Christmas in the country
Trip Start
Sep 13, 2010
1
22
26
Trip End
Jan 17, 2011
Sylhet City, Sylhet, Bangladesh
Sunday, December 26, 2010
While fleeting moments of sadness swept across my mind the last few days knowing that I would be missing a white christmas with my family in Cold Lake, Alberta, it has been a christmas to remenber.
Last Wednesday, my good friend Shazia Shah, a born-and-raised in London Bangladeshi woman, and myself boarded a "first class" bus to the city of Sylhet. Sylhet is a district in Bangladesh and also a city. It is a small city that is one of the most economically well-off cities in the country due to the massive outflux of inhabitants to London and thus a massive influx of money from the Londonis (the name used in Sylhet to describe the Bangladeshi people who escape to England). Consequently the city has relatively good infrastructure (like sidewalks where you won't fall into the rivers of shit flowing underneath of them) and it is a relatively clean city and you do not find yourself wading through knee-deep garbage. The reason for this wonderful trip to the countryside was to attend the wedding of Shazia's cousin, Shami. The family was delighted to have foreigners come and observe the ridiculous luxury and splendour that is a wealthy Bangladeshi wedding.
Upon arriving in Sylhet, we were immediately whisked away to the family's home where I proceeded to meet the grandmothers and cousins and aunties and uncles and brothers and sisters and the sister of the cousin's husband and the auntie of the grandmother's daughter-in-law...you get it. Needless to say, everyone was either referred to by myself as auntie or sister or uncle or brother. This particular family had fairly good English speaking skills and could actually pronounce my name in full. However, I have been given a daknam which is a nickname given to every Bangladeshi baby born. This is a name that is only used by close family members and it stays with you for life. Mine is Lippi. This evolved because my research assistant told me to tell people my name was Levy because Adrienne was too difficult to say. Then Levy turned into Lippi because of pronounciation issues. Therefore, when I come back to Bangladesh in the future I will be known as Lippi.
After being fed meat, fish and more meat and then more fish, it was time to prepare all of the gifts for the evening's party. The party we attended on the first night was a Mendhi which is a party organized by the groom's family and friends for the groom. The bride is not allowed to attend. What happens is all of the women from the bride's side arrive to party crash and bring with them a carravan of gifts and sweets. With the gifts prepared it was time to attempt the wearing of the sari. The women were wonderful and I feel as if they take great pleasure in dressing up a bideshi (literally translated as "outsider" and is what foreigners are called here) in their traditional clothing. All of the grannies and bride's girls crammed into a little bedroom to get ready for the party and spent hours gossiping. Gossiping is the national pastime here. We went to the party and brought the gifts in, watched the groom sit up on stage letting everyone spread tumeric paste on his face and feeding him sweets for hours and then we ate more Bangladeshi food made with the same four spices as every other Bangaldeshi dish. Shazia and I created a commotion by ordering a second dessert. Everyone of course gathered around us and laughed at us.
The next day was spent preparing for the second party, the gai holud, which is the party for the bride. We painted the entry way of the house with white, red and yellow designs, the traditional wedding colours. Most likely some of you have seen the designs done in powder in Hindu temples and for Hindu weddings. Well traditionally, in Bangladesh, powder is used also but to make things easier we used paint. This was a way of welcoming the groom's family who bring gifts to the bride's family on this day, including her bridal sari and her gold jewellery... for this particular wedding she was bought 10,000 dollars worth of gold bling. During the day, two more of mine and Shazia's friends from Dhaka arrived to attend the wedding as well. These two frenchmen would ultimate become my touring partners in crime for the remaining two days. In the evening we attended the poolside party for the bride where, again, we sat for hours watching 200 people rub tuneric on her face and feeding her sweets, or mishti. And then we ate more meat, fish and then more meat and fish. Bangladeshi people claim that they don't like vegetables.
The next morning, the two frenchmen and myself wandered out to one of the surrounding tea gardens to breathe in some fresh air and get some greenery in our sights. We came across rubber trees and a rubber tree processing operation located within the tea plantation. It is amazing to see where the soles of your shoes come from. makes you think twice about rubber. Then we headed to Shahjalal Mosquejid, one of the famous mosques in Bangladesh. It was Friday and Friday is the special prayer day. It's similar to Christmas or Easter, except every week. The Muslims who don't pray five times per day every day come to special prayer day so the mosques fill right up on Fridays here. There must have been ten thousand men praying here. It was quite stunning and beautiful and really illustrated the massiveness of Islam. My Christmas eve.
I then headed to the beauty parlour with the bride and Shazia and had my hair and makeup done and then proceeded to un-do to ridiculous hair-do they gave me. It was like a helmet prom hairstyle from the early nineties. I couldn't even look at myself in the mirror and no, there were no pictures taken of this hairstyle massacre. But the makeup was VERY Bollywood. It was my first time wearing huge fake eyelashes and purple eyeshadow.
Christmas day was spent on the train travelling across the country. It is certainly an experience to take a Bangladeshi train; very loose suspension so it felt like we were going to bounce right off the tracks. This is not an irrational fear. There seems to be more than one train derailments/ crashes per year. There was one like three weeks ago, in fact. But it was beautiful and I had good friends and we were all good company for eachother. We arrived around at eleven to Dhaka and immediately went to the poshest hotel in town, the Westin, and had a genuine Italian gourmet dinner and shared some vino to celebrate the birth of Jesus (he was Italian, no?).
I'm back in Dhaka now and wrapping things up. I leave for Kuala Lumpur in two days to meet my adventurous mother and we will be escorting in the new year in Saigon.
I wish you all a really wonderful holiday with friends and family and lots of good christmas music! You don't know how much you love christmas music until it isn't around for christmas.
Lastly, I thank you all for your concerns about my health while here. Feels nice to know someone is worrying about you when you're all alone and sick in a forieign country whose medical system barely functions. I have been feeling much better which I think has been due to switching to a more balanced diet (whole grains, yogurts, oral rehydration salts etc).
We'll see you in a month!
Comments
Merry Christmas Lippy! What a great nickname. I'm right now in Zanzibar getting toasted on the beach, and it's more amazing than a real veggie burger! Have fun with your mom in Vietnam, stay safe and I'll see you soon!