The cookie being offered to me at the Grameen Star Education center is a small, brown, circular wafer. Inscribed on its face is the name "Haque's Digestive". I take a bite. Chew, chew... wait a second. This is a graham cracker!
"BUZZZ" sounds the door bell. "BUZZZ" I ring again. A minute later little Alumgi arrives, keys in hand. He unlocks the accordion gate, using his tiny frame to full advantage pushes it open and walks out to meet us smiling. He pulls the bolt on the large iron front gate, and swings it open for us. "Thanks, Alumgi," we chime. But thanks often seem lost on him. He doesn't need to be thanked. He's just doing his job. He's a servant.
It's a sunny day out and we're sitting in a park in Uttara. There are six or seven games of cricket going on simultaneously in an area that I would have suspected could maintain a maximum of three. As usually happens when we're at the park, young boys and occasionally older men come up to us to ask, "What's your country?" or just shake hands. Today, we met Labu. He is originally from Khulna, where his father works in a jute mill. His English is broken, but from what we can tell he works in a garment factory putting labels on clothing.
Three disparate stories, but I see a connection. These scenes fit into the picture I keep getting of this city. It seems to me in many ways a city set in late nineteenth century America. When I try to examine Dhaka and make sense of it in my head, I have to turn to Professor David Bailey. Perhaps I'm just imagining similarities, perhaps I compare everything to American history because it's the only thing I know anything about, or perhaps my analysis will just seem obvious. But, for whatever reason, I feel that to understand Dhaka, I need to go back to HST 316: American Intellectual History.
Now there is plenty of evidence available to make this claim appear utterly ridiculous. Just look at the cars and buses and baby taxis and rickshaws taking people back and forth to work or school or the market each day. Or look at the men in the office next door bent down on their knees lifting prayers to Allah. Obviously there were no automobiles and very few Muslims in nineteenth-century America.
However, let's look deeper. Place yourself in one of those automobiles driving down the street. Sit squarely in the twentieth century and look out your window. What do you see? Perhaps your eyes are drawn to the banners draped across building after building. The banners are often different but the product is always the same: "Become an IT professional: C++, Novell, Microsoft Certified Professional. Courses start soon! Enroll now!" The names of the schools vary from NIIT to Aptech to Grameen Star Education. They are the one to two year technical schools, aiming to create a technical elite, ready to bring Bangladesh into a new prosperity. The universities are seldom much more than an expansion on the technical school. Some of the bigger public schools, like Dhaka University offer the full gamut of majors and courses from Anthropology to Zoology, but for the most part the Universities that people attend offer architecture and computer science and electrical engineering, and a few other related fields. The greatest prestige, though, goes to those who are educated abroad. If the best education is desired, students travel to the United States or to the UK or Australia.
Bangladesh is preparing to leap into the mainstream both technologically and financially. America was once in this position too. The industrial revolution was just picking up steam in the US when the Civil War rolled around. Afterwards it became evident that the world was changing and we didn't want to be left behind. Many of our best and brightest, like Henry Adams, were sent to Europe to study in the most modern German universities. A select few studied philosophy and religion at places like Harvard. But with Justin Morrill's bill creating the first land-grant universities the move to mobilize a nation began. Michigan Agriculture College was the first public land-grant university and its purpose was obvious: train engineers and farmers to modernize America and keep it competitive in world markets. And now this is what is happening to Bangladesh.
We can go even lower down the education chain to find similarities. Our friend Wasama was telling us about the average level of schooling here in Bangladesh. Schools usually meet in houses that have either been entirely set aside as schools, or had portions converted to classrooms. The teachers are usually only mildly-prepared housewives. There is no such thing as an 'extracurricular activity'. As I heard these things images flashed through my head of every movie I'd ever seen portraying American schools in the 1800's. I know, movies aren't the most reliable of resources, but I never finished my independent study on the history of American education, so movies are all that I have. Thus, with a theory in my mind I decided to see if it had legs. What else seemed to me characteristic of such schools? Perhaps a focus on grammar and rote teaching of writing, spelling, mathematics, etc... I asked Wasama about the teaching style. And I was right. The evidence is by no means conclusive but my aim is only to build a circumstantial case.
When school is done, and sometimes in lieu of school, many city-dwellers are drawn to the garment factories. In Mirpur, there is a road leading to the Grameen Bank Bhaban that is literally lined with garment factories. We are told that many of the workers are women, and until recently, children. I have yet to visit such a factory, so I can't speak to the conditions. But I doubt they are worse, and I suspect they may even be better than the conditions found in the many garment factories that once provided so many jobs to girls and women in America during the mid to late nineteenth century. Here I admit my knowledge is lacking, forcing my conclusions to be drawn from vague impressions from history classes of the past. The only detail I can remember is the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire which killed a whole factory's worth of garment workers in 1911. (And I had to confirm that on the Internet!) Sure, that's officially the Twentieth Century, but I hold anything that occurred before World War I as fair game for this article.
Labu is from a rural farm family, but like so many others here in Bangladesh he has come to the big city to find work. This trend is one America has certainly seen before, particularly during the migration of freed slaves to northern factory towns. I bet America still experiences that now, although it becomes more difficult to see a flow from rural to urban as the two seem to blend together in our sprawling society.
As for Alumgi, well, he defies explanation. He has grown particularly fond of sneaking up on Robin and I so that he can stick his finger in our ears. Delowar says that he's "too naughty." That's Delowar's job. He's the head of the household. I've never had servants before. I can't say I particularly like it. But my initial distaste for the entire concept has waned. Delowar has only been working at this house a few months. In the past he has worked mostly for our hostess' mother. He tells us in his broken English that he liked that job better, not because of his new duties are less agreeable, but because his old job was in a nicer area where there was more to do. Before Delowar took over his duties here, the head of the household and head cook was a older gentleman who had been serving the family since his childhood. When the time came for him to retire, the family offered to let him go and take care of him. But he responded, "Where else would I go? I like it here." I heard this story from Auntie, and thought, 'Is this an estate?' By local standards it's a beautiful little house/apartment hybrid. The roof is covered with flowers and plants. There is a full cadre of servants that could be characters in a Dickens novel. Yeah, I'm willing to believe this is the general setup of an estate in 19th century America, just subtract the electric range and the refrigerator. There is no washing machine. That is Mushi's job.
But for me, the graham crackers really seal the case. What is a graham cracker? It's a treat. It's sugary goodness. It's something you can combine with frosting to build little forts. It's a hefty dose of fiber to keep the bowels humming. What? That's right: graham cracker as health food. That's nonsense, right? Well, perhaps in a culture that can proudly boast of its regularity. But if you ate as much meat as is common in Bangladesh and consumed as few whole grains, well, then you'd be singing a different tune. And what better a way to get some fiber than from a fine little cookie? It's a good idea. At least Reverend Graham thought so, in America, in the nineteenth century. Apparently the marketers at Haque agree.
-DB.
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