Our Glorious Day Off

We get one day a week off here. When you only get the one, you look forward to it even more than with a whole weekend. To us (the volunteers) its a day of utter indulgence. We splesh out (a british term meaning splurge) on western style food. Two weeks ago I had pizza, an eclair, french fries and two milkshakes! This week I had only one milkshake (cookies and cream) but also a thai dinner (did not taste anything like Thai food) a cappucino, an apple pie, and an orange banana smoothie. We have narrowed down all the western style shops in Dhaka. That and some of the volunteers have memberships to their expat clubs, so that's where a lot of the spleshing out occurs. We go to the western grocery store after and buy things like oreo cookies and pasta. It's more of a treat than you can imagine. I think I've had 10 oreo cookies already today.

Yesterday was a more somber occasion than usual though. We chose to attend the Liberation War Museum in Dhaka. Pakistan (of which Dhaka was once a member) chose not to recognize Bangla as one of the national languages. This infuriated the 70million Bangla speaking people. There were unarmed student protests in response to this discrimination. So Pakistani police opened fire killing many students, professors and other educated peoples. The crack down came much worse in 1971. Pakistan lead an genocide against the people of East Pakistan. The raped, torutured and murdered thousands. They specifically targetted women, children and those who were educated. They rounded up women to be sex slaves in their soldier's camps. They murdered thousands of children. Students at Universities did not fair well.

India came to the aid of Bangladesh as well as many other foreign countries (though not the USA. In a recently unclassified document, Nixon wrote 'do not squeeze Yhan at this time.'). As a result of brave internal fighting and foreign support Bangladesh was able to liberate their country. On the last day before Pakistan conceded defeat the PAK army rounded up thousands upon thousands of doctors, professors, engineers and other leaders of community. They murdered them and threw their bodies in mass graves. And this, remember was on the final day. They already new the war was over, but attempted to create an intellectual vacuum for the new country.

The museum was a beautiful tribute to these martyrs. It was also graphic and disturbing with photos of mutilated bodies and starved children. They have items of clothing of many of the people who were tortured and died. The most disturbing is possibly the small vest of a child that was murdered because the soldiers were looking for his father. The child had been stepped on.

I was prepared for this as I had read a great deal about the liberation war before arriving. Even with that it still makes you stick. The perpetrators have never been brought to trial, as is so often the case.

It's times like this I wish I'd been born something innocent like a dog or a cat.

L