What's That Slurping Sound?
Is That Your Narrator Sipping Tea or Is He Being Milked?

Srimongal, Bangladesh

Depending on your temperament, Bangladeshis have just the right level of English to be slightly amusing or highly annoying. With my months of skin thickening treatment in the Middle Kingdom, I find they usually fall into the former category. I wave off the most vocal of elementary English speakers like water off a duck's back.

Despite the decline in English levels since the withdrawal of the Raj's highly visible hand, a competent Bangladeshi speaker of the world's language of necessity is easier to find than the equivalent Chinese or even Thai. This makes Bangladesh--despite its being an obstacle course of open sewers, muddy streets, constant construction and bumper to kneecap traffic--an easy place to get around in. If one is willing to ask for directions, that is.

Drawbacks abound, obviously. Fame is most sweet when you've done something to warrant it. My whiteness is no cause for celebration. It's a cause for worry when my sunscreen sweats off in the afternoon sun and I come home looking like a lobster. My whiteness makes me feel like a freak show attraction at a tea shop. But when I try to charge the crowds admission--"five taka, five taka"--I get only blank stares.

So what. Stares are common any place where Europeans decided their mission civile couldn't be turned into a mission touriste--or, more importantly, a mission commerciale. Bangladesh has a much worse combinations of variables.

Combine fairly across-the-board English competency with a country ranked more corrupt than any other nation on earth, and you have a recipe for the kind of dilemnas I find myself in whenever I venture out. It's far too easy to get entangled in what one rolling stone (Big Will) called "derelict philanthropy". (He wanted to make himself a business card).

Teeth aching from nearly unavoidable tea overconsumption, I often hover caffeinated into the muddy or flooded streets to fend off the raised eyebrows of rickshaw drivers, the saluting hands of shop owners, the "hallows" of children, the hands of beggars, and the various tricksters, slicksters, gawkers, hawkers, talkers, baulkers, walkers, stalkers, squawkers, and faux pauxers. In this milieu, the kind hearted and slightly naive such as yours truly get drained of their liquid funds faster than a shredded can of "Starship Brand Condensed Milk" leaks its sweetjuice into a cup of Golden Broken Orange Pekoe.

Here's how my street charity has worked so far. I've almost got a system worthy of export.

Kids don't get money because they're likely working for someone else, but if they are selling sweets or flowers, I indulge and buy more than my stomach or my wallet--if either spoke faster than pity--would have me buy.

Cripples don't usually get money because they may have inflicted the damage to elicit pity. Gouged eyeballs, tied arms, and other deformities don't get me reachin', even when they're displayed prominently before train windows. Cripples and beggars may also be working for a collection cartel--a beggars' mafia.

Music always brings a tinkling sound to the beggar's bowl.

Women with chidren don't usually get money, but the witch with the mark of the devils' cock (Betel nut red) around her mouth got a spare bill from my pocket last Bloomsday because I pittied her child. "Where do you think that money went to?" my friend asked, irritated. I knew the anwer. Highly addictive, highly carcinogenic Betel nut. I regretted my indirect investment in her drug addiction almost immediately.

Did I trust the man at the train station who was "not a beggar" and had "a terrible skin disease" that left him "unable to find strength to work" and wanted "only five thousand Taka?" No, I can't help everyone in Bangladesh.

I did help a man today who showed me the way to the Srimongal Post Office and helped me buy some green tea. Perhaps I shouldn't have, but he seemed truly desperate.

He told me his Peptic Ulcer had burst. I told him I was Canadian.

He showed me a doctor's prescription, which he said he could not fill with his own money until his friend from America (his boss from Occidental Petrolium) came to pay all his expenses in August.

At first he requested 1700 Taka ($25US) for tests and drugs and I told him he'd have to find another way. He gave me his address and phone number, said he'd pay me back if I gave him mine. I declined.

Then I decided I'd try buying him a week's worth of medicine directly from a pharmacy. This I did and it ended up costing 300 Taka ($5US). Knowing that the man could likely sell the drugs back to the store when I snuck into the tea shop for a roti, I just thought back to the few times in my life when--deep in the pits of suicidal depression--I spent more than $5 gorging myself on fast food at McDonalds. Never mind that I may have gifted the man an average Bangladeshi's weekly salary. If he was lying, I will never know. His story is between him and his god now. Peace be with him whether he's a sick man or a liar.