A smile is in everyone's language

Whoops! Somehow I let more than a week pass since I last posted. I'm in a mood tonight to ramble a bit, rather than tell real facts and stories about what's happened over that time... so bear with me. This morning, I learned the true blessing of a smile - something so simple, yet so often underused.

In the city of Dhaka, I often find myself staring at the ground outside or pasting a hard look on my face while walking through the streets. Things as simple as buying food here turn into ordeals - they're trips accompanied by male stares all around, with expressions ranging from benign curiosity to menace at the foreigner. I've already written some about the begging in Gulshan (my neighborhood); that's there with every trip outside, too, and how to respond to it is one of the biggest struggles here (because many in our neighborhood are "placed" there to beg, and I've taken to giving fruit instead of money). It's uncomfortable to realize that you need to put on a hard demeanor here to get anywhere.

This morning, though, I was introduced to another side of Bangladesh. A friend took three of us out to the Mirpur area of Dhaka - a slum where ICDDR,B is doing a study involving cholera vaccine and handwashing behavior interventions. We were shown a couple of the intervention clusters by a member of the research team from ICDDR,B and another man who's part of the organization that is implementing the interventions.

The people here are... beautiful. While in Dhaka, I see mostly men (women tend to stay at home), Mirpur was alive with women and children. And, gorgeous women and children! - in warmth, color, spirit, and smiles. We went into a couple of homes to see intervention buckets for chlorinated water (to be placed near kitchens and latrines, which tend to be shared by a number of households). The study is comparing the effectiveness of cholera vaccine versus cholera vaccine plus this water intervention (or so I understand it). The women we visited were proud to open their homes for us to observe, and we actually picked up two more "tour guides" from them! The first woman we visited was actually also a community health promoter working in the study.

Back to the idea of a smile... that was the most beautiful part of the experience, and it's added completely new perspective on life in Dhaka. Some pictures will describe the conditions of the slum better than I can:














Amidst that, however, was THIS (a couple of my favorite kids from the day). Gorgeous smiles, open curiosity, mothers asking to have their babies' picture taken, warmth of spirit and generosity. :) Kids followed us everywhere (which in itself is pretty typical here), but here they wanted to say hi!, how are you!, tell us that they were in school, and a couple of them learned how to say "my name is" today! Saying "thank you" isn't very typical in Bangla, so kids and women always kind of giggle when you say it.











Lots more photos in my Picasa album... enjoy! :)