.

...you know how to arrange yourself in an auto rickshaw so that instead of holding two people, it can hold seven.

...you understand the language of the car honks, considering a form of Morse Code.

...you know someone who has been eaten by a Royal Bengal Tiger in the Sundarbans, but recommend a trip there to every foreigner.

...you own at least one piece of clothing by "Clavin Kline" or "Dona Karen".

...you know which city bus to get on, even though there are no discernible bus stops or numbers/signs on any of the buses.

...you answer multiple choice questions with "Yes, no problem."

...you take pride in how corrupt your country is and tell every foreigner, "We were last on Transparency International's list five times in a row! A record!".

...you are less than 5 feet tall, even if you are a man.

...you drive a Japanese or Korean car (i.e. Toyota, Nissan, Mitsubishi) but in a make no one in North America has ever heard of, such as Probox, Noah, Voxy, Bluebird, Pajero, Sage, Saloon, Corona, Succeed, Hiace, Esteem, Premio, Surf, Hover, Torrance or Prado. Or else you drive a Toyota Corrolla.

...you dye your hair/beard/mustache neon orange because you think it looks so natural on you. (Men only)

...you have night vision.

...you appear to need almost no ingredients to make a delicious, three course meal.

...you need only four hours of sleep a night, and make fun of people (like me) who need eight.

...you are friends with wild dogs, most of whom turn out to be better trained than American house pets.

...the concept of a speeding ticket is entirely foreign to you, since you're never able to drive faster than 10 mph in Dhaka.