Sylvia's Journal

In sharp contrast to the day before, yesterday was more of a solo day. It started with breakfast in a restaurant that was deserted except for two chipper waiters, one of them Rosario with the Portuguese roots. I chose the local breakfast, a chili omelet. Nowhere else have I had this cooked just right with exactly the right amount of hot chilies.

While waiting for my order I had time to study the English language newspaper. It was full of encouraging news about the new prime minister and her cabinet which has several women in important roles. One of them will be Hillary’s counterpart. Most of the people I have worked with are happy about Bangladesh’s new leadership, and so this country joins the happy brigade that already has America and Ghana marching behind their inspiring new drummers.

One disconcerting piece of news was an action by a local Moslem council to close the road, on which its mosque is located, to women. There is a photo with the story that shows an elderly gentleman with a stick. He stands at the entrance to the street and beats every woman who dares to enter. It is a little piece of the middle ages that is preserved in this capital city of a country that has at least 5 women in its top leadership and another 20 or so elected in Parliament. That there isn’t more outrage about this kind of behavior is unimaginable.

In another piece of B-news, a school of girls is exhorting its graduating class to go out into the world and emulate great men. I understand the idea but the wording bothers me. There are so many great women to emulate it is in this part of the world (later in the evening I met a whole roomful).

Yesterday’s program consisted of writing the retreat report and then going over the draft with the key players before finalizing it. I like these zippy assignments: fly in, hold retreat, write report and fly out, all in 3 days.

I had taken public notes on the whiteboard (with permanent marker) and made digital pictures at the end of each session, not having time to type the notes up as I was doing double duty as a facilitator/note taker. From some 40 jpg files I was able to reconstruct the data and surrounded them with a narrative to capture the deliberations. By the end of the day I removed the word Draft from the title page and emailed the report away from my to-do list.

I said goodbye to my new friends at the School and made a last courtesy visit to the Centre and went home to prepare for my evening out with Sayeed and Shika. They brought me along as a mystery guest to the house of their relatives the Khans, old friends of several of us at MSH. I was immediately taken into this noisy and boisterous family gathering that was in honor of Sayeed’s son and his brand-new wife. I had not seen the son since he was a teenager and so did not recognize him. I learned much about the social context of weddings and wondered what it would be like for the young couple to have to appear weeks on end at lunches and dinners until they leave to go back to New York later this month.

Many of the nieces and nephews live part or all of the time in the US. Most of the men appear to be IT professionals while the young women are financial analysts and economists. It is the generation of their mothers that paved the way for this. Those feisty women were the activitist who pushed and pulled, created organizations, convinced donors to give them money and are still busy, now on the world’s stage, to help their sisters along. We talked about what had changed for women in Bangladesh during their lifetime (they are huge) and noted there is still much more to be done (e.g. men with sticks and blocked streets).

I thought about the book The Namesake and it turned out that most had seen the film. It’s the story that some of them have lived as well. It is about loneliness and being an outsider and having kids that become outsiders back in your homeland. Seen against the backdrop of this noisy and happy family gathering I imagined the new bride in her Queens apartment, later this month, solo, while hubby is away all day at work. I heard she has sisters in the US and can only hope that their presence will be enough to stave off the loneliness.