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.