Made in Bangladesh

these photos were taken by our log at ‘tal camp’, just two weeks ago - the morning after being battered by the winds and tides of a nearby cyclone.

this makeshift camp (it is not an official refugee camp) is situated between the highway from teknaf to cox bazaar and the river Naf (you can just see the highway on the right hand side of the picture below)
the camp occupies an area that is 800 metres long and between 50 and 30 metres wide

at least 7500 people live here

since the storm we’ve been trying to repair the latrines that we built a few months back that were destroyed (and flooded) in the storm.

we also run a basic health care clinic and a feeding centre for tal and surrounding residents with an average of 100 consultations a day at the clinic.  over 40 children per day attend the theraputic feeding centre.

this is tal camp.

(thanks to luca for the photos!!)

and for the press release from last march (which i posted earlier so some of you have already read it) please click here

28 degrees celsius (nice and cool)
7:28 PM
and the most incredible thunder storm is surrounding us here in dhaka.

if i weren’t worried about being on a high point, i’d try to get a shot of the lightning.  as it is, our windows on either side of the living room give the impression that a rave is taking place outside with strobe lights that would not be advisable to someone with epilepsy.  don’t even bother counting 1 mississippi, cause there ain’t much pause between the flash and the boom.

i should probably unplug my computer…

update
7:33 PM
and there goes the power

well a quick update is better than no update right?

so… in the past week:

-we have gotten all of our revised budgets and plans in to amsterdam (see previous post about 4M which was both hair-raising and much romantic).
-our team in teknaf has narrowly escaped a nasty cyclone that was headed their way (all estimates were that it would be a direct hit, so they were camped out with generators off, cyclone kits ready, windows boarded – but at the last minute it veered off and left them with less damage/ flooding than a full cyclone, but still more than a regular storm).
-our other team in khagrachari has packed up, handed over keys, loaded the land cruisers and left the chittagong hill tracts after many many years of msf work there (not an easy thing to do at all)
-two expats have been ‘end of mission’ and i’ve sent them on their way (one we weren’t sure would ever leave after a false alarm cholera scare and then the threat of the cyclone)
-Ambrose (also previously mentioned) who had his going away lunch last week, has been confirmed for a short mission after his training this summer at headquarters (many woo hoos can be heard through the office).
-and last but not least, the equivilant of the flu season has hit town (and while something we need to respond to medically, it does mean many of us are not feeling at our best

and here for no apparent reason is a picture of a goat licking himself that i took while i was in khagrachari:

*I wrote this post a few weeks ago following my field visits to teknaf and khagrachari, during a commercial break on American Idol.  (I know… bad tv and I get along though).  But I’ve held off on posting it worried it’s too emotional and silly.  But I’m going to post it anyway, and hope I don’t come off as a depressive whinger*

when you work for msf, you are told to watch out for signs of stress and burnout.  symptoms include a sense of hopelessness, a deterioration of world view, numbness and even callousness towards suffering.

So let’s check: 15 months with msf… am I becoming hard and jaded?  barely. i think all that’s happened is that i’m more sensitive to what I’ve seen.  a few days ago i was sent an email from a friend who had a horrible day but instead of moaning about it, she wrote a letter entitled ‘dear darfur’ where she placed her bad day into perspective, knowing that it paled in comparison to the reality of people living through that crisis.  In the preface, she wrote that whenever things seem rough for her, she reminds herself of how truly blessed she is, and how much others are suffering.  and each time i read the email i just start crying because it’s so amazing to know that a woman in canada cares.  it’s not that its a surprise, because she is a very aware woman, and there are many aware and thoughtful people in my life who care about things going on worldwide, but i couldn’t help wonder what it meant that she thought of darfur.  I wondered if i could somehow communicate this to a woman living in Kalma camp, struggling to get by and survive, to let her know that someone as far away as Canada simply holds her existence and struggles in mind?

and now i’m trying to watch american idol, the fundraiser episode, and I’m crying again.  and despite the number of ways this show has been annoying, (ie. constantly saying ‘when we were in Africa’ like it was a small town near houston…) the stories of suffering that they have told between each act have affected me.

i know that fundraising efforts often play on emotions as much as they can, attempting to break through the walls of disbelief and disconnection.  back when i was in high school my friends and i handled the remembrance day ceremony for a few years, and when we did a slide show (along to guns and roses ‘civil war’ – classy eh?) we deliberately picked photos that would shock and awe our classmates into caring, following the idea that if you want to make people open their wallets, you’ve got to pry open their hearts and make them hurt so that they will care.

But for me when i see these images and hear the stories, i have no problem knowing they are real.  there is no doubt in my mind as to the suffering they are showing on the videos.  All I can think about is the little girl who held my hand while I walked through tal camp.   i don’t have to suspend belief to understand that people really suffer.  i know they do, and it hurts.  (and for me when it hurts, that often leads to a bit of a cry, which considering my current state of dehydration really isn’t a good idea.)

so i think it is safe to say i am not becoming the quintessential burnt out aid worker, all hard and cynical and perhaps even twitchy eyed.  This work makes the world so much clearer to me; it makes people who were far away realer.  And although this work makes me cry on occasion, this work gives me so much hope.  Because while I know that little girl is in tal camp, and I know we are doing the best we can for her.

I love how time flies when your in a mission. I called my mom last night to
wish her happy mother’s day, and I suddenly couldn’t think of what the
weather would be like in BC.  I left in the winter, so it is perpetually
snowy and cold when I think of home.  As well, as the weather here varies
only in the sense that it is hot or hotter, non-cyclone warning or cyclone
warnings, it can be hard to mark the passage of time as I would in
Vancouver (rainy season, dark and rainy season, non-rainy season, and misty rainy
season).

And I already apologized for the lateness of my field trip reports, but
they are coming slowly along.  I’m only just starting to emerge from the madness
that is the 4M.  Quite boring probably for everyone, but I’ll explain
anyway.  Emergency medical aid does not lend itself to easy planning.  We
make budgets and plans every year, but inevitably, those plans are
interrupted, redirected or just simply tossed upside down and stomped on.
If we could predict all of our programming for the year, we’d be a
development agency, not an emergency medical relief organization.  So as
conflicts break out, refugees move, epidemics rage, and cyclones hit, we
have to be flexible.  That means that every 4 months, we have to ensure we
are still requesting the resources that we’ll need.  So the country
management team in the field works like mad to produce up to date budgets
and strategies that are based on what was originally anticipated (in
October), what has actually happened (in the first 4 months), how those two
items differ or don’t, what we’ll need in the future (the next 8 months).
Thrilling, I know.  But, yes, important I realize.  This way we have
opportunities to react and adjust as required by the work we do.  And now I
am very happy, because for now, our part is done.

Well here it is, the first of my long awaited field trip posts from teknaf and khagrachari. I left nearly a month ago, and sadly, I’m just getting to this post now. The past month has been a blur of field visits (2 work weeks worth) and budget fun.Honestly, I can tell you that for someone who enjoys budgets as much as myself (I know, I know, a sickness) this past month has even been enough to turn me off of numbers. Although I’m getting quite good at estimating the cost of bamboo roofs (just another one of those transferable skills you pick up working for MSF

Ok, so Teknaf. Now, technically I was supposed to leave on the Sunday, the 15th of April, in the morning and fly directly to Cox Bazaar (about an hour or so). But the airline called me on Saturday afternoon and told me that the flight had been cancelled. I’d been warned that this airline was known for canceling flights, so I took it in stride as they rebooked me for the flight to Cox on Monday morning. So leaving my knapsack empty, I went about my normal routine and wandered in to the office Sunday morning for a regular day of work.

And then they called again. Nope, Monday flight cancelled too.Would I like to fly Tuesday? At this point, the trip is starting to shrink beyond the point of usefulness. The work week in Bangladesh is Sunday through Thursday, and the last thing you want to do as a capital staff person is show up in the field and force the field expats to work with you on their weekend (they rarely get a weekend off as it is, and I’d rather they only work when it’s emergency related, not the Finco wanting a tour of the clinic). So if I flew out Tuesday morning, then I’d have Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday and I’d be flying out Thursday. I start to ponder the usefulness of this Tuesday morning flight.

But that wasn’t necessary, because they cancelled that one too. So now it is noon on Sunday and I’ve nearly decided to ride a bike to Teknaf.The clock is starting to tick since it is one of the big budget planning months and since Teknaf only has a 6 month budget, and could really use a full 12 month budget, it was really important I get out there to talk to the team. Plus they were in the process of hiring 30 new staff for the new hospitals, and again, I felt that since I was ‘HR’, I should try to be out there to help with that if needed. So I started asking people around the office what the alternative was. And then we had it!There was a flight to chittagong in 5 hours, which could meet up with the car movement the next day! Huzzah! So now, all I had to do was wrap up at the office, go home and pack, run to the shop and buy cheese and chocolate for the field team, get to the airport, fly to chittagong, sleep there, and wake up in the morning for a short car trip (4 hours) and boom… I’d be in Teknaf just past lunch on Monday. The whole trip would take just less than 24 hours. (Seriously, look on a map at the distance; it’s like going from Vancouver to the Okanagan. The bicycle plan may have saved time).

But all of this was nearly for naught. I arrived at the airport totally sweaty and gross since the power was out while I was trying to pack and I kept wavering between shoving my laptop in my knapsack (too heavy) and carrying it separately (would have to check a bag) which finally resulted in me repacking in the car (never recommended). When I finally got to the airport, I had about 15 minutes before the flight was scheduled to depart (my mother is rolling her eyes as she reads this) and so I rushed through the front door, shoved my bags on the security belt, and went off to where the woman could pat me down in the privacy of a curtained booth. As I finished up, smiling at the guard with the big gun, I glanced up at the screen and saw a flight to chittagong listed… and it was cancelled.

So in true Julia fashion I grab my bags, dash out the door, and chase after my driver who is starting to pull away. Many people watch me do this.And they are giving me a lot of space. The driver parks and comes up to me just as the information screen switches from bangla to English, and at that moment I realize it is not actually my flight that has been cancelled but another one scheduled for the same time, and if I want to check in on time, I’ve got about 5 minutes to do so. I apologize and sheepishly slink away from the chuckling driver (and observers) and reenter the airport. The men at the front wave me past the initial check, since I’ve already had my bags and person searched, but the guard waves me back – he would like for me to be rechecked. [This exchange would later provide me something to mull over while I waited for my flight – is the guard now suspicious of me? Am I going to get hauled away? I don't like to annoy men with guns.] At the desk they don’t seem concerned about my timing, but as I would soon realize, that is because the flights don’t actually leave as scheduled. Nobody actually tells you this though. You just sit in a large waiting hall, sitting, waiting, watching the clock tick past the actual departure time with no announcements, looking for people holding the same ticket as you for reassurance, and the finally a podium is set up, and people in the appropriate uniforms start taking tickets. Everyone then piles into a mini-van and off to the plane and away from Dhaka.

honestly, i swear, i am writing my adventurous field visit posts right now.  so they will be posted soon.  in small chunks, because if i did it all in one it would be 8000 lines long and no one would read it except family members who love me so much that they will read any nonsense i type out and they would end up with eye strain.  so little posts.

promise.

I don’t really know how to start this entry because I am aware that I have been terribly absent from my blog and I’m also aware that I am in a terribly melancholy mood. This week started well on Sunday, when the increase in temperature was accompanied by a rare glimpse of bright blue skies above Dhaka. Usually the sky is overcast, sometimes with a grey tinge to reflect the smog. But Sunday, it was blue and I was so happy. I had a week in the office to catch up with things I’d neglected during two weeks of traveling to the field, and then there was even an extra bonus when I discovered that May 1^st was a holiday here, so I would have a nice day at home on Tuesday.

And the first part of Tuesday was quite nice. Jason and I wrote thank you cards for wedding gifts (apparently wedding etiquette gives you 6 months from receiving the gifts to reply and we were coming in about 3 weeks before deadline). We had bought some nice cards from the craft shop down the road, and writing notes to everyone prompted a bit of homesickness, but I was handling it ok.

Then the phone started ringing and the logistics coordinator was on the other end asking me why I hadn’t answered my mobile. I slapped my forehead and ran into my room where I had left my phone by my bed. I’ll admit that I’m not as vigilant here as I was in Sudan where I practically glued my phone to the side of my head. But here it was, the first time I’d left my phone aside, and everyone had been trying to reach me. That morning, some group here had decided to set off three explosions in train stations across the country and they included a message that was anti-NGO (non-governmental organisations).

[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6610667.stm]

And we did the things we do at MSF when something like this happens. And that part I’m fine with. But beyond the practicalities, I find it really hard to not get upset when people target NGOs and the work that they do. I realized this in Sudan, and I remember it here. There is a 5-year-old child inside my head who starts stamping her feet and saying, “This is not fair!” I have an overwhelming embedded belief that intention should count for so much, and when all you are trying to do is help and you get slammed – well, this just seems wrong! Perhaps my indignation seems naïve, but I can tell you I’m not the only one who feels like they’ve been kicked in the gut when this type of thing happens.

It reminds me of when things were really tense in Khartoum last spring, and there was a lot of anti-NGO sentiment in the press and in speeches. These emotions came up for me then too. But I was able to do what I always have to do and think about what we are doing, who we are helping, and how there are people who support us. This can sometimes be hard when you don’t see the patients and beneficiaries every day, since in the capital we don’t. But in Khartoum this remembrance was actually prompted by something that happened while I walked to the office. A car was passing me with an older man inside. As he drove by he slowed down and shouted with a smile “Khawadja, Tamam!” Which very loosely interpreted meant, “I like that you’re here.” It meant the world to me.