Mon April 7

The men went back to the Gopalgonj bank today, and hour away, to take care of business over there.

The children pulled out the water hose again and played in that for a long time till TulSi let us know that the neighbors were saying the water was running on their property. So we had them fill up the pool again to keep the water contained.

Pulled out leftover spaghetti for lunch when the men got back.

Doyle took our family to show us a few things like the local post office while his family napped. On the other side of the street in a large grassy area a Mela was being set up.. food vendors, carousels, balloons, cotton candy, etc, etc. ,..

Then we all loaded up and went to the bOro bazaar. A large market encompassing many streets along a river. A large fabric area that I’m looking forward to spending some time at, and then a little of most everything else that one can think of! Stopped and bought some umbrellas, a brass dokan looked like a promising place to drop some taka someday, then down the gangplank at the rivers edge where boats were being loaded. Burly men carrying heavy loads on their heads down the steep bank and gangplank to the boats. Produce, dry goods, 50 gal. drums were also being rolled on.

One hilarious aspect as the Barkman/Koehn tribe wended their way down the streets, thru the market, mostly single file, you’d hear- “Ek, duy, tin, car, pac, choy, Sat, at, nOy, dOS, Egaro.” or even in English sometimes! I guess we were a fairly impressive sight-bedeshis with a serious trail of little people-7 children between the ages of 10 and 1..

As we left, we found ourselves in a real traffic jam for awhile.. saw lines of protestors headed somewhere.?. Eventually we pulled off the street to go find us some supper. Surprise! They took us to a back room that had air conditioning and its own set of sinks and bathrooms! A perfect place to have the children contained but not stuck in a chair disturbing other diners🤗

We came back past the mela that was going strong and Packed with people!!