It's limbo now. All of my possessions are gone and my
apartment stripped bare like it was when I arrived two years ago. The two weeks left before I head for Vermont hang heavy. Time goes slowly when you want it to go fast. Last weekend I traveled to the north to the farms outside Mymensingh, to Farook's family home. He just received his Masters Degree in Fine Art from the University of Dhaka, first in his class. We traveled by bus and then walked to the big river, the Buriganga, and crossed with others in a small flat wooden boat powered by the boatman's arms. On the other side we followed the footpaths a few miles until we came to a place, a little village, where we hired a rickshaw. In this region there are no cars and no machines except for the occasional threshing machine, like a big composter, that knocks the rice off the stalks and shoots it all up into the air where stalks and rice separate and fall to the hard clay ground. Most of the time one hears only the sound of birds and cows and people talking in the fields and on the footpaths, which connect it all together. People sing, and in the evening, as the work gets finished for the day, the birdlike sound of the flute reverberates across a vast, flat plain of green, across the rice paddies, the fish ponds and vegetable plots stretching to the horizon. People walk and talk. Groups of women, with saris of every color flowing in the wind, head for the family farms, each farm a mile or so from the next, and each one immaculate. No plastic, no garbage, no scraps of paper anywhere- absolute perfection and balance of nature and people. I ask Farook, "What kind of problems do they have here?" He said." There is no hospital. Lots of the people don't own land, just work it for the landowners like my father. They are poor." But it was obvious to me is that being poor here is infinitely better than being poor in Dhaka. And yet, for some, the uninterrupted peace of nature can be a burden, a burden relieved only by the stimulation of the city.

In Dhaka I read in the paper that a band of pirates was robbing big fishing trawlers at the mouth of the Buriganga where it enters the Bay of Bengal. One of the victims sought help in town and 100 villagers set out to catch the pirates. There was a fight and a couple of villagers were killed in the process but the mob caught the pirates- fifteen of them- and bound them and poured acid in their eyes. The ones who live will no doubt show up in our neighborhoods where the rich folk and beggars live side by side. They will join the lepers, the halt, the lame and the twisted along with the teenage mothers who made the mistake of getting pregnant without getting a husband first and were shunned by their families and villages and sent to the streets to raise their kids. Every day the newspapers deliver stories like this.

The two political parties- both headed by women-are Mafia gangs, literally, and the wars between them create a steady cycle of murder and retribution. The normal struggle between outlaws and police is carried out "wild west" style. Farook and I traveled the 130km from Dhaka to Mymensingh by bus as he always does. Anarchy rules the road. I knew what I was getting into because I have done it before. Only a refusal to be stuck in the white-skin privilege box all the time is reason enough to take to the road. We call our box "the golden triangle, " the districts of Gulshan, Bonani, and Baridhara where the all the embassies are. I ventured out more last year and even would drive myself, which was safer than having my driver do it. We both had accidents and a thousand close calls. He's dead now-26 years old! Back on the bus my eyes are glued to the road as we narrowly avoid hitting rickshaws and pedestrians and miss by six inches other trucks and busses coming at us head on. Six inches is a lot of space to miss by. That's normal. It is hard to explain the other passengers on the bus sleeping peacefully as we careen down the road. The busses are scarred and beaten as if a giant had used them for a hundred games of kick the can. Every scrape and dent marks a hit. Most of the windshields have been broken or cracked by angry pedestrians who have suffered from these drivers or witnessed one of their atrocities. Drivers are killed by the mob if they don't run away fast enough. For me, driving is the single most difficult thing to face in this country. Every minute on the road, even between my apartment and school, is an ordeal. Like many aspects of life here, it defies description. My American friends and I look at each other sometimes and say, "Nobody would believe this. There is no point in trying to describe it." Grace under pressure- resilience and strength beyond imagining: these are the great qualities of the poor Bangladeshi people. A rickshaw walla will pedal two people 10 km for ninety cents and be smiling. All day long laborers lift baskets of clay or concrete onto their heads and carry them high up into buildings or up out of a lake or pond they are digging by hand. All day long for a dollar-fifty or less. Women too. They do the same work. I ask Farook, "Do they have a lot of back problems?" He says." No, everybody is strong. No back problems." Bangladesh can be tough on the white-skinned foreigner who can feel like an animal in a zoo here; so curious are the people and eager to connect. Out in the farms in Mymensingh some of the people had never seen a foreigner before. And it can be very exhausting to be seen by so many as the genie who came out of the bottle. But I am glad I made the effort to connect and give of myself a little and I am glad it is almost over and glad to be going home, a place I will appreciate in ways I never did before. I will remember how much I was loved here and how much I found to love, in the people, in the language, in the krishnachura trees, the palms, mangoes, and rain trees and the birds, the dhal bhat, and a million unforgettable sights, sounds and smells.
Alhamdulila! (By God's Grace)
Ricker Winsor
Dhaka, Bangladesh