Before I mention anything else let me give you a wee update about last week's dinnertime unpleasantness. As I'm sure you remember, the day afterwards I had a conversation with a manager at VSO who lives in the same block as the volunteers I was having dinner with. Well, the very next day he asks if we can speak in private in his office. It turns out that the very evening after we'd first spoken 2 men from the house had knocked on his door asking who I was. He invited them in to talk, and as we'd already spoken he was able to give them a full run down on who I was, what I'd seen and how I felt about it. This seemed to calm the 2 men down who incidentally were brothers who share the house and live with their wives i.e. the beater and the other woman who'd watched her do it. They then proceeded to explain to Ranju that the house maid was difficult, often shouting and being disobedient, but that they saw it would be best to let her go rather than beat her. By all accounts they seemed quite guilty-looking, and perhaps as a result of these feelings want to meet with me to explain! I've told Ranju that I'm happy to meet with them if it's to agree that their behaviour is wrong and it would make them feel better, but if they want to convince me that beating this girl is in any way acceptable then I want nothing to do with them. Ranju was supposed to fix something up for Saturday night but I heard nothing - maybe they're not feeling as guilty as we thought...

On an entirely more positive note I've had a really busy week, especially socially. It seems like I've gone from one extreme to another, from having no mid-week social life whatsoever to doing something almost every night. The difference this week though was that a good friend of ours and fellow volunteer Jean is leaving next week after completing her 26 months. It was also her birthday so there was a birthday meal on Tuesday night with a farewell party on Friday. In actual fact, the Friday gathering was titled a "Farewell and de-habituating sharing event" which we all found very funny but contains a lot of in-jokes about development workshops and Bangladesh English so probably won't make anyone else even smile. Ah well. It was a top party with improvised fajitas and lots of booze provided by VSO's principal expat supported, a lovely lady called Jane who works for WaterAid. Even as Sarah and I were leaving around 1am she forced 6 beers and 2 bottles of wine upon us as she didn't want anything left! As you can imagine there was much kicking and screaming as we filled our bags with booze...

Wednesday night was 5-a-side football as the new league has started up. After the glory game I played about 3 weeks ago this was entirely different, and that wasn't all due to lacking 1-2 key players at the back. Quite frankly, even if we'd never played together before we were still awful. The fact we were playing against a bunch of fit and quick Bangladeshi students didn't help either. I lost my rag once or twice as I just found their hypocrisy too much to bear i.e. they'd push and foul like they were playing in the Premiership, but as soon as you touched them they were screaming foul and demanding what your problem was. Pathetic. That's no excuse for getting wound up about it though, but it had been a long day and I wasn't in the mood for that sort of juvenile crap. At one point there was even one lad who was screaming back "DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!"

Once I'd calmed down a bit I started thinking about why a rich and educated bunch of lads would have so much bad attitude. Granted my above examples aren't a clear statement of the problem, but it is something I've noticed more generally. There was also this Bangladeshi lad at the party Friday night who at one point had to back away from someone as they were standing too close and he didn't like being touched. That may not sound very odd, and for a Westerner that would even be a perfectly normal reaction to life here, but for a local that's a little odd. This attitude thing as I see it comes to the surface in everyday life too. Take crossing the road in Dhaka for example. They're aren't really any easy or defined crossing points so you just pick your way through the traffic when you can or want to. The funny thing though is that you'll get someone in the middle of the road, waiting for the next lane to clear, and they'll be telling cars to stop or go a different way with some very dismissive hand gestures and a stern face. It's as if they think they control the road and the traffic should yield to them. As a result the vehicles do of course avoid the people crossing, but they'll do the bare minimum to prevent a collision. It's like a permanent game of chicken were each side tries to give way the least without backing down or losing face.

I of course see the whole thing entirely differently. The road belongs to the vehicles, and if you need to cross you really should do it on their terms. If you get caught in the middle the last thing you'd want to do is annoy a car or lorry by telling it where to go! This may be a stretch but I see here the workings of a very hierarchical society were most people are powerless and at the beck and call of someone else. Fundamentally I think that no one likes being told what to do without having any say or the possibility to say no, but that's a fair summary of life for the vast majority of people here. Even the rich and carefree student lads will have to live under the control of their parents with little or no option but to do what they say. This situation of powerlessness will lead to resentment and a need to rebel whenever the opportunity arises, hence the excessive reaction of the student who didn't want to be told what to do by a team mate or opponent. You can also see this sort of resistance in the way the rickshaw pullers behave with the traffic police sometimes. Certain roads are banned to rickshaws at certain times, but sometimes they'll stray over the boundary waiting for customers and the policeman will tell them to get back. Never have I seen one of them move back when asked, even when threatened. It is only once the policeman starts hitting the rickshaw with his stick that they'll move. It's almost as if making the policeman resort to such heavy-handed tactics is a victory for them, making him angry undermines his authority.

Well I think that's quite enough of me giving my 2 pence worth about Asian culture. You'll be relieved to hear that next week I've got 2 field trips planned as part of an audit I'm doing for one of our partner organisations. They had some staff stealing money from their micro-credit programme so want to see where they need to tighten controls to prevent it happening again. My first trip will take to a remote village down south where I'll apparently be staying in a guest house with no electricity or running water. Bucket showers here I come!