Confessions of a Muslim, Asian.........-American??

Yes, I too need to blog about this historic event...GOBAMA! Especially now, since today is 5th November and I just posted an entry about being Bangladeshi versus an American. Let me start off by saying, my earlier blog was in reaction to a conversation I had with a group of Bangladeshi-Americans at the American Club here in Dhaka right after watching Obama's victory speech.

We were all having a friendly argument about how Bangladesh is going down the dumps. Some of us felt that we needed to get away and others felt we needed to stay to bring about changes. Anyway to not completely appear a blind nationalist I should point out that while I fervently defended Bangladesh saying we were still a relatively new nation and that changes would come slowly with time...I went back home and had the same argument with my dad but this time I was the one wanting to get away from here!

Anyway, so here goes to being American. I moved back to Bangladesh this summer in June after almost four years in America and let me tell you, I have not come across one person (neighbors/strangers) since I came back who had not asked me why I decided to come back? Yes, even after all the harassment during immigration, and the Bush blunders and other whatnots a lot of people here still continue to think of the US as the land of dreams.

Nevertheless, along with a more popular opinion at present, America had lost my respect a long time back. How in the world could a country considered the world's greatest democracy, start wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and support the military governments in Pakistan and guess what, even in Bangladesh! (We shall keep out of all the other blunders Bush made and for the moment just stick with America's greatest appeal to the world over...Democracy! the freedom to choose). Yes, I suppose the Afghanis and Iraqis love the fact they are now surrounded by the American army, or that Palestinians love America for supporting the Israeli government who not only keep the Palestinians enclosed on little strips of land but also control the flow of their food and water! Or that Pakistanis are ecstatic about thier very recent ex-Prime Minister Pervez Musharaf who with America's backing, controlled the people of Pakistan on a very tight leash for way to long. Yes, this must be the kind of democracy in America that appealed to the rest of the world.

You can forgive the-Bush-mistake once. But how could it have happened a second time? How in the world did so many Americans support this man a second time? This is the man that made a fool of not only himself but of America to the rest of the world.

To not make this blog too long, I shall end it by saying: No, I never really felt like an American ever before in my life.

How could I? My nationality was questioned both because of my RACE and my RELIGION. Yes, I am Muslim and I love being one but - No, you do not have the right to question me about it. As we all know, Barrack Hussain Obama, the 44th President of the United States had to campaign long and hard to convince Americans that he was a) not Muslim and b) that he was an American, and black ethnically. As a result of this, he did turn many Muslim-American voters off of him but I would just like to say, that I wasn't one of them.

I don't think he would have become the 44th President had he not divorced any relations with Islam completely. But do I think he is the man to restore America's place and respect to the rest of the world? Yes, I do. The fact that so many Americans, after so many years of foolishness has chosen to make Obama the president despite the Hussain in his name, and despite his skin color, my faith in Americans is a little restored. Not everything may work out as promised, and maybe Obama will not be able to bring back America to its position pre-Bush, but, he was able to make Americans take a step towards the right direction and choose Obama to be the President..... despite his ethnicity and despite his so called connections to Islam.

Identity Crisis?!?

I have never really considered or called myself an American. One, I may have been born there but I never lived in the US until four years ago. Second, I never really felt like I belonged in a country where no matter how well I spoke the language or picked up the culture, some people still needed to asked me where I was from originally.

Take for example, a good American friend of mine from here (L: forgive me for sharing this even after you explained it to me, it's too good an example) looked at a group photo of mine from college, and said something along the lines of all my friends having been internationals. Nope. All the people in the photograph had been Americans except maybe one/two. Many were Americans I think who had never in their lives left America. Ethnically my friends from the photo (taken after a performance - bhangra/hiphop) had been South Asian, African-American, Hispanic, etc. otherwise all those considered minority population and hence the question about their nationality. But what a question, and surprisingly all the way out here, even in Bangladesh!

Therefore, whatever problems Bangladesh may have, and we have quite a few - one of the poorest, highest crime rate (eh...one of the top i suppose), apparently even a terrorism breeding ground- I still belong and always will to Bangladesh first. If nothing else, nobody questions my nationality or ethnicity when I go about in this country. Also, we may be small and we may be poor but we did fight and gain our independence and the right to speak our mother-tongue.

P.S. I guess it's unfair of me to not add this: the friend I wrote about earlier did tell me that she assumed I was international (because I did not grow up in the US and we clearly had different definitions of identity/nationality etc.) and also the fact that all students of color at her college had been international students, is what made her ask me whether all the people in my photo had been international students also.

Imma working lady!

I’ve decided to take up blogging again. I figure it’s easier for me to keep in touch, and less of a nuisance for people who don’t want to read emails or facebook messages from me. Anyway so too much has happened since last year for me to try and take up from my last blog. I will just start a new entry with something that happened really recently. To give some background details, I now work at James P. Grant School of Public Health in Bangladesh. The work is very interesting, and the atmosphere dynamic and female dominated so for those who know me well, I am sure you can tell how perfect it is for me.

Anyway I am involved in a couple of projects that belong to the Center for Gender, Sexuality and HIV/AIDS a collaborating center between UNAIDS and BRAC School of Public Health. I’ve recently helped to complete an HIV stakeholders project, where we interviewed various key stakeholders working in the HIV field in Bangladesh to identify success, challenges and opinions on ways to move forward. The work was really helpful in giving me a good solid background on what has been going on in the HIV/AIDS field in the past and at present. The report was recently submitted to UNAIDS and my name is there as part of the research team!

I also helped coordinate and MC'd a student seminar to raise awareness about HIV to students from 6 public and private universities. That went really well and I’ll have a lot more to say about it in my next entry.

Our "White", "Brown" and "Blue" boys

I finished reading Jhumpa Lahiri's "the namesake" today. I'm starting to detect a pattern in my behavior after finishing each of these books. Okay so, so far, I've ended up finishing all of them a little after lunch time at work. This happens probably because I usually leave the last two or three chapters to be read together. Like I never just leave the last chapter to be read later (who does really?). Anyway so I finish the book, which so far have all ended depressingly, then sit in my cubicle for a while and make myself miserable thinking about all the sad things that I can remember (LOL). Then I play spider solitaire to distract myself for a bit sometimes even venturing on to a higher level of difficulty. And true to my track record, I'm yet to win a game at a medium level of difficulty. What can I say? LOL sitting games are just not my forte. I'll refrain from mentioning my abilities at other sports/games in this blog.

I don't really know any Lahiri fans so if I'm offending anyone, I apologize from beforehand. I can't claim to have read a lot of books but from my experience of the ones I have read, "A Suitable Boy" is a much better written, detailed and way more interesting than this one. I only compare Vikram Seth's book to Lahiri's because both are sort of about Calcatian families and put a lot of focus on Western influence on Indian/Bengali culture. Or it could only be because both are South Asian writers, writing about South Asian families/lives. The thing is, I read Seth's book at least 5/6 years back and fell in love with all 1500 pages of it. I remember finishing reading on Eid day (Muslim festival) and not wanting to leave my parents's room in my grandmother's house because I had been upset about the book finishing and my involvement with the characters lives ending. Yes, I was that strange. But over the years, I reverted to reading trashy romance novels (lol yes harlequinn! and just so you all know, this had been one of my biggest secrets until now) about 250/300 pages long which would all end with the couple married happily for ever after. Nevertheless I'm finally making a conscious effort to go back to reading non-trash this summer.

Ironically, I got in to the habit of reading on a holiday in Singapore where I went to visit my Aunt's family. I turned 13 that summer in Singapore and to say the least, it was a life changing summer. I made a best friend and discovered one of my favorite cousins, started to get to know my brother for the first time, started reading books in English also for the first time, discovered I could eat like a pig (I would finish a package of sausages on my own for breakfast) and had my first crush on a non-brown boy. LOL. I think (that really should be "remember") he was half chinese and half white and with our mutual sense of color coding, my cousin and I coded him "white", another dude (15 year old, maybe?) "blue" because of his blue colored eyes and just before the summer ended, I think we even managed to discover "brown" with an accompanying set of brown eyes. We spent EVERYDAY checking out these guys at an arcade on Orchard Road. So "white" we saw at that arcade for the first time wearing his school uniform, "blue" i can't quite remember, but I think my cousin had discovered him on the bus on her school route and finally "brown" on the escalator on the way to the mall where the arcade had been. It was without doubt a memorable summer.

What can I say? We were only 13! :) I will leave the story about the busboy we left my friend's number for (pretending it was mine) on a piece of napkin at a restaurant in Chicago earlier this year, for another day.

Anyway, I promised myself I would keep this entry short so people would actually want to read my blog. I'm still at work now and that was my short break to rouse myself from the depression brought about by the ending of "the namesake" :-). Also my brother just called to let me know that my Bangladeshi passport has been renewed. I've been bugging my family to take a trip to somewhere in India ever since I came back this summer. Their excuse of my expired passport has just ran out, so I'm also cheered at the prospect of maybe being able to bug my parents to the point of them giving in to a quick trip to Darjeeling in India. LOL I just have to refrain from letting the nagging reach the point of annoyance otherwise I might find myself back in Boston instead of India! :-)

Ramblings Of An Under-Utilised Mind

There was a time when I was so self-conscious about showing anyone my writing, that I would have been horrified at the idea of blogs! I don't know if it's my nature that's changed to "I don't really care about what others think" or my belief in my writing skills (after working at a paper, NewAge for a little while) or what exactly has changed, that allows me to actually enjoy doing blog entries. LOL really or it could be plain boredom as I haven't really been doing much at all this summer in Bangladesh.

Have you ever thought about how useful the word LOL really is? I mean a plain smile at the end of that sentence I wrote on the top paragraph about the boredom bit, would have only expressed mild cheerfulness. "Hehe" at the beginning would have just made me sound plain silly. But "LOL" is kinda like I'm laughing heartedly but mocking myself at the same time. I feel like it's perfect for me. And I don't know if it's common but do you too, think, "LOL", and are just a little tempted to say it out loud in the middle of actual, face-to-face conversations?

I don't know if it's the British dry humor or just Hugh Grant that made me laugh throughout Music and Lyrics. I loved it! I do realize what a silly movie it is but I am ashamed to say I quite enjoy chickflicks! :) Sometimes I think I shouldn't be liking Hugh Grant so much, what with his prostitute scandal and stuff but I'm yet to really decide how I feel about either that or prostitution. Just to clarify, like most other people, I am confused about whether prostitution should be legalized or not given all its pros and cons. LOL I realize that doesn’t say much, but that's a whole different blog entry.

One thing that I actually have been doing, (after all that talk about not seeing through to any of my plans in the last entry and also in this one) is reading the translation of the Quran. I must admit when I started looking at it, it was from a womens studies major's perspective but as I go on, I get confused about whether I am looking at it for my own interest, as in for my own life or for my studies and to make arguments in papers, to friends and stuff. My parents are from two separate worlds of understanding when it comes to religion. My mom is extremely conservative, traditional and completely confused about where one begins and the other ends. My dad on the other hand, is as laid back about religion as he is about most other things given that there is some sort of explanation or logic behind the matter. Isn't that interesting? It really gave us the space to kinda make up our own minds about things between their two extremes. Religion, has been one of them for me. I know I like my religion and no matter what anyone else says I don't really feel like it is as strict as people make it out to be. What's more interesting is that God has asked us to interpret the Quran on our own to be able to guide our own lives. I mean how much more leeway can you get from a religion than that? Of course leaving the Quran to be translated by every Tom, Dick and Harry also means that you leave it open to be taken out of context and be used anyway people want. Anyway, the reason I mention religion at all is because of something interesting I have noticed from people's understanding of Surah 4 which is about women. I've had to look at that Surah a couple of times for different women's studies or religion courses I've taken. Since then, I've also looked at that same chapter for my own interest. Funny enough every time I ask someone different to explain it to me like my TA, Professor, friends or even my dad, I get a different explanation for the lines. I am yet to figure out if it's because of the English translation because I never managed to give the same translation of Surah 4 to the people I've asked or because really, it is supposed to mean something different to each of us given our backgrounds and understanding of things. I don't know. I am quite confused and have even thought of maybe learning Arabic to actually understand the Quran. LOL but that's where my laziness and attitude for never seeing through to any plans really kick in!

In case you’re wondering, I am not really religious. LOL or at least not in the typical “Islamic” way :)

Hoping To Be A Mother Soon?

Can I just tell you how many plans I had initially made for this summer? Unfortunately I haven’t had the will or the interest to see through to most of them. Let’s see, number one was to successfully accomplish my internship at Social Marketing Company. I’m still working at SMC and will be doing so until August 27th when I leave for the States, but I don’t know if the successful bit will actually happen. I’ll tell you in a minute why. Second was to lose weight because I have convinced myself, if I don’t manage to do it while still in college, I’ll never end up doing it. The week I returned to Bangladesh, I started interning at SMC and that same week, I convinced SMC to let me use their very male dominated fitness center. They even tried locking me out of it my second week here, but I went directly to the highest management and got access to it once again J. Unfortunately, that incident killed my enthusiasm for working out during my lunch hour at work. Instead I had been reading books during my lunch breaks. That, was my third goal/plan. To spend this summer, reading as many books I could get my hands on and watch all those movies I have always wanted to and have been recommended to but never actually had the time. Okay so this is what happened with the books. I read something by Coetzee, hopefully I’m spelling his name correctly and was so depressed over it that I kept texting my brother about it and even went to see him at his work so he could cheer me up. My brother’s cheering up consisted of scolding me for wasting time at work, sitting and pretending to work while really I had just been reading. He suggested that I would be making better use of my time, staying at home and napping. If you all don’t believe me, you can read the text he sent me. LOL we all understand the value of napping in my family. I’m reading Tuesdays with Morrie right now and yet again getting upset. LOL I might just switch to learning GIS (Geographical Information System – this map making program) instead of reading, as that had been another goal for this summer that I’m yet to even start. Um watching movies didn’t go too well either because I started with Departed and I abhor violent movies that end in everyone being dead anyway. I mean what’s the point of violence if you can’t even protect yourself? Yeah I’m very peculiar about how I want my books and movies to end.

So this is what happened with SMC. I had a little confusion about the project, Maternal and Neonatal Health (MnH) Program, that I’m working for before I came. So the MnH project was launched at the beginning of this year to bring about changes in knowledge and practice of childbirth processes to decrease the maternal and neonatal mortality rates (MMR and NMR) in Bangladesh. This is how confused I am about my work because I am not too sure about whether we are working to just reduce MMR or both MMR and NMR, of course any process undertaken to reduce one will also reduce the other to some degree. Bangladesh has one of the highest rates of MMR and the region where the pilot MnH program is being launched is Barisal (one of the district/state in Bangladesh), which has the second highest MMR in Bangladesh. Sylhet, another district in Bangladesh has the highest MMR but the reason for the birthing difficulties and death in Sylhet apparently are not due to the typical issues of access to good health care, lack of knowledge, etc. So what SMC is doing through the MnH program is launching a kit called the safe delivery kit (SDK) with a plastic sheet for the mother to lye on during delivery, a blade to cut the umbilical cord with, two pieces of string to tie the umbilical cord with, a bar of soap and this scissor kind of sterilized plastic thing to actually cut the umbilical cord. Did I happen to mention 90% of the births in Bangladesh take place at home and most of them not in the presence of a trained person? Anyway, so the SDK is for changing the practice of birthing, but this product is for illiterate villagers who are wary of any new thing that is introduced into their lives and has very little faith in Western medicine. Therefore, to the enhance the knowledge of villagers and the people who service them (these health care providers are typically high school graduates with their knowledge in medicine coming from experience) SMC is setting up teaching sessions, outdoor discussions with only mothers, whole family, or just decision-makers in families like the mother-in-law and husbands to not only introduce our new product but also to teach them the dangers signs of pregnancy, the importance of being ready for delivery at any time with money and traveling vehicle, to encourage them to see professionals not only before and during birth but also post delivery, etc. And the way we are going about this training is that people at the head office, (like me J) are planning and making the curriculum and holding training sessions for the heads of our regional offices. This training is called training of the trainers (TOT). Our regional officers came last week, and we had our TOT session. Now these officers will be launching another training session, which too we are making the curriculum for, to teach the non-graduate medical practitioners (NGMP) who actually provide the health care in villages. Villagers do not trust doctors and think they’re too costly along with Western medicine. SMC has a few selected NGMPs who work on most of their projects. NGMPs are called different things by different organizations and by villagers and they are not all even high school graduates, this is a criterion for being SMC’s NGMP. The NGMPs will conduct the actual work of talking to the villagers and convincing them of the importance of care before, during after pregnancy, the use of SDK, safe birthing processes, etc. SMC is going to take down data of births using SDK and without to see changes in MMR. If the project is successful in the two districts being launched, Barisal and Patuakhali, it’s going to be launched on a countrywide basis in a couple of years. So MY WORK, lol consists of being a part of all these processes in Barisal and Patuakhali and also the advertising campaign, which has been actually given to an outside third party company. But since the product launching has been pushed back to August 15th as opposed to July 15th, my work right now consists of translating all the syllabus, curriculum, power point slides for training etc from Bengali to English. LOL and here lies the issue with my internship and it being successful. I THINK in both Bengali and English and all those people who know me well enough, KNOW that I speak in both languages all the time regardless of other peoples’ comprehension of either Bengali or English…so can you understand how painful it is for me to translate full sentences in Bengali to full sentences in English???

An Invite to My Wedding :-)

So I wrote the entry below while at work today but couldn’t upload it since I don’t have web access (imagine!) there. And then I tried uploading at my friend Shezami’s house but that didn’t work either since we were running late for a hookah session at this really nice lounge near my workplace J but now I’m finally home and can update my blog. Two random things have happened in the meantime that I must share!

Okay so everyday at lunchbreak at work, I go down to this dinky storage room where they have a treadmill (apparently it’s there fitness room but no one uses it) and use it for about a half hour. Today the guard who logs me in, came in and chatted with me for a few minutes. Our whole conversation was just hillarious, actually it wasn’t even a conversation, it was just her talking and me panting in response. So some background on the guard: younger than me probably, married, illiterate, really naïve and a sweetheart. Lol so she comes and asks me why I was doing what I was doing and then she answers it herself saying something along the lines of “oh, is it to loose weight? But you don’t look like you have lost any” and then when I laughed, she went on to try and make it a little better and she was like “ you’re not so bad looking, it’s only the weight and your front tooth that juts out a little”. And then she couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t married at my age. LOL

Here is where my obsession with skin colors come from. Everytime I fly back home, I have a conversation along the lines of this one with at least one Bengali passenger. This time it was a woman with three unmanageable kids and who understand no English whatsoever. So when the immigration officer in Bahrain started to get annoyed at her, I translater for her. Later on, she asked me if I was Bengali and when I nodded, she went on to ask if I was “original bengali”. Lol whatever that means! I figure I get all these weird questions cos I’m light skinned and when I spoke to my friend Shezami (who is darker skinned and beautiful!) a couple of days back, she told me how everyone in Malaysia (where she used to study) wouldn’t believe she is Bengali and instead would keep asking her if she is Sri Lankan! Lol gotta love our culture! You gotta be the right shade of brown to be Bengali J


I figure it's time I updated my blog and since I'm sitting here at work designing boring data collection forms, I think it's the perfect time. Really, what were they expecting? This is only my second week here and it took me this long to stop being jet-lagged and now instead, i've made up my own timetable much to my mom's dismay. Lol I wake up at 6am and it's my bedtime by 8pm Bangladesh time. It's working perfectly, really. I just need to be awake for work and then a few hours with my family and time to check facebook (notice how it's become a part of my daily schedule) and then back to bed again. I use work time to stay in touch with friends here and I get three day weekends (uhha Guha) so I can meet up with them then.So I should probably start with last week. Unfortunately the highlight (for lack of a better word, I'll try to look up a better one before I post this but incase I don't..) of the week was my Babu Uncle's (Mom's second brother) death. He had been sick and in a lot of pain for a while so apparently this is better. The last time I saw/spoke to him was last year so it's a little hard for me to imagine it and I suppose it's not really gonna hit me unless I go to his house in Chittagong and meet my cousins there. I'm really dreading that and so far I've been able to use work as an excuse to not do it and also cos my mom's is dreading going to his house, but my cousins are leaving for Australia soon so we're probably going to have to do it soon. It's about 6 hours from Dhaka (the capital city, where my parents live but both my parents are originally from Chittagong).I think I want to write about my Uncle today.

My mom has (I've decided it's a little too soon to write had) nine siblings and he was the first to go. I've a million and one cousins, spread out all over the world but my family is quite close (MahshAllah). Of course we also have a million problems, since we're all Bengali and naturally nosy but let's see maybe this will paint a better picture...so when we found out my Uncle had brain cancer, his siblings, kids, neices, nephews, extended cousins, everyone came over from different parts of the world to see him. Those who could afford it, went to see him in Singapore and those who couldn't, visited him here in Bangladesh. So he was kinda like the person holding our family together (I'm really stealing this line from my cousin's blog but I felt exactly the same even before I read hers so I'm gonna write it anyway :)). Of course it was my Grandmother doing that when she was alive but it was definitely Mejo mama later.

It's somehow more painful because he lived in the house where our parents grew up and my Grandmother lived until her death. It's a huge empty house right now.The people I've shown photos of our family home in Khondokia (which is our village in Chittagong) to- he designed it and actually helped build it. I wish you guys could see it. It's beautiful, huge and open. It has that one big room for mejbaans (huge family lunch (a Chittagonian thing) during which they actually slaughter cows and goats the day of the event and also everyone from the neighborhood comes and usually the only food is really spicy meat and really think rice and daal (lentil soup)), lunches and dinners and also where most of the kids sleep (on the floor) when we go to visit. And then a couple of bedrooms on the second floor for our moms and he built the beds with the wood from the trees that had been cut off to clear the land. He even built the second floor balcony in such a way so that the women in our family can look down and see whatever's going on outside on the lawn but not necessarily be seen by the men outside. He built the garage with electrical lines so that if we ever get musicians for some event, they can play there. There is a badminton court on the next plot of land for the kids.

Unfortunately, I never got a chance to actually go there for any event so far and it looks like I might just be going there for my Uncle's mejbaan (Instead of a Qul four days after someone dies, we have mejbaans. But you can have mejbaan for any sort of event).I must mention that he even had the clay ovens built just to make naans, somewhere behind the house. I'm not gonna say he was perfect but he definitely knew what he wanted and how to go about getting it :). When I saw it for the first time, I want to say maybe two summers back, I told him that I was gonna have my mehendi (the singing/dancing/henna night that brides and grooms have before the wedding) there and he became so happy. I just said it in passing cos it's perfect for an event like that but he went around telling everyone in our family so I decided some time back that I'm definitely having my mehendi there InshAllah. I haven't decided when I'm getting married or to whom, but those are minor details that can be worked out later.I should probably go back to work now but I just wanted to end this by inviting you all to my mehendi/wedding. Like I said before I don't know when, but the mehendi's gonna be in Khondokia InshAllah :)