Sylvia's Journal

It’s a birthday present I never want to have again: I sat through about 14 power point presentations while trying to suppress what was probably an allergic reaction to the pollen that is visible on the pond. A nice waiter who saw me run out of the conference room repeatedly, red in the face, half choking, took pity on me. He asked my permission to make me a local brew that would take care of my problem: black tea with sugar, ginger strips and 4 cardamom pods. I had two glasses and from then on I called him doctor Kalam which got many giggles from the other waiters. It sort of worked and calmed down my irritated throat, besides tasting very nice.

I discovered several people who fondly remembered this and that MSH colleague and I could fill them in on as much as 5 years or more of missed history. I also found a compatriot (from the motherland) who is a psychiatrist working on the hidden and mostly unexplored issue of mental health in Bangladesh. Our last speaker of the day enlightened us further on the complexity of trying to scale up mental health care in this society. Just seeing the many dimensions laid out was good to produce a mild level of stress in anyone called to do something about it. The plan is to train village doctors according to an algorithm that is described in the book ‘Where there is no psychiatrist.’ If this was posed as a question the answer would be ‘everywhere’ since there are practically none outside Dhaka, and only very few inside.

We are secluded from the world in the conference center, far from the maddening Dhaka crowds and in the presence of lovely singing birds (most of the day but especially in the early morning) and trees full of screeching bats (at dusk), a pond from where some of our food comes from (we are told you can keep what you catch but you have to do it with your hands) and a pavilion jutting out into/over the pond as I remember from movies about the good old days of British India.

There is also an internet center with 10 seats and excruciatingly slow and old computers, but then again, it is more than I expected and we are connected after all. Just no pictures for now. I will add these later – they would overtax the system and my patience.