Holes Carved in my Soul: The Final Word

I am almost back in the United States. What a year it has been. To begin to describe the Fulbright journey is to begin a novel of my personal and professional growth. As I sit here in the Edinburgh airport waiting for my flight to New York, I leave Bangladesh free as bird. Not that Bangladesh ever caged me. It was my frightened, insecure ego that kept me confined. But Fulbright and Bangladesh gave enough space to spread my wings and discover a world of endless possibilities--a world available to me if I climbed out of that shell and believed.

My heart still aches for Bangladesh: for the work that finally came together, for the friends who stole my heart, for the passion of such a congested place. I passed through Kolkata on my home, stepping into memories where the paagli didi journey began--I know I'll be back in Bangladesh at some point. My first visit to India effected me enough that I went back. Then when Bengal touched my heart, I came back again. I've proven that when I care about a place, I manage to find a way back.

So here is the end of my Fulbright experience in Bangladesh. I recommend Fulbright (or any similar scholarship) to any young person wanting a challenge. It has been the most rewarding experience in my life (though young, I've had plenty of amazing experiences). As for Bangladesh: when people ask the trite question, "What is Bangladesh like?" My answer is always "intense and beautiful." South Asia is just raw and real, that's what's beautiful. To paraphrase a metaphor by poet Andrea Gibson, Bangladesh is a knife that carves holes in your soul so beauty can make its way inside.

Endless thanks to those who were a part of this odyssey, both in Bangladesh and abroad. The shape of the journey depends on the company, and your company enveloped me in love. So love is all I experienced.

If anyone is interested in learning more about women's empowerment, Bangladesh or the Fulbright scholarship, please email me at amanda dot ferrandino (at) gmail dot com.

Christened

I think I officially became Bangladeshi today. I was christened in the monsoon rain on a rickshaw wearing a sari going to my center in Old Dhaka, holding three-kgs of mishti and directing the rickshaw-wallah where to go because he was lost. Once at the center, sitting with the women, gossiping and laughing, and singing Bangla songs. And the day ended with faluda and friends.

Oh how I'll miss this crazy place.

What I Will Miss About the Desh...

15.) Bargaining for clothes (well, I'll miss Saba and Dola bargaining FOR me).

14.) You can mix and match every color/pattern/neon and it will somehow look good.

13.) It is completely normal to have a live-in maid with breakfast ready when you wake up.

12.) Wearing bindis/teeps (definitely NOT the orna).

11.) Every day is Thanksgiving: tons of food laid out on the table in 20 different bowls and everyone shares.

10.) Really good dhal (lentils), tomato bhorta (mash) and faluda (indescribable).

9.) You go out with only 2 friends then you wind up with 20 somewhere on a roof with spontaneous singing.

8.) Mango and litchi season (my sweet tooth believes this is heaven).

7.) Strangers call each other mama (uncle), apu (sister), bondhu (friend).

6.) The soothing voice of the muezzin's adhan (call-to-prayer) from the mosjid on Road 6/A.

5.) Each and every meeting/visit/class begins with cha (tea) and mishti (sweets).

4.) Dhanmondi Lake, 'Kamala Buli's ship house,' and our Road 4/A Chomotkar Basha.

3.) Everyone takes off their shoes as often as possible.

2.) Saba, Dola, Abdul, Fahim, Emy, Diya, Parvez, Sayaka, Kyungai, Hia, Dipali, Lucy, Pappa, Shilpi, Zahir, Eva, Regina, Feline, Liza, Bokul, Runa, Jaganmoy, Nayeem, Sujan, Emi, Rumi, Sam, Saad, Sara, Rahib, Samdina, Nupur, Pakhi ... did I mention Saba?

1.) Simply: the Bang's rawness.

Notes on being a Paagli Didi

It was a joke—this nickname. When studying and volunteering in Kolkata, I slowly picked up words in Bangla. Forever the entertainer, I was always trying to find words to bring comedy to the young women at the shelter where I volunteered. I learned that the word paagul meant ‘mad/crazy.’ One day at work, I called one of the girls paagul in jest. Everyone snickered as they said that paagli was the feminine of paagul. “Uhh…well then, tumi paagli!” Squealing at my new Bangla, they aptly rebutted with, ‘na—tumi paagli’ (no—you’re crazy!). After I said that we all are crazy, I became the leader, the didi—the big sister.

Working in that shelter inspired me enough to work on women’s empowerment as a career goal—and enough to tattoo this nickname on my wrist. The blue, soulful ink was aimed to be a reminder of my role as being the big sister to all I can: to help those in need, contribute positively to the world, love and support everyone in their challenges...even if I’m slightly silly and fun with it.

Trust me when I say that I forget more often than remember this to be my role. Especially in Bangladesh, various trials push me in a negative worldview causing selfish actions where I lose sight of being patient, charming and supportive. I’m still grappling with leaving school (one year graduation anniversary!) and facing the world on my own for the first time. I’m still forming opinions on all that surrounds me, tossing with truths and lies. And Lord, I chose to do it in a place outside all realms of normalcy!

So in this Fulbright experience, I wish I could have given more sisterly insanity. But the truth is that every didi has to take care of herself too. Often I found my spark submerged in the pollution of Dhaka, unable to find my heart’s compassion to be a paagli didi. There were a myriad of factors drowning me in self-pity and misdirected anger. While I came back to Bengal with the lofty expectations to deeply investigate women’s empowerment, it turned to be an extended (maybe endless) lesson of my personal and essential role in the world. I answered questions of who I am and who I want to be: what I love, what makes me feel good, what am I good at, what do I suck at, what can I improve, what can I accept?

I recognize the journey of self-discovery is crucial but a part of me wishes I could have incorporated my work more, helped a little more. But in the end, I think it’s best that I took the time to review my personality and morals—for what I believe is how I will act. Opinions can change from year to year as we mature with experiences, but the core of who you are shouldn’t. We should be eternally digging through the socially conditioned layers towards the heart, avoiding hypocrisy and superficial aesthetics. Self-awareness and self-love is the first step to being a true paagli didi.

I have a very special woman in my life. Enchanting, cheerful and forever radiating warmth, she is the most self-sacrificing woman I know. No, excuse me, than most people will ever know. She can remedy any problem of all who come to her with her networks, perseverance, compassion and intelligence. But in all that selfless beauty, she is drowning in others’ (and her own) constant and high demands—so much so that she isn’t taking care of herself. I admire and envy the truth of her but I am constantly reminding her how no one will receive help when she’s run into the ground.

Seeing her like this validates the importance of taking time for yourself, your body/mind/spirit before you can effectively give. Giving all the time will eventually leave you with nothing. I now have compassion for myself that I’ve been selfish in this journey—it’s needed. And I will compensate for it in due time.

I’ve accomplished a lot professionally and academically here: I’ve made contacts with several innovative (and no-so innovative) empowerment organizations and witnessed a range of progressive programs. Meeting these women firsthand and interviewing them in their village will remain the most crucial lessons of my professional career. Already I am shipping home reports, notes and books on my topic for future reference along with over 60 business cards of relevant employees in Bangladesh. But most importantly, I am dragging home a stronger Amanda: one who battled her own ill-temper, loneliness, doubt, and hatred—who came out still believing in the paagli didi inside her.

I am leaving Bangladesh taking more than I gave. But this relationship is far from over. I’ll make it up to her.

Epiphanies on Rickshaws

My brain doesn't have an off-switch, it just doesn't shut up. "Talky as a jay-bird" might be the phrase, something to say about everything but too scattered to remain with one topic. I rarely never find concrete solutions or satisfying answers to any of the madness that thunders around in my head.

However, traveling has always soothed my unrelenting consciousness. When I was young, I could stare out the window during long car rides and be content. Today I'm the same on buses in Nepal, planes over Borneo or trains in India. Give me a window with a moving picture and I'm at peace. During university in New York City, I loved the subway because the ride was always in-between my destinations, where I could quiet myself and be present. At work I had to think about tomorrow's meeting, at school I had to think about tomorrow's paper, at home I fought with myself over yesterday's mistakes. But the hum of the train's wheels muffles my brain. During that silence, plenty of answers have come to me, even when I wasn't asking anything.

For my first months in Dhaka, I dreaded finding transportation because (1) the buses scare me when they look like they've survived WWII, (2) I hate having to argue for a price of a rickshaw or CNG and (3) I'm consistently lost because 'urban planning' is a joke. As I adjusted over the last ten months, I have come to enjoy transportation again. Even over all the sound and air pollution, I can still find the little epiphanies.

This afternoon was one of those days. In the quiet, it came to me that despite all the stress I've been through this last year, regardless of how many more grey hairs I have now, how I've been molested, how I didn't accomplish all of my work, how I cried till my lips bled.. that it's all worth it. This deranged place has taught me too much to ever really hate her. And she's produced several beautiful souls with whom I have eternally connected with. No--despite how I've been beaten by her, I could only love Bangladesh.

With only a few weeks left, that damn Cinderella song is stuck in my head: Don't know what you got 'till it's gone..

Empowering for you and me

“Anthropology was the science that gave her the platform from which she surveyed , scolded and beamed at the world.” Jane Howard on Margaret Mead

That's how I always felt about anthropology. I felt connected to the art by being about to learn about the world as wholly as possible. Feeling that we need to understand this world before we can help it, development research was a great way to do so. I imagined myself working for a research institute or the research department of an NGO, personally interviewing the people we want to help and finding out how we can help them. That was the drive behind this scholarship: to learn about programs that try to empower women and ask the women themselves how they want to be empowered.

Doing this work is another story. I enjoy interviewing survivors of sexual violence, because I learn about where they come from, what kind of programs they seek for empowerment and what they're dreams are for the future. With this information, I was hoping to publish a paper discussing their needs so better programs can be created. But during all the interviews, I felt I left them just as vulnerable as they were before. I began to feel that I was taking something from them, their story, a piece of them, to use for some high language, post modern academic paper that they will never see nor understand. To add insult to injury, most people who makes decisions on empowerment programs would never consider my findings because they are too wrapped up in what donors want anyway.

Where's the empowerment.. for anyone? I feel I left them not changing anything, leaving them as powerless and as scared of their future as were before I came. I can give them love, of course that helps, I'll always believe that. But that's not a tool they can hold onto, that's a feeling that will fade once I leave. I may have touched some lives, but my work is not sustainable. And in all honesty, where's the empowerment for me? I have felt powerless this entire trip, lost in the colossal mess of Bangladesh's corruption and violence. There were times I lost interest in my work completely because what was the point?

But this weekend, for the first time in the last 10 months, I finally felt I did something right.

My roommate Saba has self-defense training that she attended in India. Looking at the materials, I fell in love: physical and mental self-defense techniques and positive confidence building in a 2-3 day workshop with a group of women only. I begged Saba over a month to let me do a few workshops with her before I leave. While we're still in the process of planning with a few NGOs and universities, we held one 2-day workshop in our living room this past weekend with 8 of our girlfriends.

I never was so happy this entire trip. Combining my own personality traits with my knowledge on sexual assault, I was able to teach other women (our friends) why we face such tragedies as women in patriarchal societies. With Saba's help, we trained our friends how to escape from an attacker by hitting the the most vulnerable parts on a human body. We talked with them about how to define and assert their boundaries. We shared tips in positive personal decision-making and how women overcome the sexist barriers in front of them. It was only two days, it was just our friends (which, most of them are already quite aware of gender violence and are already pro-feminist).. but I felt so f-in good! What I loved was that personal feeling of empowerment being able to empower others. We ended the workshop not knowing how much they will remember, but at least we put these techniques out there and created a safe space for women to share all the awful experiences they keep to themselves. I really loved being a trainer.

So this is my career path: become a trainer on women's empowerment. Who knows where that exactly will lead, training companies on sexual harassment to sex education to confidence building techniques for young girls. I've found several promising organizations in the new city I'm moving to in September. Finally, I'm excited about my future, my empowering future, again.

Love to Charlotte

Every paagli didi needs her own sisterly support. Love to Charlotte for her endless compassion, patience and gentle honesty. It takes a super strong woman to pull another strong woman out of the dumps. Love you!

"Isn't that rape?"

I'm livid. Personally livid.

As a researcher who studies gender issues and sexual violence in developing countries, I come to hear of some horrifying and disgusting things. But truth be told, I've been getting better at numbing myself to it. It's easier to push into the back of my brain and focus on my work. A lot of stories don't even shock me anymore (like when I came to find that brothels here stick freshly boiled eggs up sex worker's vagina's to punish them). Don't get me wrong, I'm still overwhelmingly angered that gender violence and discrimination is STILL occurring in the goddamn 21st century--but nothing surprises me anymore. Also, most of the time I'm talking to women who escaped and are now with an NGO, (hopefully) out danger. Maybe distancing myself is the only way I can continue with my work.

But it's a whole new set of emotions burst through that wall when something happens to someone you know.

I was supposed to hang out with my good friend yesterday but she cancelled. When I asked her why, she said that her family suddenly informed her that they have a marriage proposal for their 17 year-old daughter (my friend's niece). My friend has been paying her niece's school fees because her brother and his wife aren't working but are living on her family's land. I started to freak out, I thought she wanted to go to college. "I'm going there to meet him and ask her what she wants," my friend responded. I knew I regretted asking: "How old is he?" "35." You do the math.

I spoke to my friend today: "Well, my niece is getting married today." Restraining my fit of rage I ask her, "What did she say?"

"Well she said, 'Why not?' Amanda, she isn't allowed to leave the house now. My brother keeps her inside. She isn't allowed to go out and talk with her friends. She thinks that maybe when she married, her parents can't say anything and she'll have more freedom. She is miserable now, might as well try something new."

I sighed, "I still don't understand why a 35 year-old wants to marry a child."

"For the sex, Amanda. What else?"

"Isn't that rape?"

"Not here."

I know the gender imbalance of her country upsets her, but she just brushes it off as normal. I just can't accept it: because no woman wants that as a normal life, wants marriage as her only choice of escaping tyrant parents. 'Choice'--a word she doesn't know.

I've met this niece at a family gathering, she's sweet. It's just too close to home. It's repulsive and a violation of who we are as humans.

Epic Love from My Sister

Happy 23rd to Me : )

ladies: strike a pose!

gentlemen: boom boom pow

we take it low low low low low...

my favourite friends, vodka and sheesha--what more could a girl want?

we finally found cheesecake!

i love being 23 years young!!

endless love to all who celebrated my birthday over the last week : )

Drunken Promises

Last night, you slept and left me alone

And tonight pretending to be asleep, you toss in all directions

I thought you and I are one until the day of resurrection

What happened to your drunken promises?

- Rumi

Coconut Dreamers

Groovy break at the Mermaid Eco-Resort with Fahim!

happy faces : )

Love Is The Truest Health

"Reason has no way to say its love, only love opens that secret.

If you want to be more alive, love is the truest health."

- Rumi

Bathing Beauties in Cox's Baazar

View more photos of Cox's Baazar

Cool, Unlying Life

“When we get out of the glass bottle of our ego and when we escape like the squirrels in the cage of our personality and get into the forest again, we shall shiver with cold and fright. But things will happen to us so that we don’t know ourselves. Cool, unlying life will rush in.” - D. H. Lawrence

Jahangirnagar University

View on YouTube here.

The Skeleton (1924)

There on the plain, on the way-side, an animal's skeleton

` is lying on the grass,

the same grass that had once given it strength

` and gentle rest.

They lie, bleached bones in a heap,

` time's loud dry laughter,

like death pointing its finger, insinuating:

` Where the beast ends

` there you end as well; there's no distinction

` in your case too, when life's wine's been drained,

the broken cup will be left like that in the dust.

I said: Death, I don't believe what you say

` mockingly of emptiness

My life's not the sort that becomes a total pauper

` at its journey's end,

` that at the end of the day

pays with hollow bones its last bill of board and bed.

All that I've thought and known, spoken, heard with my ears,

` all that has burst from me in sudden songs

` were not contained in a life hemmed by death.

` What I've received and what I've given back--

` on this earth of mortals where can that be measured?

Many a time has my mind's dance transcended

life and death, and gone where beauty lives

` eternally. Can it then stop for ever

` at the boundary of bones?

` My true identity

` cannot be measured by flesh.

The hours and minutes don't wear it out by their kicks,

` nor does the wayside dust pauperise it.

For in the lotus of manifest form I've drunk the honey of the formless,

in the bosom of suffering found in the dwelling of joy,

` heard within me the voice of eternal silence,

seen the way of the stars through the dark empty spaces.

` No, I'm not a big joke of the Creator,

not a grand holocaust built with infinite riches.

-Rabindranath Tagore

Happy Holi: Healing Our Skin Disease

Happy Holi--only one street participates: Shankharia Bazar. Nicknamed 'Hindu Street,' there is one street that you can buy all things Hindu. The first day is calm, walking in and out of temples, getting our faces fondled by gentle mothers offering flowers to the gods. We buy bags of Holi powder and return the welcoming gestures.

But today, it's roped off to make sure that no one ignorantly wanders through the street.. you will not come out clean. Little boys pop out of small alleys with water bottles filled with paint and used as pistols to christen us in pure white. The boys are fully painted with colors and have cruelty in their eyes that reminded me of Halloween: the camouflaged opportunity to reek havoc on whomever you want. Residents from balconies are pouring buckets of colored water onto our entire bodies. Then the rotten eggs and tomatoes come out, injuries gonads and causing nausea. Seeking refuge, we find our way down a pitch black alley to a water pump with a kind family sharing their soap. We emerged, to be plastered with green, red, purple and blue as we all danced in the street to Bollywood music.

After 40 minutes of trying to convince a rickshaw to take us home dressed as ghosts, we laughed at ourselves and the, literally, thousands of people laughing at us. In Hindu Kolkata, everyone gets painted.. but Muslim Dhaka, it's quite a surprise to see three women sitting on a rickshaw, wet and greenish-blue. Laughing and singing the whole way home and trying to convince people we have a skin disease, we scrubbed our bodies as clean as we could with coconut oil and soap. The marks are still there, but we survived.

This rebirth would have never taken place without my citadel of amazing friends: Abdul, Dola and Saba. Thank you for everything--your personalities are no less vibrant than our newly dyed outfits!! And always--chodmarani, chodir bhai, chuida bole, chudi ney !!!

Inarticulate Poet

"Inside every Bangladeshi is an inarticulate poet." -Herb Propper

We'll miss you and your wisdom, Herb--and well as your refreshing sarcasm : ) see you in VT!

Cacophony

I just want to record this sweet little moment:

I moved into a new apartment: four bedrooms, four balconies, three bathrooms, kitchen, dinning room and sitting room. We are three Bangladeshi and three Americans which we aptly named the Wonderful Six Women Nest: Choy Nari Chomotkar Basha. Right now, one of our maids singing about an eggplant tree cleaning in the kitchen. Our live-in maid, who we treat as a roommate, is chopping potatoes on the floor with a special, curved Bangladeshi knife. One of my roommates is putting coconut oil in her long, black hair to keep it soft and the smells are coming from her room into the dinning room where I'm typing away. Another roommate is tuning her guitar in her room behind her bright pink and purple curtain.

And in the back, the call-to-prayer rings from the mosque around the corner, singing his sweet melody to Allah and all who love him.

I tilt back and smile, grateful. Then cough from my sickness and blow my nose, to trumpet the cacophony of sounds.