I've just returned from a really enjoyable weekend in Dhaka, so I'm going to tell you about that this week. Before doing so though, let me introduce the 2 new faces that arrived at BRIF this week. They are Hector and Danae, a Spanish couple from Barcelona who are travelling around Asia (and then Africa) making films of the NGO's they stay with. The first night they were here they showed us a film they'd made of the day in the life of 3 orphans living in a remote part of Northern Thailand. It's usually great watching happy kids, but these 3 also had to do almost everything for themselves including washing and a fair amount of cooking. There was one hilarious scene where the 2 boys are cleaning the concrete floor of a large room. They're both naked as they scrub the now very soapy floor. It was so soapy in fact that it was more like an ice rink and they were slipping all over the place. The best bit was when they went to opposite ends of the room, held onto a piece of furniture like Olympic swimmers at the start of a back stroke final, then pushed off with their legs and slid backwards into each other like curling stones!

So anyway, my weekend. I try to get to Dhaka every 2 weeks or so to see Sarah, and usually I manage to engineer a meeting with a donor or VSO to justify the time away. This time however all my attempts to find a legitimate excuse failed, and I wasn't prepared to wait another week (on top of the previous 2) to wait for the next planned VSO event. As a result I just said I was going, not really leaving Habib much choice in the matter! Fortunately he understands I need these weekends away, and I think he sees that they don't affect the work we're doing in any way, shape or form. So I went down on the Thursday, and the journey was fairly uneventful with one exception. About half way down I started noticing a significant Police presence along the road side, and then we passed what I believe will be a new university that has just been built with an awful lot of people outside, and a large tent with lots of chair inside waiting for some ceremony. The Police presence continued, and was reinforced with lines of school children holding little white and yellow flags. It was all starting to look like a government dignitary was expected, and sure enough just after our lunch stop a Policeman pulled us over and stopped our bus to let who I later learnt to be the Prime minister go by. She goes around in a big white Mercedes, and there must have at least 20 vehicles in her cavalcade ranging from supporting 4x4's to small trucks full of troop. So that was the journey, and after a few drinks at the BAGHA with Sarah and 2 of the new volunteers, that was also Thursday.

Friday was a great day. We had a lazy morning then headed out into town as I needed a haircut. OK so my hair is very short at the best of times but after 4-5 weeks it does look in dire need of a shear. Having a haircut is one of the few moments of true luxury I afford myself as I go to the swankiest hotel in town (the Sonargaon) and pay a whopping 200 taka for the privilege. Sarah also doesn't mind coming as they serve really nice coffee in the lobby. Usually there are a few important looking men getting their hair cut (not to mention dyed black) so there's that gentleman's club feel to the whole thing. This time there was a youngish-looking man sitting in the chair next to mine (there are only 2 in total) who turned out to be the highest goal scorer in Bangladesh hockey history and was 2nd highest scorer at the 1999 Asia Cup. He told me that it's a semi-professional sport still, but that when he scored a hatrick his team mates threw him a cocktail party and they drank beer. When I asked if there were many Muslims in the team he replied that there were but that beer didn't count as proper alcohol! When I mentioned this to Sarah she told me that apparently the Quran doesn't mention alcohol as such, but says a man should act "in a sober way" and that this has been interpreted as meaning no booze. It seems to me that religious texts are like statistics - you can make them mean whatever you want really.

My haircut took all of 15 minutes, so we then decided to buy some lunch at the Sonargaon's pastry shop and ate it sitting by the pool. Strictly speaking we shouldn't have been there as I'm sure it's for guests only, but you'd be amazed what you can get away with when you look Western around here. It felt like we were having a luxury picnic, sitting in comfortable cane chairs in the shade, and this got us to thinking about what to do after VSO. The link here is that eating lunch by the pool was something we'd like to do more of in the not too distant future. The more I personally think about it the more I see myself working as a consultant to small and medium sized organisations, public/not for profit and private sector, in a developed country. Increasingly I see that the main problem facing countries like Bangladesh is the state of the government and the attitude of those in power. While there are many organisations doing fantastic and essential work, until the government, or rather the ruling elite, decides it wants to improve the country and not just their own situations we're just pissing in the ocean. In my book that means that developed countries must exert honest and fair pressure on these rulers to encourage them to give up their power or use it for the greater good, and I don't have the skills, position or knowledge to be an active participant in that process. I can however be a concerned citizen and help others to understand how bad these situations can be, and that just because there's nothing in it for us either strategically or financially, we should still care and help.

So that was lunch, and the next event on the agenda was touch rugby at 4pm. We got a taxi to the BAGHA, had a cold drink, then I got changed and headed off to break a new record for sweating while following a ball around a small expanse of grass. Sometimes touch rugby can be really good and sometimes it's just poor and frustrating, and this time was nearer the latter. The players are generally the same, but depending on how much we all drank the night before and our mood, we either play well in a good atmosphere or we get frustrated and narky. When I first started playing I found I was getting really aggressive, not because of the other players but because I wasn't aware of how much frustration from the previous week's events I had bottled up inside me. I now know how to manage life here a lot better, things are also going a lot better, so when we're not playing well I can still walk off the pitch and go back to the BAGHA without being in a foul mood. This of course is essential when that same evening you are cooking dinner with your girlfriend on one of those rare occasions that you have the flat to yourselves. The only thing I'll say about that is a word of thanks to Peter for sending me some wonderful Blue Dragon cooking sauces, and I particularly recommend the Thai green curry one.

The next and final day of my Dhaka weekend was Saturday, and my bus was at 1pm. What made this return trip different was that it was the first day of Ramadan and so I was wondering how fasting was going to affect the bus driver! We'd been woken up at some ungodly (no pun intended) hour of the morning by people shouting and playing sirens in the streets to wake up "the faithful", so not eating as well as not sleeping seemed to me to be rather poor preparation for a long-distance bus driver. The driver actually seemed fine, and the bus was half empty as I suppose not many people want to travel that day. Usually we have a 20 minute stop after about 3 hours, but that would have been a full hour before sunset and the time when most if not all the passengers except me were actually allowed to break their fast. Unsurprisingly then, when the bus started to pull into the service station there were a few words of protest and a group suggestion of pushing on until 5.40pm, the officially defined time for sunset. The conductor duly obliged, so around 5.30pm we pulled into a small roadside restaurant and took our seats. The waiters brought food to everyone as they sat and waited, poured water into glasses, but no one of course touched anything. I'd ordered my food and a coke, but the sense of waiting for the official time to start eating that came from the 100 odd men (no women) sat in the restaurant made me wait with them. Then a waiter called out that it was time (I made it 5.43pm but hey who's counting?) so everyone first drank their water then tucked into their food or iftar as it's known. Usually it's a mixture of sweet and savoury, the extra sugar I'm sure being essential to restore energy levels after fasting all day. I have to admit that it felt nice to share that moment with all those people, but as I got back on the bus I wondered what the 2 women passengers had done while the men ate their bananas and sweet cakes...