Tues Nov 3 back to Khulna 🚙 💨

 Uneventful ride home, stopping at Raj Darbar again (bout halfway home) for lunch https://maps.app.goo.gl/5XEMi3c7MWoUZNy37?g_st=ic We like to order off the Chinese menu at this place.. the waiter was happy to see us again and showed us picture of Gentry from the last time we were there🙃 And happily hauled him around with him again…

Mon Nov 2

 A leisure morning 

To the hosp. to get Gentry’s next immunizations.

 More shopping…Jamuna Mall. Lonnie stopped in at the 👓 store, where 3 of this crew have been outfitted, and had cha ☕️ with the man there. The girls and I got started on our shopping. We always have fun at Mr D.I.Y.

Brian’s and Miss Christina joined us at the park and then took rickshaws to a Mexican restaurant for supper that our southern Baptist friends referred to us https://maps.app.goo.gl/6ChBdH9KedqEKJLJ8?g_st=ic rickshaw rides back to our vans. Which going and coming back were a bit of an experience because they took us quite a round about route to the restaurant. seemed to be something about a crossing or being on bigger highway complication. After several times of turning around, we ended up walking the last stretch of the way..

Sun Nov 1 Auntie Wanda’s funeral

 Lonnie and I got up and took Gentry with us to Brian’s to listen to Kaylee’s Auntie Wanda’s (Reimer) memories starting time of 7:00 am our time. She was her single auntie from Linden, AB that was like a 2nd mom to Kaylee. Just 6 weeks ago she had tickets to visit Brian’s here in Bangladesh along with Kaylee’s parents and younger siblings and we would’ve been getting to know her in person this week if all would’ve gone according to plan A. She  ended up in the hospital thinking she was battling one kind of pneumonia and then another only to find out after a month or so that her lungs were covered in cancer!  And now, instead, here we are, getting acquainted with her thru the memories of her family and friends. 59 years old. A vivacious and talented lady. 

Brian went to his clinic day and we got some more Dhaka shopping done starting with croissant sandwiches and yummy drinks from North End coffee shop. 

Home to make tortillas and applesauce for taco supper that Brian’s and Miss Christina joined us for. Later we put the littles to bed and then Lonnie and I went to Brian’s to listen to Auntie’s funeral with them starting at 10:45 pm our time..

Sat Oct 31 Dhaka 🚙 💨

 Left by 8:00 stopping in Chakrakhali for dim and ruti breakfast

It wasn’t far down the road and we started seeing groups of people alongside the road. Groups of long robed Muslim men with their white prayer caps to be exact. At one point, I offhandedly commented as we went thru one intersection.. “and there’s a couple thousand”. But then struck by my own words we were like, “Now Really! How many do you think that actually was?!” So as we were passing another group, Lonnie instructed us to count the 12 passenger vans lining the highway. At that spot there were 50. So using the conservative number that only 12 were in the 12 passenger vans that would come to 600 people! And the scene continued to repeat itself!! We figured we would soon be coming upon the cause for this and hoped for a peaceful passing! 

Before we hit the 4 lane, we came to a spot where we were waved to the side of the road with everybody else and waited. By this time, we had done some research and knew it was Bangladesh’s Prime Minister that was coming thru!! Just as the procession arrived, the crowd started chanting. Lonnie and the girls think they actually laid eyes on him but it was not very obvious which vehicle he was riding in and maybe that was on purpose for safety reasons🤷🏼‍♀️ with such a large entourage and quite a few with prominent men standing up in the middle of an SUV thru the sunroof waving and greeting their fans with, “asalamalykum”. And then the  S T R I N G  of fans following in these silver 12 passengers vans!!?! We all sudden realized the vans all had a big sticker on the windshield with a serial number. So for the next while we took note of the numbers. The highest we saw was in the 900s. Just masses of people. Once we hit 4 lane we were out of the  heavy traffic.

We hit Centerpoint(airport) Chef’s Table for lunch and UniMart.. Cheers!!! They still have Tostitos tortilla chips🤗🤗

On to Pink City/the guest house. 

Annslie’s comment upon entering, “It’s good to be home!” But later at naptime, disturbed because it wasn’t “her” pillow…

Jaira was very upset because some of the row of trees behind the house had been cut down, “even the biggest one!”…just never know what’s gonna affect a 10 yr old… sometimes I think they’re really adaptable and the next time change affects them quite emotionally…my girls have spent many hours playing behind the guesthouse…

Unloaded. Annslie down for a nap, 

Lonnie and Brian went to find the part for our Khulna oven

Christina and I walked the streets of Pink City pushing Gentry in his stroller till he fell asleep. Made beds.

To Brian’s for supper

Fri Oct 30 Worship Day

 It was fishing day again at the pukar (pond) that’s just before our church house. So, many locals had paid to spend the day fishing at that location and lined the banks.

At Choygoria here, we decided to try attendance charts. There was no S.S. in Chakrakhali so it worked great to have extra time for getting the 30+ students’ names onto these charts.

After S.S., there is this lady that we’ve helped with medicine and her dad has been friends with Shanto’s. This lady’s husband died 4 years ago and her aging father has had a stroke… still up and about but not able to work like before… she has health issues and is not able to help bring in income.. she’s got a 14 yr old daughter that did not pass class 8 exams, they want to get her married well but Bangladesh has a backward? dowry system so they don’t have much hope of being able to marry her well.. this lady has an 8-10 yr old son as well. So, a household of 5 without an income to speak of. Losing their home is a real fear

We agreed to go with her to her home as we didn’t have the 2nd S.S. to attend

We wound our way along the canal on a narrow foot path, behind the men that were spending the day fishing.

Arriving at her home I was very pleasantly surprised.. very cleanly swept dirt yard and home. It was also more spacious than a lot of village homes that we’ve been in..

  typical mud floor home built up about 2 ft

But this one was very open with a walkway all along the front. Neighboring S.S. children hung around with us there…coming in for a drink…by this time it had started lightly raining which it kept up the rest of the morning… one of the girls led us to the wash room behind the house.. it was very clean and tidy also~a built up mud foundation outhouse with squat pot with an A-frame roof and a burlap cloth to let down when in use…On the far end of the house in the cooking area, the wrinkled little old grandma was squatting in front of a wok over the fire, just finishing cooking up a mess of greens. The lady said her daughter was there on the bed in the bedroom but in the dimness of the bedroom I could not see her under the mosquito netting. She called her 14 yr old daughter out then so we could meet her. She, like many other young people, was using a using a smart phone. These villagers often do not have much but it is not strange to see them with a smart phone. 

The children were all playing a game outside and my girls were game to play with them but the language barrier.. Maddie says,”I am not getting what the rules are”😏 in hindsight I would’ve had Kobid help them out with translating as he was with us since we had come straight from S.S.

When we took our leave, the lady and her 2 children came with us, taking us by a few more homes of her family where we were invited in, told to sit. The next house was nice in that it was concrete but not the level of cleanliness that we’d just experienced.. here they brought us palm fruit that had a nice texture and mildly sweet flavor..

Back past all the men spending the day fishing

By time we got home, we were all quite damp from the fine rain and the dirt paths that we’d been walking on had been turning to slippery mud…

Lunch

Littles down for naps

I tried my hand at making dudh cha(milk tea)… in my efforts I ended up with a couple pots of hot tea while trying to get it right..I did get a satisfactory product but still not sure if it was authentic

3:00 Lewis’s came for doctrine class 

I told them about trying to learn how to make dudh cha and wondered if Purnima would come into the kitchen and give me a demo. She made it a spiced dudh cha with cardamom seeds and cinnamon. One of the things that I’d been wondering for sure on was how to do the milk. So she helped me perfect it. I’d figured out that I needed to scald the milk 1st before adding it to the tea to get that desired texture with the gloopies from the scalded milk 😜 also learning that there are as many ways to make dudh cha “as there are cooks”. Purnima asked for Horlicks which is a powder of some sort that I didn’t have and Lewis says it’s best with a little instant coffee yet, too!! So I guess I have a few more versions of dudh cha to try. I thought I didn’t like dudh cha for our 1st whole year here cause probably within our 1st week in the country we were served dudh cha made with powdered milk and who knows, maybe if I’d try it like that again by now, it might set a little better than that 1st experience.?.

4:00 service…Shanto and Espondant were there in addition to Lewis’s, Liton, and Kobid. But Shotti was at home sick still. They’ve been having fevers, etc. it sounds like Shotti has been quite out of commission.. her parents left for a week? But plan to be back..

I put a load of laundry in and we started preparations for going in to Dhaka tomorrow

Thurs Oct 29

 Lonnie and I decided to go into Khulna City this morning and see if parts for the oven are available locally or if it’s an item for our upcoming Dhaka trip.

Got bbq meatloaf out of the freezer for the girls’ lunch

 We stopped at one stretch of appliance stores with no luck. Grabbed a few ruti(fry bread) from a streetside vendor. Went on to Day-7(grocery store), Artisan where we shopped clothes for Gentry and shirts and another pair of pants for Lonnie. There was another store Lonnie wanted to check for the oven part. At this one, 2 men said, if Lonnie would take them to Boro Bazaar they could check with somebody there.. no part there either. Then we stopped at a diner that has caught my attention for quite some time but I can’t pull anything up about it on Google Map. It’s the Compteur(or something like that🤔) aesthetically pleasing with floor to high ceilinged windows, trimmed in black. Plants for accents, A spacious dining area.. clean and modern. We ordered a frappé and a crème brûlée to try something from their menu. The crème brûlée was definitely the best we’ve had in this country so far. And we decided we’d like to come back for some special occasion sometime..

Wed Oct 28

 A nice little thunderstorm came thru in the night. Very possibly one of the last rains of the season, til next year..

Our kitchen oven’s chronic problem of not staying lit is steadily getting more severe even with the the TLC that has been administered by the head of the house.. this morning the oven was pulled out, the back cover removed and extensive investigation ensued.

After school, I was mixing up Autumn Pumpkin (choc chip) cookies (Meals To The Field cookbook), Lonnie and Annslie were down the road buying eggs and everybody else was outside.

Maddie comes in reporting that Gentry is gone! The neighboring repair shop man (who we know well) wanted to hold him and he takes off down the road on his bike, out of sight! They were found at the dhokan just past the church and Gentry was soon back home again.