A Walker in the Suburbs

It will probably take months to digest all the sights and sounds of Bangladesh, and the feelings I had experiencing them. Strolling to work this morning in a light drizzle, I noted the lack of people, the lack of goats — the lack of life.

It’s a safe, clean, sanitized world here. We’ve made it that way, we want it that way. I’m not complaining.

But there is a jumbling, jarring craziness there that I miss. Horns honking, buses flying, rain falling. Life lived in the open, nothing much left out. Now that I’m back here in the relative quiet, I’m weighing the differences.

The picture taking up much of today’s front page features a white whirling dervish of a storm swirling toward a slender green peninsula. From this vantage point, Florida seems nothing more than a vulnerable appendage, a state that should be retractable, though what it would retract into I am not sure. Georgia, perhaps?

My recent trips to Florida have made me fond of the place. It’s a beach lover’s paradise, and its tropical air and foliage set it apart from the rest. It’s another world for me, and it’s threatened like it hasn’t been in decades.

The picture leaves little to the imagination. It’s hard to see how Irma could do anything but clobber the state. All we can hope for now is that there be as little loss of life (none, please!) and property as possible. Now we’re all feeling for Florida.

The wonder of it all is why we’re not all sick more often. Or at least that’s what I think when laid low. I mean, think of the germs we come into contact with on a daily basis. Think of our valiant immune systems, fighting them off.

But sometimes, our immune systems come up against something they can’t surmount. That’s what’s happened to me since I returned from Bangladesh. While I’d like to think this is something I picked up at home, all signs point to it being a souvenir of my wonderful trip.

I’ve been remembering the last couple of days. Should I have peeled that apple before eating it? It came from the swanky Dhaka hotel, so I didn’t. Or did I ingest a smidgen of non-bottled water when brushing my teeth?

Questions without answers. All I know is that I feel a lot like the faded flower pictured here. Nothing to do but hang on, wait it out — and keep pumping the ginger ale.

Not sure whether the virus I have now originated in Bangladesh, the airplane (most likely culprit) or right here at home, but whatever the source, it has laid me low. I have a pile of work to do and lack the stomach (literally) to attack it.

Instead, I’m forced to bed, hoping to avoid yesterday’s fogginess but not quite sure that I can.

To help the time pass, I’ll remember some of the sights I’ve just seen. Fantastical images of a world that already seems a million miles away:

A rainbow at the end of our boat trip through the Sunderbans.

Jute drying in the sun.

A magical garden of hanging plants.

Woke up in the middle of the night unsure of where I was. Was it Dhaka or Chittagong? Khulna or Munshiganj? Jessore or Cox’s Bazar?

It came to me in layers and waves: It was my own bed in my own house with the window where it always is. It was familiarity: my own mug with my own tea (a decaf blend) with plenty of milk and sugar.

I’ve been awake for two hours but feel like I could go out again. Maybe I will. But first, a tribute to the unexpected place where I find myself now:  home.

I”m home, where it’s 30 degrees cooler and 10 hours later, and where I sit with the last of the roses and crickets chirping in that restrained way they do in late summer.

I’m awash in the familiar, which seems strange after two weeks in an exotic locale, where traveling was significantly slower and more colorful than a spin on the Beltway.

Right now, I barely know where I am. Somewhere in between, I suppose, which could mean the airspace over India, Iran, Poland, northern Scotland or Labrador.

Maybe I’m hanging out in the ether, or at least my time sense is. All I know is … If I can remain upright for 90 more minutes I will call it a (very long) day.

The title sounds flippant, but my feelings are not. It’s just that “bye-bye” is an English phrase that translates. So if the country could hear me now, it would know that I’m leaving.

What it might not know — so I’m going to tell it — is how deeply it’s touched me.

Of course, “it” is really “them” — the drivers and the chiefs of party, the farmers and the fishers, the boatmen and the shopkeepers. I’ve been fortunate to travel to a place preceded by decades of good will, since Winrock International has been doing important work here since the 19980s.

Bangladesh is an old culture but a young country. Half its people are under 25, and it has the energy and drive to prove it. Things may seem a bit slower at home when I return. And that will be fine — for a while. But it won’t take long to miss the honking horns and the colorful rickshaws — the chaos and the color of this place,  and — most of all — the heart.

It’s my last night in Bangladesh, so I celebrated with room service, a bad movie, and before that … a sunset swim.

The rooftop pool tempted me from the start, but there hasn’t been time for it between trips to the field. Now my work is almost done, so I spent a few minutes side-stroking through the gloaming.

It was good to be suspended in the warm water, thinking about all that I’ve seen, the people I’ve met, how we all live under the same sky and clouds, how we all look up at the same unfathomable blue.

Not a lot in common, true, but more than it might seem.