Back to Bangladesh

We had a wonderful 10 week trip home to America, spent hours and hours visiting family and friends and eating way too much.  We enjoyed the quiet and beauty of Maine---lots of nature walks, ocean sails and campfires, s'mores and lobsters, salads and cheese and chocolate.    

 October 10th we board a plane in Portland, Maine and arrive 30 hours later in what feels like a different planet.   It sends me reeling every time and takes at least two weeks to regain my balance.   It's not just the jetlag.  It's the craziness of being in our rural home surrounded by pine forests one day and 48 hours later find ourselves in the craziness of Dhaka riding in a rickshaw, dodging people and goats and traffic. It's the strangeness of looking at our calendar and seeing that just a few days earlier we were having a quiet dinner out with our friends Ben and Laura.  And now here we are in our other world -
where many of the women wear veils and men wear lungis,  where cows and goats roam the streets and where the azan (call to prayer) wakes us before 5am and we buy our chickens live in the local bazar instead of in the poultry section of Hannaford.  

We feel rested and ready to get back to work, but we have arrived back just in time for two big religious holidays so every one is on 'chuti' (vacation)!  This week the country's 16 million Hindus celebrated Durga Puja.  The goddess Durga is believed to have divine power against all evils.  Puja ended last night with a jubilant procession (beginning at 10pm) with loud drums and dancing as they took her statue and set her free in the river.  To read more about it, go to:  http://durgapuja.getit.in/index.php/2012-09-17-11-46-55/the-story.

This Saturday, Oct.27,  over 140 million Muslims of Bangladesh will celebrate Korbani Eid where thousands of goats and cows will be sacrificed as an offering to Allah.  Those who can afford it have already purchased their animal as in the picture below. The following is a description from a website:

Qurban means sacrifice. The significance of this eid is from the offering of Prophet Abraham who prepeared to present his son Ismail(as) to Allah, upon having dream of such a command. He prepared to offer his son, but this was a test from Allah, so before he could slaughter his boy, the angels replaced him with a sacrificing animal. To remember this sacrifice of him we muslims who can afford to, make an offering to Allah of an animal. This is called Qurbani. It is not an obligation, but necessary for all who are earning and have enough money to do it. The meat of the animal should be divided into three portions, of which one third is distributed among the poor, another part among relatives and friends, and the third is consumed in the family. We are impressed that the Hindus and Muslims of Bangladesh, for the most part, live peaceably side by side. Hindus who venerate the cow have to watch them being slaughtered all over the city while Muslims, who abhor the worship of idols, have to watch Durga being paraded through the streets.   As for us, we will have to wait until the Eid holidays are over to get our classes going again but meanwhile we will be enjoying the hospitality of many friends as they invite us into their homes and celebrations.