Barisal, Round 3 :: by mama

I recently made my third trip to Barisal, the southernmost of Bangladesh's six divisions. I was there for work, and it was as interesting as ever: muddy walks through villages to talk with local women, hot afternoons spent meeting with local health workers, and bumpy drives along one-lane dirt roads, dodging livestock and men carrying wood on their heads, to visit places like this local health center.

The fact that is was Ramadan made the trip even more interesting than usual. For example, we had some challenges finding food. More than once, we asked the staff in our guesthouse if we could possibly have a meal, and they gave us the ubiquitous Bangladeshi response, "Oh no, not possible." Hm. Even Muslim women are allowed to forgo fasting when pregnant, but apparently that was not of any concern to these guys.

Also, I got to experience firsthand another interesting Ramadan-related practice. In the days prior to the alarm clock, people were traditionally woken up for their pre-dawn meal by a guy who wandered the streets at about 4:30am, banging on pipes and generally making a racket as loudly and energetically as possible. It supposedly doesn't happen much in Dhaka anymore, and certainly not in our expat-heavy neighborhood, but I can verify that it is definitely still happening in Barisal. There was only one day when I didn't hear him -- maybe he had slept in? -- and that one day was blissful. (Side note: it never occurred to me to get up and look outside to see if he was dressed like this guy, but I now wish I had. That would have made it much more awesome than it was.)

We had originally flown down on the MAF flight, but we had logistical challenges and had to return by launch. [Note: The launch is not a boat. My Bangladeshi colleagues were cracking themselves up, talking about how expats refer to the launch as a boat. They are totally different! Silly expats.] Here, see for yourselves:

Anyway, so the launch involves an overnight river voyage pretty much directly north, leaving Barisal at 9:30 pm and arriving in Dhaka at about 8 am. It has three levels: the bottom level is just a big open space, where people lay out mats and food and whatever else they've brought with them:

The second level is small single cabins, and the third has the VIP rooms. Behold the glory of the VIP room (that would be my own sheet and pillow from home on the bed, because I am paranoid like that):

After a bit of a sleepless night, we arrived to the frenzy of the main launch terminal in Dhaka, elbowed our way out to the street, spent about a half hour on the phone with our driver as we attempted to locate the car, and finally, oh so happily, went home. Ah, Dhaka.