My orientation is complete, and I’m back in Mymensingh. Our orientation was cut short due to a strike that is today and tomorrow due to the recent rise in fuel costs. In this strike it is extremely dangerous to travel by a fuel supplied vehicle. Apparently if you travel by car or bus mobs will attack the car and set it on fire. But as I rode the rickshaw to the internet café I saw several buses and cars on the road not being attacked.

Since we were supposed to be in orientation today, I have the day free. Patrick arrived in Mymensingh last night and there was some confusion to his accommodations. He was supposed to stay with the Taize brothers, but all their beds are full. They managed to find him a temporary room, but we really don’t know where he will end up or what is going on. Today I am helping him figure out how to ride rickshaw, buy things, and get around.

At Taize there are three brothers that I have met: Brother Eric (Sweden), Brother Guome (Holland), and Brother Frank (Holland). Brother Frank was the first brother that I met and he supposedly is the one to work out arrangements with foreigners. Unfortunately he left last week for Europe. Brother Guome arrived a week or so from Europe, and is leaving tomorrow as his mother just died. Brother Frank is the oldest and strictest and just arrived from Holland – he is the one that we are working on Patrick’s arrangements with. (The boys don’t like when Brother Guome is around because he enforces strict curfews and study sessions and doesn’t allow mobiles.) I had breakfast with him, Patrick, and Brother Guome this morning. (I had cheese from Holland!) He said that some of the boys that are at Taize don’t have the ability to succeed in school/pass their exams, so he will have to ask them to leave so that Patrick can have somewhere to stay. The Taize dorms are packed full of boys as this week is the week to enroll in university. Boys invite themselves to Taize and hope that they will be supported by them, but there is a limit to Taize’s resources. So after our breakfast, Brother Frank proceeded to introduce Patrick to some Taize boys by saying, “This is Patrick, he will be taking your bed tomorrow, and you will go home.”

As the Taize boys continue their education, they are the teachers at the Taize schools for poor children. The Taize boys also must volunteer at CCH, a day center for the handicapped, and Asha Neir, a home for the mentally handicapped. Asha Neir was recently started by a former CCH worker, who saw that the handicapped that were abandoned had no place to go and were sometimes on the street or in jail. Asha Neir has four mentally handicapped boys and four full-time staff. I went to Asha Neir last night to store my bike (not yet a motor bike) that MCC just gave me, and got to talk to the staff, and interact with Bupy, a mentally handicapped boy, who I like a lot. CCH is a place for the handicapped to come together, and they also have a handicraft section that I will be working with. They make cards, expensive rugs, and one man does wood carvings. All of these handicrafts are produced by the handicapped. The director of CCH is my landlord, Metu.

Mobile phones can be difficult to use when you don’t know Bangla perfectly. Sometimes you will get a call and have no idea what the other person is saying or how to hang up politely because you don’t know Bangla. Also, Bangladesh has an epidemic of missed calls. Random people will call my phone, ring once, and then hang up. Then they will do this five times in a row. This happens daily, and I think that it is common here.