Oct 10, 2005
Mr Khan was the CEO of the Agriculture Department and our main contact with the Department during our visit. He was a bright eyed little fellow with snow white hair and a pretty smart demeanour. He told us once when we were relaxing over a cup of warm sweet milky tea in a cracked cup, that he had been a wanted man during the uprising, with a price on his head. He seemed quite proud of the unimaginable number of rupees the Pakistani military had considered his head to be worth. Perhaps the anguish of being hunted month after month while he slipped from village to village, lying low on the roof of a bus, or under a stack of rice straw on an ox cart, accounted for the snowy whiteness of his hair, which contrasted with his dark brows and his quite youthful complexion. But if the fugitive existence had drained the colour from his hair it had done nothing to diminish his energy or his enthusiasm for life. Rather it seemed, the realisation that with persistence and resourcefulness a simple people could in time defeat an efficient and merciless military power had given him new heart, had given him confidence against all challenges.
The Pakistanis and their American backers had left a country and an economy in ruins. The professionals, the engineers, the scientists, the contractors, who might otherwise have been expected to organize the reconstruction had returned to Pakistan whence most of them had come. Most of the bridges were blown, and the harbour at Chittagong was choked with the wrecks of ships that had been sunk where they lay at the wharves. A series of interrupted rice harvests had left the warehouses empty of everything but the rats. The refugee camps to the south of the town were scenes of desperation still, with sick and starving people sheltering under bits of matting or plastic propped up on sticks. Each night the hundreds of desperate village folk who had come to Dakha in a hopeless search for employment, would try to sleep on any vacant space they could find, covering themselves with their cloaks, or failing that a piece of sacking or with only the clothes they wore. Each morning trucks would cruise the open spaces and the median strip of the motorway, and gather up the bodies of those who had failed to survive the night.
Yet progress was being made. Rice was again being harvested, and new rice planted. The refugee camps were shrinking for whatever reason. The ramshackle government of President Mujibur Rahman with its half trained staff and scant resources was offering some sort of plan, however inept, for the country’s reconstruction. And Mr Khan seemed to take heart from having survived when things had been even worse. As executive officer of the new Ministry of Agriculture, and a friend I think, of the Director, he was keen to move things forward.
Towards the end of our visit we had a meeting with the Director of Agriculture and Mr Khan, to discuss our findings. David, in his capacity as our group leader, insisted that we all wore suits and ties, to give the meeting an air of formality and authority. Just before the meeting Hayes warned us of his intention to “do a controlled loss of cool” during the meeting, the object of which was not immediately clear to me. However David didn’t object, so I assumed it was some recognised diplomatic manoeuvre.
The Director, whose name I have forgotten, was a stocky little man, slightly balding and with a thoughtful and sensitive face, not unlike a darker version of my late Uncle Murray. I felt at home with him. He cleverly seated himself at the end of the long boardroom table with his back to the window, where he could observe the detail of our facial expressions, without our getting a clear view of his. For my own part this arrangement suited me, for some of what I had to report was going to be critical of his department, and I felt I might give a more honest account if I could not distinguish anger or disappointment on his countenance.
David introduced us and thanked the Director for cooperation during our visit. He said we had been able to see everything we came to see and he hoped we could have a mutually useful dialogue. He asked me to comment on the agricultural aspects of the aid project.
It seemed to me that there was not much scope for aerial spraying under ordinary circumstances, since the rice crop was almost entirely in blocks of about 500 square metres, (half the size of a New Zealand city section) and in any case the blocks being at different stages of growth would not generally be susceptible to the sort of simultaneous insect attack over a large area that would lend itself to spraying by a fixed wing aircraft - at least not susceptible to such an attack by most of the pests likely to infest them. Hand spraying using manually operated knapsack sprayers, as was at present being practiced by some growers, seemed the best way of dealing with occasional outbreaks. Furthermore, the varieties of rice grown, though not high yielding, were nevertheless fairly resistant to pest attack, and I had not seen any badly infested crops on our surveys of the country either from the road or from the air.
There was nevertheless a possibility of an armyworm outbreak at some time, and that might call for a different approach. Since the nature of armyworm caterpillars is to move forward on a front from block to block whatever its stage of growth, they could, if allowed to go unchecked, bring devastation to a significant area. Aerial spraying might then be appropriate. A better way of dealing with armyworm however, would be to set up a system for forecasting outbreaks so an outbreak could be dealt with before the caterpillars got on the move. I had discussed such a forecasting system with the senior Bangladeshi entomologist and we had worked out a technique which would not be too expensive, and which should be practicable for most villages. I therefore saw the need for spraying by fixed wing aircraft as being limited, and intermittent.
I had been impressed with the quality of the scientists I had met, and with their dedication, as I had also been impressed with the dedication and capability of the field staff. However in both cases they were poorly equipped for what they were supposed to do, particularly in comparison with the employees of foreign chemical companies who were also advising farmers on pest control matters. The status of the Ministry’s staff suffered accordingly in the eyes of the farmers. Worse still, I regretted to say I did not think the Ministry’s staff were getting the support or the encouragement from their head office which their dedication deserved. In fact I thought they were justified in feeling overlooked and neglected.
Uncle Murray nodded his head as if he recognised the problem, but with the light in my eyes I couldn’t read the detail of his expression. He said he would like to get out among his staff more often, but transport was a problem. There was mention of jet boats.
This seemed to give Hayes his cue. “Oh!” he said, “Jet boats!” he said, thumping the table with his massive fist, “The Great White God in New Zealand is expected to supply more! You are given aircraft which you don’t use; we train mechanics endlessly, yet they are still unable to keep the aircraft flying; we train pilots who somehow mysteriously evaporate as fast as they are trained! What would be the point of supplying more aircraft, or jet boats, or anything else while this state of affairs continues!”
Mr Khan reacted. It was not for nothing that he had been respected as a freedom fighter.
“Keep your bloody aircrafts!” he snapped, thumping the table in his turn. “We never asked for them in the first place! It was your damned experts with all their great knowledge of rice growing who told us we needed them, and that they could supply the aircraft that would do the job! And what have we got? Unsuitable aircrafts that burn up foreign exchange for fuel and spare parts while they train a few pilots. And those pilots are still working for Bangladesh anyway! We don’t need your aircrafts. Keep your bloody aircrafts!”
I had not imagined that Bangladeshis were capable of wielding sarcasm in this way. Mr Khan must have got himself a thorough education under the Raj.
The Director smiled quietly, enjoying the spectacle in the manner of a man who has witnessed and survived many more lethal exchanges. David retained his diplomatic calm, and addressed a few soothing words to Hayes, who “Harrumphed” and began to wind down. The lady from the New Zealand Embassy in Delhi wondered if it might be possible to convert one of the Fletchers to carry a few passengers so it could be used to give the Director and his senior staff better access to their field staff. David believed it was possible, and that it would be a matter worth investigating.
The Director leaned back in his chair, and tea was brought in, warm sweet milky tea.
***
By the time we’d been at the Intercontinental for a week, practically everyone on its eleven floors must have been aware of John Hayes. Certainly the Bangladeshi staff could hardly have failed to notice him. They were tiny, dark and lightly built. I doubt whether any of them weighed 50 kilos. He was enormous, sandy-pink and must have weighed well over 100 kilos. They were all ages but had the culture of a thousand years laid on them. He was about 22, and looked much younger.
And as if his appearance wasn’t enough, he seemed to go out of his way to draw attention to himself. He would pause at the main entrance to the hotel to examine the rifle of the little sentry, peering inquisitively down the muzzle of the ancient weapon with the simple curiosity of a child, much to the amused embarrassment of the youthful soldier. The lad had probably been taught to deal effectively with terrorist infiltration or with civil insurrection, but there was clearly nothing in the manual about the proper reaction to an overblown and bemused Peter Ustinov. So he did what Bangladeshis do best. He smiled.
Breakfast, like everything else at the Intercontinental was what you could expect at any Intercontinental anywhere in the world. For the Intercontinental, (or the Sheraton, or the Hilton), be it in Tokyo, Chicago or Dar-es-Salaam, is a triumph of the American Way of Life over the petty irritations of the unenlightened world outside. The real world is something for the American traveller to gaze upon, (preferably through two layers of glass), and perhaps even to comment upon, politely, but definitely not to indulge in. Whether travelling or recuperating from travel, the American tourist or businessman expects, and receives, a predictable uniformity of everything from temperature and humidity, to room décor and food and the Gideon bible on the dressing table. Monotony for them is not a problem but an objective. Life, they feel, has enough uncertainties as it is.
However, for those few who were reckless enough to throw convention to the winds, the chef at the Dacca Intercontinental had appended to the breakfast menu, along with the customary fruit compote, cereals, Danish pastries and savoury omelets, a further item, apparently left over from the British Raj, “corned beef hash and two fried eggs”.
Hayes was intrigued with this from day one. While the rest of us contented ourselves with cereal and coffee, or poached eggs on toast, he would lean back in his chair and study the menu with a masterful air, and after due deliberation, boldly order the corned beef hash and two fried eggs. The waiter would note down the number, and hurry away, only to return a few moments later to inform Hayes that the item was not available. Hayes would express astonishment, or mild displeasure, and proceed to order something else.
He kept up this charade each morning for the three weeks we were there. Each new waiter would fall into the trap, while even some of the waiters who had served us before, would forget that corned beef hash and two fried eggs were never available, and perhaps had not been since the British left. The wiser waiters would smile and inform him then and there, but more often they would go through the rigmarole of taking his order to the kitchen first. Hayes never wearied of it. It must have had the effect of making him known to all the kitchen staff as well as all the waiters.
So much for the serving staff and the sentries. But of course there were guests in the hotel too. There were Germans, fat and pink, who more or less monopolised the swimming pool; there was an American agricultural mission, which didn’t seem to go anywhere; there were Swiss merchants presumably selling chemicals or laundering money, and there were blue rinsed ladies, either attached to one or other of the above groups, or perhaps touring on their own accounts or their deceased husbands’ legacies. There were also some Russians, very close-knit in tight suits. All these would appear at the close of each day, well groomed, for the evening meal. Dinner was always formal. We were all obliged to wear suits and ties. Hayes tried once to dine in sandals, an aloha shirt, and a “lungi” skirt which he had got from somewhere. The head waiter politely tried to tell him that formal dress was required, to which Hayes responded that the skirt and sandals were indeed the formal dress of the country we were in, and that the head waiter’s black bow tie and dinner suit was what was really out of place. The waiter smiled, but insisted, and Hayes was forced to go and get changed if he was not to be deprived of his dinner.
The dining room was a large and ornate affair, much decorated with huge dried flower arrangements as well as fresh greenery and hibiscus flowers impaled on rattan canes. The centrepiece was a carved table on which a silver tray displayed a grandiose chocolate log. Heavily iced and decorated with marzipan flowers and curlicues, it must have taken some artist several hours of talented concentration to concoct it. The thing that irritated Hayes was that it was brought out each evening, but it was never cut, and none of the guests cared to be the first to broach it. None, that is, except Hayes. When his coffee was served he got up and approached it as if it was something he did every day of his life, and taking up the great carving knife that accompanied it he helped himself to a massive wedge of the construction. It turned out to be rainbow hued inside, so with its entrails exposed it became even more of an attraction than it had already been. With the fascination that high carbohydrate foods seem to exert upon middle aged ladies, the blue rinse brigade saw their opportunity and fell upon the creation and demolished it about as rapidly as good breeding would allow. Thereafter the chocolate log ceased to be an object of veneration, and I must say the later ones diminished somewhat in grandeur and complexity as they came to be regarded as a standard item of diet.
The wedge that Hayes had dealt himself that first night proved to be more that even he could handle on top of a substantial dinner, but he was not going to be defeated by it. He wrapped it in a purple napkin with the intention of taking it to his room for a late night snack. Unfortunately the lift lobby on the ground floor was at that time occupied by a group of white jacketed staff, presumably as a precaution against dinner-only guests seizing the opportunity to invade the upstairs rooms. Hayes was not, for a wonder, prepared to argue his wedge of rainbow cake past this group, but diverted instead into one of the souvenir shops along the corridor, where he could pass the time until the watch dogs had dispersed.
In a shop Hayes was in his element, for bargaining and haggling were his favourite pastimes, and he excelled at them. He handed the cake parcel to me and, pretending to ignore the two ladies behind the desk, cast his gaze about the merchandise with the air of a big spender. He took down a sword, reminiscent of the Bengal Lancers, and made a few peremptory lunges with it. He tried its edge with his thumb. He admired a tiger skin rug on the floor and tried to get the toe of his shoe between its jaws. The ladies were intrigued but said nothing.
One of the few garments that looked as if it might fit him was a jacket made of leopard skin. It must have used a whole leopard in its construction. He tried it on, and admired himself from several angles in a full length mirror. He asked my opinion. The little ladies were by now in stitches. He asked the price. The mention of money brought them back to their professional senses, and they offered some atrocious figure, say $3 000. He pondered for a few moments. “What if I take two?” he asked. They dissolved in giggles. He ignored them and put the coat back on its peg. “Are they gone yet?” he asked me, and when I said they had, he took back his cake, and with a condescending farewell he left the ladies in their mirth. It was the best night’s entertainment they had ever had, though they hadn’t sold a thing.
And yet I wonder if it wasn’t all a ruse. Did he deliberately make himself conspicuous, so that when he slipped past behind their backs, as with his soft shoes he was quite capable of doing, they could never convince themselves that he had gone past them unnoticed? They would be prepared to swear to anyone who inquired that he had not passed that way.
When I left Bangladesh it was John Hayes who drove me to the airport. We made our farewells in the departure lounge and I joined the queues at the passport, immigration, security desks, ultimately emerging form the metal detectors into a corridor which led to the appropriate gate lounge. When I got there, who should be waiting for me but John Hayes. He gave me the shadow of a smile. When I asked him, as I could see I was meant to, how he got there, he said it was easy. He had noticed an open door behind the passports counter so he had slipped behind the busy officials and through the door to find he was in the corridor leading to the gate lounges. I asked him how he would get back. He said that wouldn’t be a problem, and apparently it wasn’t.
Next morning he was awoken in his room in the Intercontinental by the sound of a military helicopter hovering outside his window. It was the day of the military coup, and the murder of the president.
Hayes told us later, when he got back to New Zealand, that after the coup, the Air Force chief had had himself appointed Minister of Agriculture, and, being intrigued with our little air trainers, had taken one for a joy ride. Unfortunately he had misjudged somewhat during a circuit of the airfield, and had crashed it into the upstairs passenger lounge, to the detriment of both the plane and himself.
With the best will in the world, aid projects can so easily end in disaster.