Fun With Friends

The past few days have been so refreshing for our whole family. Larry, Gayle and the girls (our Country Reps) were in Mymensingh and we were able to spend a lot of time together. Our boys, who don't get to play with other children that often, were thrilled to be able to have so much play time. I was happy too, because I got to cook a number of meals for all of us. We had a great time together and I am so thankful for such great CRs!

I think the highlight for everyone was taking a trip to the river on Friday morning. The water has risen a lot, due to the recent rain we've been getting. The shore was also lined with fishing nets, so it was a challenge to find an empty place that was good for swimming.


Riley decided he would dig a hole, so that when it rains, water will fill it and maybe fish would come in and he could come back and get the fish and our cook could make if for our lunch!!!



Meanwhile, the others were having loads of fun in the water. Pruitt decided to become a "mud boy" and the others were happy to help him. They spent hours in the water. It was wonderful!


Riley seems to have a knack for "living on the edge". The drop is only 6 - 8 feet. The children all made a slide out of it later. Jensen went down first. When asked by one of the girls if it hurt, he said, "Yeah it hurt, but it was fun!" Soon they were all sliding down. It doesn't take much to make kids happy. Just water and sand, with some mud thrown in, will do the trick!

Boys

Sometimes I look at my boys and just chuckle and shake my head. Last night was one of those times. Pruitt decided to "cover up" so that the mosquitos couldn't bite him. It's not as hot as it was last month, but is still quite warm. Socks on the hands? I think I'll risk mosquito bites!

And then there is Riley. He has been absolutely delighted with our nightly visitors - grasshoppers. How they get in is beyond me, but they, along with many smaller bugs, make their way indoors. He calls the grasshoppers his "best friend" and spends a lot of time catching one of them and walking around proudly. He was determined to take one to bed with him but I told him he would just squish it. So he told it, "Good night" and asked if he could kiss it. LOL

Jensen decided it was a good time to be Pharoah and soon had his brother fanning him in royal style.

Sometimes I feel like I'm in full-time conflict resolution/mediation between three warring tribes. But then suddenly I am reminded how fun they can be. Laughter is such good medicine. May your day be filled with it!

Embracing Suffering

Sometimes poverty needs a face, a gentle reminder that all is not well with the world, that there are many who have it worse than you or I. A couple of things hit home for me this week. While listening to a pod cast by Rob Bell about Paul, I was struck by the thought that I need to embrace suffering. It's there, it's part of life. I can kick and struggle, I can try to ignore it, I can try to disguise it, but it will still be there. But if I embrace it, it will still be there, but it's not so frightening anymore. Suffering is meant to keep our souls alive, to keep us from growing cold and hard, from forgetting that we need God in our lives.

When we embrace our own suffering, the eyes of our soul are also opened to see the suffering around us. Myanmar. China. Iraq. Lebanon. The list goes on and on. I could send you faces and stories from where I live, and I plan to continue to do that. But poverty and injustice are closer than that. They are around you, wherever you are. And you can make a difference. Sometimes when I'm overwhelmed and discouraged, I read the ancient words of the prophet Jeremiah, "Does it make you a king to have more and more cedar? Did not your father have food and drink? He did what was right and just, so all went well with him. He defended the cause of the poor and needy, and so all went well. Is that not what it means to know Me? declares the Lord. "

Soon after we began to think about moving here, a dear friend of mine shared the following Franciscan prayer with me -

May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half-truths and superficial relationships so that you may live deep within your heart. May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression, and the exploitation of people so that you may work for justice, freedom and peace. May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, and war so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and turn their pain to joy. And may God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in this world so that you can do what others claim cannot be done.

I love it. I can think of no better way to sign off.

God bless you...

Ole'!

As a result of the current food crisis here, MCC is looking for cheaper food options that can be introduced into the local diet. Since I love anything that has to do with food prep, I was asked to work on some ideas and recipes involving corn and soybeans. Field corn is grown here, as are soybeans, but they are considered by most to be animal food. In my research I have discovered amazing things about corn tortillas. In the states we can pick up a bag of them for a buck or two. If anyone wants to go to the bother of making them, all you have to do is pick up a bag of masa harina and mix in a little water and salt. But, alas, masa harina is not simply ground corn. It is corn that has been boiled and soaked in a mixture of calcium hydroxide and water, rinsed and then ground while wet and dried again. At least that is what the bagged stuff is all about. Masa means dough, and they say the best tasting tortillas are made from the freshly ground wet corn dough. I wondered how I would ever be able to make that here. I was surprised to learn that calcium hydroxide is already in most households here and is chewed with pan or beattle nut. Then I was wondering how we could grind the corn. In further research I found that the most authentic way of grinding the masa is on a flat stone with a stone roller, which is exactly how Bengalis grind spices. I was amazed to find that everything is already here. And it would cost about 1/3 of what flat bread made out of flour is costing here. Now, the question is, will they like the final product? Well, I haven't had time to soak and grind the corn yet, but I was given a bag of ground corn (which all my resources said wouldn't work for making tortillas). I decided to try it anyway. So I made a gooey bunch of yellow dough and rolled it out. My family was impressed with the bean and cheese quesadillas they got out of the deal. They were a bit crumbly but tasted pretty good. I can only imagine the authentic stuff will be even better.

Ah, life is such a crazy journey. You never know what possibilities are right in front of you, things you would never discover if life would always be easy, would always stay the same. I'm talking to myself now more than any of you. I've been feeling my losses quite keenly again. Sometimes I feel like that bag of corn is going to feel - boiled, soaked, ground, rolled and back on the burner again. Yet there is a fragile hope that something even more exciting than corn tortillas may come out of the journey I'm on.

Ole'!

Ponds and Pineapples

Over the weekend we took a quick trip to a rural area of Bangladesh and stayed on the compound of a Catholic Mission/boarding school. The boys loved the open spaces and played American football with an empty pop bottle. They loved the pond and spent a long time splashing during the hot afternoon!



We stayed in this mud walled house with a tin roof and blue wooden shutters. A few days before a snake was found and killed in a girls' dormitory nearby, a Banded Krait. I confess I looked under the beds and all around before settling in and tucked the mosquito nets tightly around us for the night. A storm blew in early in the morning and the boys were thrilled to lay in the dark and listen to the wind and the rain on the tin roof.


It was a short stay and after breakfast we took a van gari (a flat-bed rickshaw) for about a 45 minute ride to the main road to catch a bus back to Mymensingh. We drove past lots of pineapple fields and banana groves (above). Below is a closer view of the pineapples, which we are eagerly awaiting the ripening of!

A Basket Case

On our way to visit the basket weaving project on Tuesday morning, we stopped at this lake and enjoyed a few minutes of quiet peaceful beauty.

The basket weavers were quite happy to see us and quickly abandoned their weaving to watch the boys play tag. The boys were just glad to have an open space to run and were oblivious to the fact that they were providing the morning's entertainment.

My boys rarely stop moving. Even in the van they find ways to move and let off their energy, or at least some of it. By this time we were all acting like basket cases. Our journey back to Mymensingh included an overnight stop at the MCC office in Sirajganj, where we enjoyed dinner at the house of a co-worker. Wednesday morning, after a breakfast of flat bread and spicy lentils we hit the road for the last time and arrived home 2 1/2 hours later. We unpacked, scrubbed away the grime of the trip and happily settled into being home again. All in all, it was a good trip but there is no place like home!

Screen Printing

After travelling for nearly 6 hours, seeing the Indigo project and Action Bag project (where they make all sorts of lovely bags), the boys were exhausted and had had enough. But when they saw the screen printing, they all perked up. They definetly share their father's interests! The cloth drying in the above picture, will be made into bags by women at Action Bag.

Here are some of the producers in their little stations, working tirelessly to screen print either cloth or paper. They had a little show room full of beautiful greeting cards. The woman below is working on trees to be used in Christmas cards. Riley kept wanting to go back to the room where they mixed the colors. I could tell he would have loved to get his hands in the bowls of thick gooey globs of paint. We had to drag the boys and Austin away from there.

We visited yet another project and saw some crocheted hand bags and scarves, then we went to a hotel and freshened up before going to the home of one of the directors for dinner. We all sort of fell into bed that night. All in all it had been a very full but interesting day.

Indigo

Indigo blue is one of my favorite colors so I have been looking forward to visiting this project. I was surprised to learn that the plants have nothing blue about them, at least not in this stage. The short green plants looked pretty normal to me. But oh, the transformation that growth and heat and water and sunshine can make!

There are 5 women who produce the indigo. They have done the planting and at harvest time they are the ones who will harvest the plants and soak them in these large drums. Then they have to either stir the mixture for 6 hours or use a newly invented contraption (pictured below, behind Jensen) that has bicycle pedals. I'm not a mechanical person so I won't try to explain it, but I will say that I'm glad God has gifted some people with the ability to create amazing, time-saving contraptions that are also quite good for the environment.

Here is Bita, talking with one of the producers.

And here is Jensen, holding up the old stirring stick, stained from hours of stirring indigo. After having a good look around and hearing about the process, we were ushered into the office where we were fed plates of fresh fruit - apples, mangoes, pomegranates, oranges and grapes.

The Journey North

Monday morning, bright and early, we joined 2 co-workers, Bita and Abir, on the next leg of our journey, to some of the northern districts, to visit projects there.

It was a long but lovely drive. The rice fields are being harvested, and we drove past lots of corn fields, banana groves, sugar cane fields and large vegetable plots. The roads were often lined with trees, the rich green interspersed with bright blossoms of orange, red, yellow and purple. It was a feast for the eyes!

We had lunch at this little family - run restaurant or hotel as it is called here. As we were getting out of the van, the boys wondered if it had a swimming pool. We quickly explained that a hotel here is not the same as a hotel in the states! We enjoyed a lunch of rice and curry, eaten Bengali style, with our fingers.

The boys were enamored by the pump in the rear courtyard where we washed our hands and they fought to do the pumping. I think they could have easily been persuaded to live in such a place.

Riley became good friends with Abir on the trip, though he struggled to say his name and kept calling him "Ablu". Our driver, Shumon, is on the right and safely took us over many kilometers!

An Encounter With Brass

We were privileged to have a tour of the Dhamrai Metal Crafts and to see a bit of the process of brass sculpture making. They use an ancient method called Lost Wax. To put a very long process into a few words, they make very intricate sculptures out of wax, apply 3 layers of clay mixed with other materials and in varying thicknesses, and then fire it in a kiln, pour molten brass into it, break off the clay after it is cooled and then spend time polishing and perfecting the pieces.

Here one of the artisans is chipping off bits of the clay, revealing part of the body of a lion. Large sculptures are done in pieces and later put together.

Riley was very enamored by this lion head and spent a lot of time counting the teeth and pretending it was real.

Here is one of the kilns. The archtecture of the whole place was amazing - old and crumbling, yet full of intricate detail and antique beauty.

A Visit to the Potters' Village

We have just returned home from a trip of many trips, including this visit to a potters' village near Manikgang, an hour and a half from Dhaka. Those of you who know Austin can imagine how happy he was for the opportunity. The boys were also thrilled, as they love to get their hands into clay nearly as much as their dad does.

Here is a kiln being loaded. They use a mixture of wood, rice straw and dried water hyeceinth for fuel. Quite resourceful, if you ask me.

Here is a kiln that is fully loaded and ready to be fired. Austin will have to fill you in on the technicalities.

Before we left we were served Dab, green coconut water. Jensen thinks it tastes like water with a little bit of sugar and a little salt. Pruitt says it tastes like lemonade with milk, salt and sugar. Riley just wrinkled his face and stuck his tongue out.

And here we are, leaving with some pots and some clay that the guys are looking forward to getting their hands into.