Here are a few more pictures for who ever reads this to look at. I think that the pictures of people are the neatest, the people are the real asset of this country. The kids on the left are my host brothers and sisters, the little girl in the red is as cute ass can be her name is maliha.The woman on the right is my host mother, she has taken it upon herself to make sure that I am okay at all times. She is the nicest lady I have met since I have arrived. She has made my life so much easier, she has helped me with all the things that I dont understand about Bangladesh language wise and socially. Considering that she was married off by her father at the age of twelve she has got to be one of the most down to earth people I have met. She has no education besides being first in her class at the school of hard knocks. She is the one that I have written about in previous blogs, she loves to hear the stories about what goes on outside Bangladesh. Anyways she has been a god sent to say the least.

I finally made it back to Kurigram, thank god. I spent at least a week in Dhaka for no good reason, and now I will have to go back sometime soon. Sometimes it is unbelievable how disorganized the American Government can be. I wish that they would just leave us alone at our sites so that we can work, everytime I have to cancel class I feel bad. I try to teach my students by example, for instance I give them a hard time about attendence yet I have to go to dhaka every month or every couple of weeks which makes me a pretty bad example as far as attendence is concerned. Oh well, what can you do...... nothing.

I am not sure whether I already wrote about this or not so if I have please excuse my forgetfulness. As many of you are aware my cooking is not so good, so I eat a lot with my family. But recently I found these places called Hotels (restaurants), why they call them hotels I do not know. I found one in particular that I like, it has no name but I would be willing to call it "I hope you came hungry and broke." When you sit down the waiter/guy sitting around doing nothing brings out no less than four glasses of water, then he always asks me one thing "mangso na shobji?" (meat or veggies). Once I respond it sets in motion a chain of events that cannot be stopped ( or at least I have no interest in stopping them), he immediately disappears behind a wall of smoke known as the kitchen. Then he returns with two heaping plates of white rice and sets them down next to the four glasses of water, after that he disappears again behind the veil of smoke. Then he returns with a mountian of fried veggies with some crazy spicy curry, so now I am surrounded by smoke and about five or six Bangladeshis that want to witness the spectacular show of me eating. After I down the plate of veggies he returns with a bowl of dhal (lentils) which he dumps on my plate along with something else that I havent got the courage to ask what it is ( maybe cow heart, but I am not sure). After that he brings this things called pe-aji, which I systimatically inhale. All the while the Bangladeshis are watching me like I am in the circus. Then comes the sweets and tea, ooooooo they are soooooo good. After all that the waiter/man who sits around brings me a cigarette, which I am required to smoke even though I dont smoke. So he sits down next to me and puts his arm around my shoulder and lights up a cigarette for the both of us, you would think we just had sex or something. He is sitting there with a big grin on his face and I am ready to cry because the food is sooooo hot and my stomach feels like it is going to burst. I usually take the cue to leave when he puts his hand on my thigh and asks me "was it good for you?" So as I am approaching the cash register (a guy smoking a cigarette with a wood box in his lap) I am trying to tally up how much food I ate. I know for sure I had three plates of rice, four pe-aji, two bowls of dhal, two plates of veggies, three chum chums (sweets) and two cups of cha and one god awful cigarette. I am wondering to myself how much is this going to cost, that was a ton of food. The man grins with no teeth "that will be thirty cents please," I couldnt believe it, it was practically free. I guess I really complain....... let me just say that I will be paying that place a visit very very soon. So now I am not only known as the man who is taller than all but I can also eat more than three plates of rice in one sitting without even flinching, it looks like I am going to be a legend in my own time (or at least in Kurigram). I heard the next day at work about my lunch experience, the hotel and my office are at least three or four kilometers apart. People are coming up to me on the street asking me if it is true, I neither confirm or deny truth, so the legend is growing. I think that it is now at about four or five plates of rice and a cow heart or two. Hopefully now no one tries to make good on the myth. The people here see it is as a sign of respect to eat the Bengali food especially if you are a foriegner, and for me to clean my plate is even more important. They see us (Americans) as very wasteful people, which is probably true in some respects. But now they know about one 6'4 American who wastes nothing on his plate. I feel bad for the next volunteer that has to come live here, becuase he/she is going to have some pretty big shoes to fill. Anyways........... I guess that is about it from this side of the planet, anything interesting happening in the States. Whatever you do dont draw any cartoons depicting Muhammed, WWIII is going to start over some damn cartoon...........

Thanks for tuning in, until next time Shada Shoitan signing off.

This is the picture from that strange healing ceremony slash festival that i wrote about some time ago. Boy was that a strange event.....and so the pictures keep on coming...........

And the pictures keep on coming........

So on that last blog I published a couple of pictures from the area in which I live. The women that are standing in a group are from the village, they love it when I come out and play with their kids and eat with them. They always want me to stay and get married in the village but somehow I manage to escape eachtime, now I think that they think it is humorous. Anyways maybe some of these picture will give you an idea of what Kurigram is like. On this blog I have provided a rather gory picture, this is of the sacrifice. I thought it was pretty cool, but I am sure the PETA people would tend to disagree. The next picture is of the kids in my neighborhood area, they are the ones that will be going hungry tonight because their parents livelyhood was destroyed. Many of my friends lost everything that they have because of the government, and believe me they are not happy about it. They were crying at first but now they are really pissed, I have a feeling that someone is going to pay really soon. I just hope it is not me, I asked them to tell me before they went off and did something crazy. I am sure they will, or at least as long as I keep going for tea.....oh wait that was destroyed, my favorite tea stall was torn down as well. Well maybe they will at least let me get out of dodge before the revolution begins. Believe me it is coming soon....and I am about to have front row seats.

Allah Hafez

I had to come to Dhaka for a training yesterday, but it turns out that the training has been cancelled due to a heightened "security alert." Apparently today and tommorrow is the long march, which is exactly that a march from the four corners of the country that converges on Dhaka. You know.....where i am right now! The government has arrested thousands of opposition leaders over the past two day to try and prevent any anti-government activities or quote "subversive" activities. The last I checked it is not a good idea to arrest the people from the opposition party in a "democracy," but hey what do I know anyway.

As I was leaving Kurigram yesterday morning I saw one of the saddest things. The government has decided that it is going to take possesion of all the land falling on the right hand side of the street (how they decided that I dont know). Let me back up a second.....in Kurigram most of the business owners are squatters, they just set up little tin shacks on the side of the road and sell what ever they have. Many of the shop owners are tradesmen (metal workers, wood workers, etc.), and what they have in those tin shacks is it, there is nothing else as far as money or work is concerned. Also the unemployment rate in Bangladesh is hovering at right about fifty percent, okay with all that said I can continue with my story. So as I was leaving my house yesterday morning I heard some really loud banging down the street. I asked the rickshaw walla what the noise was, he replied "the government is once again beating us farther into the ground and there is nothing we can do about it." As we approached the main area of my neighborhood I noticed that the street was littered with debris. Then I saw men tearing these bamboo and tin shacks down with sledge hammers. They were evicting all the shop owners in my village area as well as other villages because they could not afford to pay the bribe to the local politician. I felt so sick to my stomach seeing the men standing there watching their livelyhood being torn down right infront of thier eyes. There was nothing they could do because there were men with shotguns and teargas launchers ready to use them (believe me they have no reservations about opening up on a crowd). So I think that it is pretty easy to gestimate that there will be another couple thousand people in Kurigram that will be starving now if they wernt already. Pretty sad reality huh.

I have been staying really busy the past couple of days/weeks, it is amazing to see how fast the time is starting to fly by. I am finally getting settled into my new apartment, it is pretty nice to have a little more independence now. Even though I have to start cooking for my self for the first time in six months, let me just say that I am a little rusty. It doesn’t really matter in the end because my students invite me for lunch everyday; I am talking about an all out lunch. At least five or six different dishes along with Pulao (the best rice as far as I am concerned), so I really cant complain too much about the eating situation. When I lived with my host family I at lunch there everyday, and if I didn’t they would be worried about me. Or as they would occasionally say to me when I ate lunch with someone else, “ Bai re khabar bhalo na.” Which means, “food from the outside is not good,” which culturally translates into “you need to eat at home because we make the best food.” The cultural translations are definitely taking a little longer than the actua language itself. Speaking of food… we (Kelly and I) had a barbeque with some friends in the community. It was pretty funny to watch, they weren’t quite sure what to think about a hamburger. The stacking technique just was way too foreign for them. It was really fun nonetheless; everyone was so excited to get to eat American food. That and they wanted to see the bideshis cook. Thank god it turned out okay, I realized about half way through that people were just enjoying trying to master our eating techniques. They kept wanting to use a fork because “that is how all Americans eat,” but I had to explain that in America we had all different types of food and ways of eating it. The response was pretty much unanimous… “America shob ache, kichuri er moto” which means America has everything, like jambalaya. This is pretty much the response that I get from most people when I try to explain things about America. Anyways it was a nice barbeque with the community, it would have been way better if I could have gotten a case of PBR from the commissary but I don’t think the local Imam would be too happy about me boozing up the neighborhood. I guess there is always next time………

I went to Dhaka last week for a few days, every time that I go it reminds me of how much I love Kurigram. Dhaka is a freaking zoo; I think that it is one of the nuttiest places I have seen. They have these little death traps called CNG’s, they are these three-wheeled motorized vehicles with a crazy driver chewing pan the whole way. It is a roller coaster ride from start to finish, and it definitely is the most unsafe thing that I have been doing besides being an American in a Muslim country while G.W. is running the show. Kurigram feels so far removed from everything, probably because there is only one bridge to get in and out, and that bridge is shared with the railroad.

Class is going pretty well so far. today we are having a debate on "Arranged Marriages v. Love Marriages. So I guess I will see how that goes, it should be interesting to say the least. Most of the girls went for arranged marriage and the boys went for love marriages. I think that a couple of the students will end up dating after this class, or at least it seems like they will. I think that it is kind of cool, my class provides a forum for people to be outside of the norms of their culture. In other words it is a place where they can talk about taboos and have political discussions without fear of persecution so to speak. Actually, everyday after my English class I teach a short Spanish lesson to about ten students who are interested. It was not my idea, they just were really interested after I told them that I can speak some Spanish. Which was of course followed by a Spanish song, that pretty much sold them on learning Spanish. So now I hear some of my students practicing Spanish with each other, if I could get them to practice their English like they practice Spanish they would be doing much better. Although I must say that I am proud that they are so eager to learn, from what I understand not all the volunteers are having so much success with their class. It is not necessarily the volunteer but more the will of the students. My students do not have any other alternative, there is no English medium school or any competent English teachers for that matter. Or as some of my students say "we have nothing else to do, it is not like I can go get a job." Which is true, there just is no work to be had in this area.

By the way, this is the picture of the village that my family lives in. This is where John Henry is a living legend.

Well that is about it from this side of the planet, maybe my next blog will be a little more interesting...... especially since there was a article published in the Bangla and English newspapers saying that JMB now wants to KILL Peace Corps volunteers, they said that they want us gone...... you know what I say.....NUTS!
Or whatever that guy said at the Battle of the Bulge. Bombs Away.
Signing off for now Bhodmashiallap (hint: this blog basically is "bhodmashiallap")



P.S. please excuse the grammar errors, I only speak correct english between 3:00 and 5:00 Sunday thru Thursday. It is not like i am an english teacher or something......