Made in Bangladesh

(don’t tell me to grow out of it)

well, everything seems to have worked out, and it is becoming quite clear that i will leave bangladesh in one week. finally end of mission… over 14 months will be completed (really, the longest i have been in one job for a while – i’m the type to get bored easily and 12 months is usually as long as i want to stay in one place).

my replacement has been found and confirmed and will be here this week. my handover report (currently 20 pages!!) is definitely on its way to being complete. my ‘unique’ form of filing is being simplified to something that may make sense to someone who doesn’t live in my brain. my evals for my team are all mostly written, and meetings will be held next week. my boss and i have done my eval. my end of mission schedule is worked out (just need to confirm flights).

and i’ve said good-bye to a lot of folk already. i found myself in teknaf in early may for the ‘farewell/closure’ party for the project. many of the staff had already started working for a handover partner (we have handed over the IPDs and are co-managing the outpatient clinic right now). there were a lot of goodbyes going on at that party. but there was also dancing, which is something i haven’t been able to enjoy a lot in bangladesh. but we did dance at this farewell. a combination of hindi superhits, and aqua.

i haven’t talked a lot about leaving. but i knew that it was likely my last time in teknaf. and i was definitely sad. and yes, of course, i cried a little as we drove out that last day. but that’s to be expected yes?

further confirmation that it was my last visit was that i finally (!!) saw elephants!! finally after i don’t know how many times i have driven the highway outside teknaf… i saw the elephants!

and it’s strange… my expat ‘team’ here hasn’t really changed much for a long time. i’ve had the same head of mission, log coordinator and medical coordinator since june. i said goodbye to the head of mission last weekend before he left for meetings, to the medical coordinator last night before she headed to holidays… even most of our teknaf expat team has been the same since last summer. so it’s been the first of really big goodbyes of people who i’ve been through so much with in this mission (floods, cyclones, closures, openings…).

and while the management team i’ve worked with this past year will likely never exist as itself again, there is a chance i will see the expats again. but my co-workers who are national staff, my own team, my own department – this is a pretty solid goodbye. i can hope we will keep in touch, and thanks to the miracle of social networking sites, perhaps we will. but in reality, there’s little chance i’ll ever come back to bangladesh. and just like my colleagues in sudan who i’ll likely never see again, the same is true for my colleagues here.

and finally, it’s saying goodbye to the people here. saying goodbye to tal camp and everyone living there. saying goodbye to the beneficiaries in the hill tracts and in the old cyclone project sites, and the dhaka project. and it’s more abstract than the people i know by name and have worked alongside. it’s more abstract, but it’s a bit harder. after a year of learning about, and trying to provide services to people, i’ve come to care a great deal about what happens to them. and while i’m confidant in our handovers, and our project teams, and my replacement, it’s difficult to let go. specifically, i have seen the struggles and hardships of the rohingyas living in tal camp, and very soon, i will no longer be part of trying to provide them the stuff that basic human rights are made of. i will no longer be a witness who can speak out. it’s hard to let go of that.

i have a lot to look forward to. my baby nephew, the rest of my fabulous family, and friends i love dearly who are all waiting for me to come home. so while i’m thrilled beyond belief to go home and see them all, it doesn’t come without the sadness.

but as the wise dr. seuss once said (and as the staff in teknaf wrote on the invitation for the farewell party)… don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.

…another project!!!

(ok, i’ll admit that is rather cynical sounding, but it’s becoming a standard joke that every three months we open a new project in bangladesh – the emergencies have kept us on our toes!)

quick update:  i went on leave in april, and came back to another project opening!  we carried out a food assessment in the chittagong hill tracts back in march/april, and the results came in – there was definitely a need to intervene.  so we have started up a short term nutritional intervention in the region that appears for now, to be the hardest hit by the flowering bamboo/ rat infestation (for more information, click here).

so the past month has been another flurry of activity.  6 new expats so far, with some on the way.  plumpy nut arriving on planes (a form of ‘ready to use’ food which we currently use in our feeding program in teknaf as well – sachets of a paste made with peanuts, milk, sugar and vitamins – kids love it!.  more info on ready to use foods here).  the area we are working in is not unfamiliar to us – you may recall the post from over a year ago when i was in khagrachari for the final phase of our malaria health program.  the hill tracts are a very unique region of bangladesh.   it’s very hilly, and there’s a lot of jungle (as opposed to the rest of bangladesh which is river delta/ flood plains).  malaria is a huge problem up there, which is why we had a program for so long.  until a few years back, it was a conflict region as well.

the access is difficult, not tonnes of roads, and during the rainy season the streams become rivers.  lots of hills, and jungle combine to make a lot of locations ‘walk-in’ only.  the assessment took 4 weeks simply because of the amount of time it took to reach each location!

our logistical teams are currently trying to get to set up outposts in different areas so that the medical staff can set up feeding programs.  as i mentioned, the terrain is not easy, and there’s lots of hiking involved… everyone lives in pretty small villages, and they’re pretty far apart, so we have to find a way to make sure we reach the malnourished kids.

next challenge is a food distribution (!)

i know it can get rough, and your writing makes sense.  it’s understandable to have some panic that the baby will arrive before you are ready (similar to the dream i had the other night where i had to get on a plane in 2 hours and pack for a nine month mission and i didn’t know what to take!  i just threw all the dirty clothes off my floor into a plastic bag and called that ‘packed’)

i know you worry you won’t be prepared enough, won’t have the right stuff, will drop the baby… and any other creepy crawly worry that can get into your head.  but, i’m here to play the ‘aid worker’ card and tell you about what i see in my work. (so aged and wise i have become)

there are mommies that just love their babies.  mommies that have nothing at all, unregistered refugees living in mud.

i see them when they bring them to our clinics, they hold them, they feed them anything they can.  they are held in slings and scraps of cloth.  when the babies get better, they start laughing and gurgling and they are happy.  then the mom is happy.  and so are the sisters and brothers there with them…

seriously, love is all it takes.  i have watched a child grow from 1 kilo to 3, born premature to an ill mother.  father was gone, but child siblings all present.  i watched the mother, frightenly malnourised herself, feed that child throughout the day with theraputic milk via an eye dropper.  everytime someone arrived, she eagerly showed off her growing child.  her son and older daughter would skip around the bed, gleeful.

but yes, it’s misleading to say love is all it takes, because this child could have died despite her mother’s love – the world is incredibly unfair that way.  but my point is simple, and it’s something i know you know, but may be hard to hold on to sometimes… all the baby needs is for you and his father to love and protect him.  i have watched mother’s with nothing to offer their babies but love and the willingness to take them to a doctor, save their babies lives.

i can’t wait to meet your baby this summer.  i never knew how much i could appreciate the sight of a fat baby, but it makes me so happy now.  i’m happy to know that your baby is fat already, and loved already.

post script… my nephew was born but one week later.  1 month early, but still a healthy 6lbs and 10 ounces.  i guess my sister’s dreams about the baby showing up early were actually warnings   i am such a proud auntie right now!