Cha-wallah Hospitality

One of my favorite things about being here is stopping for a cup of cha (chai tea). For 10 cents you get a delicious, steaming hot cup of tea and often some good conversation in Bangla.

There are cha-wallahs (tea sellers) on every street. Grabbing cha is, for men anyways, an important part of the daily routine.

We walk by the cha-wallah on the corner of our block nearly every day. Almost from the beginning he’s been calling out “bondhu! kemon achen?” (friend! how are you?). I’ve been stopping rather frequently to get some cha and friendly conversations at his stand.

Last week he invited us to dinner. As most of my interactions are with my teammates, the teachers and students at language school, and bideshis (foreigners) in general, I was pretty excited to go to a Bangladeshi’s house for a meal. Also, he doesn’t speak so much English, so it was sure to be a good opportunity to try to put the Bangla to use.

So on Friday night, three of us hopped on rickshaws along with the Ronni’s (the cha-wallah) Philipino friend JiJi and made our way about 20 minutes south. Then we had a lovely 20-minute walk along a lakeside and through a poorer community to Ronni’s house.

That walk was so refreshing. We live in one of the nicest neighborhoods in Dhaka. It serves our purposes here (focusing on language study and planning) but it leaves me feeling a little disconnected from the poor and the slums. Walking through back alleys filled with children running and playing games, people cooking and doing laundry, and the sights, smells, and sounds of real Bengali life was brilliant.

At the cha-wallah’s apartment we met his family, were served snacks and tea, relaxed on the roof watching the sunset and listening to the call to prayer from several nearby mosques, watched his wedding video (so beautiful), got invited to his village, went back to the roof and watched a thunderstorm roll in (also beautiful), lost power, were served more snacks and then finally a delicious and huge Bengali meal.

All the while we were doing our best to converse in Bangla. I don’t think we did too poorly, but there were definitely a few moments of utter confusion and what one of our teachers likes to calls “bangla bomi” (bangla vomit). Thankfully those were followed by lots and lots of laughter.

All of it – walking through a poor community, talking and laughing in Bangla, and enjoying Bengali hospitality and food – made me incredibly excited again to be moving in to a slum. So much more goodness to come.