No respect

Hello all,

It has been a few weeks since my last post... A lot has been going on over here on the other side of the world...

To start off with a little clearing up on what exactly I"m doing over here. First off, I'm teaching Spoken English. The classes I teach are nothing like what we had growing up. Most of the kids that I teach can read and write. They just can't speak English. Students start getting english drilled into their heads during class 2. Most have good gramer because they memorize the textbooks, but hardly anyone can speak because nobody speaks english in Bangladesh... That is why the government asked Peace Corps to send English speaking people. In my classes we don't even deal with gramer or spelling. Which is a bonus for me. My goal is to make the students better speakers.

Now some history about the desh. In 1953 several students were killed during a protest. Please note that in 1953 Bangladesh as we know it today didn't exsit yet it was still part of Pakistan or East Pakistan as it was called. Well some university students were protesting and they called this protest to say that the people of East Pakistan should speak Bangla and have their own country. Some people didn't take very kindly to those words and many people were killed. So if you ever wonder why we have the U.N. world language day it is because some people died in Bangladesh for their language. And from what I have found out, they are the only people to have ever died for their language. with the seeds of Revolution already in there minds the people of Bangladesh started a war with Pakistan and on Dec 16 of 1971 Bangladesh became it's own country and quickly took out english in the schools... People in Bangladesh are so proud of bangla and the revolution of 1971 every single town has a some tribute to it... It is kind of funny to think some 50 years after this struggle to speak their own language I'm being brought over to Bangladesh to teach English...

Now for some updates on my life. My room inside the house is now complete. I must admit that is a bonus. The shit has finally come to the Desh... It's a little chilly in the morning but by mid afternoon it's hot again. I must admit that makes it rather hard to get in the X-mas spirit...

One of the many things that make no sense to me about bangladesh is the fact that there are no trash cans here. In the States you can get fined or even thrown in jail for not throwing stuff away. Here all of Bangladesh is your trash can. I have yet to see a sign saying Keep Bangladesh beaufiul... But, everyone talks about the natural beauty of this place... Back home I just throw stuff away and never think twice about it. However, in the Desh all I have to do is look out my window and I can see the conquences of my consumption. The more complex and developed a society becomes the less responsibility people have to take for their actions. In Bangladesh, all I have to do is look out my window and I can see the trash... This was all brought full circle to me when I got lecutred about it by one of my fellow volunteers. This person saw me throw the wraper of something off the second floor of our training site... Well, after 5 minutes of being told why I shouldn't do that I had this thought you just read...

I will leave you today with some numbers and other bold statements

Originality seems to count for very little here, the community is much more important, conformity, and accordance and compliance. Everybody sounds the same here. It seems impossible to get people to think/write with there own voice

When I make my trip into Dhaka for X-mas it will have been 5 weeks since I last saw an American or spoke with somebody that is a native English speaker...

Now for some more weekly highlights... Two viliages got into a fight over a crikcet match... Something didn't go right so they were out for blood... Well I see the lowlights if you will on TV and they are charging each other midevil style with bamboo sticks. It is all put into proprecitve by my host mother when she says, "they don't have modern weapons so the use whatever they can find" (are you kidding me!)


Lastly and most troublsome... The other day they found a bomb/cocktail in the highschool of my town... The highschool is in the same complex as the college. We share a courtyard together... I found out about it and asked the vice principle what the deal was and he didn't even know about it, shortly after he was shown the news paper which talked about it, he called all the people that he knew to figure out what was going on... YOu can see the highschool from the window of his office.... So yeah, needless to say things here are interesting to say the least... I'm just sticking around to see what happens next....