Dhaka on my mind

The combination of being in the “leaving” mode here and following the news about the tragic factory collapse in Dhaka has me reflecting on my Bangladesh experience. The situation I’m in right now, leaving a place I love, is about as opposite as it can be to that leave-taking from Bangladesh.   For the last two months that we lived there, I couldn’t wait to leave, didn’t care that we were headed into an uncertain future of no home and no job secured to support our family of four.  I was filled with grief and blamed it in large part on Bangladesh.

I moved to Dhaka happily and full of curiosity, with a newborn and a toddler.  We had a driver provided by my husband’s work and an apartment in a posh, tree-shaded, gated neighborhood that was home to embassies and several international schools.  Expats in Dhaka were warm and welcoming, exchanging phone numbers and arranging playdates after meeting each other for the first time.  We became members of the American Club and spent hours every week in the pools and on the playgrounds.  When we went on vacation it seemed easier to leave Bangladesh on an airplane bound for Thailand or Laos or even the US than to battle traffic leaving Dhaka by car.   I was rarely out of the expat bubble and then never alone. 

That wasn’t my intention.  When we moved there my immersion experiences in other countries still outweighed the time I had spent as an expat in the expat world.  Arriving with an infant and a toddler, I got swept up in the play-dates and sing-alongs and eventually the international club and school scene.  I did try to avoid the people who had only complaints about their lifestyle in Dhaka, who could not see the irony of bemoaning their difficult life while they enjoyed a drink at the club and their ayah played with the kids on the playground.  When I got pregnant with my third child, midway through the second year there (when we were still expecting to live in Dhaka for three or more years), I still thought I might follow the example of some missionary friends and go to a hospital in the northern part of the country to give birth, instead of jetting off to a world-class hospital in Bangkok.

There was a period right at the beginning of our time there that I started to have a sense of how many people in Dhaka were living right at the edge of their capacity, how close to the surface their frustration and anger simmered, and how if they ever decided to make an effort to get some justice for themselves and we happened to be in the way, we would not stand a chance.  In occasional moments of panic I would calculate how I’d get to the American Embassy eight blocks down our street, with both kids in tow, how long it would take if I had to carry both of them, wondering if I would be strong enough.  As I got used to the rhythm of our life there and saw that demonstrations rarely if ever brought any threat of violence to us, I relaxed and stopped thinking about it.  Eventually my son started school, I started working from home, singing with the international choir, and hired an ayah to watch my daughter. 

And then the baby died in my second trimester.  That first night of knowing the news, before I jetted off to the world-class hospital in Bangkok, I remember sitting on the floor in the kitchen and thinking that my own little tragedy was nearly nothing in relation to people’s daily struggles to survive.  That clarity disappeared quickly as I wrapped myself up in my own personal tragedy, trying to figure out what to call it – birth a too-hopeful word for a dead baby slipping out, miscarriage sounding like I had fumbled and dropped it.  I struggled to bring my living kids back into the center of my attention and stopped thinking about Dhaka much at all.  I resolved to leave as soon as possible.

In the years that followed I kept in touch with friends I made in Dhaka and took great joy in reunion when our paths occasionally crossed, but could not think much about the place itself except as a source of grief and bad health.  It was especially difficult when I would meet Bangladeshis and have to answer the inevitable question about how I had enjoyed living there.  I'd mumble about the food and warm wonderful people and then change the subject.

 The beginning of reconciling with my Dhaka experience came when my daughter’s first grade teacher asked me to take on their classroom’s presentation for their yearly UN day celebration.  Over two days, each classroom is transformed into another country and each class cycles through every room, spending 20 minutes in each “country.”  A good friend in Bangladesh sent fabric, handcrafted paper, models and storybooks, I made up a slideshow and put together brief presentations designed with the various ages of the students in mind. I had the kids who could read check their tags to see where their clothes were made- invariably there was a “made in Bangladesh” on one of them and that led to a short discussion of the garment industry and workers.   I wondered if any of the older kids saw the news and remembered our discussion.  What if one of these kids grows up and works their way through the ranks of a company that has power over a garment factory in another country?  What if they end up working for an organization that can have a positive impact on those workers and their families?

Honestly I'm ashamed of how fleeting my own moments of clarity and empathy were while I was there.    Why does it take yet another tragedy there for me to start trying to think about how I can help, now from the other side of the world? And how much understanding is necessary for empathy?  Living somewhere doesn’t mean I’m an automatic expert on it- I feel uncomfortable being called to represent a place that I really only lived on the margins of. Still there is a role we can play- I strongly believe that awareness confers responsibility.   The challenge is keeping that responsibility in mind and finding an appropriate role to play.

All of this is a work in progress

post script: the story of one immediately good outcome of my bad experience- had my driver not learned about the ultrasound clinic (at which I got that devastating news) by driving me and my danish midwife there, his son might not be alive today.  Soon after this, a quack doctor told his wife that their own baby had died inside and that she required an emergency D&C to preserve her health and fertility.  He took her for a second opinion at the clinic I had used and learned that she and the baby were fine.  Their son was born several months later, after we had left.  Our driver is a man of extraordinarily even-tempered broad-mindedness and integrity.  I have no doubt his children will make the world a better place.