here are the last notes, and pictures, from the october journey:

-Journey to Bandarban District ("welcome to the hilly green edge of Bangladesh")... close to Burma!
-many ethnic/tribe groups
-permission required to enter this district. many security checkpoints VERY inefficient process
-stayed in 'hillside resort' cabin in the deep woods
-took 5 hour hike through the forest and paddies with a local guide 'Onik' who introduced us to lots of different villages and several different tribal groups along the way. hard hiking...
-Bandarbans looks a lot like W.Va mountains to me!
-Bandarbans means 'monkey forest', but no monkeys inhabit it. sad realization
-that night, did some walking and some shopping in the town at the base of the mountains. Bangladesh is a country of stall-shopping: little one-small-room places side by side that sell much of the same thing everywhere! in particular: bananas, tea, potato chips, flip-flops, scarves
-early the next morning, a stop at Bandarban Buddhist shrine which was BEAUTIFUL and absent of all other people. a visit with the sun just coming up - wow! such a peaceful place

-Travel to Rangamati, small town that is home to a famous Buddhism center!
-A day of much, much driving on perhaps the worst roads ever been on. We were accompanied on the road by many trucks and many many buses so crammed full of people that they spilled happily onto the roofs of their vehicles. we passed one bus with over 30 men sitting on the roof. remember: high speeds, SHARP curves, VERY bumpy and narrow roads. insanity!!!!!!!!
-more security check points
-a visit to a hanging bridge
-a visit to the tribal 'king's' house; there is still a 'king' today but he has no political power
-sampan rides to and from the sites in this town
-visit to Rangamati Buddhist temple/center. we are told about this place: once a year there is a big ceremony and festival here that attracts 3 million people, from Bangladesh, India, and Burma. the festival is in November, and preparations were underway. the complex was simple, very nice. the Buddhist monks offered refreshing calm and sincerity
-long hours of tense driving
-finally, returning to Chittagong our driver Kalam takes us to see an Islamic prophet's holy burial site from 300 years ago, which is also a pilgrimage place: there is a pond there filled with HUNDREDS of big white turtles who swim around and eat the food that people feed them and let people touch their shells. a very surreal scene at night time - no pictures aloud! and i had to cover up with a scarf. woah, mind-blowing experience! holy turtle pond

Overall Thoughts:
-Life in villages seems better than the life of a poor person in Dhaka city...
-Bangladesh is a land of cement stalls.
-trash is everywhere. all over every street, littered through green spaces, piled in public areas. for me, it makes everything seem so dirty... i have trouble adjusting to this
-so many people, people filling every vehicle to the brim, people lining every street
-Driving is so dangerous. People in every sort of vehicle from pedestrian, rickshaw, baby taxi, car, truck, bus share the same highways of narrow and poorly maintained roads. the country's biggest highway - the Dhaka-Chittagong highway - is a two-lane road not divided. people drive way too fast and pass each other all the time. it is normal to be run off the road... it must have happened to us 50 times on the drive home.
-We (the 3 interns) hired a school driver to drive our car on this trip: Kalam. He is a smart man and we trust him a lot, more than any other driver we've met. He took really good care of us - and we needed his guidance. He was very kind to come, and we also paid him a great salary - as well as money for him to eat and sleep along the way.

so glad we got to know Bangladesh at this much deeper level now - what an adventure it has been this last week. I also feel very grateful that we made it home safely. I went in to school yesterday after we got home, and really enjoyed the kind welcome that the school staff (mostly local folks - our cooks, guards, and janitors) gave. Glad to get busy with school life again - a successful break!

Pics from Jimi and Beckley:
hear no, see no, speak no evil at the buddhist temple

hiking

back to the story - a day in chittagong city

Notes from a day in Chittagong, the country's 2nd biggest city:
-New Market and Jhahor Bazar for saris and garment rejects; many Tshirts purchased
-a stop at the British-built courthouse, nicest building we've seen
-Kalam, our awesome driver, sweet-talked our way into the ship-breaking yards where we saw beached ocean-liners being blown apart and stripped down into every isolated part: floor boards, bells, sofas, kitchen sinks, rope, toilets, etc. These yards got some serious bad press several years ago, and generally they haven't been letting foreigners in to see. go Kalam!
we took stealthy pictures from the hip even though we weren't supposed to. i was used as a distraction by my housemates: i'll post some of their pics too!
-a stop at Foy's Lake, Chittagong's favorite amusement park, where we took a paddle boat ride. not a bad place, but a really weird place
-dinner at an awesome Indian restaurant - what a find! where the guys ordered 'dosas' (fried flat bread stuffed with some delicious curried something) that were 1 meter in diameter. we got lucky with this pick - clean food is tough to find
-i feel i haven't seen many women this whole trip...

in the big shopping center, men pick out wedding saris

scarves

from the car

the courthouse and around it





working at the docks

shipbreaking

**pics from jimmy and beckley**

shipbreaking:



Foy's Lake, paddle boat

dinner

For Many Abroad, an Ideal Renewed

Click here for full NYTimes article!

GAZA — From far away, this is how it looks: There is a country out there where tens of millions of white Christians, voting freely, select as their leader a black man of modest origin, the son of a Muslim. There is a place on Earth — call it America — where such a thing happens.

Even where the United States is held in special contempt, like here in this benighted Palestinian coastal strip, the “glorious epic of Barack Obama,” as the leftist French editor Jean Daniel calls it, makes America — the idea as much as the actual place — stand again, perhaps only fleetingly, for limitless possibility.

“It allows us all to dream a little,” said Oswaldo Calvo, 58, a Venezuelan political activist in Caracas, in a comment echoed to correspondents of The New York Times on four continents in the days leading up to the election.

Tristram Hunt, a British historian, put it this way: Mr. Obama “brings the narrative that everyone wants to return to — that America is the land of extraordinary opportunity and possibility, where miracles happen.”

_________________________________________________________________

Results of our mock election at school (everyone was able to vote, including all staff, regardless of nationality)

A total of 451 votes were cast as follows

Obama 87.3%
McCain 7.1%
Other 2.9%


143 voters identified themselves as US citizens and voted as follows

Obama 86.0%
McCain 9.1%
Other 3.5%


271 voters identified themselves as non-US citizens and voted as follows

Obama 91.0%
McCain 5.5%
Other 2.2%

politics and world view

Prayer for Obama in Kolkatta: Coimbatore Chant for Barack
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1081031/jsp/foreign/story_10042287.jsp
Priests at a Dhanwantari shrine in the Tamil Nadu town are holding special pujas and yagnas every day so that Obama has a stress-free, successful campaign and a long life and defeats his enemies.

Obama has the Support of Peruvian Faith-Healers
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/nationworld/sns-ap-lt-odd-shamans-for-obama,0,1848117.story

on to Chittagong

hi! here the story of our trip continues; things really got wild on the second half, when the 3 interns hired a driver and went to Chittagong and the Hill Tracts area. we went without many plans, and saw some cool and some really weird things

Day 1
on the way to Chittagong City:
-leaving Dhaka at 5am, we brave the highway
-pull over at old Hindu village. hike up 1000 steps to Hindu temple overlook. steep and so so sweaty. the first elevation since arriving in bangladesh!

-animal sacrifice ?? made it down from the hike just in time. ladies making loud high-pitched noises at the moment of the big swipe. 2 baby goats got their heads chopped off with a big curved knife that had been blessed at a Hindu altar. we were there, along with 30 or so local people, to watch it happen from up close. the body parts moved after they were separated. all this was shocking

-we were invited to lunch by local gurus (some kind of enlightened sect). a climb up to their compund and an all-vegetarian lunch with our hands - lentils tasted good after animal sacrifice watching - invited by the gurus in friendship, and also in the hopes that we could help them travel to the USA somehow...they want to go to New York City. can you imagine them cruising Times Square? we weren't too much help but we were very friendly and appreciative


hike to temple






goat sacrifice





the gurus