Made in Bangladesh

In very very exciting news, (at least for those of you who find an abacus to be a neat-o fun game as I do), I managed to close my bookkeeping already for the month.Every single financial transaction for the whole mission has been condensed into tiny tiny little electronic files and emailed off to the people in Amsterdam.Just one of the many many checks to ensure we aren’t blowing all the money on jube-jubes and carnival rides.

The reason why I was able to close so fast my first time was simple.The person sitting at the other desk in my office held my hand, (figuratively of course), the whole way through and kept me from barfing.See, when I worked in Khartoum I was responsible for making sure all of my bookkeeping got to the Finco, but now I’m the Finco, so the admins in the projects are all sending their books to me, and then I’ve got to make sure it’s all authorized and correct, that everything balances and a billion other things, and then I have to send the files off to the people in Amsterdam who do some magical things to them up to and including having small elves checking the math, (at least this is what I assume happens).

And last year, the first time I closed my own bookkeeping in Khartoum, it was a bit sad really.I had a wretched cold (too many airplane rides and changes in climate), I was desperately homesick (one month without friends, family or fiancé), there were strange disparities (that eventually turned out to be due to a simple typo made when the new files had been installed but it took me two days to finally figure that out)… needless to say I cried a lot.Now, I’m not telling you because I’m proud of the crying, (what a great introduction to my new staff, ‘Hi, I’m your new boss and I like to cry in my office!’), but rather, I’d like to juxtapose that experience to this one.This time, not a tear was shed, nor a stomach heaved, as Ambrose answered each one of my ‘one more quick question’s and watched patiently as I slowly worked through the step by step guidelines that come with the finance software.So the reason I have successfully and quickly closed for my first time (!!!) as Finco, is simply because I have a great co-worker.

Ambrose, the Financial and Administrative Supervisor, has been working for MSF in Bangladesh pretty much forever as far as I can tell.He’s got more than 10 years experience, and he can do all of this with his eyes closed.I cannot believe how lucky I am to come in as a new Finco and have someone as experienced and patient as he is to train me.I mean, I took the specific MSF course all about these things, but that was 6 months ago, and it isn’t the same as when you actually do it (our computer program has lots of the ‘are you sure you want to do this?’ type buttons that really do little for my confidence).And I’m lucky enough to get one more month close with Ambrose before he heads off to Amsterdam to become an expat Finco as well.Let’s just hope I’m never competing with him for a job.

Today I am just a little bummed because I was supposed to get out to one of the projects on Sunday, and then the other one the week after.But I found out today, (Thursday = our Friday), that while the former finco and I did a great job checking with the projects about the timelines, we forgot to check with the staff here.So I have a meeting with the auditors and a meeting with the people who approve our visas all scheduled for next week.So, malesh, I must put off the trip for a bit. Which I know will disappoint the expat teams out there since I have promised presents of chocolates and seaweed.

But this delay may in fact be handy since I hadn’t yet purchased a shalwar kameez (traditional garments for women here) to wear in the field.While there are a few of the long shirt/ baggy trouser combinations left in the guesthouse, I have the feeling that either we’ve only had teeeeeeeeensy tiny female expats in the mission or most of the garments have been worn/laundered to exhaustion, (except for the teeeeeensy ones left in the guesthouse of course), since there are none there that come even close to fitting properly. And I think it may defeat the purpose of wearing traditional garments if they are so tight they look like they were painted on.All in all, gotta go shopping before I hit the field!! Yah!! Now if only I could find the stores…

I haven’t mentioned yet that for this posting, I’ve been lucky enough to drag along my husband, Jason.Sometimes when you are posted in a capital and the security is really good and the stars are aligned juuuuuuust right, you can arrange this sort of thing.And it’s quite handy since otherwise I would live all by myself in the guesthouse, and with my cooking skills, have to survive off of popcorn and tuna melts (ahhhh university days).Last night I realized just one more benefit to the arrangement: bug duty.

Up until last evening, we were doing all right in the pest department.On my first day I saw a gigantic rat crawl under a fence, and mosquitoes have the run of the apartment.It was not too bad in my view (when I worked in Mexico as a human rights observer, I remember the rats, as large as small cats, outnumbering the IDPs in one settlement.One night I fell asleep eating dried apricots and when I woke up the baggie had been shredded and the fruit was all gone.I didn’t sleep too well the next night).But the delicate balance of nature all changed last night.I was in the bathroom, peacefully reading “Calvin and Hobbes” and all of a sudden I saw a huuuuge cockroach.Like, bigger than Toronto cockroaches.It was bigger than my thumb.Big.So the feminist I am, I bailed out of there into the bedroom, threw up the mosquito net, leapt onto the bed and took cover while yelling at Jason to ‘take care of it’.

Now, I won’t bore you will all of the details of Jason’s heroic attempt to kill the offending creature, but after he leapt out of the bathroom and did the icky-icky-yucky dance, I asked how it was going.That’s when my husband looked up at me with eyes like saucers and explained, “He charged me!!!”

Needless to say, the cockroach escaped.Jason was a little shook up so I remarked that we really had little to worry about; this was nothing like the cockroach stories that came out of Muhajariya in Darfur (I’ll just say that squat toilets + leaping cockroaches = unhappy expats).I’m not sure he fully appreciated the story, but it made me feel better.

…and yet I still lay awake until 4 am last night. To borrow one of my favorite terms from Arabic; Malesh.I’ve been told it means ‘I’m sorry’ or ‘that’s unfortunate’, but mostly I found the term carried the resonance of ‘too bad, that’s life, deal with it’.So I think it may be appropriate here.

One week and I have completed handover from the former Finco (our handy term for the financial and human resources coordinators).And the one thing that has struck me so much has been the difference between here and Sudan. Living in Dhaka is luxury. I can go to a supermarket and buy one of 8 different brands of anything! I can buy DVDs (of surprisingly high quality considering that the covers are sometimes poorly laser copied – I always get a kick out of the fact that even the piracy warnings are copied). I can buy kitschy import Korean school supplies (how thrilled will my sisters be). I can buy books in english!!!!!! There are sidewalks and streetlights and not nearly as many gaping holes into fetid water along the street.

Not to say that there aren’t similarities – there is still the call for prayers that can rip you out of sleep at 5 AM. There are birds everywhere that will start cawing and chirping at 4 AM (despite the air pollution here which must be the equivalent of a pack or two of smokes a day). I think there is one near our house that is some sort of ‘mocking’ bird since it has a jazzy little tune that I swear I’ve heard before.

But the country as a whole is in a much different state than I found Sudan. The international community here is mostly development agencies and embassy folk.We are the only MSF section present (while all operating sections are in Sudan). The expat presence is much different then in Sudan, where emergency aid workers far outnumber any development related staff. The international media isn’t everywhere. Signs of war aren’t everywhere. Being part of the international community doesn’t feel as stigmatized and vulnerable as it did when in Khartoum. (I remember telling friends that I was so excited to go to Bangladesh because it meant while reading newspapers I wouldn’t be represented as the face of immorality and illegality).

And this relative calmness that you sense compared to a country like Sudan is what makes this mission much harder to justify. People refer to this as a ‘soft’ country because trucks aren’t being hijacked and staff isn’t beaten. Although instead of people, maybe I should just say that ‘I thought this was a soft country’ (although I know I’ve heard ‘soft’ from somebody…). And that thought is dangerous because there is a real humanitarian crisis here. The needs of the Rohingya population who fled the abuse in Myanmar to come to Bangladesh, who have been living in makeshift camps for 15 years, who are denied refugee status and living on the side of a road, those needs are still glaring, and we are doing our job staying here.

MSF operates in some of the most dangerous places in the world and I think we can get used to seeing the dangers and threats as somehow indicative as to the seriousness of a problem or the ‘realness’ of the threat to a population (and again, I need to rephrase to say ‘I’ not ‘we’ since I really don’t know how other people feel). I think the program here could prove to be a good reminder though if there is anyone out there beside myself who has such preconceived notions, since the situation for a population cannot be inferred from the GDP of a country. This program reminds me that what matters is that we hold on to our mission statement and treat those people most at risk without prejudice. And we are doing that here in Bangladesh, which makes the restless nights worth it.