30 Final Days of Bangladesh – Day 29 – Shubho Boro din! Merry Christmas!

Shubho Borodin! Merry Christmas to all my many friends in Bangladesh, Britain and all over the world. May this blog post find you all much blessed and loved on this day.

While I’m glad we decided to spend our final Christmas at LAMB before leaving Bangladesh, I have to admit that the last twenty-four hours have been among the hardest in my life.

The reasons are numerous and include some personal issues which I won’t go into here. Most are simply the difficulty of trying to pack up our house and say goodbye to so many when are hearts just aren’t in it.

I work up this morning feeling distinctly un-christmassy and honestly miserable.

After celebrating Christmas at LAMB church and seeing so many joyful people and felt a little lighter in my heart though by the time we had gone round everyone’s home and eaten vast quantities of deep-fried nasta my belly was feeling heavy.

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We didn’t go to the LAMB bhoj (feast) but instead when back to our ayah’s village for their own bhoj. We were guests of honour and spent a wonderful couple of hours with Surola and her family. We could barely pull ourselves away in the end.

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Then back to LAMB and off to final party in the evening with some of the bideshis (foreigners). More food, then I played guitar as we sang carols. Then they gave us a delightful cake which, after yet another meal just eaten, was almost too much but we ate some anyway.

Tomorrow, I will write the final post of this series in Dhaka, after we’ve left LAMB and flown south. We get the morning to finish sorting the piles of stuff which still lie everywhere and attempt to cram even more bits and bobs in our bulging cases. Then we have lunch and say goodbye properly, truly to everyone who comes to see us off.

There’s never been a moment I’ve least looked forward to in my life. It’s all quite, quite horrible.