G is for Gaibandha

Rickshaws and Baby Taxis, Dhaka street in 1999

I’ve never been to Gaibandha, and yet I feel I know something of it.

Dhaka days are filled with rickshaws and CNGs. Like for most of the rest, for me the As to Bs are best covered this way. Both transport forms are to be enjoyed, especially because each journey is so personal. Without getting hung up on the over-chargers or the ones who won’t take you where you want to go, there is so much fun to be had along the way and what’s more, it’s a great opportunity to learn something about Bangladesh, in particular the appreciation Bangladeshis have for humour. Commuting in Dhaka, despite the jams, is almost always a pleasure.

It so happened that one evening I and five of my friends should go from Bailey Road to a friend’s place in Mogh Bazar, not a great distance but enough to warrant a rickshaw. The first rickshaw-wallah quoted a reasonable price. You should have seen his face when I told him we were six and asked if that was okay. He started laughing, as did we, and of course we got the required second rickshaw. Into our journey, our rickshaw-wallah started to sing: perhaps it made the pedalling easier. Loud and to himself he sang, hare Ram hare Ram, hare Krishna, hare Ram, with the melody supplied by Bollywood. I like the way singing aloud is not taboo in Bangladesh, an activity in the west reserved for karaoke bars and the shower; so I joined in.

After several rounds of the song, and fortunately it was sufficiently late that there weren’t too many locals around to be disturbed by our little concert, a breath of silence returned to the evening. ‘Are you Hindu?’ I asked the rickshaw-wallah. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Neither am I.’ He asked the usual, where I was from, what I was doing here. We chatted as he rode on, and after some time he asked me to sing another song, in Bangla.

The request made me shy: it was one thing to torture a song in English, but it didn’t seem right to do that to a Bangla song, especially when I know the lyrics of so few, apart from the ones I sometimes invent for amusement complete with their grammatical mistakes and mispronunciations. I wasn’t singing one of those! Instead I started again, hare Krishna, hare Rama, this time to a western melody: the song from the musical Hair that most westerners are familiar with. This time the rickshaw-wallah, and I knew his name by then, joined in with me.

When we were done with the second version, the rickshaw-wallah again started asking for a song. I told him that if I sing a song in Bangla it should do for the fare, thinking it might dissuade him. He knew I wasn’t serious and agreed. And so the pressure was on: I scoured my brain for a suitable song, one of the few I know, to sing for my supper, so to speak, not that I wouldn’t have paid him as well; rickshaw riding is hard work.  There was the first part of the national anthem, not appropriate; Ami Ek Jajabor by Bhupen Hazarika of which I only know the easy chorus part; the one about Kolkata I rather like, but I knew almost nothing of those words. As the minutes passed and we finally arrived at my friend’s place it was all too embarrassing: so I piked and paid. We had a good laugh about it and promised to see each other around the city sometime, somewhere in the Mega City. And I promised myself I would learn a Bangla song or two; sadly a promise as yet unfulfilled.

One day after work I jumped on a rickshaw heading for Farm Gate, knowing that my friend who’d arrived in Dhaka from the village was standing about fifteen metres in front: just for fun I’d pretended not to see him. Naturally enough he pulled over the rickshaw just after we’d started and got on. I suppose I am a bit mischievous because I said, ‘who is he? I don’t know him.’ The rickshaw-wallah was instantly fearful; ‘I’m not going,’ he said, thinking something untoward was going on. And here’s another thing I like about Dhaka: people help each other. A second rickshaw-wallah standing nearby had witnessed the scene and immediately came to assist. There was a split second where I thought he might hit my friend, to protect me. Then I laughed and they understood; we all laughed.

On another occasion several weeks ago my friend jumped off the rickshaw to buy cigarettes from a local shop, and while he was gone I paid the fare. We were in a rush and I thought it would save time at the other end. When we reached our destination I started to walk away and my friend stopped me, saying I should pay. Loudly I said, ‘I’m not paying that fare! It took too long; too many jams!’ I continued to walk away, my friend thinking I was being completely unreasonable; the rickshaw-wallah, from Panchagarh, was beaming with delight.

Each rickshaw ride, CNGs too, is a mini-encounter never to be replicated. There was the old CNG driver forced to continue his occupation because his children working in the Middle East would not send remittances; there was the driver proud of his son who was studying at the cadet college in Comilla; and the guy who ever so sincerely invited me on a fishing trip to the beel near his village house. It’s a pity I’m not an angler.

Of course a normal part of each conversation is to ask which part of Bangladesh the driver or rickshaw-wallah is from, for most Bangladeshis are very much attached to their home districts. It’s an interchange of learning for me; sometimes I ask what there is to see in a particular district or why it’s special. Gopalgonj is peaceful I heard, because in the home of Bangabandhu everybody supports Awami League, Kishoregonj is a land of haors, Tetulia is cold in winter and Jessore hot in summer: such things are rickshaw-learnt.

And well, I discovered something else, in the course of my completely unscientific study: a good percentage of the best rickshaw drivers, the ones who refuse to nominate a price before you leave, saying, ‘whatever you wish to give,’ and mean it; the most sincere and polite who never overcharge… well, as a tendency, they seem to be from the north. In my area it means in particular many are from Gaibandha.

You won’t believe me but sometimes you can imagine it before you ask… a look of honesty in the face or something… and sometimes I ask the rickshaw-wallah’s district before saying where I want to go; to determine what sort of ride it might be.

It happened so commonly in my area that after a while I started giving a little extra, a kind of Gaibandha-bonus for excellent service, when the service was excellent. I even toyed with the proposal of featuring a big ‘G’-sign on Gaibandha rickshaws so you could choose them off the bat; but ultimately I gave up even on the bonus system since there were so many great rickshaw-wallahs from Rangpur, Dinajpur, Nilphamari and other northern districts too, so the temptation was to ever expand the geographical eligibility of it, and it was not really something on my local salary I could afford; and of course there were other excellent drivers from everywhere else as well.

Nonetheless, the consistency of Gaibandha service was enough for me to start asking why; why are people from Gaibandha seemingly so inclined towards politeness and honesty? One Gaibandha driver said that in the north people treat each other well, whether rich or poor, and that there is less social distance between the two than in the city. Another said it’s because north Bengal is more traditional. In fact I wouldn’t know because I’ve not been there; what I do know is that Gaibandha rickshaw-wallahs are able ambassadors for their district. I really appreciate them and all the others for their hard work and more, for sharing snippets of Bangladesh and adding a little light-heartedness to almost every day.

And before you scoff further at my generalisations, I should mention the day one of my friends and I were trying to get a rickshaw in Naya Paltan, and the first five or so wanted to over-charge: that friend is a long-term resident so he knows. I was just telling him my Gaibandha theory, and he was as sceptical as you are, when we stopped the sixth rickshaw. The rickshaw-driver gave the exact rate first time. ‘Where are you from?’ I asked. ‘Gaibandha.’

Two days ago in the midst of bustling Kawran Bazar I was alighting from a rickshaw when another rickshaw driver rushed over to me and said, ‘I went home!’ He was really happy about it. ‘Panchagarh,’ he explained, seeing the puzzled look on my face; it was the rickshaw-wallah I’d refused to pay because of the traffic! I wish I had a memory for names. He asked after my friend and I inquired of his parents, and that was it: one more micro-encounter that proves that unlike just about any other big city the world over, and only if you look, Dhaka retains the human connectedness of the village, especially it would seem if you’re dealing with someone from the north.

There's no doubt, there's a lot to learn from Dhaka's rickshaws.  Or maybe a bit of escapism at the cinema?


This article is also published in Star Magazine, here: G is for Gaibandha





Bangladesh Dreaming: Article Index for articles about Bangladesh

September 12, 2001

“I need a shelter to build an altar away from the Osamas and Bushes”

- From the song ‘Mouth’s Cradle’ by Björk.

Crowded Boat heading for the Hatiyan Shore

Sometimes things are so straightforward they can’t be seen. It’d seemed unusual that of all the hundreds of people, and far away in Sydney, it was her that came to mind, that woman from Hatiya who can’t speak. I haven’t seen her for several years now. I don’t know where she is.

Her sari was usually a little dishevelled; her hair similarly so: long, black and matted. She grunts and moans to communicate, and whenever she’d be somewhere in the village where I was staying and we’d randomly meet, she used to moan excitedly with such an enormous smile, full of joy, powered with life. I guess she exaggerated her facial expressions to fill the space where words would go. She’d point to me and to one of my Hatiyan friends if he was there, and then mime carrying pots on her head, to see if we remembered. Of course we did.

It’d been evening, one of the many times my friend and I had arrived at Hatiya Island on the Chittagong to Barisal ship. Though it depends on the tides, it is often evening by then. There was the usual turmoil: each and every one of the seemingly millions of passengers pressurised with an urgency to get down the narrow metal stairs, off one side of the ship, at precisely the same moment. There were boxes tied with string, plastic carry bags, baskets, machinery parts, fish nets and suitcases. It was as though a whole village was on the move down those stairs, as always.

Below, competing like dodgem cars to sidle in to where the stairs ended in space, to take us ashore were old wooden boats, open and of questionable seaworthiness. Around them swirled the mighty brown sea that is the Meghna River.

Among the jostling crowd was that woman, who I hadn’t met previously, but who my friend vaguely knew of. ‘She can’t speak,’ he told me.

She had aluminium cooking pots and water jars, too many and in a range of sizes; in her hands and balanced on her head. She had an impossible task, to get down those stairs without losing one. The crowd pushed around her and she wailed as commandingly as she could to find space, clinging desperately to her cargo to survive the human torrent. My friend and I each took a pot to help, for she had no one.

Crowded Boat to Hatiya

Surely enough we were soon jumping from the small wooden boats onto Hatiya’s muddy bank. When we reached the beginning of the road, we organised a baby taxi to take us the thirty-odd kilometres south to the village where I was staying, and we offered to give the lady a ride. It wasn’t necessary to ask where she was going exactly, for everywhere is south of the ghat. There is only one main road. In any case, she was grateful for our small gesture, helping with the pots; her eyes were filled with happiness and relief, no words required.

I didn’t think much about it; in Hatiya people usually help each other. It’s no big deal. But that minor occurrence somehow created a tie between us, simple yet important in the way only simple things are. After that she would run to us if she saw us, and mime the pots. After that I’d have tea with her, much to the astonishment and slight disapproval of some of the other villagers; and sometimes I gave a few takas to help out. Though I didn’t know anything about her life, it can’t have been an easy one.

It’s so obvious that it would be her who came first to mind on that day in a Sydney lift, on the way up to the policy section in the department where I was working. It was in that excruciating moment when I’d also lost my ability to speak.

In many ways it’d been like any other day. I must have woken late and drowned myself in the shower to rekindle a feeling of life. I must have squeezed into the peak hour train, and gotten off at Wynyard in the city centre. I would’ve puffed on a cigarette those last two blocks to where the office was. All the usual morning rituals must have been there, and yet the morning was far from ordinary. It was September 12, 2001.

Sydney Harbour Bridge (wikipedia photo)

The attacks in New York had occurred around midnight Sydney time. My parents woke me with news of the devastation and in my half-sleep I didn’t appreciate what they were saying. ‘I’m sleeping,’ I told them, annoyed, ‘tell me in the morning.’

Before work I’d seen the TV images, played and replayed, and like the rest of the world I was stunned. I remember feeling numb on the train, along with every other commuter in the carriage. Normally people sat silently, and on that day there was silence too, but it had a reach to it, a connection shaped by the horror of events on the other side of the world. Everybody seemed nervous and haunted, and when eyes met there was a knowing look: as though we shared a horrible secret, except that the whole world knew.

I wondered if it really was the work of Islamist terrorists: thorough speculation had barely begun; and I was concerned there would be a backlash against Muslims in general. I thought of the victims’ families and how suddenly life could be unexpectedly lost. I remember being grateful my brother, who was living in New York, had managed to call before the phone lines got jammed. What was it like for him in New York, when as far away as Sydney it seemed that the world was forever altered? Those TV images, played and replayed, played and replayed…

I’d been slightly nervous getting into the lift. I don’t remember waiting for it; the doors slid open when I pressed the button. I got in, and a man followed me. He held the doors with his arm, and leaning slightly out the door, whistled like a sheep grazier to kelpies, Australian sheep dogs. I remember being slightly annoyed at the delay as I wanted to get the lift ride over with: to be heading up into a skyscraper was unpleasant on September 12.

Responding to the whistle two people came, a woman and a younger man, and when I thought about it later, they’d come from different building entrances. The building had three entrances, the one I’d used, and the two others from where they’d come. Because of the nature of my job I knew many of the people who worked there: I had to coordinate information from across the department. It was a large building, but I remember thinking, slightly unusually, that I’d not seen any of those three people before.

I pressed nineteen; after that the older man pressed sixteen. The lift began to move. It was already a few floors up when the older man broke the silence. I don’t wish to repeat his words directly, but he suggested rather firmly that all Muslims should be disposed of. ‘Yes!’ said the woman eagerly in support. ‘Yeah,’ said the younger man, with a little more hesitation.

Sydney skyline (wikipedia photo)

There are occasions when I would have openly challenged such talk, but on that day? The three of them glared in my direction, waiting for me to agree. Their expressions were accusatory and demanding. I couldn’t speak. In that small space of the lift I felt a great chasm had opened between us, and it just wasn’t something to be regretted. Was this anymore Australia?

In a way, my silence was befitting, for the events in New York were the start of a long period of silence not only for me but for much of civil society. It was the beginning of my understanding of the new, secondary war: the War on Tolerance.

I couldn’t wait for them to leave; it seemed an eternity to reach the sixteenth. It was in that void that the woman from Hatiya had come to mind. I had always admired her, facing her life without a solitary word given from it, so bravely. In my mind I saw her once more juggling metal pots and water jars amongst the crowd, struggling to negotiate down those narrow stairs. I saw her smile of life.

On that day, as it happened, going up in a Sydney lift were three Anglo-Australians wishing for her death. It’s what it means, genocide, or more correctly, mass-genocide since Muslims belong to many nationalities. Goodbye to the Hatiyan fishermen who risk their lives at sea in splintery trawlers to support their families; no more day-labourers out in the fields; no bustling night markets throbbing with customers and sellers, their produce spread across the ground. There would be no doctors or teachers or police or blacksmiths or charlatans or miscreants. It would be the end of thieves, worm-ridden children and rickshaw drivers as well.

And for the record, the views of those three people in the lift are an extraordinarily poor representation of the views of the vast majority of Australians who, even on a day like September 12, are not advocates of genocide.

The world had changed. It did not bode well. Even today I wonder: after so much effort trying to deal with the catastrophe of September 11, have we, as human beings, even begun to approach the consequences of September 12?




The thing about Osama swimming, before the US military got to thinking about it.  Or you might like to spend time in the village.


This article is also published in Star Magazine, here: The Day After September 11

Hatiyan Faces

Bangladesh Dreaming: Article Index for articles about Bangladesh

Monsoon, a Feeling for Rain

Dhaka street in the rain, from 1999

There was enormous freedom when I was young, nine or ten years old. My friends and I, we’d dump our bikes in a park somewhere and head off into the bush for daylight hours, exploring overgrown tracks, spotting turtles, catching lizards, tadpoles and small fish called guppies. When we came back our bikes were right where they’d been left. Life was largely carefree.

The Buriganga, Dhaka in monsoon time, 1999

In northern Sydney there are patches of eucalypt forest everywhere; the topography is of small hills and contaminated orange-tinged creeks. We’d make mud jumps for our bikes; or slides down a muddy bank into the polluted water. We’d do dangerous things like exploring the network of large stormwater drains armed at best with a torch. It did for spelunking adventures. On weekends, our parents rarely knew where we were, expecting only that we’d show up some time around sunset. The freedom to roam was the most common way to be a child in those days; these days I suspect many kids are unable to benefit from such freedom. These days, driven by a culture of safety and fear, things are more supervised.

The only time I recall any trouble for our expeditions was for arriving after dark, or returning home wet. In the cold of Sydney winters it can take most of half an hour to be substantially soaked: the nature of fine drizzle. I’d sneak in the door shivering, attempting to avoid my father who never understood the impossibility of paying attention to a triviality like the weather until it was all too late.

It’s good to be an adult, to arrive at the front door as I did last week, utterly soaked after walking through the streets of Dhaka in a monsoon downpour, without having to sneak past my father. In the monsoon season there’s a choice: find a skerrick of awning and stand sardine-crammed with all the others waiting for the rain to stop, or giving in to it, accepting you’re wet and continuing on your way. The latter option becomes all the more tempting when, before you find the nearest shelter you’re already half-drenched, which in the monsoon takes most of half a minute.

And while the sensible ones take shelter the going gets fast, no longer having to zigzag through the Dhaka crowds; the streets are yours, the bucketing warm water releasing the toils of a day at work, the noise of the city, the day to day trifles. At the end is a shower, a towel, a change of clothes and cup of coffee, but for now it’s just you and the rain; in the city monsoon there’s a striking solitude to be had, of you alone amongst ten million others.

‘What is monsoon?’ my mother asked over the phone line from Sydney. ‘It’s rain, lots and lots of rain.’ But it’s so much more than that.

Ploughing at the start of the monsoon

In the village there’s the hearty percussion of each downpour on the tin roof, waiting inside, sleeping or reading a book or eating mangoes; window-watching the world dissolve into miniature lakes and rivers and estuaries. It’s the great delta reminding us she’s there. It’s the time of the poling across fields to reach the market on the small boats called noukas. It’s the very culture of the land.

Slipping and sliding, negotiating impossibly thin boundaries between rice field oceans, only to have to wade through ankle deep water to a front door is how to visit monsoon friends. There are the occasional courageous knee-deep mud trudges too to distant markets, a chorus of frogs, the strain and determination of your leg muscles; and in places there’s that sport, mud-skating; and all is barefoot, for it is well-understood shoes are worthless. ‘You are good on the mud,’ I remember villagers telling me, more politeness than actuality; but if there is any truth in it, it comes from learning to walk on Norwegian ice. In Sydney there is no equivalent.

Hatiyan market, Lenga Bazar, with just a hint of rain

In the village too the sky makes the world stop, plans delayed, schedules trapped in tea shops and houses and mosques. In Hatiya the world shrinks to along the bitumen main road, further friends remembered but unseen for days and weeks, separated by a great barrier of mud. In these months, lives are shaped temporarily by the whims of the sky.

The locals were surprised how often I would brave the rain, but it’s not surprising since I am talking of the short holidays from Sydney, when each Hatiya minute was priceless and putting off a visit to a friend’s place unthinkable; or a trip through the mangroves to the beach! ‘I like how if you have a plan it gets done,’ a friend once told me, which came as a surprise because I always felt a bit disorganised and spontaneous; but he was correct regarding the monsoon. ‘You can’t worry about a bit of rain,’ I told them, and sometimes I had to coax them from under their shelters. ‘Don’t worry, I have a superpower to make it stop’; and of course they wanted to see that. So did I. We’d start out and occasionally it did stop which impressed nobody more than me; it was Paul the octopus style, although the European mollusc is much more successful than I ever was; and when it didn’t work I’d blame them for not allowing me to concentrate properly on the sky. That would humour them all the more.

Monsoon rice fields

‘Why don’t you use an umbrella?’ I can hear my mother say. Ha! Umbrellas are for the between times; the height of the monsoon ridicules such feebleness. As well you know there is simply no point even to unfold them; and it’s not uncommon to see people already walking through the rain giving up, putting their umbrellas down because they are already soaked and there’s just no point.

In the pauses, when the sun streams through the clouds and steam rises from the road, you can really consider the glare of the greenery, the great renewal and growth. And at night, on those lucky nights when the moon is full, well there is just nothing like its reflection on the sea of the rice fields, even more so for the island moon of deep Hatiyan villages, where there is no electricity to defeat its brilliance. There in the silvery light, nearly as bright as day, under the fifty million stars and meteors, you know, this is how the ancients knew the night to be.

In Australia the monsoon is a news item. ‘The monsoon has broken in India,’ newsreaders announce. It’s one of the few seasonal phenomena worldwide that’s considered newsworthy there; even the start of the ‘wet season’ in northern Australia is not reported in such a way. It was hard when I heard it, the announcement of monsoon, when I was not here to enjoy it in person; although usually by mid-monsoon I was thankfully on the way.

Rice fields of Hatiya

From the air Bangladesh has become an ocean. It’s a unique wonder: a mesmerising expanse of tiny household-shaped islands joined together in that unlikely squiggle of causeways we call roads; one of the best views from the plane there could be. I used to fly in captivated, ready for the dangers of the rolling Meghna, to meet again the mighty monsoon world; although of course arriving after the monsoon has begun is cheating, for the great rain is the great reward for surviving the furnace of May.

Back in the city the rickshaw drivers guide their vehicles along where the road ought to be, somewhere under the water. You hope not to fall unexpectedly into a hole. Office workers jump awkwardly across puddles, sporadically dipping their business shoes where there is simply no other choice; street stalls employ whatever plastic sheeting they can find and others embrace the season, splash, dance and go silly in the nautical cityscape.

A dry spell in the Dhaka monsoon in 1999

We can complain about too much water, but in the end it’s obvious: when the monsoon is not there, or sporadic like it is this year in Dhaka, the planet, and we little humans that inhabit it, are all the poorer. Monsoon reminds that we belong to the world and the world does not belong to us. Monsoon is time itself. The monsoon screams, ‘this is life! There is life.’ And it’s impossible not to listen.

So there you go, Mum, as far as my words can tell you, from Thiruvananthapuram to Thimpu, and as an essence in Bengal, that’s what the monsoon is: lots of rain and lots more than rain. But if you really want to know, you need to feel it, on the face, on the arms, in your squelching boots and sopping socks that drench even the very gaps between your toes.

From monsoon to fishing in the Bay of Bengal? Or chatting in Dhaka?

This article is also published in Star Magazine, here: Monsoon, a Feeling for Rain






Bangladesh Dreaming: Article Index for articles about Bangladesh

Adda, the Genteel Sport of Talking

Dr. Chicken and Situ (in his 2,100 taka shirt) for adda over lunch in the city, 1999

It’s not that people in other countries don’t talk to each other, of course they do. Across the world people meet together for a chat, to exchange views or share food; there’s nothing unusual in it. It’s in Bangladesh though that such activity, ‘adda’ as it’s called here, has been raised almost to the status of a national sport.

Each evening but particularly at the weekends, Dhaka’s prime ‘adda’ venues such as around the TSC, through Ramna Park or at Dhanmondi’s Number Eight, are bustling with activity. Under the stars, wooden benches are moved about and plastic stools arranged into suitably-sized discussion circles. Impromptu waiters wander with cups of tea on trays; patrons call to them by name to place their orders. People, mostly but not entirely men, because women’s adda still occurs more often at home, greet each other and share a few words as they negotiate their way amongst the regular groups to reach their regular group, ready to settle in.

‘Chanachurrrrr,’ blast the trumpets, the ritual attention-seeking tool for sellers of that snack called chanachur, known as Bombay mix in the U.K. or Punjabi mix in the U.S. and sold in folded paper cones.  Others snacks are also to be found: there are roving sellers of mori or puffed-rice mix, bottled water too, and stalls specialising in traditional Bengali cakes called pitha or savoury fried items like shingara and samosa; and yet ultimately it’s not the food that draws in the crowds, it’s the adda.

It’s hard to find a seat in those places at those times; a spare stool is a prize that’s usually well guarded. If you try to take one that’s seemingly unattended, inevitably a hand will spring out on top of it and someone will say, ‘lok ache’, ‘a person is there.’ Often it is not a person you can see who’s there; because they’re probably still on their way, caught somewhere on a rickshaw or Honda, in a jam that can be caused by nothing less than adda itself, with localised traffic snarls on the approach roads to the gathering places. It’s not that people don’t talk to each other in other countries, but there are not too many cities in the world where the quest for verbal communication can cause jams.

Adda at Hatiya tea shop, with Boss, Situ, Shiraz and Lekubhai, 1999.

Adda is not like other sports, because there are no rules and rarely points to be scored; but it has innumerable ‘players’ and can readily attract spectators, especially in the village, in the tea shops, on bridges, on mats laid out beside the road. There it is something greater still: it’s through adda that people who’ve known each other all their lives, family, neighbours and friends, constantly renew and reinvent their relations with each other. Adda is there when marriages need arranging and it is there when the grief of somebody’s passing needs expressing.

Indeed in the village, adda is perhaps the most important means of conflict resolution, most often a simple matter of talking things through, rescheduling debt repayments or compromising on property matters. Where conflicts run deeper, adda becomes more formalised in enlisting the assistance of a shalishdar or mediator; in sporting terms the shalishdar could be considered the referee. Indeed in this aspect the value of adda has been recognised in the west, where over the past several decades efforts have been made to establish their own informal mediation mechanisms for minor disputes; forms of resolution that are more cost-effective and less antagonistic than formal justice processes. While such western constructs are artificial, Bangladeshi village adda is age-old, as natural as the coconut palms lining the road.

In its shalish form, adda is reminiscent of that other South Asian game, ‘the game of kings’, chess. It is said that chess, which has been dated to the 6^th century Gupta Empire, was used for training in military strategy. Military conquest is also a form of conflict resolution, albeit a far less benign one than what adda provides.

Adda too marks the end of a dispute; once settled it is etiquette to share a cup of tea and the little adda that goes with it, signalling a return to normalcy and good relations. Ultimately, adda is a quintessential tool of community-building; where adda is strong, community relations are strong. Adda binds; it’s society’s glue.

Enjoying adda while mending fishing nets

There are people who say adda is a waste of time; others associate it with vice, such as smoking, betel leaf chewing and drugs. I suppose it’s true it can include such activities, but there is not a ‘sport’ in the world that is free from occasional drug scandals and ultimately people make their own choices about such things. It’s not the fault of adda. And as for a waste of time, in much of the world the time set aside for adda is surrendered to the TV set, so things are relative.

For the most part adda is simply about having fun. Its beauty is its adaptability; adda can be lively or serious, refined or down to earth, noteworthy or frivolous. It can include acting, singing, story-telling, mime and jokes; its range of topics is infinite. The pervasiveness of adda in Bangladesh is impressive, because ultimately adda is communication, and it would take a person braver than I to suggest communication is not an important quality for a society to have; so while in Sydney a stranger talking to you on a bus or in the street could easily be greeted with an element of suspicion, ‘are they mad?’, in Bangladesh it’s normal, and a good thing.

‘Brazil has lost the match!’ a stranger exclaimed to me a couple of weeks ago; and why should he not have expressed his disappointment at the outcome verbally; because the disappointment is shared and adda is about sharing. It’s communication like that, the start of adda, which turns strangers into friends.

If you are still in doubt that Bangladeshi adda is unique then think of this: there is no exact translation of the word available in English. English has ‘chat’, ‘conversation’ and ‘confabulation’, terms that focus on the spoken word to the exclusion of the passing of time together associated with ‘adda’. There is ‘chitchat’ which is usually derogatory and sounds like what a stern teacher might say to his or her class, ‘there’s a bit too much chitchat going on in this classroom!’ You could use ‘chinwag’ though this sounds like two grandmother neighbours standing along the boundary fence between their houses, a break from doing the gardening; and there are terms like ‘hanging out’ which conversely emphasise the time spent together but not the verbal component.

The closest English word must be ‘gossiping’, but only in its hundreds-of-years-ago sense; what you might find in a Jane Austen or Charles Dickens novel. These days gossip means to talk ill or fallaciously of someone who’s not there. Neither ‘small talk’ nor ‘schmooze’ fit the bill either, the former meaning triviality and adda is not always so; the latter defined as talking for a reason, to try and gain advantage. Adda is not that.

Yusup Kaku, Boss and Situ in tea shop for adda

It is unlikely too that you would find any of these words in an English-speaker’s CV listed under ‘hobbies’, but on Bengali CVs, alongside ‘cricket’, ‘chess’ or ‘carrom’ it can occur. I have seen it listed, in English as gossiping or chatting, for wont of a more accurate translation. And unlike those English terms, the Bangla ‘adda’ fits well in such a category.

Among their cultural achievements many nations like to claim as their own a game or sport. The oldest discovered depiction of skiing comes from Norway and dates back some 5,000 years; modern soccer and cricket are both English games, several centuries old. Backgammon is claimed by Iran, with a set uncovered by archaeologists that is approximately 3,000 years old. A sport of less international renown, a sport which is underappreciated and endemic to Bangladesh is that genteel sport of talking, adda.

Bangladeshis are right to relish those hours shared with family, friends, sometimes strangers, engaged in pointed or seemingly pointless adda. It may not have a ball, rarely a referee and there may not be rules as such, but the banter, enjoyment and highs and lows adda can conceive make it something of a sport, and there can be little doubt that if there ever were to be a World Cup in adda, different from debating in that the ‘players’ would be scored on entertainment value, possibly humour, rather than persuasiveness, that following some stiff competition from the coffee houses of Kolkata, Bangladesh would take the trophy.

‘Chanachurrrrr’ blow the trumpets, announcing the start of the evening’s tournaments. And as we sit there, as things are just getting interesting, my friend’s mobile phone rings: inevitable in this day and age. Is it an inhibiter or facilitator, the mobile phone we used to meet there in the first place? Either way he has to go, his wife wants him home because they have to go and visit some relatives, where they will sit in a living room, share food, a cup of tea, and of course, more adda.

Backgammon is claimed by Iran and skiing by Norway, both great places to travel.

This article is also published in Star Magazine, here: Adda, the Genteel Sport of Talking

The crowd at Joshim's tea shop pose for a picture, 1999

Bangladesh Dreaming: Article Index for articles about Bangladesh

Legends of the Brahmaputra

Guwahati (Photo: Rituraj Bhuyan on wikipedia)

Rivers are story-tellers; the Brahmaputra is no exception. Just as their waters carry the filaments of earth to deposit at will along their changing course, to become the fields of the farms on which our houses are built, so rivers carry ideas. Thoughts are shaped and rearranged at their own meandering pleasure.

From its broad sweep across the plains of Assam to the teardrop islands of the Bangladeshi delta, the Brahmaputran currents flow with legend. An actor to a tee, even its names are many: Brahmaputra, Jamuna and ultimately part of the Meghna, from the mountains to the sea. In the south, on the island of Hatiya, the legends collect like silt and focus on a name: Kamrup-Kamakhya.

By the time we reached Guwahati and the start of the first visit to Assam for both of us, Situ was settling into India and enjoying each new discovery, as of course any traveller would. I enjoyed the wonder of his wonder.

We visited the major sites, the temples: a small ferry took us to the Umananda Mandir on an island in the river; the priest at Navagraha Mandir gave prasad or blessings amid a troop of monkeys prancing about inside and out; and by bus we reached the important Kamakhya Mandir.

The Kamakhya Temple is itself a place of legends.  One version of the principal legend is as follows: once, when the goddess Devi Sati’s father King Daksha organised a blessing ceremony called a yagna, he did not invite his daughter or her husband Lord Shiva. At the insult to her husband Sati jumped into the ceremonial fire and killed herself; and on seeing her dead body Shiva became enraged and commenced the dance of destruction, the tandav.  With the Earth on the verge of destruction, Lord Vishnu with the help of his chakra started cutting Sati’s body into pieces which fell across the country.  It stopped Shiva’s dance and the world was saved.  The places where Sati’s body fell are considered centres of power and Kamakhya Temple is said to be where her reproductive organ fell.[i]  

Similarly, Kalighat Kali Temple in Kolkata is said to be where the toes of the right foot fell and Sitakunda Chandranath Temple near Chittagong is said to be where the right arm fell.

There were two things that excited Situ which I didn’t appreciate. ‘Kamrup is a district!’ he’d said with elation, and ‘Kamakhya is a temple!’ I’d asked why he was so taken with these two place names.  ‘I’ll tell you later,’ he said and I’d left it at that. I didn’t imagine he wasn’t telling me because it involved superstition, something he wouldn’t normally pay attention to. He was a bit embarrassed.

Kamakhya Temple, Kamrup District (Photo: Daimalu on wikipedia)

We took a day to visit the ‘Poa Mecca’ mosque east of Hajo.  I was telling Situ that as people say it is a quarter Mecca, which I’d read in the guidebook, that to visit four times is said to be like undertaking the Hajj, he should be sure to take namaz when we went there.

He was strangely insistent he wouldn’t be able to take namaz because he didn’t have a topi or prayer cap to wear. I bought him a cheap one from the street. It was then he confessed: in Hatiya he went to the mosque irregularly so was unsure he would know exactly what to do! ‘Well how do you do it when you do go to the mosque in Hatiya?’ I’d asked. ‘I follow the others,’ he said.

The night before our trip to Hajo he practised in the hotel room how to do his prayer. It’s not as if I could shed any light on it.

The mosque was really memorable for two reasons: because unfortunate Situ couldn’t concentrate on the namaz he was taking inside from imagining me outside laughing that he wasn’t sure how it was done; and because of the Imam, who afterwards gave a special blessing to us both and then said to make sure we visited the Hindu temples in the town before returning to Guwahati. One of those Hindu temples had been built on the ruins of a Buddhist temple before it.

In West Bengal and again in Assam we’d seen the tolerance and intolerance of India: one religion’s destructiveness towards another as well as beautiful cohabitation. In particular the Imam directing us to the Hindu shrine was an enlightened gesture.

A few weeks later Situ and I crossed the vastness of the Meghna, three hours it took, from the mainland to Hatiya on the rusty but sturdy vessel they call the sea truck.  Hatiya is fashioned by the river: there are few better places to appreciate the power of nature than standing at Hatiya’s riverbank and watching the erosion.  A few days in Dhaka can mean the tea shop with the water views where you had your tea before you left is now in the river, or moved elsewhere in the market. Meanwhile on the southern shore sediment grows Hatiya ever larger.

By the light of the kerosene lamp in the tea shops, Situ would relate our journey to our friends: and they were fascinated. For hours he would talk and show photographs, about Poa Mecca, riding elephants and wild rhinoceroses: all our Assamese adventures. But when he said we’d been to ‘Kamrup-Kamakhya’ the villagers were entirely astounded.

In Hatiya from time to time come travelling salesmen, with bags of tricks and special powders, with various potions of dubious merit in attractive glass bottles and sometimes a cobra or two to charm, for advertising purposes; always they have tall and fantastic tales to share; entertaining with loud voices and wild claims, they draw a crowd and drum up sales. ‘In Kamrup-Kamakhya,’ they say, ‘there is a magical bucket and if you step inside it you can fly to anywhere in the world!’ ‘In Kamrup-Kamakhya,’ they say, ‘there is a lion on an island in a river, and if the lion roars…’ well, a certain part of the male anatomy falls off!

For Hatiyans, Kamrup-Kamakhya is a mythical place so far away that anyone who goes there never comes back. Thus when we said we’d been there, some of the locals looked at us as though we’d just conquered Everest.

The Hatiyan Hindu community were particularly interested in the Kamakhya Mandir, which no one seemed to have known about previously; yet soon enough our pictures of the place, and the other mandirs of Guwahati featured in several of their homes, stuck into the thatched walls or decorating home altars.

Situ goes to the mosque regularly these days; he easily knows his namaz.  It’s the talk of By-the-Big-Bridge.  I suppose like the rest of us he got older.  We still remember the Indian trip, now and then, on Hatiyan evenings illuminated by solar power.

Shaped by the seasons and carried by the river are ideas. A little bit of fact gets scattered as the river negotiates southwards. The Brahmaputra – Jamuna is a legend-shaping river that silently deposits stories as sediment in the Meghna’s delta islands.

---

[i] http://www.religiousportal.com/KamakhyaTemple.html

This article is also published at:  Legends of the Brahmaputra (Star Magazine)

The preceding part of this adventure is published here: A Mountain in Need

A view across Guwahati to the Brahmaputra (photo: Tasiruddin Ahmed on wikipedia)

India Will Decide: Article Index for articles about India

Bangladesh Dreaming: Article Index for articles about Bangladesh

A Mountain in Need

Darjeeling with Kanchenjunga just visible!

Hatiya is beautiful. The morning belongs to kingfishers in brilliant blue swooping to catch fish from canals; the day is for large monitor lizards rustling in the bushes and a mongoose darting with urgency across a rural laneway. The afternoon is the buffalo lazing semi-submerged in a pond, off-duty from the plough; and the night is the domain of ginns, bhuts and their company, the howl of foxes and pained cry of wild cats.

It is in the long evenings which were not so long ago lit by kerosene lamp, in the tea shops, amongst the village men socialising, where even far-fetched plans sound grave. Situ is to blame for my gramer bari or village house affliction, for not only did he donate his family, his neighbourhood to furnish my life with hospitality as plentiful as the monsoon rains, but because he too has a traveller’s soul.

In the evenings, between the chatter over the price of vegetables, news of an impending marriage or a recent death, we’d make travel plans for entertainment, translated to include the other villagers. Mostly they were over-the-top, the temples of Thailand, the north of Norway to see the midnight sun of the Arctic summer, or the Australian outback with its endless miles of sky. Once he listed a budget for a trip to Ukraine via Moscow. I still laugh about the figures: $7.97 for a train ticket to travel thirteen or something hours, $5.61 for a hotel room… okay that’s exaggerated, I don’t remember exactly, but they were a little on the low side.

You can always tell a traveller. It’s not by the number of stamps in their passport, but in their eyes. Just talk of journey and a traveller’s eyes will get up in anticipation of immediate departure. My eyes have always betrayed me that way and so did his. It was only through the accident of our different birthplaces that I’d been granted the luxury of visiting many countries while Situ had not explored beyond Bangladesh.

I used to bring when I could, travel books listing all the world’s countries, the basic facts and a few pictures. He used to call me in Sydney and say, ‘I’ve just been reading about Malawi.’ His wife used to complain that he wouldn’t turn the hurricane lamp down until very late from dreaming his way around the world through the books; and within a year, cover to cover they’d be worn from having been read so thoroughly. It’s all behaviour to be expected from a traveller.

As it is between friends, mocking is expected behaviour between us. I used to list the countries I’d seen, counting the Sub-continental way using the creases in the fingers; then start to list the villages around about which was Situ’s travel list. And I used to say, ‘you need to see a mountain. You can’t have a successful life without at least one mountain in it.’ ‘I’ve been to Bandarban,’ he’d reply. ‘If they’re mountains, then why is it called the Hill Tracts? No, you need a big mountain, with cliffs and snow.’

With the joking I grew to know that I would take him somewhere; that I should find him a mountain. Such things are important.

Of course I would benefit too, since one’s first trip to somewhere foreign is an incredible experience that can never be repeated; the next best thing would be to witness a fellow traveller’s first trip abroad.

It happened in 2004. There was no international phone line to Hatiya in those days, so Situ used to make the somewhat arduous trip across the river, three hours, where he’d have to stay the night, just for a few minutes on the phone to Sydney. I was planning the usual visit to Hatiya; it happened nearly every year. This time I said, ‘we’re meeting in Kolkata.’ One can’t see through phone lines but I knew what his eyes looked like when he heard it.

Funnily enough Situ had always said he didn’t wish for India because ‘it’s the same as Bangladesh.’ Of course there are no two countries the same, as much as they might be branches of the same tree. India was easily affordable on a Sydney salary and for him the visa wouldn’t be much fuss. I knew he’d enjoy it. I always had.

Somehow he organised the passport and visa; there’s a few stories in that but best that he should tell it. Somehow he took himself to Benapole, nearly catching pneumonia on his first air-conditioned bus ride, and crossed the border alone.

Meanwhile I rang Kolkata, as fortunately I have a friend there too, Jayanta. He has a distinguished, really dry sense of humour, and he’d just gotten married. I was yet to meet his wife. ‘So your wife,’ I asked, ‘is she nice?’ ‘When you come to Kolkata,’ he said, ‘you can make your own determination.’

I asked if there would be any problem if I brought a friend this time, from Bangladesh. ‘Hindu or Muslim,’ he asked. ‘Muslim.’ ‘Is he a good person?’ I said he was and Jayanta agreed to trust my determination on that count.

Such was the excitement that my stomach didn’t descend to land at Dum Dum along with the plane: Situ should be there with any luck. Jayanta should be there with any luck. I met Situ first. He’d been waiting all day, sneezing from the bus ride, buying the consecutive three-hour tickets needed to wait inside the terminal building. But he was waiting and sneezing in India! Jayanta had brought a friend with an extra motorbike, so it was no trouble to power off to his place where we stayed a couple of days, during which they got to know each other. Jayanta’s wife was lovely, I determined.

There were many firsts for Situ on his trip: first masala dosa, first iced tea and iced coffee, now all readily available in Dhaka. He’d seen with dismay the historical mosque near Pandua, West Bengal. It was partly built from destroyed Hindu temples and you can see the faces of Hindu deities in parts of the brickwork. More inspiring was the coexistence of Hindu swastikas decorating the mehrab, the focal point of the mosque. Situ said in Bangladesh he’d been taught the arrival of Islam in the Sub-continent had been peaceful. Pandua says it wasn’t absolutely so.

It was hot the day we went to find his mountain, it was roasting. With sweat pouring down our faces like a minor waterfall, at the Siliguri jeep stand and headed for Darjeeling, I suggested we needed to take the jumpers out of my bag: I’d brought two since Bangladeshi winters are not quite as cold as in Sydney and Situ would need Sydney-strength apparel for what would be undoubtedly the coldest day of his life. He thought I was mad, in the heat. It was well over thirty degrees and I wanted a jumper!

I make little jokes about the jeep ride: Situ was so scared, as we rounded some of those vertical precipes along the roadway, he held onto the side of the jeep so intensely that layers of the skin on his hands came off. Truth was even on my second time there I was slightly nervous too.

In Darjeeling, Situ burnt himself while taking his first hot shower. It’s logical really, what he thought, that the hot water tap would come out at a set, comfortable temperature, rather than needing to regulate it with the cold tap. It could be like that. In Darjeeling we watched in awe as the clouds below us lifted over the course of the morning and continued above as we ate breakfast; and in Darjeeling we saw the white horizon hairstyle of Kanchenjunga, a name Situ would soon be using to criticise my Sydney-sized belly.

The Himalayas are where Hatiya comes from, by the Ganges, by the Brahmaputra. The Himalayas are Hatiya’s mother.

Back in the tea shops some weeks later, folk listened in wonderment as Situ described to them about ‘the town above the clouds.’ So he got his mountain in the end.




This article also published by Daily Star at: A Mountain in Need

The second part of this adventure is published here: Legends of the Brahmaputra

Hatiyan tea shop

India Will Decide: Article Index for articles about India

Bangladesh Dreaming: Article Index for articles about Bangladesh

Shrugging, Hissing and Feeling Groovy

Asmara - Wikipedia Picture

There are times travel itself plans a day off: days left open with not much to do between bus journey and plane booking. It was on such a day in January 1998 that I lazed over breakfast in one of those small side street cafés in the small Eritrean capital of Asmara, hoping to prolong the coffee as prelude to a day given to postcard writing and laundry.

Asmara, with a population of 500,000 people, is a pretty place set among small hills atop an escarpment some 2,325 metres above and 60 kilometres inland from the Red Sea. It has fine boulevards and admirable Italian architecture, for Eritrea was an Italian colony until 1941. There’s a nifty craft market to explore and both the cathedral and mosque to visit, with the approximately five million Eritreans, speaking nine different languages between them, divided more or less equally between the two religions. Yet having stayed a few days, what else was there?

The Eritrean people were complex. They spoke of hardship, not least the challenges of poverty sadly familiar to many Bangladeshis; not least the legacy of Africa’s longest war, thirty years, before successful secession from Ethiopia in 1993. Like Bangladeshis, Eritreans are rightfully proud of their independence. But the tensions they spoke of took place in an atmosphere that was incredibly and strangely laid back. Perhaps that is Africa.

Was it the soft rustle of the Eritrean English accents or the easygoing manner of the people? Was it that old African lady who’d called out ‘buon giorno’ in Italian or facing that odd situation in small towns where beer was more readily available than water? It could have been watching camel traders pass on their way to market that slowed the rhythm. Whatever it was, despite the ongoing struggle of life, in Eritrea it was possible, even when on holidays, to feel like the least relaxed person in the country.

Casual as things were, it was hardly unusual for the guy at the next table in the café to start conversing. His name was Tewelde and he was pleased to know I was Australian. There was a famous Australian eye surgeon Dr. Fred Hollows, renowned for treating cataracts amongst the poor and training local doctors. He was something of a legend in Eritrea and I’d met locals who’d said they could see because of him. It broke the ice.

‘I’m going to a wedding this afternoon,’ Tewelde said, ‘would you like to come?’

In Australia weddings are expensive and exclusive, so despite my enormous curiosity I declined. Tewelde persisted. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘in Eritrea it’s allowed to invite friends.’ With the weakness of my curiosity and strength of his encouragement I finally agreed. Goodbye postcards and laundry!

Asmara Street Scene - Wikipedia Picture

A few hours later we met, Tewelde now donning a sports jacket for the occasion, and set off for the church hall where the first reception was going on. Tewelde explained that in Asmara it was usual for Christian weddings to take place on Sundays in January, since it was the month following the traditional harvest season when people could afford weddings. People were already drinking, dancing and feeling groovy when we arrived. I wasn’t allowed just to watch.

It must have been quite a sight, my first Eritrean dance steps. I copied those around me, shrugging my shoulders and twisting to the heavy African beat, shuffling and hissing like a steam train in time with the music, the way they express their enjoyment of the music. The only concession was that unlike Latin American dancing for example, there was no need for the coordination of pre-rehearsed steps. In Africa all there was to do was open oneself to the music and let it guide your limbs, freestyle. My arms and legs moved in ways they’d never done before.

After a while we jumped in a car and followed the bridal party out to the plateau’s edge, at a place where you could look down on the clouds in the direction of the Red Sea coast: a perfect location for wedding snaps.

Bridal Party

Then it was time for the second reception, the one that runs into the deep night. Tewelde said they’re normally held in large tents pitched across one of the capital’s side alleys, and it being a Sunday in January I noticed several tents on the drive to reach ours.

Inside the floor was covered with straw; not sure why. Firstly we polished off a full dinner of spicy goat meat and salads; washed down with honey beer served in metal pots large enough to have grown flowers in. They called them glasses but they were big.

Tewelde (centre left) and his friends ready for honey beer

The local food in Eritrea features holey, rubbery bread called injera, a single flat piece large enough to spill over a dinner plate. Onto it would be put the meat dish; and with whoever was there you would share it, eating with the hand Bangladeshi style. Injera takes some getting used to because of its unique flavour.

During the meal children came crawling under the sides of the tent and tried to steal food. I felt sorry for them. The guys beside me were furious, yelling something in Tigrigna that clearly meant ‘go away!’ I was just about to stick up for them, to suggest perhaps we could spare a little food for the street kids, when one of the guests noticed my concern. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said smiling, ‘it’s our tradition. At first they try to steal food and we pretend to be angry about it; later we invite them to eat.’

After dinner with tables cleared, the real dancing began. I can’t say my shrugging and hissing improved, but with the abundance of honey beer I was certainly feeling groovy, and lost my shyness for it.

The Reception Tent

Mostly the men danced, but also some women; and while the bridal party were dressed western style, the other ladies wore exquisite loose white cotton, hooded dresses trimmed with colourful bands of African design. In women’s fashion it might be hard to beat the sari, but those Eritrean ladies were elegant.

In a circle we danced and being the only westerner I attracted attention. The kids in the corner cheered loudly as I passed; the African ladies in the middle would release that high powered whistle that only African ladies can manage; and the other guys dancing were showing the latest twisting, shrugging, hissing moves for me to emulate. I felt guilty for taking attention from the bride and groom.

After several rounds one woman proceeded to give me her outer skirt, a part of her dress! I had no idea what it meant. I confess I held a secret fear if I took it maybe I would have to marry her! So I refused and she was really insulted. I understood soon enough, when all the other men dancing were being handed skirts from various ladies and wrapping them like lungee. It must have been quite an honour to have been offered first.

Bride and Groom

The Eritreans didn’t mind my poor judgement and the shrugging, hissing and feeling groovy continued. A while later an old man, he can’t have been a day under seventy, wiggled as best he could onto the dance floor, using his walking stick to help him, and came in my direction. Onto my sweaty forehead he stuck a one Nakfa note, the lowest denomination in local currency. It was another custom, a compliment for nice dancing, and a particular honour: elders are well-respected in Eritrea.

Bride and Groom

‘Do you know what people are saying?’ Tewelde asked at the night’s end. Well obviously not. It was in Tigrigna. ‘He dances just like an Eritrean, they’re saying, he’s western but he can dance!’ I blame the honey beer.

I’d told Tewelde I was to attend another wedding in two weeks, that of my Sikh friend, up the road in Chandigarh. Tewelde shook his head, ‘I don’t know, you come here and after a week you’re dancing like a local, and soon you’ll be in India and be just like an Indian!’ To be as the local: every traveller’s dream! While the truth was nothing of the sort, it did happen that two weeks later there was a bit of wild punching in the air and a different sort of twisting. It’s hard on the leg muscles that bhangra.

The following morning I’d decided to take a day trip to Adi Quala, a town on the edge of the plateau where I’d heard there was a grand view down into Ethiopia. The bus station was both the national capital’s terminal and a dirt yard surrounded by a brick wall. I was finding the right bus when a guy called across the yard, ‘did you like the wedding?’

I sometimes wonder what happened to that couple. I hope they are having a nice life; because from May 1998, just four months after the wedding, a border dispute led to a second war against Ethiopia, until 2000, which claimed 70,000 Eritrean and Ethiopian lives. The groom was an army man.



This article is also published by Star Magazine, here: Shrugging, Hissing and Feeling Groovy

Also about travel in Eritrea: We Met Over Coffee

Bride and Groom at the reception