Ramadan in Chittagong

I should admit that I haven't been updating for several reasons. Primarily my life here in Chittagong has settled into a routine schedule of work and eat. Additionally, I spent about a week and a half sicker than I can remember ever being before, so my energy for even writing emails was entirely diminished. More on that later, though!

So despite finding myself back in a routine in life, things here are still staying interesting. With a bit of turbulence and some improvising the school year here at AUW has started. I probably only know about 30% of my 75 students' names so far, but am learning more every day- and like I said, I was sick for a week (that's my excuse anyway).

Life in Chittagong has changed dramatically for me in the last few weeks in two ways. Firstly, Dan has arrived! I'll post a link to his blog at the end of this entry. He will probably be better than I am at posting interesting photos. He arrived right when I was starting to actually recover from the flu (perhaps of the swiney variety?!), so it was nice to have someone feeding me right when my appetite came back. I think Dan was a little shocked when the nurse came in to check on me and said that I was looking more lively than I had in a week. I think Dan had thought I was looking horrible- little did he know how horrible I had been! Basically I was stuck in bed with fevers that spiked and dropped as if someone were tuning through my internal radio stations looking for a good song- 99.8 100.3 101.5 102.4 103.6 102.3 100.0 101.3 99.6 100.5... up and down up and down. I developed a rash basically all over my body. I basically couldn't open my eyes without feeling pain behind them. After a few retrospectively hysterical bouts of delirium (during which time I found myself clutching desperately at a thread that I found in my bed and weeping that the thread was my closest friend...) the nurses and doctors at AUW decided that they should take some blood to make sure I didn't have typhoid or malaria. A man came in from the lab that AUW uses and I was called forward to sit at the table in the Health and Wellness Center and have my blood taken. However, this man and I were not on the same page. As soon as I started sitting at that table I started feeling light headed. I lost my vision and started losing my hearing- I was definitely about to black out. However, there was a part of my consciousness that was aware of the fact that this man had to take my blood so that eventually someone could give me something to make me feel better. So I resolved to stay sitting at that table until he took as much of my blood as he needed! But as I was sitting there my arm would start to droop sadly and the man would say: HOLD STILL! And I would mumble an apology and try to hold still- which is harder than it sounds when you think the room around you is moving. As soon as I felt him finish up taking my blood I decided I needed to lye down. "I think I need to lye down" I said, and I started to crawl onto the floor right there under the table. The man, panicking and perhaps a little nervous that someone might come in and think he had put me in this floored state, grabbed my arm and pulled me to my feet. He called for a nurse who rushed in and found me, once again, trying to lye down on the floor. The nurse pulled me up and started herding me towards the "chill out room" where I had made myself a nest on one of the spare beds. Luckily I was lucid enough to alert her of the fact that I was about to throw up, and she managed to get me into the bathroom in time. After throwing up and then sleeping for the rest of the day I started feeling better. Eventually they got my test results back and I came up negative for both typhoid and malaria, and have actually been feeling great the last few days!

So I have physically recovered, and Dan is here to entertain me, so thing have been going great in that respect!

The other huge change that's happened in Chittagong in the last few weeks is that Ramadan has started. For those of you who aren't familiar with the ins-and-outs of Ramadan, I'll just give you a short run down. Basically Ramadan is the month of fasting in Islam. What this means is that Muslims who are observing Ramadan do not drink any water and do not eat any food from sunrise to sundown every day for the month. This has become a part of my life for several reasons despite the fact that I'm not fasting. Firstly, every morning at about 5:20 a siren alerts all people in Chittagong that it is now officially time to stop eating. The siren then sounds again at about 7:30 in the evening to alert everyone that it is now okay to eat again. The first time I heard this siren I thought it was a tsunami warning and I found myself wondering if living on the 6th floor of my building would be protection enough against a tsunami. However, I soon realized what the siren was actually for and now I anticipate its sound in the morning while I'm half-awake after my neighbors inadvertently wake me up when they get up to make an early meal for themselves, and again in the evening after work.

Because there is no eating during the day during Ramadan, every restaurant is closed all day. This basically means that Dan and I are making all of our own meals. It's still possible to go out during the day and buy uncooked food- vegetables and fruits, grains and lentils, etc. because people really do feast during Ramadan after sunset. Also on the streets you can buy what's called iftar (iftar is actually the meal that happens at the end of the day after sunset- but people also refer to the food by this name). So every restaurant that is closed during the day opens up street stalls at night and sells all sorts of iftar- samosas, chick peas, fried chilis (a lot of deep fried food actually), and desserts (also deep fried). I've found it's difficult now to buy naan or parota or roti on the streets, whereas before it was incredibly easy, but now it's easy to go out and buy samosas, so it's a compromise.

Something that I find interesting here is that by the end of the day people are far less productive. Dan and I went to Central Plaza to buy fabric and even though iftar time was still not for another half an hour, we were told to come back another time. People just get so hungry that things literally shut down. Also right after iftar time it's possible to go out onto the street and just walk down the middle of it. Traffic has stopped, and shops are quiet. Even beggars won't follow you around during this time because everyone is busy eating for the first time in 14 hours. When I was working in NYC I had a job taking 15 boys to Central Park to go ice skating. Needless to say that experience was loud and chaotic. When the boys were back on the bus, however, we would give each of them two chocolate chip cookies. The moments that followed us handing out the cookies were the only quiet moments in the entire afternoon, and this is much what Bangladesh is like at iftar time. The streets calm down, the beggars don't follow you down the street, and people don't yell at you from their shops. Everyone is busy eating.

Well, I should actually get going to go buy some samosas and some bananas before things start closing at iftar. I'll try to give some general updates soon- maybe with photos! There's a vegetable market near my house that Dan and I went to the other day, and I really want to return to with a camera. You basically get to it by walking through a little alley where men sell fruit and dried fish. In the market you can buy all sorts of vegetables or you can buy fish or shrimp, mutton (which hangs, whole, from the rafters) or chickens (which you pick out, live, and they kill and feather for you). So hopefully I can get up the courage to take some photos there, because it's a pretty awesome spot.

I hope you all are well

--- Catie


Dan's Blog:

http://blog.danbretl.com/travel/