The Gernand Family (and Emily) in Bangladesh

Tour Our House

2009-07-23T11:29:00.009+07:00

This is a video tour of our house in Gaibandha for those of you who have not been able to come and see it.

A Solar Eclipse in Bangladesh

2009-07-23T09:15:00.005+07:00

Well, if you weren't in Asia yesterday, you missed one of the seven total solar eclipses expected to occur this decade--only one more left next year in South America. Where we were standing in Gaibandha, the eclipse did not appear to be quite total, at least as far as we could tell, but we did not exactly have ideal viewing conditions. The partly cloudy viewing however, did make for an interesting photograph you can see below.

Omen? Given their mathematical predictability, I don't think anyone could consider eclipses as omens, but this was the same day that Emily left our home here to travel to Dhaka on her way back to the US. I'm sure if Ezra could say her name, he'd be asking about her, but we'll just have to wait for that.

Bangladeshi Consumers Have To Be Sharp

2009-06-14T12:30:00.006+06:00

I've been meaning to put this on the blog for a while just because I think it is so funny (and scary), sort of like those dumb horror movies.

I wanted something to keep in my office to heat up water to make tea or instant coffee (the only kind of coffee you can buy outside of the big cities). So, I found this nifty gadget in a shop in the market of Gaibandha. It works great and does just what I wanted it to do, which is heat a small amount of water quickly. How it does that trick is the interesting part.

As you can see in this next picture, the whole contraption is basically just a plug that goes into a power socket, and two bare electrodes that stretch into the water. That means that it is just running an electric current right through the water in order to heat it up. If you were to touch the water while it was doing this, in addition to getting a burn from the boiling water, you would also get electrocuted. And, not even a warning sticker on that thing... [there was a small note on the box, now thrown away, that users should not touch the water while heating].

[For Engineers Only] If you notice, there is also a different in the corrosion between the two electrodes. I could ask you which is the anode and which is the cathode as there is obviously some difference in oxidation and deposition going on between the two, but it is a 220V AC line, so what it really means is that there is a DC bias in the power supply, and that I normally plug in the heater in the same way each time. Oh, and yes you can clearly see the hydrogen and oxygen bubbles from the electrolysis of the water when you first plug it in, before it gets hot enough for the steam bubbles to obscure everything else. It is also funny to think that this thing won't work with distilled water as it is an insulator (unless you leave it sitting there long enough for some iron ions to work their way into it), luckily for this thing, the water in Gaibandha is loaded with iron and other minerals.

Then, it gets even funnier. The "Lipton" logo label is not real, the company that made it, Dhaka Plastic, is not associated with the Lipton tea company at all, they just put that on there so people think about having tea and needing this little contraption. How many more water heaters they sell because of that I don't know.

So, you can get all kinds of things here, even stuff that would be outlawed in the U.S., meaning that you can make good use of your money, if you are also smart enough to not get killed by the things you buy.

On The River

2009-06-14T10:14:00.009+06:00

Seeing as most of Bangladesh is a river delta, much of the romantic and nostalgic images that Bangladeshis have about their own country are associated in some way with the river or water in general.

Fish and rice are considered the traditional foods. Canals and ponds for irrigation, transportation, and drainage of flood waters are everywhere. The least expensive way to travel from town to town is still by ferries going up and down the major rivers waterways. The smallest fishing boats are still row boats. Sails used to power the larger and heavier boats, although they are almost totally gone now, replaced by gasoline or diesel engines. Traditional folk songs in Bangladesh often speak of fish and boats and life on or near the river.

Recently, as part of my job, I had the opportunity to travel on a boat up the river to another village outside of our project area and visit a few sites along the way. You might find some of these pictures interesting.

This is a mobile hospital boat visiting a village along the river. A few of these are around in different places in Bangladesh, and as you can probably imagine, are more useful during floods and and other disasters when reaching people in need of care is difficult.

Re-boarding our boat after a visit to a "char", an island in the middle of the river that is constantly being eroded and shifted by the river's movement and floods.

These nets are common all around Bangladesh, even in ponds and canals far from the rivers. They include a net and a long bamboo lever system for moving the net around, either placing it on the bottom and raising it up, or pulling it through the water to catch seafood. Often, they are fishing for minnows and other small fish that they will eat in a spicy curry sauce (extremely nutritious, but not exactly my thing). But, they can also use them to catch larger fish and other tasty things crawling along the bottom.

This is a small traditional fishing boat used on the rivers of Bangladesh.

Our ship had a young capitan, but luckily the chief accountant for our project could help him steer the boat out of the dock.

At a stop along the side of a river, we walked a short distance to visit a flood shelter, passing through this jute field along the way. Jute is a plant grown for its fiber, which is often used in rope and carpets (like hemp). You can also eat the leaves like mustard greens when it is young and tender.

This is a larger boat, similar to the one that we were riding, but used for cargo. In this case, it is carrying a load of straw (dried rice stalks) used as animal feed.

This is a picture of a village along the side of the river, with their fruit trees, crops, fishing boats, and hay piles for their animals all visible.

At The Office

2009-06-13T16:47:00.005+06:00

Alison and I spend most of our work time in the office, probably about 65% for her, and 95% for me. It isn't exactly the same as your office in the U.S., but there are more similarities than differences. If you are curious, we thought you'd like to see a couple photos of the office where we work in Gaibandha.

This is the exterior of the building. By American counting, Alison's office is on the second floor on the left side, while mine is on the third floor on the right side (they count the European way where the 1st floor is the floor above the ground floor).

Here is Alison hard at work on Sunday morning. The work week here runs from Sunday through Thursday.

Here is my office, a corner office with a private bathroom. If you forget about the air conditioner not really working, and the power dropping for a minute every 3 hours while the generator starts up, its the nicest office I've had so far in my career.

Chocolate Awakening

2009-06-12T16:03:00.003+06:00

As the saying goes, "better late than never," so I am posting a few pictures of Ezra's 2nd 1 year-old birthday party. We were in Dhaka at the American Club and our friends Becky and Scott graciously hosted the party and got Ezra a giant chocolate cake (well, giant from a baby's perspective). Ezra also got a chocolate cake for his 1st party at our house, and he liked it but was pretty tame about eating it. As you can see below, he wasn't holding back the second time. He literally dove straight in and Jeremy and I could hardly hold him back. He was a happy boy!

Free Time

2009-05-10T14:31:00.010+06:00

Life with a 14-month-old can never really be described as one having a lot of relaxing free time, but... The fact of the matter is that we do tend to have somewhat more free time here in Bangladesh than one does in the States, and many fewer distractions. Our commute is a 5 min walk down a little side street to the office, we don't spend time driving anywhere to shop, there are no TV shows to schedule our lives around (there are lots of Bangla TV shows, we just don't have a TV), the work day is generally an hour shorter than in the States, and we have hired people to help us with our cooking and cleaning.

Once you get used to and more comfortable with being hot most of the time, you find that you have a lot more opportunity to get through books, and other tasks that you used to not find time for, or at least were easily distracted from. In general, I find that I am probably about 2-4 times as busy as I was during my Peace Corps service, but there, I had no electricity or mobile phone or internet to coordinate new things to do. And still, one finds the opportunity to do things you might not otherwise find the patience to do back home, like read thick books.

So, what do we do with our free time? Well, we worked out a little routine together to remind us all of home. It took Ezra a little while to learn the footwork, but in the end we were pretty impressed. Hope you enjoy watching the clip below.

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Fun with Water

2009-05-08T23:17:00.008+06:00

Ezra really loves playing with water, in the bath, in plastic water bottles, and in buckets. He loves it to the point that he wants to have the water running the whole time during his bath until his little tub is practically overflowing. We let him go at it in a bucket and basin on our deck one weekend. Here is some video of him playing, although he seems pretty business-like about the whole thing.

Part Boy, Part Monkey

2009-05-08T21:31:00.009+06:00

Ezra has been walking for several months now, and can just about break into a run, but how he developed his excellent climbing ability, I am not totally sure. He climbs up everything, if we let him, and sometimes we just play "spotter" to see how far he can really go. The video below shows how he can just climb the window bars seemingly without thinking about it and as if he has been doing it for months. Hope you enjoy watching it (and don't get too nervous).

Geckos...and first words

2009-05-08T11:29:00.004+06:00

Just like most babies, Ezra has been babbling for a long time. He actually makes a variety of interesting noises, some sounding like animals such as monkeys or dolphins. He has been repeating the standard monosyllables dada, mama, nana, etc. for as long as I can remember. And for the last few months, he has been expressing an emphatic "ooooohhh" at everything he sees (especially birds, bugs, and plants when exploring outside). In fact, he seems to have a better eye than us for these things, as often he is saying "ooohh, ooohh, ooohh" and I don't even see the bird in the tree until it flies away.

Although it is fun to hear him say "dada" (by far, the most frequently expressed word) and "mama" (this one is still rare), he doesn't yet say it for us. Instead, he picks up a toy and says "dada" while showing it to us (like he's telling us what it is). He also says "da-deee" (i.e. daddy with emphasis on the last syllable) which is also super cute, but again, he calls most of the things he sees or touches either dada or dadee. Our nanny knows a bit of English, and she kept saying, "no that's not dirty" to Ezra. So finally I asked her why and she said that Ezra was saying "dirty". Well, in her accent, dirty sounds a lot like daddy, but not at all to us (which reminds us why our Bangla sounds "right" to us but not to them!).

So, on to the real point of this post - Ezra has finally said his "real" first word. That is, he finally said a word that is not just a combination of easy sylables he knows and he used it in the right context. I mentioned that we have a lot of bugs now but didn't mention that we also have a lot of geckos. And when I say a lot, I mean there are probably about 20 living in our house (and they are making more - we have seen the tiny babies!). They make a very distinctive (and sometimes quite loud) sound and crawl everywhere, including upside down on the ceiling. They are usually near the light fixtures or in the vents to catch bugs to eat. The Bangla word for gecko is tik-tiki (pronounced: teek-TEE-kee) because the geckos make a sound that sounds like the word for them. When we first arrived in Bangladesh, it was one of the first Bangla words we learned because we saw them all the time and the word is easy to say and remember.

You may have already guessed where this is going. Ezra has heard us saying "tik-tiki" whenever we hear or see a gecko since he was about 6 months old. He also hears the staff in our house saying the same word. So, when spring came and the geckos were again in full force, Ezra was constantly seeing them and saying the famous "ooohhh". Until one day, about 3 weeks ago, I was pointing to one and saying "tik-tiki" - and Ezra repeated "tik-tiki". We were stunned. It was great that all 3 of us (me, Jeremy, and Emily) were together to witness it. We stared at each other in disbelief....until, he said it again. Since then, Ezra has been faithfully saying tik-tiki every time he sees or hears one. Actually, he likes them so much (who can't like a gecko?), that now we catch him saying tik-tiki and looking at the ceiling when he wants to see one.

So, Ezra has begun taking and ironically, his first word was the same as one of our "first" words here. His second clear word was "babu" (yes, another Bangla word), which means baby. This is another one he hears constantly because everyone is calling out to him. Some have claimed he says other words, like hello, but I've yet to hear them. But any way around it - Ezra is a very expressive little boy.

A Bug's Life

2009-04-18T16:43:00.003+06:00

Well, it's bug season in Bangladesh. The season is a combination of spring and summer in the US. The heat is as strong as the summer, but it's just starting to rain occassionally (it's been totally dry for months) and all the plants are blooming like spring. Except for the heat, it's a lovely time. Any inch of this country that wasn't covered with plants before, is now fully green (the majority with rice paddies). In fact, our yard was "cleaned" before we moved in - which means all the plants were ripped out and the ground left brown and barren. Now, there is grass (magically) and plants everywhere. And along with the plants, rain, and heat...came the bugs. There are many bugs we can't identify because we've never seen them before (actually, the mosquitos are so big, we can hardly believe they are mosquitos). But, there are many familiar types: ants of every size, flies, dragonflies, butterflies, moths, bees, wasps, roaches, centipedes, and giant spiders (yes, I know the last 2 on the list aren't actaully bugs). Ezra has learned the Bangla word for mosquito ("mosha") and swats for one anytime he hears the word. Actually, he doesn't know the difference between mosquitos and any other flying bug, so he swats at everything equally.

On another note, we were recently at the home of a friend and saw "A Bug's Life" playing in Bangla for her 4 year old son. Since we have no Bangla tutor and are always looking for ways to learn more of the language - Emily bought the DVD for us to watch. It's amazing how many English movies and TV shows are available here in dubbed Bangla and it's no wonder everyone knows a lot more about our culture than we know about theirs.

Ezra is 1-year Old !

2009-03-21T16:23:00.003+06:00

Check out some of Ezra's one year photos.

Trip to Comila, Moinamati, Sonargaon, Dhaka

2009-03-21T16:20:00.006+06:00

During our two-week break, we had a chance to visit several interesting sites to the East of Dhaka and in the city, including some Buddhist ruins from the 8th century. Here are a few pictures.

Star Mosque in Dhaka

Bangladesh National Assembly Building

Ahsan Manjil (The Pink Palace) in Dhaka

Shrine at Lalbagh Fort in Dhaka

(Constructed by the son of Mughal Emperor)

Old Capital Building in Sonargaon

(Capital of Bengal before British arrival)

Hindu Guru (holy man) at Durga Temple in Comila

Excavation of 8th Century Buddhist Temple and Monastery near Moinamati

Ruins of 8th Century Buddhist Temple at Monastery near Moinamati

Trip to Sylhet, Jaflong, and Srimongal

2009-03-07T14:47:00.007+06:00

Finally getting a chance to take some vacation from work for all of us and take the opportunity to get out of the house and around Bangladesh while Alison's parents were here, we took a four day tour through the northeast part of Bangladesh known as Sylhet. The division of Sylhet contains several towns and cities, including the main one of the same name, and is also home to several national parks, a numerous tea plantations, citrus plantation, and pineapple plantations as well as other things. The terrain is hilly, wooded, and rocky in places making it very different from the part of the country that we live in. It reminded me a little of Guinea, although this area is one of the wettest in the world, with some places receiving more than 4 meters (156 inches) of rain on average every year.

Enjoying six-layer tea in Srimongal (a different flavor in every layer)

Hiking through Lawachara National Park (near Srimongal)

Don and Diane in front of their Eco Cottage in Srimongal

Ezra enjoying some fried rice in Sylhet (hands and spoons are just too slow sometimes)

Jeremy, Alison, and Ezra at Madhobkunda Waterfall

Boat ride on the Jaflong River

View of the Jaflong river and across border into India

Taking the train from Srimongal back to Dhaka

Birthday Party Number 1

2009-03-07T13:54:00.011+06:00

We recently got back from our vacation around Bangladesh with Alison's parents (Don and Diane) [much more on that coming later], but before we left, we celebrated Ezra's first birthday at our house in Gaibandha. Here are some pictures...

Ezra waiting for this party to get started...

Ezra calmly enjoying his cake

The family

Ezra trying out his drum featuring (you guessed it) the Bangladeshi group "Gangstar"

Ezra opening more presents (with Bonnie's help)

The Move to Gaibandha

2009-02-08T09:47:00.006+06:00

So, what happened to January... and February...

Well, after being here for about two months, and starting to get settled in learning our surroundings, we were informed that our jobs would be completely moving to another town nearby (from Rangpur to Gaibandha). After an extremely long wait to find and prepare a house for us to move into, we finally moved into our house on January 7th, after being in temporary housing since we arrived on August 20th. Hence, a very busy month for us and the reason for the lack of time to post anything to this blog during the month of January. Things are still being set up with our new house, but we are at least close to a routine, and close to a vacation.

January has been cool here (in the 50's at night and 70's during the day), often with a thick layer of fog especially in the mornings, which will occaisionally block the sun for days at a time (rather depressing). In February, the warm sun was back, there is no rain and there are clear skies everyday, and the evenings cool off enough to want to sleep with a blanket.

This is where Gaibandha is located

And here is a picture of our new house

Ezra's First Christmas

2008-12-28T20:45:00.007+06:00

The Big Day

2008-12-27T18:22:00.014+06:00

In Bangladesh, they call Christmas “Boro Din” (Big Day) and New Year’s “Choto Din” (Small Day). Although there are few Christians here, most people are familiar with this holiday and the Government offices are closed for it. Also, they recognize our Gregorian calendar new year’s day, but the Bengali calendar new year starts on our April 14 (by the way, the current Bengali year is 1415).

For our Christmas in Bangladesh, we found a small Christmas tree and our cook bought us some “Christmas” decorations (note in picture above, they resemble something you would see at Mardi Gras) for the tree and the house. We played some Christmas music, streaming from online radio stations when the internet was working well. We all bought some small gifts for each other (somehow Ezra got the most!) and I completely bought out the wrapping paper supply at the local “Hallmark” store (sold in 1.5’ x 3’ single sheets) to wrap the gifts.

Christmas morning we had a fun webcam session with my family (and had ones with Jeremy’s family earlier and later in the week). Then we opened gifts, with Ezra going first. He actually did a little bit of the paper ripping, but overall he was not quite as interested as we thought he might be. We had a lovely Christmas lunch with special “pullao” rice and fried eggplant. Emily and I provided some entertainment singing Christmas songs and Ezra actually sounded like he was trying to sing along sometimes. One of the biggest highlights of the day was finally making the brownies that we had been saving from a package my mom sent us. And after Ezra was tucked away in his crib, we watched a Christmas movie and ate the warm brownies with some vanilla ice cream.

Ezra and the tree

Christmas Lunch

The Christmas afternoon nap (outside on the roof deck)

So, that adds up to...

2008-12-14T13:57:00.010+06:00

Like the letters, the numbers here can also be confusing, even though they are much, much more similar to what we already know. I learned my numbers first (the symbols anyways), so that part has not been as confusing for me as learning the alphabet, but I do find them interesting since I was a math teacher and have had a very math intensive education and work experience.

Our (Western) numbers are actually derived from Arabic numerals. However, if you look at Arabic numerals compared to ours, only a few of them are actually the same. Likewise, the Bangla numbers are also based on Arabic numerals, and show just as many differences. Then, when you put them all side by side, only a few symbols match up between them. Even if you reconcile that, some of the symbols have changed values for some reason.

I don't know what accidents of history make symbols change value from 8 to 4 for example, or from a 9 to a 7. Or, why a symbol would match in the Eastern and the Western variations on Arabic and not in the original, central, Middle Eastern one, but it does make me wonder.

* * *

But, now for the real kicker... In English, the names of our numbers are irregular from 1 to 20 (although you can argue on the -teens), and then they are regular (or patterned) after that with new names only for the 10s place: thirty, forty, fifty, etc., and then for the values of hundreds and thousands. So, to count from 1 to 999,999 you only need to know 29 unique words that you can combine in various combinations to communicate the value you want. So, 125 = one + hundred + twenty + five.

In Bangla, most of the first 100 numbers are irregular! There are some patterns, but they are contantly changing (like the way English uses three different patterns between eleven, twelve... ; thirteen, fourteen...; to twenty-one, twenty-two... ). There is no simple pattern you can rely on for any big block of numbers in Bangla. Just look at a couple of these examples:

1 (one) = aek (pron. EK)

20 (twenty) = bish (pron. BEE-sh)

21 (twenty-one) = ekush (pron. EK-oosh)

[rather than the simpler aek-bish or bish-aek]

3 (three) = tin (pron. TEEN)

60 (sixty) = shat (pron. SHAh-T)

63 (sixty-three) = teshotti (pron. TESH-oat-tee)

After those, thankfully, there is a word for hundred and thousand, and the names for the first hundred numbers are reused and some regularity (pattern) sets in. But, a new word appears at 100,000 (one hundred thousand), which South Asians in general call a lakh, and by which they count until the value of 100 lakhs, or 10,000,000, which they call a crore. They use those in place of our millions, so at least it is just a change and not an addition.

In the end, the bottom line is that to count from 1 to 999,999 in Bangla, you have to use a combination of 102 unique words, an increase in complexity of over 251%.

Get counting !

Take a ride on a rickshaw

2008-12-08T13:41:00.008+06:00

On being illiterate

2008-12-07T10:32:00.016+06:00

Having learned to read at the age of 6 or 7 most of us have no memory or experience what it is like to not have that ability. Even when learning another language like French or Spanish or German, we quickly learn how to read those languages (and pronounce the written words), even if we don't always understand the meaning of the words we are looking at; we can quickly recognize the words we do know and get some kind of gist of what is being communicated.

But, imagine not being able to do that at all...

Even though none of us is any expert in Bangla at this point, we all know some number of words as well as names of places and so on. But, as we haven't learned all of the alphabet yet (we are earnestly studying--check back soon!), we are almost helpless when looking at any kind of text. It is an odd feeling to have all sorts of education, and yet, have to ask bystanders the meaning of any written information, even a simple sign or advertisement. What makes it even more frustrating is that many of the signs are actually written in English with Bangla letters. We could understand much of it just fine were it spoken to us, if only we didn't have to stand there for 5 minutes playing a personal game of multi-lingual Jeopardy in our heads (...I know 3 letters in that word and 2 in that one... can I figure it out?, but what language is it written in?).

And, don't think you can get by without asking dumb questions, either--for a dumb question picture someone in the US asking where the bakery is, right underneath a giant bakery sign. That sign on the door you walk up to inside the restaurant could say "danger, high voltage" or "women's restroom" or "office, knock before entering". An elementary school child here in some ways navigates around the world easier than we could by ourselves just thanks to a little literacy. Luckily, we don't have to do much alone, and often those around us know some English and usually don't expect us to understand what we are looking at in Bangla anyways. So, next time you run into that foreigner with a heavy accent in the US asking for help but who is having trouble understanding you, be extra nice, because we are receiving the balance of that kindness out here.

Where there is no turkey

2008-11-30T15:16:00.005+06:00

Our Thanksgiving Spread

So what did we have for Thanksgiving? We had a goose! They aren't commonly eaten here, but there is a special market twice a week in our town where you can get one. We had one goose (left below) and one chicken for our Thanksgiving meal.

Our Bangladeshi house staff helped us prepare the food (chopping vegetables, etc.) and were watching us cook with keen interest.

Other than the poultry, we made mashed potatoes, green beans, and cauliflower. One of the professors from Johns Hopkins was in town and he was kind enough to bring some holiday food from the states. So we also had cranberry sauce, yams, gravy, and stuffing (the boxed stuff is surprisingly good!). He also brought some graham crackers for pie crust, so we made key lime pie and chocolate pie.

Below is us with our visitors (on the left) - 2 other Hopkins students and one of the professors. And thanks to my mom, we had Thanksgiving napkins (see picture below) and a tiny turkey decoration.

Ezra is on the move

2008-11-28T16:21:00.010+06:00

Sitting, scooting.....and biting

2008-11-15T18:04:00.014+06:00

Ezra is quite mobile now, but not quite crawling. He scoots and rolls around and easily sits up (even in his sleep!). He also pulls himself up to stand on anything he can grab and trys to do gymnastic moves while breastfeeding (exciting for me!). The biggest news is that he has his first two bottom teeth. They both came in almost at the same time and he hardly acted any different while they were breaking through. He can practically eat a banana straight from the peel now. Unfortunately he tries to take a bite out of us occasionally. Thankfully he is eating well and devours anything I have put in front of him.

The Two-Tooth Smile!

Ezra is definitely the only baby in

Bangladesh with a Blue Bell onesie.

Ezra and Emily experiencing the culture.

3 months, 2 seasons, and 1 big baby

2008-11-15T16:37:00.010+06:00

We've been living in Bangladesh almost 3 months. The season has changed from hot and rainy to not hot and mostly dry. The nights and morning are actually quite cool now and we don't use the air conditioners during the day. It is a very pleasant time of year. And, it is harvest time for the farmers, so many vegetables are available now: eggplant, carrots, radishes, green beans, cauliflower, pumpkin, cucumber, tomatoes, cilantro, cabbage, and many types of greens, to name a few.

We are stilling living in a temporary house, but have finally made arrangements for a house to live in for the rest of our time here. We will hopefully move in the next month or so.

And of course, Ezra is getting bigger everyday (and we are getting stronger to carry him).

Here are some pictures of our time here:

Views from our roof

Alison (in local attire) and Ezra

Jeremy, Alison, and Emily at a former ruler's palace

Alison, Emily and Ezra walking down a main street in town

Eat With Us

2008-10-17T15:01:00.005+06:00

So, want to have dinner with us? Well, as actually coming over here would probably be a bit expensive and time consuming just for dinner, maybe you can eat what we're eating and pretend you are here.

This is what our normal dinners look like (with the addition of a big bowl of rice).
Most things are generally familiar, especially if you have been to any Indian restaurants, although the flavors are unique.

Dal (usually lentils, but can also be any kind of pea or bean) in the Bangladeshi style is a lentil soup with garlic, chili peppers, and onions cooked until the lentils get mashed up and breakdown and make the whole mixture a consistency of thin gravy. Some Bangladeshis eat this as a soup at the end of the meal, but others mix it in with their rice as they eat the other dishes.

So, what is curry, exactly? Well, it isn't much like the curry mixes you pick up in the grocery stores back in the US. You'll get something much closer if you walk into an Indian restaurant and order Chicken Tikka Masala and Vegetable Do Piaza (if you are in a big city, you might even be able to find a Bengali restaurant). Those restaurant dishes will be somewhat compromised for American tastes (more so if it is a buffet), but it is a good place to start.

To start whipping a curry dish up yourself, you would do something like this (hopefully following a real recipe you find in a book or on the internet):
[1] put some oil in a pan over medium heat (mustard oil is commonly used here, but also regular vegetable oils or ghee, which is clarified butter) along with the whole spices of cinnamon, cloves, green cardamom pods, black peppercorns, and bay leaf, cooking until the spices are just toasted;
[2] add a paste made of blended up garlic, onion, and ginger and cook until this starts to just brown;
[3] add several green chili peppers (to taste, but they tend to use a lot) that look a lot like serrano peppers or ground red pepper, and tumeric;
[4] add vegetables, or meat, or chicken, or fish depending on what you are making and cover cooking over low heat for all the flavors to blend together.
[5] then serve with lots of long grain basmati rice.

Usually our vegetables include potatoes and green beans and eggplant (and chili peppers), with additions of whatever else happens to be in season. So far, we've seen carrots, tomatoes, pumpkin-like squash, and lots of unique squash/eggplant-like vegetables that we haven't been familiar with. Some of them have been good but unremarkable, while others have been good enough we wish we could take them back to the US with us when we return.

Otherwise, we eat a lot of fish (as is traditional in Bangladesh) usually cut into steak like portions and served with some curried squash. We are just starting to be able to tell the fish apart by their flavors and amount of bones, but they have mostly been delicious. Some Indian restaurants will have Bengal-style fish dishes.

So, that's it. Hope you enjoyed it. Thanks for coming over.

If you want to try the real stuff, just let us know when you'll be dropping by.

Ezra Says...

2008-09-27T19:28:00.015+06:00

Click, Click, Click...

Da, Da, Da...

He can also do, "Ba, Ba, Ba..." But, we haven't got that one on "film", yet.

The Birthday

2008-09-27T15:30:00.014+06:00

As many of you know, Jeremy and I have the same birthday. We actually had a very nice birthday here in Bangladesh. The Friday night before our birthday, we went to a local development organization (RDRS: http://www.rdrsbangla.net/) that has a guest house where you can get special meals if you call in advance. We had duck, fish, carrots, beets, lentils, and rice (of course). For dessert we had ice cream and chocolate cake. They even put 2 candles in the cake for us. Our other Hopkins friends were there and sang Happy Birthday.

On our actual birthday, one of the staff invited us to his home for Iftar and dinner. Iftar is the meal that Muslims eat to break the fast each day of Ramadan. The family cooked a very special meal for us, although they didn't even know it was our birthday (we told them after arriving).

We appreciate all the birthday wishes from family and friends back home - especially those in Houston who were evacuating or preparing for Hurricane Ike (which hit Houston the same weekend).

2 weeks

2008-08-30T11:27:00.014+06:00

We have been in Bangladesh now for 2 weeks and have mostly been resting, eating, and going to orientation activities for work. We've finally unpacked our bags and are feeling somewhat settled in our house, although there is still much to do (like buying furniture!). We are staying in a temporary home that a former staff member lived in and will be looking for a new place that suits our needs. The home we are in now is quite nice with running water (and hot water for showers), electricity, air conditioners (although you have to turn them off when the electricity goes out and the generator is running), a refrigerator/freezer, and a gas stove for cooking. We can buy things like a tv or microwave, but aren't splurging on such luxuries yet.

We have hired staff to help with cooking, cleaning, and watching Ezra. Cleaning has to be done everyday because there is so much dust and hand washing clothes takes a long time. Cooking is done from scratch each day by first going to the market and selecting fresh vegetables and fish/chicken/meat. We have really liked the food so far. Our lunch and dinner meals are usually rice, dal (thin lentil sauce), cooked vegetables, small piece of fish/chicken, and sliced cucumbers. They serve us a breakfast similar to what we are used to in the US - toast, eggs, and coffee (instant Nescafe). The Bangla breakfast is curried potatoes and vegetables, eggs, "parathas" (fried flat bread), and cha (tea). We have this occasionally too. Bananas are in season right now, and they are everywhere. Most of the bananas here are fatter than those in the US and they are much more flavorful too (I'm not sure I will be able to go back to eating our bland ones). We've been buying things to stock the empty kitchen and purchased an electric water kettle. This appliance is fantastic - it boils water so quickly! I think I'll be adding this to my appliances when we move back to the states.

Thankfully, Jeremy and Ezra have not been sick at all. I have been sick once with some kind of intestinal problem, but it was very short lived (just one night). The main doctor on the project insisted I drink ORS (oral rehydration solution) for 24 hours, which made me feel like I was "experiencing" Bangladesh and public health here. In case you didn't know, Bangladesh is the home of ORS, and this public health effort alone has saved hundreds of millions of lives. It is mostly used with children to prevent dehydration from diarrhea, but was initially developed to save people from dehydration during a massive cholera outbreak back in the 1970s. You can read more about it at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oral_rehydration_therapy and http://rehydrate.org/ors/index.html#1million. The beauty of this therapy is that it is just salts and sugar - which in the right balance will allow water to cross the damaged intestines into your body. Water alone will not be transported across, which is why people die of dehydration, not the cholera, rotavirus, etc.

It is nearing the end of the rainy season here. The weather is sometimes sunny and hot; other times it is raining and not quite as hot. It rains everyday and is always muggy - much wetter than Houston. Thankfully it is past the peak mosquito time and we haven't seen many of those.

We have been trying to learn Bangla, but it has been slow going so far. It is hard to find a tutor and most of the office staff we work with speak pretty good English. So we've been getting by, but won't get far doing things like bartering at the market if we don't develop good speaking skills. Thankfully, another student from Hopkins (Becky) who speaks pretty fluent Bangla is also here. She was a Peace Corps volunteer in Bangladesh, which means she knows the language and the culture - which is a huge help for us.

Our weekend is Friday and Saturday, so tomorrow it's back to work for us. I'll write another post soon about the work I am doing here.

Ezra Is 6-Months Old !

2008-08-29T13:03:00.015+06:00

Today, Friday, 29 August 2008, Ezra is 6-months old. Here are some photos from his half-birthday.

And this is a video clip of him eating his first "solid" food, rice cereal. He didn't seem all that impressed.

Where Are You ?

2008-08-22T15:49:00.004+06:00

In case you were afraid to ask, here is information about where we are living.Bangladesh is tucked into the far eastern portion of India sharing only a small portion of its border with Burma. Bangladesh is almost entirely composed of a huge river delta. The river delta is made up of the confluence of two major rivers: the Ganges (or Padma) and the Brahmaputra. Consequently, it is very flat and very fertile and often has trouble with flooding in periods of high rainfall.

We are living in the city of Rangpur, which has a population of a few hundred thousand. Rangpur is located in the northwestern part of the country about a 6-7 hour drive from the capital, Dhaka. It experiences less of the trouble with flooding and cyclones than other parts of the country.

We are still learning about the area, so I'm sure we will have more information in the future, but for now, at least anyone can point to where we are on a map.

We have arrived

2008-08-18T19:58:00.004+06:00

After much planning and preparations and a tremendous amount of help from our families, we departed for Dhaka, Bangladesh last Thursday, August 14. We arrived in the capital about 28 hours after leaving Houston. Ezra did really well on the flights and was mostly happy and entertaining other passengers. He seems to have baby jet lag now and will need more time to adjust to the new time zone. We are 11 hours ahead of Central Daylight Time (will be 12 hours ahead when you go off daylight saving time in the fall).

The weather here is warm and humid with daily rain showers - in fact, it's so humid that my glasses fog up when I walk out of an air conditioned building. For this reason it is also very green with plants and trees, which is quite lovely. We have only seen a little bit of the country so far, mostly from the window of the car when traveling (on the left side of the road) from the airport to our hotel. We did venture out to do some shopping today, which confirmed that we need to learn Bangla fast. Many people speak some English and a few speak it very well however this can only get us so far (especially trying to haggle at the markets). It is definitely a busy place with people everywhere. Physically, it is similar to other developing countries we have been to (poor roads, no sidewalks, etc) but it is amazing how technology is far beyond these limitations, including "free WiFi" at our hotel and nearby restaurants. We have a received a very warm welcome from the people here and we are looking forward to going north to Rangpur tomorrow, where we will live for the duration of our time in Bangladesh.

Moving Out and On Our Way

2008-08-04T22:40:00.002+06:00

We are on our way to Rangpur, Bangladesh from Baltimore, Maryland, USA. With Alison having the opportunity to run the operational day to day activities of her nutrition research study for her PhD at Johns Hopkins and Jeremy having a position also with the university to perform some process reliability analysis on the university research organization there, we are making this big international move.

Bangladesh is the most densely populated nation (excepting city-states) on the planet, and one of the poorest in Asia. An extremely fertile land that suffers from torrential flooding and periodic cyclones, Bangladesh has made great strides towards development in the past couple decades. The work we are doing has the potential to make a small step to improve the health of families there, something that we take for granted in the United States.

Now, as of July 25th, we packed our house, put our things into storage, and set out on a drive across half of the United States from Maryland to Texas. Ezra did great in the car on the way down, alternatively napping and playing, much better than Alison and I for the most part.

We will actually leave the US on August 14th and arrive in Bangladesh on the 16th after about 26 hours of flights and layovers luckily having only one stop in Dubai.

We will use this blog to post pictures, video, and stories about our time there. Check back from time to time or subscribe to the entries via email or RSS feed.