Reinventing the Wheel-chair in Bangladesh
Well as I hear on the news Bangladesh is two thirds under water. This is not very good news when you consider I am flying out there on tuesday for about 5 weeks. Also consider the fact that I have a spinal injury and get around in a wheelchair or crutches and will be travelling on my own for the first time. I am told by trailfinders that flights are still arriving and leaving so I know that the airport is at least dry. I will be working as a volunteer at a spinal injury unit out there which I also know is on high ground so I should have somewhere to stay. Getting around is going to be fun however and after the floods go down I will have to be careful of all the diseases that follow. Hopefully I can do some good and help some people out there who have had similar injuries to me. Should be a bit of an adventure anyway. I'll keep you posted ...
Diary Entry 1: (Friday, August 6, 2004)
News from the land of the flood is that I am here safely and it is still raining - every day! Saw the floods as we flew over and while in Dhaka but where I am is wet but on high ground. The journey was a long one and slightly stressful in places but I arrived safely and I have my luggage and an undamaged wheelchair which is a big relief. I was even picked up, just about, at the airport by the CRP transport who honked and weaved his way through the terrible Dhaka traffic to get me to the centre. I have looked around and am still deciding which areas to get involved in at the spinal hospital ( www.crp-bangladesh.org ). The weekend is on Thursday afternoons and Friday so today some other English volunteers and I are at the Bagha Club in Dhaka. It is a tiny bit of English Colonialism stuck in the middle of Dhaka. Here you pay in tickets valued in sterling and laze around the pool or tennis court. They have alcohol at the bar (one of the few places in Bangladesh), there are no dress restrictions for women, internet and the air con is great. Back into the thick of it tomorrow though.
Diary Entry 2: (Friday, August 20, 2004)
I have been here a couple of weeks now. The floods are receding and I am more settled with life at CRP and with a very different culture. I have done quite a bit of travelling in the last few years and this is definitely the most culturally different place to England I have visited. There are many similarities in lifestyle with other places I have seen like Southern Africa, Indonesia and Cambodia, but on a cultural level it is very different.
The 5 daily calls to prayer (including one at 4.30am to the mosque just outside my window) are easy to get used to, but one thing that is difficult to adjust to is the food. It's either cooked with lots of oil or is so sweet you can only eat tiny amounts to prevent getting a "head spin" from the sugar rush. It makes you think of the long term effects when you see the the black and yellow remnants of teeth most people have here.
It’s the differences between the sexes that I find really unusual. It is perfectly normal for men to walk around hand in hand and be very tactile with each other but it is practically forbidden for any touching between opposite sexes. The women (even ones not from Bangladesh) also have to cover themselves whenever outside their rooms and cannot show anything between their ankles and elbows and have to wear an Orna (a scarf like item draped over the shoulders and across the chest) to prevent any part of the woman’s shape being visible.
The students here at CRP have to be back in their rooms by 9pm and only get about 6 passes to go outside the CRP gates per month. They are also not allowed inside the mosques and in society in general they are very rarely seen outside the home and certainly not after dark. It has been quite difficult to get used to and has required a change of how I would normally react in many situations. I am getting to know the staff and patients pretty well now but I have to remember that when one of the guys I know touches my leg or grabs my hand when he is talking to me it is nothing out of the ordinary here. Also, when talking with the female staff and students many things that are ok in England are not appropriate here and I have to try and remember this. Things like touching someone with your feet is considered rude but burping and spitting in public is not a problem!
As a foreigner I am forgiven for getting things wrong but the more time I spend here the better I am at deciding what is culturally appropriate. My working day starts at about 8.30am (bit of a shocker for me) with helping at Occupational Therapy. Then to “special seating” helping to re-design the wheelchair and make it lighter and better. I am working with another English girl who did engineering at Cambridge University and hopefully we can get a new design ready by the time I leave. We are also designing ramps for some of the vehicles and some new adjustable collapsible parallel bars. Lunch is 1 till 3 then it’s onto the wards talking to patients followed by wheelchair skills and sports (basketball and table tennis). The days are pretty busy and tiring with the heat and humidity. My Bangla (Bengali) is improving and at a push I could direct my way round on one of the over half a million rickshaws or into Dhaka, officially the most polluted city in the world, in a taxi, order food and ask a few details about people I meet. I am writing this e-mail in a single computer internet café (if you can call it that) just outside CRP.
Even a simple email can be difficult work. This is is my third attempt to write this entry after losing the first one due to the computer logging me out the first time then a power cut the second time. Power cuts happen about 3 times a day. The last one lasted about 2 hours so I wandered around, boiled and filtered some water (has to be done daily), killed a very large spider which was sitting on my room door (man that thing could move fast, picture to follow hopefully), unfortunately didn't manage to get the large toad, mouse, cockroaches and thousands of mozzies I have had in my guesthouse in the last 2 weeks. Ate some oily fried veggie thing and sat about. Many people stop and stare. It is a national past-time here, especially for a white guy in a wheelchair in the middle of a packed street. Many people came to practice their English on me which generally consists of asking me my name and where I come from, about my level of Bangla too. However I got invited for chai twice and it is very rude to say no. Unfortunately chai is sickly sweet (of course!). It is tea made with condensed milk and extra sugar. I am still trying to get used to it but everyday it surprises me again by just how sweet it is and how they can manage to drink so many of these little cups of sugar every day. Anyway, things are going well and I’m enjoying life here. This shop is getting ready to close now so I have to finish this entry.
Diary Entry 3: (Thursday, September 2, 2004)
It has been 2 weeks since my last diary entry. After my 3rd week at CRP I decided to pop to Thailand (and because it's just down the road....ish) for a bit of a break, to buy some bits and bobs, to get to the beach and actually get a bit of a tan and to have a much needed night or 2 out. The previous week has been mostly focusing on getting the prototype new chair designed and made. The problem with prototypes it that they often need a few attempts at various parts before you get it right. This means regular trips down the long ramp to the workshop and back up in the heat to get parts produced by the workshop. It is looking pretty good now. The changes to the original design are easily removable back wheels, 4 position options and changability for the back wheels and brakes, better brakes, improved seating position and the combination of the general frame design and a removable seating system for the special seating department. Hopefully I can finish it off, write out all the things the workshop need to know with diagrams and in Bangla and bring it into production when I go back for my last week next week.
This week myself and some of the other volunteers were also taken to another area of Dhaka to see the Women's Project. Here they make embroidered items and other crafts to sell and we were treated to a look around the centre, a puppet show and dinner. It was really impressive to see how they managed with very basic facilities and produced some really great crafts. Most evenings I have been going back to the lads' rooms and playing cards and chess. I have become one of the lads really with the guys I play basketball with. They all know me really well and I feel very accepted even if still obviously different to them. I often find myself in the middle of a game of 29 (a card game they taught me) not having a clue what they are talking about but still just enjoying being there. It is also a great way to learn things quickly and it's amazing what can be communicated and the freindships that can be made with a few words known by the other in his language, hand symbols and a bit of patience.
I have enjoyed my week in Thailand, to be completely honest it has been nice to get a break from the oily, no variety food, restrictive culture and hundreds of mosquitoes (especially when I go back to the lads' rooms to play cards). However I'm ready to go back to see all my new friends and try and get this chair finished. Coming to Thailand on my own was also a bit of a challenge I had set myself. Travelling with a disability can be hard work and I wanted to see for myself if I could manage to come here (as I already new the area), get down to one of the islands and see how I would cope on my own. Some areas were difficult and I'm not back yet but I'm glad I did it and I know I can do it again if I want to. Now it's back to CRP. Hopefully next time I write I will be back at home and the chair will all be completed.
Diary Entry 4: (Monday, September 20, 2004)
I have been back from my travels about a week now and I am getting settled back into the rain and chilly weather that signals the start of autumn in ol' Blighty. My last week at CRP was actually quite emotional. I had become pretty attached to the place and the people there, if not to the oily food and polluted air. I managed to get the new wheelchair prototype completely finished and spent some time working on the drawings and descriptions to help the workshop put the chair into production fully and without too many problems. I also got to play wheelchair basketball in the new competition I helped to start up. This competition will now run every 3 months with many sports from javalin and wheelchair basketball through to ring throw and Carrem (both local games). I was pleased to get to play basketball again with the friends I had made previously. While I had been in Thailand the vocational training (retraining the patients to do a new job they would still be able to earn a living from) section had moved to a new place in Dhaka taking all my friend with it.
I raised some sponsor money by completing the London Marathon in my track wheelchair (3 hours 6 mins) earlier this year. This is how I paid for my trip to Bangladesh. I had some extra money raised so I used this to sponsor the prizes, buy some new sports equipment and pay for the competition to continue every 3 months for the rest of the year. I was called on to make a speech and the presentation of the prizes as the official "sponsor" of the event which was a little embarrassing but made me feel good too.
I was really sad that all my friends had moved to a new place and I managed to go and see them in the new venue on 2 occasions which was a bit of a trek and included getting around on my own, strapping wheelchairs to the back of rickshaws to transport them while I tried to balance on the tiny seat and hailing taxis late at night in dodgy areas of Dhaka. But it was all worth it and I got to say a reluctant but fond fairwell to them all just before I left. I don't want to sound big-headed but I think I probably left more of a lasting impression at CRP than most of the other volunteers managed to. Having a similar injury and experiences allowed me to become accepted much more easily. Also spending a lot my own time socially with the guys meant I was a friend as well as a volunteer worker.
My last week also demonstrated just how different Bangladesh culture is when one of the recently graduated students who I had become very close to told me about how she would most likely be married off to someone of her parents choice within 3 months or so. She had tried to put it off but now knew, even though she was worried and sad about it, that she had to obey her parents wishes for whoever they choose for her. The hard thing I found to accept was that she already had a boyfriend (a really nice guy, from a well to do family, who actually put me up in his house the last night I was there). Unfortunately her parents didn't approve of the area of the country his family came from and wouldn't let them marry. I found it so sad that there seemed no solution to the problem and she had no other choice than to do what they wanted for her.
I have had a good time in Bangladesh. It is not an easy country to travel round in and it has its problems but I would still go back, and maybe I will one day. I would like to go back and see how the new wheelchair design is holding up and how the sports competitions are going. It has shown me that if you put yourself in the right place for your own skills and get on with it you really can make a difference. Volunteering can be hard work but the rewards can be great too. I experienced a new culture, made some great friends and left with a feeling of accomplishment and that my time there had made lasting positive affect. In fact it's very much like travelling the more usual way - the only difference is you are there for a bit longer and you have to get up earlier! I would recommend it to anyone.
