Made in Bangladesh

i’m going to start this entry by pretending that i haven’t been a total loser and not posted for ages.  and i’m going to pretend that my last post was incredibly relevant and moving and left a strong emotional impact on everyone who read it.  (besides the urge to rush to the bathroom).  and i’m going to also pretend i don’t find this entry title too cheesy.  don’t judge till you finish reading

july has been bonkers. absolutely bonkers.  and one of the reasons has been that almost the entire expat team in the field has turned over all at once.  so we welcomed a new doctor, new nurse/midwife, and a new project coordinator.  the new doctor – i wasn’t sure what to expect.  but the dear sweet man arrived and handed me a bag of coffee as a gift and i nearly leapt into his arms.  the new midwife/nurse is actually someone i worked with in sudan – and when she was matched to the position i was soooooo excited (i insisted that i get to be the one to call her and tell her!). the third person is a new project coordinator – who i’m quite happy to say is a fellow canuck.  and i’m not trying to come across as xenophobic, but having another canadian arrive is just so exciting.  there are some jokes that only canadians get.

so lots of handing over going on.  usually we desperately try to get people to the field to do a physical handover with the people they replace.  but at times, that isn’t possible and sometimes it’s capital, sometimes amsterdam, and sometimes you just get a really long email.

luckily, we’ve got 2 field handovers and 1 capital.  and i looooooove watching people handover.  you have one expat arrive who is totally knackered and on their way home and every essence of their being knows that they are ALMOST DONE!  and then you have the new person, who usually has waited at least a few weeks (up to months and months) for a posting, plus time to get their visa, plus home country briefings, amsterdam briefings, ridiculous amounts of time all cramped up in airplanes and now they are almost there and ohmygod they just can’t wait!!!

i sat in the living room and listened to the midwives start their handover and it was hilarious!  somehow, the energy transfers from one to the other, and the midwife on her way home who has been developing and starting 2 birthing units and had to train all the staff and try to get it sorted is finally able to start using midwife shorthand again… flinging words and acronyms around like…, well, i can’t actually remember what she said because none of it made sense to me – but it all made sense to the new midwife.  what a look of relief on the outgoing midwife’s face!

and the new one – who loves being in the field and figuring out how to deliver the best care in the most trying of circumstances – she gets to talk about the nitty gritty of the work again.  the best ways for women to deliver in these situations, the training materials she’s brought from home to train the staff (excuse me ma’am, the x-ray shows a pelvis in your suitcase?), ideas about encouraging women to come to the birthing units, and finally the difficulty of checking on labour progression when her shalwar khameez scarf get’s stuck under the patient’s foot.

and the look of relief on one woman’s face as she realises this program, that has been her whole world for months, will be managed by someone who just might be good enough to keep it going… well it can’t help but remind me how much people care about the programs they run and the people they serve.

between june 4 and june 28… i managed to make three trips – the first to teknaf for 5 days (2 of which traveling), the second to bangkok to renew my visa (a hardship i know – and that was 4 days with 2 being travel – and then another trip to teknaf (2 1/2 days of travel, 1 day in the office).

i was a little tired when i got back from that last one.  2 1/2 days of travelling to get a day in the field was a bit rough – and that was the easy route!  originally i thought i’d have to stay overnight in chittagong on the way back because there was no space on the flight that left in the evening – just one on the 8 am flight (ugh).  but i went to the airport anyway, and made really big puppy dog eyes and pointed to my two colleagues who already had tickets and basically begged the counter staff to put me anywhere on the flight (i could huddle in the lavatory for 45 minutes no prob).  i offered that i wouldn’t need to eat any snacks, and i could even pass on the mango juice box they always hand out.

and 5 mins before the flight was scheduled to leave they gave me a boarding pass!!!! huzzah i cannot describe how happy i was about this.  (they didn’t make me sit in the bathroom and i got 2 mango juice boxes and a chocolate wafer bar…)  to know i could sleep in my bed (i didn’t care at this point that my bed at home was a foam mattress while the hotel likely had a real box spring), to know that i’d eat at home with my husband – ahhhh what joy.  this was thursday evening and i’d spent tuesday morning at an airport, tuesday afternoon picking up oxygen tanks in chittagong for our hospitals, tuesday afternoon/early evening driving (4 hours weeeee) and tuesday evening in a hotel near teknaf since due to getting the oxygen tanks, we were running late and we can’t drive after dark – so fun hotel night.  then wednesday morning Abu (he’s been driving for MSF for more than 10 years!) and i set off at 6 am, stopped to get about 15 boxes of medical forms we had printed up (we print up our own forms for prescriptions and lab tests at the hospitals) and off we went for 2 more hours on the road.

after all that i made it to the office in teknaf pretty much on time for work!  but everyone was quick to tell me i looked like crap.  ‘whiter than an englishwoman’ was one of the comments.  i get kinda car sick when travelling, and one consequence apparently is that all the blood leaves my face and settles in my butt (this is an assumption of where the blood goes but i like the explanation for excusing why my pants are getting tighter).

i used to think lots of travel was romantic.  i’d read job ads that said ‘travel required’ and get all giddy and excited.  now… not so much.  i love the idea and i still get excited.  but well, the harsh reality of exhaust fumes and delayed flights has taught me better.  i know, i know, i work for msf so i should really get to a good place with travel… and i have mostly.  i mean, the fear of flying i developed while in sudan seems to have gone away (huzzah huzzah!) so i no longer think i’m going to die at least 8 times per flight.  and i like going to new places.  but yeah, sometimes it’s just not as exciting as one would hope.  most of the not fun parts consists of trying to find potties and food.  it’s a lot like road trips at home actually – have to plan where to eat, where to pee.  but here it’s a tad more complicated.

like, i try really hard to make sure i don’t drink too much water before a long drive (even though it’ll be dehydrating) because the look of stress that crosses a driver’s face when i lean over and say ‘um… could we find a bathroom’ is a look of stress i don’t like to cause. and it’s so densly populated here, that there isn’t even an option of hiding behind a tree.

on the trip to khagrachari in april, it took 30 mins before the driver pulled over to a big fancy gas station and went in and negotiated with the manager to let me use his personal privy.  and the last hour of the drive to chittagong last week consisted of me trying to find the best position to sit in that wouldn’t remind me of all the coffee i had drunk before we left.  (eventually we also had to grab the half full water bottles that had been making sploching noises and stash them under luggage so i didn’t have to listen). and it’s not that i mind too much the state of the loo – it’s that other people really mind me using them!  and, well, as far as i can tell, most public facilities here are designed for men and i don’t think i could quite get away with trying to sneak into one.  so i get princess treatment which means i’ve probably done myself permanent nerve damage around my bladder, but i do get to use some of the poshest potties in bangladesh.

ta ta