Notes, First of June

At the Wedding

Wow! It’s been over a month since I last posted.  I guess I could blame the Rock and Roll Trivia Contest at the end of April (the same day Levon Helm died), the local hartals (general strikes/demonstrations), or even the Unites States Secretary of State, or even Abby’s arrival, but like Jimmy Buffet said, “it’s my own damn fault."

The Girls

The Rock and Roll Trivia Contest was a creation of a couple of our AISD parents.  It turned into such a big deal that it had to be held at the American Club.  Costumes were required, so I went as Jimmy Buffet and Gail as Janis Joplin.  We were divided into teams and given ballots to complete.  The music was organized by decade, and the contest was to guess the song and singer from brief snippets. 

Neither of us was much good at it.  Most of the music I know and remember was from the time before Rock and Roll became show biz.  But we had a good time anyhow and got to see some pretty crazy people get pretty crazy. 

The country, and especially Dhaka, has been in turmoil for some time now.  As I may have reported earlier, Bangladesh has two political parties, the AL and the BNP, each a confederation of various groups.  None have a particular platform or agenda, other than to be in power.  The party out of power, the BNP, currently is attracting the conservative Islamic groups, but only because here the Islamic groups are always out of power. 

A couple months ago, a low level BNP guy was grabbed at about 3:00 AM by several guys in a dark SUV at an intersection not too far from the diplomatic enclave.  The lone witness to this, besides the guy and his driver/bodyguard (also abducted), was a young boy who had to sleep in the street because his parents’ apartment manager had locked him out of the building.  This happens to working kids, apparently.

AISD Commencement

Anyhow, the BNP guy’s car was found at the intersection with all doors open and the engine running.  According to the local newspaper, the guy had actually served time for his role in a couple homicides and had been implicated in maybe four others, so he might have had a few enemies out there, even in the BNP.

Instead of considering that possibility, the BNP determined, without any proof, that the AL party, or rather, their security forces, had grabbed him.  Since the AL came to power a few years ago, about a hundred people have disappeared, so these suspicions are not exactly groundless. 

In any case, they wanted him back.  So the BNP declared a series of one-day dawn-to-dusk hartals.  The demonstrations became violent and several people were killed around the country.  The Prime Minister met with the grieving wife, but that didn’t console the BNP much. 

We were safe in the enclave, and because most people stayed home, there was less traffic.  Our buses ran on time (unusual enough to be noteworthy itself), but the embassy could not get deliveries of diesel fuel to run the generators that provide electricity when the power goes out (frequently).  Hence, no A/C in the school at times, and just as Bangladesh is heating up. 

So just when it looked like this could go on indefinitely, Hillary Clinton showed up.  The AL and the BNP managed to quit bickering about each other so they could act statesman-like for the visiting dignitary.  The hartals were postponed, and there hasn’t been once since. 

Also about this time our fifth graders were presenting their Exhibition, the culminating activity of the Primary Years Program.  My group had visited the city dump, reported in an earlier post.  The 50 kids had studied all sorts of things, the lives of the city’s beggars, child labor, bonded labor and acid violence.  Google the Acid Survivors Foundation, for instance, and you can see one of the things they studied.  The kids interviewed lots of important people and street children, even an eleven-year old girl who works 70 hours a week for 10 cents an hour to make sure your Hanes underwear has no loose threads when you open the package. 

But our biggest news here is that Abby has landed in Dhaka.  She had attended the 44^th International Horn Symposium, held this year in Denton Texas allowing her to see her aunt, uncle and cousin in Plano before flying Dallas to Chicago to Abu Dhabi to Dhaka.  She has been working half days at ActionAid Bangladesh, and playing her French horn in the afternoons.  She joined Millie in the symphonic band and played at AISD’s commencement Friday night.

Young Love

And the shoes

Abby and Millie with the Bride and Groom

This past week we also celebrated our 32nd wedding anniversary by going out for a drink and dinner.  Gail got new jewelry and I got a travel vest, like you see on news reporters and the guys on The Daily Show.  And we got to go to a wedding last week, so we had another dress-up occasion and a photo opportunity.