Hockey Night in Bangladesh

By the looks of the picture I took of myself sitting on the diving board of the Canadian Club’s warm and heavily chlorinated pool, I wasn’t having a very good time. But don’t be deceived; I’ve only adopted the pose that most Bangladeshis seem to prefer using when they have their pictures taken: stern and somewhat displeased. On the inside, however, the subject can be feeling a wide range of emotions that don’t make their way to the surface. In my case, sitting only meters away from the maple leaf that was painted on to the bottom of the pool, it was complete relaxation.

I had been warned about the diplomatic types who spend too much time at their expatriate clubs hidden from the outside world by the massive walls I spoke of after my first visit in September. For them, the ability to speak freely in one’s native tongue, enjoy a cold beer to compliment either the food that you might eat back home or perhaps…another cold beer, is an all too common occurrence. For someone like myself, however, it’s both a novelty and a luxury that I can only afford thanks to special membership rates for interns ($12/month) and inconsequential daily expenses at home. With regards to the over-pampered or perhaps disillusioned diplomatic types mentioned above, I was fortunate enough not to encounter any directly. Having said that, I could probably have picked out a few from amongst the table of Scots, Kiwis, Germans and of course Canadians pouring cans of Fosters into stomachs that had probably seen far too many hors d’oeuvres trays for their own good while the rest of us sweated it out on the tennis courts.

Where was I? Oh yes: my afternoon of R&R. The day I had looked forward to for weeks while waiting for my visa to get extended was spent pulling a refreshing but slow 5km on their relatively new Concept 2 erg machine (stationary rower), swimming a few laps in their backyard sized outdoor pool, and enjoying some pleasant conversation with a few seasoned expats genuinely interested in hearing about my trials and travails. It wasn’t long before I was recruited to play in the weekly evening street hockey tournament, a gathering of fifteen to twenty of Dhaka’s finest 8-15 year old Canadian hockey players, with a few big kids or young at heart thrown in there as well. I was told that two of the four regulation sized street hockey nets were manufactured here in Dhaka based on the two that were shipped directly from Canada, (probably from Brampton or Moose Jaw to make them even more authentic), and that the sticks (mostly wood, some fiberglass) are bought in packs of twelve by one of the expat dads whose accent indicates he’s clearly from Quebec but whose name I didn’t have the opportunity to catch. Next week. The two tennis courts were broken up into four separate games of fifteen minutes each, and since it was already dark we played under glow of the powerful outdoor lights installed around the perimeter. Teams were chosen recess-style, that is, four captains out in front with the rest of the eager yet helpless players standing in line like a group of ragtag, pre-adolescent soldiers too afraid to look their sergeants in the eye. I breathed a sigh of relief when I was picked early on in the selection process, something that never happened at recess on the unforgiving gravel field of Dorothy Lynas Elementary.

Once the always awkward selection process had separated the group into four surprisingly equal teams, (particularly since most of these are in grade eight or nine and at the age when skill is a less important asset than other things), we played a solid hour and a half of good ol’ Canadian street hockey. My team, composed of Luke, Jessica, Mohit and myself, finished the round-robin tournament with a decent 2-2 record, but if Luke, our 13 year old provisional goaltender and the quietest of the group, had come out to challenge more often we could have finished the evening above 500. Don’t worry Luke; I won’t hold a grudge. I left the club around 830pm that night significantly sweatier and somewhat unimpressed with my own fitness, but comforted considerably by the fact that I’ll never be far from home.

Post-Script: It's 103opm and someone has gotten ahold of the microphone of the mosque next door. Whoever it is must think that the whole neighbourhood would like to listen to him saying "hello.....hello.....hello....1....2...3.....4.........hello...." over and over again. Ahh, Islamic pranksters; you can never really get enough.

Speaking of Islam, here's one more photo that I took last week. The mosque is usually too small to hold everyone inside on Ramadan Fridays, so the men make their way to the roof and often into the streets outside. It's quite a sight to see, especially when the afternoon sun is shining like it did that day.