Returning Home to Bangladesh

For the first eight years of my childhood, the monsoon rains of Bangladesh drenched half my memories each year. My parents raised my brothers and I in Ishurdi and Dhaka until 1995 when we moved back to Maine, the home of my seafaring Thorpe ancestors. I had the richest childhood imaginable, in a beautiful country whose GDP places her among the poorest nations in the world despite great growth in recent years. That's not what I knew of Bangladesh though. I knew Tanya, my best friend - pictured above with me in a red sari. I knew the joy of running in flooded rice paddies with my brothers. I knew a mother dressed elegantly in saris, who never complained over forfeiting the luxuries of pampers while she hand-washed cloth diapers. And neither the heat nor torrential downpours marred the image of my first home that I carried with me to Maine.

Now again leaving my beloved Maine, I prepare to return to the monsoons, the heat, the mangoes, the traffic, lizards and cockroaches, power outages, rice, dal, curry, jackfruit, and countless other familiar sights, smells, tastes, and sounds. I am spending these next four weeks in Maine with growing excitement about the unfamiliar parts of B'desh that I'll soon encounter. I am returning not as a six-year old riding rickshaws on my father's lap. I'll be living in Chittagong, a city I barely recollect from our one visit there. I'll be teaching English to young women from across Asia at the Access Academy of the Asian University for Women (AUW). I'm so eager to meet my students and put into full-time practice the learning I received in Wheaton, Illinois these past couple years. The only other time I have returned to Bangladesh since '95 was in 2003 when I went with my family and some friends to teach English in Rajshahi. I am so grateful for this opportunity to return again. This time, to a new region and with a new role.