Friday, May 20, 2011

picnic

This week was a picnic with our immediate neighbors -- my host dad's three brothers and their families. Here a 'picnic' means that you cook and eat outside with music playing (perhaps the Bangladeshi equivalent of a backyard bar-b-que). In this case we were just in the open area in front of the house. It was very good biriyani with sweet yogurt for desert. Before and after the food there was a lot of singing and dancing, so it was a very lively and long evening.

Rabbi, in the center below, is my substitute room-mate. When roommate Shuvo is on night duty, Rabbi comes to stay over ...so I'm sure not to be lonely.

Saturday, May 14, 2011

A mango storm

Last week I was at our main office when a storm blew up. Hungry for katcha am (unripe mango), I hurried down to the entrance, where several others were already waiting. We watched for several minutes as the wind whipped the mango trees in our courtyard ...then finally a couple mangoes fell, and I rushed out in the the rain to grab them. But the wind kept getting stronger, and soon mangoes were falling from all the trees, along with leaves and branches. Then suddenly, in a fierce gust, the tree in front of us snapped in half and filled the courtyard with its branches.

So what was looking like a record mango crop suddenly was cut in half. I think many other areas also had similar losses.

But the mango did not go to waste. Lots was eaten fresh with salt, and much more was pickled as spicy amer achar.


Harvest

It is harvest time for the irrigated rice crop, and this year it is a good harvest. Most of the harvest work is done by hand, but the larger farmers use simple motorized threshing drums to speed up that work a little.

During harvest time it seems like everyone is busy, and the roads turn into straw drying floors, and cycling takes a little extra effort.


Being uncle


This is from Easter weekend, which I spent over at Jacob & Hosanna's. The picture is from their blog.

Friday, May 6, 2011

...and a bidi factory

Just behind the CNG station is a bidi factory, owned by the same family. ...the same family, in fact, that owns the land MCC leased for our project site. From what I'm told, this bidi factory was where they started and the base from which they later got into other business and real estate.

Bidis are handrolled, unfiltered cigarettes -- sold for Tk 6 per pack of 25. That's 4 for a taka, or 3 a penny. So getting your nicotine fix doesn't cost you much here in Bangladesh.

...and making the bidis doesn't pay much either. I was told these Mukti Bidi employees are paid Tk 16 per 1,000 bidis rolled, and that they can roll up to 12,000 per day. That would close to Tk 200 per day (over $3), and I doubt they actually get that much. Whatever it is, I doubt any of these employees have made it big like the factory owner ...or are getting free (mukti = free) of financial worry any time soon.


A CNG station...

My new room-mate Shuvo has a job at a CNG station (Compressed Natural Gas). Most of Bangladesh seems to run on CNG; as low as gas prices are, it ends up being much cheaper than diesel or gasoline. It also runs much cleaner, so this has been great for Bangladesh's urban air quality. But Bangladesh hasn't kept up with exploration & drilling, so the gas supplies can't keep up with demand. This summer Bangladesh's big fertilizer plants, which use gas as feedstock, are shut down, and CNG filling stations have to shut down for several hours a day of rationing.

Because of frequent power cuts, the compressor can't be run off of the electric grid. It has its own 500 kW generator -- inside this building:

Here we all are in front of the generator. Shuvo is second from left. His cousin Anwar, 3rd from left, is the station manager, and got Shuvo the job. He also often stays over in our room.