Onek Shobdo (many words)

Sorry for not posting until day 20. I'll do better at this writing thing from now on. If you'd like a summary of the last three weeks, go read Margo and Nate's blogs. They've been much more faithful bloggers.

The past three weeks have been a bit of a whirlwind. From group bonding to quick cultural adjustments, there have been a lot of forced changes to be made. Subsequently, writing a blog post has not been high on my list. ...but, after three weeks, I think I'm officially blog write-able. :-)

Much to my surprise (but not to the surprise of my wise friends), this summer has thus far been very, very different from my semester in Kolkata. I wake up in a large, air conditioned, private room with a dresser, desk, working fan, a bed bigger than any I've ever owned, and two windows. Outside, there are trees. Lots of trees. There are not trees in Kolkata. The air here is equally thick as Kolkata's, but with humidity rather than dirt. I have my own bathroom with hot water, which gets cleaned a few times a week by someone who isn't me. I walk out into a huge living room with a TV and computer, couch, and two open-minded, kind, intelligent friends also studying Bangla. We live in literally the richest area of the city, in a private, gated community a 10 taka rickshaw ride away from the US embassy. Before heading to class every morning at 9:00, I grab breakfast from the fridge in my flat. Because I have a fridge. My living area is a complete 180 flip from where I lived in Kolkata - a dingy, moldy, one-six person sized (depending on the week) room with walls that left one meter gaps before the ceiling. Other than the scheduled power outages (every hour, for an hour), living in this flat in Dhaka is about 8983438 times more luxurious than how I lived in Kolkata.

Class is from 9:00am to 1:00pm, Sunday through Thursday. We have four different classes, from three different instructors, in grammar, conversation, writing, reading, spelling...everything you can think of a person would need to know to become fluent in Bangla. Because that's the goal here. Learn Bangla. There are 12 of us here in the beginning program, two intermediate, and one advanced. We're all here to learn Bangla. 15 Americans, all here for different reasons. All of whom the US government has said, "yes. Your reasons are legitimate. We will house you, feed you, and teach you for the summer. Go learn something and make a difference in the world. ...and maybe work for us eventually."

Every time I go outside and see signs full of Bangla, or hear my teachers fluently speaking the language I learned to love in Apne Aap, Kalighat, and the gardens of a leprosy center many kilometers north of Kolkata, I need to close my eyes for a few seconds to make sure it's real. For months, this language was something dreamily unattainable, a beautiful mess of poetic gibberish my ears could admire but not understand. But somehow, in the past three weeks, Bangla has taken a few steps toward me, or maybe I toward it. Tenses, vocabulary, vowel shifts, verb conjugation, and case endings have smashed themselves together into something resembling basic language comprehension.

The craziest moment I've had in the process of this realization happened while walking back from dinner with a group from Servants to Asia's Urban Poor. Nine pm, dark, we were walking in a bideshi (foreigner) pack, seven sets of white skin together. A beggar boy stumbleran to me, tripping over a combination of curbs and muddy water in the street. He was carrying flowers, asking me to buy them. This is a normal occurrence both here and in Kolkata. All over the streets, there are pre-teen boys and girls selling various vaguely useless objects. Chunky plastic hairclips. Bags of mysterious orange snack food. Strands of white flowers. They dodge in and out of traffic all day, knocking on car windows and wobbling heads, “madam, madam, madam, madam…” This particular boy found me on the street, and followed me for a minute or two. As he stared up at me, smiling wide and pleading that I buy the flowers, I had the eerie realization that he was speaking words I understood. He did not tell me a string of lyrical nonsense. Rather, he told me the flowers would look beautiful in my hair, that I should put them on my head, that I wanted the flowers. I needed the flowers. And while I knew that I didn't need or want the flowers, for once in this journey, I was able to understand that this boy was a person, communicating with me rather than speaking at the brick wall of my brain, and that I needed to communicate back with him to complete the reasonable exchange. My response, inadequately light for the weight of the moment, was "lagbe nai." Do not want. After a bit more pushing, he left.

Recently, I've realized that language is something much more important than I ever thought it would be. After four months of living in Kolkata with extremely minimal Bangla, I was fairly functional. But I was skimming the surface of real relationships, because I didn't know how to ask things like "hey, how's your family," much less understand a response. Now that I'm learning how to legitimately speak this language, I'm watching the chance of real connection get closer and closer.

A few weeks ago, a lovely friend by the name of Katie Lundell posted the lyrics to a song by Derek Webb on Facebook. It's called Rich Young Ruler, and it's about God wanting us to give Him what we are most scared to give up. Stuff like our financial security, our SUVs, our comfortable houses - in essence, the feelings of control over our lives that are false in the long run anyway.

But the lyrics that are really getting to me are these:
"He says, more than just your cash and coin
I want your time, I want your voice
I want the things you just can't give me
Because what you do to the least of these
My brothers, you have done it to me
Because I want the things you just can't give me "

For me, what's hard to give to God is my time and voice. I'm pretty selfish about my time. But here, in Bangladesh, I've been given an amazing opportunity to learn Bangla for free. What the monkey?! For some crazy reason, the American government decided last minute that my reasons for wanting to learn Bangla were worth funding. And now I'm here. So what should I do with my time? Study. Yep. Study. I should study. Fortunately, I'm really, really, super-duper über motivated to learn this language. Every time I don't want to study, I think of Dipa , and remember how badly I want her to get an education and not end up as a prostitute. Seriously. That girl is awesome. That's how I've been coping with not spending my time teaching or otherwise clearly serving. It feels like the time I spend studying now is an investment in future service. So I will serve God by studying my face off. Please send me annoying Facebook messages to encourage this.

In other news, in the past few weeks, I've become close with a church here called Dhaka International Christian Church (DICC). The pastor is the cousin of my friend Heather's husband. The night before I went to church, I read the story of the prodigal son in Luke 15. Once again, I was reminded through it that God will always be waiting to bless me more, no matter how long I've been trying to live my life alone. In church, the pastor announced that he and his wife were starting a book study on The Prodigal God, a book by Tim Keller about the story of the prodigal son(s). I took the hint from God and went to the study. It's. Fantastic. A group of people from all over the world, all in Dhaka for different reasons, all wanting to study what God is trying to tell us through Luke 15. Yay yay yay yay yay! I've met some awesome people through this study - including a woman who will be working with Freeset for the next 14 years as their head healthcare person. Yay yay yay yay yay!

I think if there's anything huge I've learned in the past three weeks (other than an absurd amount of Bangla...haven't even started talking about that one), it's that God provides...extravagantly. I came to Bangladesh to learn Bangla, and have been blessed with a fantastic community, a diverse and supportive spiritual home, kind and challenging teachers, and a comfortable living environment. Yes, I would rather be living in Kolkata right now, serving in Sonagachi. But I'm not going to be the bratty child of God asking, "why can't I serve now, Father?" I know that now is the time to learn the language I need to serve God and others more fully and more effectively. So I'm going to study study study. Study.

In fact, this post is done now.

Time to study.

Love and studystudy,
Stephanie

P.S. Sorry it's so long. ...oops.