At The End Of The Road

Well, its been a few months since my last post from that little boat in southern Bangladesh and a lot has happened since then. I have recently been working on a project on my grandfather who is living in a residential care facility here in Ventura, Ca. These are some select images from my time at the Treacy Villa over the past month.

Hands On Project Reyenda

It seems like months ago that I stumbled off that small wooden boat and was swallowed up into the chaos that is the local market in the small village of Reyenda. It had taken me almost five days filled with uncomfortable seats, terrible meals, headaches, sweat, fears and almost tears but I was finally there. Well, almost there. Over the 24 hour ride on the ferry I had memorized the now tattered paper with further instructions which was stuffed, folded and damp in my jeans pocket. “Walk into the market, take a right, walk about ten minutes and look for the only three story house, right after the incomplete cement bridge.” It all sounded easy enough.

As soon as I marched into the market I lost my sense of direction as well as my confidence. With so many eyes, frozen observing my every move, minutes felt like hours and I was soon no longer following the directions I had read over and over. I had taken a left out of the market and was now at an intersection between a mosque and a small, algae covered pond. The bicycles wheels had come to a pause, their riders eyes wide with anticipation of my next move. Even the cows and goats seemed to stare. The soccer game had briefly halted as I myself stopped walking, turning around to wonder what my next move would be. I smiled to the people whose eyes caught mine but the men did not reply and the woman, mostly in full burka, quickly looked away. I thought the eyes were the window to the soul and thus would be easy to read. In this foreign land the eyes simply starred back as though I were a ghost and beyond a look into the incredible vast differences in culture of these people they told me nothing. I set down my bags, looked around again and basked in this moment of pure life experience. I knew that somewhere in this town was a house filled with old friends I had met along my travels who had recently gathered from all over the world to volunteer in the relief of cyclone Sidr, one of the worst storms in recent years here in Bangladesh. The thought of their warm smiles kept me going.

I had decided the best thing to do was to walk back to the dock where I had entered the market and retrace my steps, hopefully with a different result. As I gathered my belongings and wiped the sweat from my forehead I heard an approaching car behind me and as I turned faced a white truck which was covered with Save the Children decals. The man driving, seeing that I was lost, stopped the car and approached me. I pulled out the instructions to the Hands On house and showed it to him in hopes he could point me towards the other white people. He laughed, the first smile I had seen in a long time, grabbed my bags and told me to jump in the back of the truck. We drove off down the road of the small village which I would soon come to know quite well, down the bumpy north road to the small path which lead to the house. I looked up and sure enough was greeted by the large Hands On sign hanging from the third floor. Over 100 hours after leaving Los Angeles I was there.

(Unfortunately the beautifully drawn Hands On sign, in English and Bengali is not seen in this image as it is behind the fallen palm tree. Hands On had rented out the top floor where roughly 20 volunteers lived, ate and slept at one time)

I was soon greeted by the warm smiles I had waited so long to see. I caught up with old friends, met some new ones, took a tour of our living area and met our cook “Lovely”. I had arrived just in time for a delicious dinner of rice, dahl, vegetables and roti, a Bangladesh fried flat bread. I sat in on the nightly “all hands” meeting, went over the current daily projects, got situated in my bunk and went to bed.

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

I joined a group of volunteers, of whom 5 of the 6 I knew from previous deployments, at a school project constructing a new building for a small english medium school. We had to walk down to the edge of the river, pay 2tk to cross in a small wooden raft and catch a bus for a twenty minute ride down the road. The bus left promptly at 8:15am and when it arrived we either climbed up top or pushed our way into the crowded interior.

I had arrived on the second day of the project. The first day had been spent constructing and erecting one of the two long 42’ walls consisting of 15 large 4x4 beams. Once we assembled the wall on the ground we employed the help of the locals walking by on the road as Ken lured them in to help us lift the wall into place. With this extra help we successfully lifted the wall into place.




Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Since there was no need to more hands at the school this morning I chose to work on HODR Half 8. Hands On has been building “half houses” for some of the more needy local residents in Reyenda. With the materials for each house costing roughly $400US it is possible to make a number of these small homes. Each HODR Half team gets all lumber needed from the local timber mill as well as the tin for roof and walls and all additional hardware needed. Each house takes approximately five days to finish. The house I was working on was HODR Half #8 and it was most of the way completed. I spent the day nailing on the tin around the walls of the house while another team finished the roof. The day was broken up by numerous tea breaks which consisted of the local tea called Cha, mini biscuits and a salty snack mix. At the end of the day the only thing left before completion was the construction and installation of the door as well as one sheet of tin on the roof and wall.

(Garrett and John stand at the base of the almost finished HODR Half 8. The children of the neighboring homes would gather everyday and help in anyway they could.)

Thursday, February 28, 2008

Since Hands On had recently signed a contract with Save The Children to build five playgrounds in the surrounding area with money provided by STC all the volunteers working on these sites were required to complete a day long seminar on the current child protection policies given by STC staff in a town about three hours away called Bagerhat. We had to catch a 6am bus in order to be in Bagerhat for a 9am start. As everything in Bangladesh is of course in “Bangladesh time” we somehow arrived an hour early. All the volunteers crowded the local food stalls for early morning roti and dal and while most of us ate, Ken went for an early morning shave in the local barber shop in true Bangla style.

(The young barber proceeded to cover every inch of Ken’s face in shaving cream. He shaved his forehead, and nose as well. After all that Ken said he still missed some spots. I guess thats what you get for 30tk (about $.50)

The seminar started with an odd combination of ice breakers and the learning of various offensive Bangla words given by our instructor Nayeem. The day was very long, filled with group discussions, “what if” scenarios and other conversations concerning child safety. It was not a very practical seminar but it was a great chance to network between Hands On and Save The Children. After the meeting, STC wrote us a check for the materials of all five playgrounds.

(Most of the Hands On crew lined up at the STC seminar site after a long day)

Friday, February 29, 2008

The timing worked out perfectly and the executive director of Hands On and his wife were able to meet us Bagerhat, attend the seminar with us and take the bus back to Reyenda with us for a few days of good volunteer work. It was good for me to finally be able to meet David and Gay. After being on four of the six Hands On deployments I have just barely missed them on every trip.

In keeping with the local religious customs Hands On has made Friday their day off. I took this time to sleep in as late as I could (8:30am). I spent the morning lounging around the base chatting with friends and checking my e-mail on the one computer that picks up a very weak signal through a cell phone connection. It takes roughly five minutes to load each page. In the afternoon I went around the local market with Gay and fellow volunteer Connie, both photography enthusiasts to try and capture the unique vibe of this village on film. Below is a small Quicktime movie I put together with some of these pictures along with other favorites from my time in Rained. The quality is pretty poor but you get the idea. These images can be seen in good quality at www.myspace.com/goldvein

“Mad World” by Gary Jules

On our walk back to the house we passed a small pond with a crowd of locals around it. It was nice to finally see the people here gathering around and starring at something other than one of the volunteers. Walking through the crowd I saw that they were watching one guy who was clearly looking for something in the pond. I asked various people in the crowd what was going on and finally came up with most of the story. The night before a man and his wife had been walking down the path next to the pond when they got in a fight and the husband had ripped off his wife’s necklace and thrown it in the pond. It was unclear as to where this man was now but someone put up a 200tk reward to the person who found it because it was worth almost 5,000tk (about $80US). I stayed and watched for a few minutes but he never found it. I told the crowd I had my money on him finding it but I doubt they knew what I meant.

Saturday, March 1, 2008

I woke up early to the sound of other volunteers readying themselves for the long work day ahead. It was the beginning of another week here at Hands On. I again signed up to put the finishing touches on HODR Half 8. The house was only a two minute walk from the house and we had our usual posse of young children following us there and helping drag our tools. I spent the morning working with my good friend Suzi on assembling the door. The wood we get comes straight from a saw mill and instead of picking out the wood we want we have to put in an order for a tree, the working find the tree and cut it down and then make us the lumber we need from it. Sometimes, well, most of the time the wood comes out a bit bowed. Putting together the door proved much harder then it was. David and Suzi spent the whole afternoon walking the door back and forth to base shaving off a bit of the side each time. We had a delicious tea break in the afternoon and with the walls and roof complete set a date with the family to come back and drink Fizz Up and eat Mishty (a popular Bengla dessert made from way too much sugar and a pinch of flower)

(No matter how poor the families that we are helping are they never fail to provide hot tea, cookies and other snacks on a daily basis. I’ve had enough tea the past two weeks to suit me for a long time.)

After dinner that evening I accompanied Nate, another volunteer, up to our friend Algae’ shop in Posherasta. Nate had been invited to learn the fine art of making mitt. “The Hage” as we called him had been a long time soldier and commander in the Bengla army years ago and spoke quite good english. He took us behind his shop where there was a small wooden shack with about five young men working around a table and roaring fire. Some of the men working could roll up to three balls in their hands at one time. Nate had troubles at first but after practice got pretty good. After the mix of one part flour to five parts sugar had been mixed a small plastic tin with fine white powder was brought out and 5-8 small pinches were dropped in the mix. Nate and myself both quickly asked what this mysterious powder was but the guys only told us it was a secret. We asked if we could try it and they said no, moving the container to the other side of the table. One of them men touched the tip of his finger to his tongue and then spit. I still have no idea what this mystery powder was, but I have an idea. We saw that Alhage had a small fridge in the back. We told him that if he put some water, sprite and coke in the fridge everyday we would buy all of it as it was the only place we could find that had the capability to make cold drinks.

(see small plastic container with red lid mid frame on the right)

(The mishti are cooked in boiling hot sugar mix and then drained from it. The sugar mix is simply passed on from batch to batch)

Sunday March 2, 2008

I went out early this morning to take some pictures because there was a thick layer of fog covering the whole town. The men and woman bath in a small pond next to the house, and without seeming inappropriate I wanted to get a picture of it. I came up with one of my favorite shots from my whole trip on this morning.

With HODR 8 complete it was time to start number 9. This house was being built for an old woman in a small village which was about a 20 minute walk away down the “5th road”. The woman's only means of making money is walking from house to house begging. She spent days and days working on the foundation and the whole village came out to greet us when we arrived with all the wood.

(we loaded all the wood on two “vans”, which are three legged bicycles with a flat bed on the back. With so much wood on each one the drivers had no room to mount the bikes and we had to push them the whole way. They charged us 60tk a piece, which is under $1 dollar.)

(half way through the afternoon we had dug the holes, assembled the wall and, with the help of some of the onlookers, lifted it into place. We were right on pace for the 5 day build.)

After the day of work at HODR 9 we all had a date at HODR 8 to celebrate the completion of their new house. We went to “The Hage”, bought Fizz Up and mishty and headed to their home. We had a lovely afternoon of food and laughs. All the children gathered and we played various games with them until it was time for dinner back at the house. It was such a great feeling to leave knowing that an entire family was going to spend the night in their new home.

Monday, March 3, 2008

The past couple days I had been feeling very congested and had sneezed more than I ever had before. I had no headache, no flu, just congested. I had been working the past couple days thinking I could sweat it out but had no luck. I worked at the house in the morning and decided the best thing to do was to take the afternoon off, work on editing some images and taking a nap. I had gone down to the intersection at Posherasta one morning and simple stood in one place as I snapped off almost 200 images. I then ordered them all in Final Cut and made a small animation video. I did this same thing all over the village in many locations and will make it a longer project once I return home. Again, more will be available at www.myspace.com/goldvein as well as www.youtube.com/jeffjohnsphoto. Since I am sitting in a hotel in Dhaka and my laptop has no more space I am unable to save the exported version of the movie at this time, but here is a screen shot from the animation.

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Today was day one of the first playground to be built by Hands On. We had selected a location at a school in a town called Tofelberi which was about a 20 minute bus ride south from Rayenda. Since this school was very close to the water we hired two small boats to carry our wood from Rayenda. We had a call for “all hands”, which means everyone pitches in to load up the wood on the boats at 7:30am. We were off down the river towards Tofelberi by 9am.

About an hour later we arrived at the edge of the river by the school. Looking up the sky was swarming with what seemed to be large crows. Upon further inspection we realized that these were actually large fruit eating bats. They were huge, at least the size of seagulls and it was very strange to see bats out, flying around and hanging on trees in the morning sun.

We pulled up close to the bank of the river, and with the help of almost every single child at the school we unloaded all the wood and marched it the roughly 200 yards to the school grounds. I have never seen children so happy to carry large, long extremely heavy pieces of wood. We had all the wood offloaded and at the school in under and hour, a task we planned on talking us all morning to complete. Marc, the project director, met us at the riverbank and helped us organize and offload the lumbar. It was amazing how eager the children were to help and equally amazing how complacent the local men and teenage boys were to simple stand around and stare at us, barley getting out of our way when we walked passed them.

We spent the day arranging the wood and digging various holes around the area where the playground would be. We were erecting a swing set, monkey bars, a cargo net, teeter-totter, a tire swing and a couple other playgroundesque wooden structures. We were served a lovely lunch of rice and dhal and in true bangla style had to eat it all with our fingers. As with everything else that we do we drew quite a large crowd. They would gather around us, point, laugh, simply stare and gathered outside the windows of the classroom to watch us eat.

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Unfortunately this would be my last day of working with the fine volunteers of Hands On Project Reyenda. I once again threw on my filthy t-shirt and dusty jeans and headed off with the crew to catch the bus. Once at the bus stop we were told there had been a problem on the bus and the whole system had been shut down. We hung around Posherasta for about 20 minutes until the bus finally pulled up. In talking with some locals we were informed that the busses had stopped running because an unruly passenger had bitten one of the bus staff while onboard. As the bus pulled up, 6 police armed with shotguns, stepped off clutching the aggresive rider. We hoped on the bus and were on our way. Once at the school I happened to glance down at my bottled water. I was mindlessly gazing at the label when I realized that in the ingredients it actually listed that each bottle contained trace amounts of arsenic, lead and cyanide. I had to take a picture.

Arriving at the school there was a strange lack of people there to watch us. We were told that it was a holiday and the school was not in session. We continued with our work but sure enough, after about an hour, we had a very active crowd of almost 60 onlookers. Most of the children from the school had chosen to come watch while a select few got down and dirty with us digging holes and moving lumber. With holes dig all over the lot, some almost 3 feet deep, we had many hilarious instances of small children falling into them as well as an unfortunate duck who was waddling across the area. By the end of the day there were so many people watching that I started to count. Alan and John had accumulated 71 people at the market while purchasing pillows but I was sure we had topped it. Counting just the people on the playground with us, the 7 of us volunteers had gathered 142 local people from the town to watch us dig holes. I almost couldn’t get a picture of the hole digging because there were so many people watching.

The women, who were usually very reserved, had been quite shy the first day, but were now warming up to us. Well, in the sense that they would not look away when I smiled. There was still no talking between the men and the woman. The owner of the house we had rented had his mother in town at one point and she was such a conservative muslim that she had never spoken a single word to man outside her own family. These woman were finally giving me some smiles.

As we packed up our tools, stacked the wood and said our daily goodbyes the ever growing crowd of children and adults alike followed behind us all the way to the next town where we were to catch the bus. Along the way we had to cross a large bamboo bridge which reminded me of something out of a James Bond movie that would blow up when the enemy would cross it. I hope we wouldn’t have the same problem.

When we got to the bus and boarded it we must have had almost as large a crowd as at the school. For these people, seeing westerners in their town, eating their food, using their same tools and riding their same busses must just have been the wildest thing ever.

Every time we walked through a market or down the street life would simply stall while we passed. I am sure that the younger generation had never seen white people before and some of the older adults probably hadn’t either. They were confused as to why we were there and the concept of people coming from all across the globe to help the poor people of Bangladesh was something they could not wrap their minds around. A large percentage of the population is simple a lost people. Their ancestors lived in India, their parents were Pakistani and now separated from Pakistan their children are Bangladeshi. For being literally surrounded by India, one of the fastest growing economies in the world, Bangladesh has been left quietly behind. The people are so hard working but can never seem to get ahead. They work the fields of rice but can hardly ever afford to feed it to their family as they need to sell it at the market. Most families have 3-4 children and are struggling to stay afloat. The people work so hard and it is so present in their blank stares. When I first arrived in this country I was not sure how to take these looks. I have come to love this country and the people who live in it and cherish the laughs of the children and the rare smile of the elders. Their sometimes insulting blank looks have turned into a seldom tear of appreciation for our simple work here. The concept of people with a simple cause, to comfort the afflicted, joining forces from around the earth to help people in need is a simple concept which seems lost in our fast paced society. I believe this is one of the most unique organizations in the world and the simple thought of helping random strangers pushes my desire to continue doing this work at any cost. This is what I believe my life is about. I am no carpenter, no roofer, and have no idea how to build a house but I do have the ability to show people that someone cares. Regardless of the physical work that I do here the fact that I took the time to come visit this county means the world to these people. Everyone is so curious why I have chosen to visit Bangladesh and I have been thanked many times over for simply arriving here. This last image was taken one night at the local market. This image sums up my trip for me. The hard working people, the dim light of hope and the hint of a smile behind a piercing gaze.

I am back in Dhaka now, after a long and uncomfortable ferry ride. Sitting in this hotel with constant electricity, bottled water and hot showers the world of Reyenda seems a lifetime away and once back in Los Angeles it will seem like a different world. Every time I return home from a Hands On deployment I have to move on from the feeling of feeling like I’m living a life that is less than. Please take a minute to look at the Hands On website and consider sending your next donation their way. Until next time, be the change.....

Jeff