Geckos...and first words

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

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 !

Check out some of Ezra's one year photos.

Trip to Comila, Moinamati, Sonargaon, Dhaka

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

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

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

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

The Big Day

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...

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

On being illiterate

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.