Salam all,
So I finished my two weeks in Rajshahi, and I am now in Dhaka for a couple of days break before heading to Chittagong. Chittagong is the second largest city here so it should be a lot different than my experience in an old town with mainly rickshaws. I’m going to write this email with a couple of stories (vignettes if you will) to give a more detailed experience of a couple of experiences rather than a little about a lot.
Scene one – going to get something besides Bangladeshi food
So walking distance from my guesthouse is a sketchy looking place with a sign that said “mini Chinese and fast food” restaurant. I didn’t think it looked good, but desperate times called for it. It was early by dinner standards as it was only 7 pm. There were three young employees/workers watching Sri Lanka vs Pakistan in a very dimly lit restaurant. After conversing in broken Bengali/Hindi, I finally received a menu. I picked what I knew and went for the “Cheken Chow Mein” which I guess is a different meat from the “Chikin Chop Suey”. They leaped into action. One of them picked up what looked like an old antifreeze container, and all three left the restaurant and handed me the remote. I switched through the channels and settled on watching “Zara Zara” from Run. Five minutes later they came back with the jug full and an unopened box of noodles. They went back to the kitchen and started cutting vegetables, singing, and preparing my food. Ten minutes later, my food was packed and ready to go. The food tasted like cheap Chinese here which is a mixture of Ramen noodles, desi food, and meat all mixed together (which isn’t that bad). Though I was pretty sure the water probably had cholera mixed in, I couldn’t complain about the freshness.
Quick comment, though I’ve been lamenting on the subpar quality of Bangladeshi food, there have been some bright spots. Once, I had this Tuna sabzi almost that was amazing. Another time, these cabbage pakore/tikki that actually looked more like Latkes.
Scene two – children’s ward in the hospital
To survive in developing and third world countries, many have to numb themselves to poverty and what surrounds it. In the case of the hospital, one does this frequently (this is more worldwide) as getting emotional can sometimes influence your decision making capacity and skill. Though I go between what is the right balance, I was put to the test while on the pediatrics ward at the hospital.
The situation in the peds ward is much the same as it is in the medicine ward. Approximately 20 beds in one big room, 30 beds in another bigger room, with each maxed out forcing 2 patients to a bed at times and many on the floor. It’s one thing to see sickness and poverty in adults, and another to see it in kids. The unsanitary ward, patients eating what looks like watered down kichari, babies crying, families talking. There is a constant hum and a specific smell of antiseptic, body odor, latrine, rice, and sickness all in one room.
Like I said before, they present very late in their sickness so usually they already have a diagnosis and the disease is known. The kid which made me break down was an approximately 10 year old kids with his eyes practically swollen shut and his stomach protruding about the size of a 36 week pregnancy. He was so full of fluid that he couldn’t get up on his own. Why did they not come earlier? Why was this not detected by the local level doctor? How did this kid live life for the past month? For simplicity sake, his kidneys had failed and therefore fluid was staying in side of him. He was now laying on the floor as all the beds were taken. I wanted to talk to his family but unfortunately, Hindi/English can’t get by with gaonwale.
The next day, I tried communicating with him the way all kids know how to – by making funny faces. At first, he was like who is this guy that is rounding with his team but is making a face at me. I tried again when my team moved to the next patient and this time he smiled and copied my face. This continued for some time and other nearby kids and mothers started smiling as well. I pulled out my camera (as it’s the only toy I keep on me) and he allowed me to take his picture. I attached it to this email.
Scene three – Medicine Department Grand Rounds
We’ve always heard that there is no such thing as a dumb question. I think we may have been wrong.
Following a lack of participation from residents and students, the frustrated medicine chairmen had this to say. “You must ask question, not foolish one, but intelligent ones”
Scene four – Kismat
I guess I’ve always believed in fate but sometimes things happen that strengthen your belief even more.
I was hanging out on the medicine wards one day and it happened to be the day medical students were being tested. I decided to watch one student stand by his patient and get grilled by the attending. He performed with a smile and did ok as I saw the professor write “80” on the score card (it ended up being the highest grade in his class. Unlike in the states, there is no desire to have a certain number of A’s or high marks). He came up to me afterwards and asked me in bengali how he did. I told him I don’t know Bengali, and he talked in English. Ends up being that he is a foreign student from Calcutta doing his medical school here in Bangladesh. We decided to meet later that day and I hung out with him and his future wife who is also in med school. We instantly clicked and learned a lot from each other. It always amazes me the perception people here have of Americans so they were happy to see me change what they think. It also happens to be that they want to go to America eventually to practice there. We ended up meeting several times the rest of the week and it felt like I had family there with me basically. They took me out to dinner my last night and then dropped me off at the train station the next day. He even wrote me a letter to read when I was on the train.
While on the train, I was worried about how I would get to my friends apt. He couldn’t pick me up at the station as he was too busy working on his thesis which he had to defend in two days and all other male family members were out of town. When I was about an hour away, the person sitting next to me told me that Dhaka wasn’t safe. We got to talking and it ends up being that I had met his brother that works as a doc at the same hospital I was visiting for 2 weeks. This fellow worked as a government employee, basically the IRS, and was visiting family in Dhaka. He told me to come with him and he’d take care of me getting back. A government car and driver were at the station to pick him up and after driving together to drop him off, he paid the driver to take me to where I had to go. God is great.
The hospitality and care I’ve been receiving here is more than I could’ve asked for. My roommate/servant also came to drop me off at the station and then has called me three times since yesterday to make sure I’m doing ok. I’m sure there are crooks and cons out there, but I thank God that so far, so good.
So I finished my two weeks in Rajshahi, and I am now in Dhaka for a couple of days break before heading to Chittagong. Chittagong is the second largest city here so it should be a lot different than my experience in an old town with mainly rickshaws. I’m going to write this email with a couple of stories (vignettes if you will) to give a more detailed experience of a couple of experiences rather than a little about a lot.
Scene one – going to get something besides Bangladeshi food
So walking distance from my guesthouse is a sketchy looking place with a sign that said “mini Chinese and fast food” restaurant. I didn’t think it looked good, but desperate times called for it. It was early by dinner standards as it was only 7 pm. There were three young employees/workers watching Sri Lanka vs Pakistan in a very dimly lit restaurant. After conversing in broken Bengali/Hindi, I finally received a menu. I picked what I knew and went for the “Cheken Chow Mein” which I guess is a different meat from the “Chikin Chop Suey”. They leaped into action. One of them picked up what looked like an old antifreeze container, and all three left the restaurant and handed me the remote. I switched through the channels and settled on watching “Zara Zara” from Run. Five minutes later they came back with the jug full and an unopened box of noodles. They went back to the kitchen and started cutting vegetables, singing, and preparing my food. Ten minutes later, my food was packed and ready to go. The food tasted like cheap Chinese here which is a mixture of Ramen noodles, desi food, and meat all mixed together (which isn’t that bad). Though I was pretty sure the water probably had cholera mixed in, I couldn’t complain about the freshness.
Quick comment, though I’ve been lamenting on the subpar quality of Bangladeshi food, there have been some bright spots. Once, I had this Tuna sabzi almost that was amazing. Another time, these cabbage pakore/tikki that actually looked more like Latkes.
Scene two – children’s ward in the hospital
To survive in developing and third world countries, many have to numb themselves to poverty and what surrounds it. In the case of the hospital, one does this frequently (this is more worldwide) as getting emotional can sometimes influence your decision making capacity and skill. Though I go between what is the right balance, I was put to the test while on the pediatrics ward at the hospital.
The situation in the peds ward is much the same as it is in the medicine ward. Approximately 20 beds in one big room, 30 beds in another bigger room, with each maxed out forcing 2 patients to a bed at times and many on the floor. It’s one thing to see sickness and poverty in adults, and another to see it in kids. The unsanitary ward, patients eating what looks like watered down kichari, babies crying, families talking. There is a constant hum and a specific smell of antiseptic, body odor, latrine, rice, and sickness all in one room.
Like I said before, they present very late in their sickness so usually they already have a diagnosis and the disease is known. The kid which made me break down was an approximately 10 year old kids with his eyes practically swollen shut and his stomach protruding about the size of a 36 week pregnancy. He was so full of fluid that he couldn’t get up on his own. Why did they not come earlier? Why was this not detected by the local level doctor? How did this kid live life for the past month? For simplicity sake, his kidneys had failed and therefore fluid was staying in side of him. He was now laying on the floor as all the beds were taken. I wanted to talk to his family but unfortunately, Hindi/English can’t get by with gaonwale.
The next day, I tried communicating with him the way all kids know how to – by making funny faces. At first, he was like who is this guy that is rounding with his team but is making a face at me. I tried again when my team moved to the next patient and this time he smiled and copied my face. This continued for some time and other nearby kids and mothers started smiling as well. I pulled out my camera (as it’s the only toy I keep on me) and he allowed me to take his picture. I attached it to this email.
Scene three – Medicine Department Grand Rounds
We’ve always heard that there is no such thing as a dumb question. I think we may have been wrong.
Following a lack of participation from residents and students, the frustrated medicine chairmen had this to say. “You must ask question, not foolish one, but intelligent ones”
Scene four – Kismat
I guess I’ve always believed in fate but sometimes things happen that strengthen your belief even more.
I was hanging out on the medicine wards one day and it happened to be the day medical students were being tested. I decided to watch one student stand by his patient and get grilled by the attending. He performed with a smile and did ok as I saw the professor write “80” on the score card (it ended up being the highest grade in his class. Unlike in the states, there is no desire to have a certain number of A’s or high marks). He came up to me afterwards and asked me in bengali how he did. I told him I don’t know Bengali, and he talked in English. Ends up being that he is a foreign student from Calcutta doing his medical school here in Bangladesh. We decided to meet later that day and I hung out with him and his future wife who is also in med school. We instantly clicked and learned a lot from each other. It always amazes me the perception people here have of Americans so they were happy to see me change what they think. It also happens to be that they want to go to America eventually to practice there. We ended up meeting several times the rest of the week and it felt like I had family there with me basically. They took me out to dinner my last night and then dropped me off at the train station the next day. He even wrote me a letter to read when I was on the train.
While on the train, I was worried about how I would get to my friends apt. He couldn’t pick me up at the station as he was too busy working on his thesis which he had to defend in two days and all other male family members were out of town. When I was about an hour away, the person sitting next to me told me that Dhaka wasn’t safe. We got to talking and it ends up being that I had met his brother that works as a doc at the same hospital I was visiting for 2 weeks. This fellow worked as a government employee, basically the IRS, and was visiting family in Dhaka. He told me to come with him and he’d take care of me getting back. A government car and driver were at the station to pick him up and after driving together to drop him off, he paid the driver to take me to where I had to go. God is great.
The hospitality and care I’ve been receiving here is more than I could’ve asked for. My roommate/servant also came to drop me off at the station and then has called me three times since yesterday to make sure I’m doing ok. I’m sure there are crooks and cons out there, but I thank God that so far, so good.
