A Day in the Life of Me

Many of you have asked me what my typical day is like and what kind of work I do here so I shall elaborate upon that here.

For the first couple of weeks we were up at around 6 am but now that we’ve adjusted to the timezone we struggle to roll out of bed at 9:30. Luckily my office is just two floors below my apartment and we soon discovered that time is a very loose concept and therefore strolling into work at 10 am has never been a problem.

Okay, so I get up from inside my cozy mosquito net canopy, usually because the hammering upstairs from the construction is deafening. Other morning sounds are men yelling out what goods they have for sale and rush hour traffic (lots and lots of nonstop horns blaring). I get ready, put on a cotton shalwar kameez and go downstairs to the office with one of my roommates, Sehr. My other roommate Shelina has probably already left by this time because she takes a bus to her office which is in the Pahartali area, around 20 mins away.

Once downstairs we ring the doorbell and a member of our support staff opens the door. We have two, Noyun and Nazim, both boys around 20-21 years old and they live in the office and are in charge of general maintenance, security and doing odd jobs around the office like delivering things from one project office to another and assisting the programme manager on different assignments. They’re really nice and helpful and a little shy; we try to practice our Bangla with them which brings them great amusement.

Next we’ll go say hi to our manager and the other people who work with us. Usually we’ll then read the English newspaper that they have delivered for us, either the Bangladesh Daily Star or New Age. Before I go on I’ll explain the organisation itself and my job. I’m working for an NGO called YPSA (Young Power in Social Action) which is leading several projects to promote poverty alleviation and basic rights to vulnerable groups in the Chittagong division of Bangladesh (which Chittagong City where I live is part of). They have several offices working on different projects throught the division and the project I’m working on is the HIV/AIDS prevention project among street-based sex workers. This project has 3 drop in centres located in Chittagong City which are places where sex workers can go during the day to have a meal, rest, bathe, watch tv, etc. This is really important because the majority of them are homeless. At the centres they are taught about STIs, HIV and AIDS, the importance of using condoms with clients and how to negotiate so that clients agree to use the condoms. A doctor visits each clinic twice a week to conduct checkups and provide medicine. Around 20 of the sex workers are peer educators who help conduct training sessions. It’s really a fascinating field and something I knew nothing about before. I just finished reading a book called Sex Slaves by Louise Brown and I really recommend it cause it gives a general overview of the situation of sex workers throughout Asia and how the majority got into this line of work as a result of trafficking, deception or rape. Many of the sex workers we work with here got here in a similar way, it’s really devastating.

One of our assignments thus far has been to compile a book of case studies about the lives of some of the sex workers including how they started doing this work, what their aspirations are and how the drop in centres have helped them. Right now we’re in the process of interviewing outreach workers, the doctor and other social workers in the program in order to add a new perspective to the book.

Another assignment we’ve just started working on is a project proposal to receive funding for a program aimed at helping people currently living with HIV/AIDS in Chittagong. The program hopes to provide antiretroviral drug therapy (which is incredibly expensive for the average Bangladeshi), computer skills training and training in sewing and handicrafts as well as grants to start small businesses. This extra help is necessary for these people because they face horrible social stigma and discrimination.

Back to my typical day. The pace is incredibly slow and we often finish our day’s work before lunch. Sometimes there is no work at all if something crucial is missing like our tape recorder for interviews or access to one of the computers as resources are very low.

Usually everyone has tea at around 11-11:30 and the tea here (cha, not chai) is really delicious. Sometimes we walk to the corner and pick up samosas or shingaras (kind of like kachori or a pastry filled with vegetables). They cost 2 or 3 takas each (exchange rate: 50 takas to 1 CAD; 66 to 1 USD).

Sometimes we’ll take a CNG (baby-taxi) and visit one of the drop in centres for a couple of hours. On average there will be around 10-15 women there resting or watching a Hindi film or having a reading lesson. The majority of them have small children and they bring them along. A project proposal we’re going to write soon will be for facilities for the children of sex workers as well as for child sex workers who require different care from their adult counterparts.

Lunch is around 1-2 pm and I’ve complained about the food in a previous email although sometimes it’s not too bad. However it’s very standard with very little variation. White rice (bhat), watery lentils (daal), cooked vegetables (shobji) and either chicken (murgi) or fish (maach) or boiled egg (dim). The spice it’s cooked in is usually very good but it’s way too spicy for my taste and sometimes our meals can be very painful.

After lunch we’ll meet with our manager to discuss our assignment or any new business that has arisen. Actually that’s quite rare... usually we have nothing left to do (cause we work at a North American breakneck speed!) so we say bye and just take off. We were scared the first time we tried to leave early but no one seemed to care.

So then we’ll go upstairs to our flat and get some chores out of the way like laundry (which we do by hand), and boiling our drinking water.

If it’s not too late we’ll head out to the GEC in a rickshaw (cause we’re quite familiar with it now, unlike that day of mishaps) where we’ll spend some time in an internet cafe and do some random shopping for our breakfast and rent some DVDs. We’re becoming very well-versed in Bollywood and Indian diaspora movies since there is very little else to do to pass the time, except draw and colour pictures to decorate our walls and pursue other small goals we’ve had to create in order to keep our sanity.

We ride back home on a rickshaw, buy some chips or something from a stall near our place and head upstairs to wait for dinner which will be in the office around 8-9 pm. Our dinner usually consists of the same thing we had for lunch and I can’t believe we’ve survived the monotony of it for over a month already. However we do treat ourselves once a week to dinner at Pizza Hut or Tava Kabab House which serves amazing parathas and butter chicken which is such a joy after enduring a week of the same thing over and over. Back in our apartment, before we settle into the common room to watch a movie, I’ll take my cold shower (which I’ve really grown used to), take a malaria pill, and we all write down how much we spent that day and settle monies owed to one another. We feel very productive when we do that which is good cause sometimes feeling productive at work is a rarity.

After the movie is over, around midnight we go to our own rooms, spray ourselves with mosquito repellent and get back inside the mosquito net and under our Cathay Pacific blankets..

Not a bad day, quite routine but sometimes we’ll shake things up and check out some sights in town like Foy’s Lake (I have some pictures up of that trip) and the other evening we went to Patenga Beach which borders the Bay of Bengal. We were late so we missed seeing it in the daylight but there was something really magical about it at night, with the waves crashing over the rocks.

I forgot to mention that throughout the course of our day we are almost guaranteed to encounter at least 2 power failures, several little lizards and if we’re lucky, a huge cockroach that will come out of our kitchen (which we only use to boil water on a gas stove) and join us as we shriek in terror and stumble around trying to figure out what to do.

Pics: http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=190i8ygb.12wxa9kz&x=0&y=ib4b63