Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Hi All- the news is that Keith is out and Tania is in. Thanks to all those who really enjoyed Keith's postings, but since he is getting back to work, I will be handling this blog for now. I can fully assure you I will will be neither as funny nor as articulate as my husband. Just so we are clear. However, I will be posting some basic info about the kids and will try to do so regularly.

We have been home for a week now, and this marks the twins' 6 mos bday. They have adjusted rather well to the move. We have had them in for their first check up, where they were subjected to ear irrigations, 2 shots a piece and Kalil got his very own nebulizer. The new meds, though similar, are doing their job, so I guess I won't complain about the price going from .50 to $30. I appreciate those who have indicated that the boys look healthy, and not tiny as we reported them to be. To give you an idea, they scored 0% for height and head circumference and 2 and 4% for weight. So they are tiny ( the Dr did note that the US scales skew for white babies and Asians tend to score less. By comparison, Maya was at 25% for weight and 50% for height. She is now 50% and 90%).
Miss Maya is a trooper and already went back to school- a half day for her first day back in town and full time since. She missed her friends and is happy to be back. The reason I know this is because when she got home, she rolled around the floor and shouted, " I'm home, I'm home!".
Ok, that is all for now since the boys are up again.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Home

Hello all. We returned home safely Monday night, totally exhausted but in one piece. Everyone will be slowly recovering from fatigue, the 11 hour time change, and the 40-50 degree temperature difference and I'll return to work bit by bit over the next couple weeks. I'll try and add a few bits to explain what happened in the last few weeks and some pictures, and then I'll sew this up.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Coming Home

I haven't had time to write anything lately, and I probably won't. The news is that we got our NOC and passports on Sunday, and we are scheduled to get the boys US visas today. We have a hold on a flight that leaves here Sunday the 16th and gets in to the US on Monday in the early evening (33 hr travel time due to time changes). There's a flurry of activity upon leaving, so we will most likely be busy with saying our goodbyes and celebrating the success of the trip.

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Bottle Up and Explode

Things blow up here a lot. I’m not talking about terrorists with martyr vests or car bombs, stuff simply just up and explodes. Two weeks ago, we all awoke to a large “boom!” and flash of light down the road from us. Then the power went off. If I were in Lebanon, I would think “car bomb,” but I’m in Bangladesh, so instead I thought “car bomb.” Then I quickly revised this down to "pipe bomb" and then “transformer.” This is not an alien experience to me, as I’ve had a transformers blow a few times in the US. Here they blow every other Tuesday, and if it rains, which it always does, on Thursday as well. One morning, three transformers that I could hear exploded somewhere between ruti, omlette, and cha. Cyclone Reshmi had been in the Bay of Bengal for days, masquerading as a tropical depression, and it had rained here three days solid without pause. In any case, none of the transformers were ours, and we had our typical morning brown-out and went on with life. Since then, there have been various loud pops and bangs, as its seems an electrical wire will stray here, fall down there, and this tends to create loud noises of varying sorts. Much of this can be explained by poor infrastructure and the rest can be explained by a land ruled by chaos and habit. Panna Phupa told me that 30% of produced energy is lost in the system due to people pirating energy. They simply hop up on the electrical poles, attach some wiring and viola, free juice. The government owns the energy industry, and no private firms will get involved because you just can’t make money if there’s that much pirating.

This reminds me of a tale I’ve told before. When we first arrived in Bangladesh a couple years back, we stopped to get natural gas. Nearly all cars here have been converted to run on compressed natural gas, as Bangladesh has lots of it, and it burns much cleaner. So, nearly everyone has a big gas cylinder in the trunk. So, we stopped and started filling up. You could see various people milling about the station; most people are not in their cars while filling up. So, Berry Phupu turns to me and says, “usually, we get out of the car while filling up, but it’s raining.” “Why?” I ask. “Sometimes the cars explode.” Sure enough, I’m reading the newspaper here that week, and there’s a picture of a car that exploded at the filling station. For the rest of my time here, I was the guy trying to look nonchalant and unconcerned as I crept away from the car and hid behind anything that appeared to be flame retardant.

This trip has been very different from the last. One of the largest differences is that we don’t go out much. The first time we came, everyone was inviting us to dine either out or at their house. We were also constantly shuttling from Panna Phupa and Berry Phupu’s house to Boro Phupu’s house where Tania’s parents were staying. This trip has been largely different. One, the boys start working themselves into sleep around 6 PM. People know that were really tied up with the kids, so we never go out at night. Two, I haven’t been going over to Boro Phupu’s house on Fridays because I need some time to myself, and the trip is horrendous. It’s a nauseating stop-start trip through the heart of Dhaka that lasts about 45 minutes and goes something like this, repeated at 10 second intervals: break, gas, break, gas, honk. Break, break, honk. Gas, gas, break, vomit. It ends in a construction zone that you have to walk through to get to their house, holding babies, trying not to fall into a large open trench or get hit by some random 12 year old with a sledgehammer. Work crews here do not look like the work crews of home. They look like someone walked down the street asking, “anyone want to bang on sh*t?. It pays!” And four or five random guys in lungi’s (basically man skirts) take them up on this, and half of them are boys who should be working with erector sets, not installing sewer drains.

Before I get to serious adoption issues, a last note on explosions. It’s a tough commentary to make, to blend the appropriate amount of snide sarcasm, jingoism, and yet not give you an idea that people in Bangladesh are anything other than peace-loving people. People do make bombs here and set them off to make points. It happens. Typically, its one political party attacking another, rather than say, someone blowing up an American business, and these things are rare. Bangladesh is no Gaza Strip, nor is it even Pakistan. It is easy to see why Bangladesh separated from both India and Pakistan, in turn. Bangladesh is a Muslim nation, but they are a Muslim nation that is geographically separated from Pakistan by India and thus culturally more like India than Pakistan. Although religiously, Bangladesh could be thought of more like its old name “East Pakistan,” but culturally, it is more like it’s even older name “East Bengal.” Hindu’s live here in peace with Muslim’s, and Hindu holidays remain national holidays much like the Muslim ones.

Bangladesh does have an Islamist political party, Jamaat Islamia, and there are plenty of folks running around with bushy beards, wishing that we returned to how things were back when Mohammed (PBUH) was around (My two favorite things in this philosophy: one, men dying their hair and beards with henna, giving them orange hair. This seems a little vain and perhaps a little feminizing for the Prophet, but I’m obviously an outsider here and not hip to the fashions of 1st century AD Medina. And, two, brushing your teeth with some type of twig. Surely the Prophet would not object to Crest). Jamaat has largely been powerless since the country began. They are currently moving towards legitimacy by attempting to enter the elections this year. It’s unclear if they’ll be allowed, but they’ve removed certain offensive things from their party constitution that might keep one out of the election, like, say declaring that the country of Bangladesh is illegitimate. If you’re yearning for the Caliphate, perhaps elections for parliament aren’t your thing. Despite this party’s existence, I just can’t see Bangladesh approaching anything close to Sharia and Islamist rule. There are lots of reasons for this, but I would say that by and large people here are NOT yearning for the Caliphate: they’re yearning for food and shelter, money, jobs, peace, and prosperity. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Everyone here has a hustle, whether it’s selling cell phone time on a corner, popcorn on the street, or high speed internet from a corner shop in the bazaar. Actually, most people here have three hustles going on. This is the reason why microloans are so important and successful here. People here are busy carving out a better life, and it may just take a few dollars to do so. I read an interesting article about a guy here who got a microloan to farm crab here. He was initially laughed at--no one here farms crab--but he turned it into a living. The loan amount? 2000 Taka, a little less than $30. $30? I can’t decide which I want to do more, own a crab farm or get into the microloan business (My mom is already in that business, having given money to the Grameen bank recently). Poverty breeds anger, and although there’s plenty of poverty here, there is also opportunity.

This discussion is all an excuse for me to write about TV here. Most folks here get Indian TV on their cable, and trust me, you will see nary a burka. Indian TV is nearly as over-sexed as US TV. I don’t have any great examples--let’s just say that tight tops and bare midriffs are in full effect--but the funniest thing I have seen is the cheerleaders for the Indian cricket league. In one televised match I saw, these cheerleaders weren’t in the stands, inciting the crowds to pull, pull, pull for their team. They were merely in the studio, at the ready in their pig tails, mini-skirts, and pom-poms to dance, dance, dance us into a commercial break. One difference between here and there: this can’t be a respectful gig here. In the US, our cheerleaders tend to be young and fresh-faced. These looked oddly like they had been hired off the street.


Here's a link to my favorite TV commercial. It's both funny and has a great song in it. Can't wait for the follow up commercial when this guy's colon explodes about three hours later.


Adoption Update

We are progressing rapidly. We now have the NOC, and we should have the boy’s passports by Sunday. This means that we could actually leave early! I have to go down to Emirates Air and see if an early departure is possible, and then convince Tania’s parents to come back early with us. It will mean missing Tania’s cousins wedding here on the 21st. We would all love to be there for the wedding, but we would all love to be home more. The last few nights here have been particularly upsetting. Amidst all the joy over getting documents and watching the Obama victory on CNN, there have been some really challenging evenings due to fatigue, homesickness, and the dreaded demon plague of scabies. I will put up a graph here soon detailing each of our desires to be home. It waxes and wanes for most but for Maya it has been a steady climb. She used to just say she wanted to go home when tired or crying for some other reason, but she now says it constantly. It will cost us about a grand to change our tickets, and Tania says she would pay that for three extra days at home. I said I would do it for an extra week.


Pictures to follow in my next post: children, transformers, and street-walking goats.