Made in Bangladesh

i love music.  i love shows.  i miss vancouver so much sometimes for the simple act of putting on some cute boots, a fun little dress, and walking on down to the railway to listen to whoever is on stage, dancing until they close the bar, and they kindly ask us (again) to leave.

i miss having a friend call me up and dragging me out to see someone they know i’ll love.  i miss the canadian music scene full of girls on guitars and funny boys on keyboards.

but the music keeps on in my head.

the other night while standing in the darkened driveway of our office, surrounded by buckets, blankets and cooking pots (not to mention the soap, candles, and piles of other goods) i found the funniest songs started playing in my head.  as the assembly line assembled the hygiene and cooking kits, as i bent down to place the candles in the bucket, then the matches, each time lifting my head to see the imposing number of goods still stacked up against the walls, shed, trees, parked cars; tracy chapman’s ‘mountains o’ things’ started to swirl through my head.  and it was a good thing – i mean, i knew these mountains of things had a point, and would mean a lot to people who had lost their basic supplies in the cyclone.  these mountains o’ things meant survival, not accumulation of wealth… so again, a good thing.  but on the other hand, the mountain’s part meant we still had hours of work to get everything sorted into individual 20 litre jute bags…

as the evening progressed, the piles slowly got smaller, but it started to dawn just how much there was.  and my second wind came accompanied by dire straights… ‘we got to move these, refridgerators’ (or in our case ‘we got to move these, fleecy blankets).  and that kept me going for another few hours.

the trucks from our supplier had shown up at 10PM. (6 hours late).  we finished loading the last truck with completed kits at 3:30AM. (surprisingly, only 4.5 hours late… we were speedy little line workers).  the thanks goes to the team of workers hired from the neighbourhood and the staff members who stayed until it was done.  our cook is a rock star, and refused to leave until the last kit was finished.

and so those are the songs i thought of while working.  i found it amusing, so thought one of your might too.  in related news this morning i passed a small girl with a huge bundle of firewood balanced on her head, and she gave me the toothiest grin.  and i thought about the mp3 player i had with me, that cost more than she will earn in a year (and there is no doubt in my mind she is a wage earner for her family, and could quite possibly be the sole wager earner for younger siblings if they are without parents…)

and i thought of how much cash i’ll drop the first night i’m back in vancouver on my holidays in 3 weeks.  similar thoughts to those i have every time a woman knocks on my car window asking ‘madam, baksheesh’.

i don’t know if i could work here if not in the capacity as an aid worker.  it’s simply too much.  at least now i assuage my guilt by telling myself the 12 hour days, being away from my home, somehow these sacrifices are as good as taking the woman into the grocery store and buying bread for her and her family.  and that my contribution helps more people then i could afford to help one by one on the street.

oh, rambly thoughts.

for now, i end with a small thanks, to the hometown musician who sent me a copy of one of my favorite songs of hers that has been stuck in my head for two weeks.  and a thanks to my friends and my family who leave me small notes in emails and phone calls.  and a thanks to the ridiculously overpriced mp3 player that means i can play any leonard cohen cover i get stuck in my head.  for now, i try to be satisfied with what i can do.

i remember last monday sitting outside with my coffee at 8AM, waiting for the expats to arrive from the hotel.  4 people had been flown overnight, arriving between 2 and 4 am, and they were due in the office by 9.

we’d been busy with preparations for the explos all weekend, but busyness takes on a whole new meaning when there are new people.  i knew as i sat there enjoying the early quietness, that it wasn’t just 4 expats, but also 4 doctors, 2 translators, and our rehired drivers (plus rental pickup drivers_ who i would also see that day.  i knew it would be bonkers as people needed briefings, paperwork, information, and a role in the planning taking place.

so i took a moment, and sipped my coffee and watched some cute birdies play in the pre-dhaka-haze sunshine.  it looks like spring here in the morning.  the concrete has that old deniem blue/grey sheen.

i was wise to enjoy the few minutes of silence, since it has not been replicated since.

i’m not sure how to sum up the past week, except to say it involved 1 night of packing relief kits until 3:30 am, receiving, briefing and sending off 11 expats, hiring 25 staff, purchasing thousands of items for the earlier mentioned relief kits, tonnes of stress and late late nights, and at least three instances of breaking out in hysterical laughter that ended in tears – mostly due to tiredness i think.  as my dear medco put it, you have to laugh so you don’t cry – but sometimes you do both.

the hundreds of dead is now well over a thousand, and there are worries over areas that haven’t been reached yet.  in the wee hours of monday morning (tomorrow for me now) we will have 4 expats arrive, and today we prepared our landcruisers, emergency kits, and logistics kits (food, flashlights, lifejackets etc etc).  i rehired translators and medics from the emergency program we ran after the floods, and we called back the drivers from the project as well.  our logco is getting himself back here from teknaf and tomorrow morning we have a coordinating meeting with some other agencies we will work with – by dawn tuesday the first land cruiser should pull out the gate.

i’m writing this now because i was so bad during the emergency project in august and just stopped writing. i figured better to write a boring little rather than nothing at all.

so today was quite busy. all this plus sending the nutritionist off to teknaf.  the poor woman arrived at 8am this morning, and we had her on another plane by 4.  we are doing a nutritional survey in tal, to recalibrate our numbers and get a better idea of what the needs are.

in terms of this post cyclone assessment, we will have 3 teams on the ground and we are truely in the assessment phase right now.  msf has very specific intervention criterias when it comes to natural disasters.  we only intervene if the local capacity is overwhelmed, or specific groups are not getting assistance, or if our beneficiaries are affected (and these folks are usually marginalised anyway, so it makes sense that we are responding).  in many countries the emergency response is so limited, or spotty, that it can be crucial that we step in.  in other cases, the disaster is just so bad that the regular programs can’t cope.  we ran the emergency diarrhea treatment centre this summer for that reason – the people who usually can deal with the large increase in diarrhea cases, the icddr,b, was dealing with increasing numbers that indicated their resources would soon be overwhelmed.

in this case the number of players on the ground is quite large, and we aren’t sure if we will find medical needs, or more livilihood issues (which are quite serious nonetheless, many areas have lost all their buildings, food stocks, crops, etc).  are people looking at only short term displacement, or will there be longer periods of crowded and unsuitable conditions (something that can lead to definite health problems).  so i guess we just have to wait and see what we find yes?

now i go to sleep. perhaps more soon.

hello everyone,

well, the cyclone has passed and our guys in teknaf are all doing alright.
the storm didn’t hit them overly hard, just bad winds and some rain.  tal
camp managed to get through with just some damaged latrines and more mud
than usual.  the women and children have been returned from the school they
stayed in overnight, and the team feels pretty good about how it went.
indeed the cyclone hit on the western coast, whereas teknaf is the eastern
end of the coast.  it was freaky to look at sat pictures of the storm
though, since it was literally engulfing the entire bay of bengal, and in
fact, was larger than the country itself.

dhaka is good.  we had a night of howling winds and lots of rain and things
making noise as they blew around outside.  a quick survey of the streets
shows downed branches and some debris, and we’ve been without power since
early early in the morning.

the area that got hit has an official death toll of 242 right now from AP.
government and responding agencies are concerned the number will rise as
they gain access to areas who have lost communication during the storm.
(but i feel a perverted sense of relief that they are speaking of hundreds,
not hundreds of thousands.  and i’m trying to find a way to write this down
that makes it clear that i still consider the loss of life tragic, but i
was so worried it would be so many more people.  can that make sense?)

the lower numbers could be due to the fact that according to news releases,
they managed to evacute hundreds of thousands of people from the coastal
areas.  there is an entire early warning system and volunteers who go
around with whistles and megaphones and get people to leave.  once again, i have
been impressed at how strong this country is in emergency preparedness.

i talked to my mom earlier today when the only reports were of the missing
fisherman who didn’t return before the storm.  she asked why they wouldn’t
have, and the only answer i could think of was desperation, to not lose
income, or their boat, or their nets.  a lot of these guys are incredibly
poor, and i was told that people will risk their lives to save their nets
because they fear if they don’t, they’ll only starve later.  and that
thought depresses me beyond belief.

but my depression really has no place here.  i’m very lucky.  i’m in my
home, and the power just came back on, and i’ve got clean water and no tree
crashed through my roof and my husband is safe beside me and i’m going to
put on some socks and drink some tea to warm myself up since it 24 degrees
but i honestly feel like my toes are about to freeze off my feet.
perspective.  it’s a funny thing.

this has ruled my brain most of the day.

in teknaf, we’ve closed the clinic early, as well as discarged patients at the hospital who are well enough to leave.  people are being encouraged to move to higher levels and go to the cyclone shelters.  for the people we serve, the good news is the storm
didn’t veer towards them.  but that means  in real terms that the storm will
hit other people, who no more deserve this than our beneficiaries.  it is
really quite wretched to sit her and watch the small dot on the cyclone map
move closer and closer to shore.

for everyone on the coastline, the surge is the main concern (raise of
water – rolling wave type thingee).  the wind expected is incredible, and
now even the team in teknaf has started to point out that the storm is
expected to move inland to dhaka by tomorrow morning.  i can hear the wind
outside pick up right now, and it’s not even 5PM.

so yes, for us in dhaka, some rain and wind, and the cold himalayan air
brings us down to what feels like a freezing 20 degrees.  for teknaf, no
direct hit of the cyclone, but an unknown surge impact… which if you’ve
seen the photos of tal after the minor cyclone in may, you can understand
our main concern.

but for the people on the eastern side of the coast, bordering india, the
storm heading their way is terrifying to me.