So I came back from my field trip to the Moulvibazaar district in the north-east of the country. There would be a six-page entry if I had to write about everything, so I won’t. The trip was successful in the sense that I understood a lot of things by going there which I wouldn’t have from just reading, but in terms of the number of surveys I got done, it wasn’t very good. That’s because another guy went with us who was going to evaluate the project – and his work was more important, so we ended up going to the places he wanted to go to. Next time I go, I must go solely for the purpose of my thesis…the only problem is that the trip isn’t arranged by me but by IUCN.
Anyway, the area we went to (generally the Sylhet region) is super conservative. I have been to the field before on several pretexts, but this time it was for my own work so I had to do a lot of talking and observing. I haven’t been to a place before that was a mixed community – both Hindu and Muslim families living in the area – but so conservative about their own religion and cultures. Especially the Muslim families – their women didn’t do any work outside the home, even related to fishing and farming. Fisher folk in general were looked down upon by both the Hindu and Muslim communities we visited – they were understood to be the lower caste. In one village that we visited, we didn’t even see any of village women! What was strange, however, was that the men gladly talked to us with no hesitation…I guess to them we were city folks which meant we were of a different breed altogether. And these are the conservative, bearded, elderly Muslim men I’m talking about. Not all of Bangladesh is this conservative anymore…somehow I had to end up in an area as such to do my research. If I were able to do something more comparative, my research might have been a little richer.
All in all it was an eye-opening experience. The hour and half that we spent on the boat ride was fun, too, but that’s where we spent a lot of unnecessary time. It was important for me to actually go on the boat ride because I needed to understand how the beels were, but I really didn’t need to stay there for so long. But the other guy did, so we had to.
People I went with and met there were nice, but the evaluator guy was strange. Wannabe intellectual, is what we labelled him.
Food wasn’t so good…Sylheti cooking isn’t the greatest apparently, so says my mummy dearest. Can you tell food’s the most important thing in my life right now? :D Can you also tell that I’m fat? Lol.
The bird pic I took is apparently called a kite in English…it’s a cheel in Bangla.
So I came back from my field trip to the Moulvibazaar district in the north-east of the country. There would be a six-page entry if I had to write about everything, so I won’t. The trip was successful in the sense that I understood a lot of things by going there which I wouldn’t have from just reading, but in terms of the number of surveys I got done, it wasn’t very good. That’s because another guy went with us who was going to evaluate the project – and his work was more important, so we ended up going to the places he wanted to go to. Next time I go, I must go solely for the purpose of my thesis…the only problem is that the trip isn’t arranged by me but by IUCN.
Anyway, the area we went to (generally the Sylhet region) is super conservative. I have been to the field before on several pretexts, but this time it was for my own work so I had to do a lot of talking and observing. I haven’t been to a place before that was a mixed community – both Hindu and Muslim families living in the area – but so conservative about their own religion and cultures. Especially the Muslim families – their women didn’t do any work outside the home, even related to fishing and farming. Fisher folk in general were looked down upon by both the Hindu and Muslim communities we visited – they were understood to be the lower caste. In one village that we visited, we didn’t even see any of village women! What was strange, however, was that the men gladly talked to us with no hesitation…I guess to them we were city folks which meant we were of a different breed altogether. And these are the conservative, bearded, elderly Muslim men I’m talking about. Not all of Bangladesh is this conservative anymore…somehow I had to end up in an area as such to do my research. If I were able to do something more comparative, my research might have been a little richer.
All in all it was an eye-opening experience. The hour and half that we spent on the boat ride was fun, too, but that’s where we spent a lot of unnecessary time. It was important for me to actually go on the boat ride because I needed to understand how the beels were, but I really didn’t need to stay there for so long. But the other guy did, so we had to.
People I went with and met there were nice, but the evaluator guy was strange. Wannabe intellectual, is what we labelled him.
Food wasn’t so good…Sylheti cooking isn’t the greatest apparently, so says my mummy dearest. Can you tell food’s the most important thing in my life right now? :D Can you also tell that I’m fat? Lol.
The bird pic I took is apparently called a kite in English…it’s a cheel in Bangla.
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What's a beel?
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