USA! USA!

Apparently the unpopularity of America and Bush's administration failed to impact Bangladesh's opinion of us. It appears that everyone loves America, everyone loves me because I am Americas, and everyone wants to move to America and work low paying jobs because they still believe in the America is the land of opportunity. It is quite distrubing. Without a doubt foreigners get special treatment in Bangladesh. Our driver was telling us that if he ever gets in trouble while driving, he just tells them that he is driving foreigners and its all ok. I found this hard to believe because there doesn't seem to be any traffic laws here so if you were to get in trouble it would have to be something pretty severe. But I was proven wrong. The other night we were reversing down a main road because we had missed our destination and a cop standing on the street starting approaching looking very mad. He then starting tapping the rear passanger window in order to get Saiful's attention. However, when he peeked in and saw me, he saluted, and then cleared the way so that we could continue on our mission of risking life and life to create traffic jams. I have never been saluted more in my life, security guards, police, and sometimes in the military personal salute me. Though this general attitude of servitude to foreigners does not just stop there. I often feel like the Bangali's that work for us will stop at nothing to accomodate us. As soon as we arrive in a village, chair magically appear for us to be more comfortable. Robbie (the cook) almost always does what we ask, I have no idea if we are putting him out and asking him to do more than necessary because he just nods his heads and smiles, even when Bala gave him his dirty underwear to wash. Saiful happily works until 16 hour days despite having a baby at home to care for. We were wandering around Matlab hospital the other day, (where everyone saluted us and let us do whatever we want) and I was beginning to get concerned that they would let us walk into a den of tigers if thats what they thought we wanted. This fear was immediately confirmed as we were walking around the pouds. There was a narrow trail around some of the ponds that we were walking along, there was a guard at the start who just saluted us and let us walk on by. About halfway around, one of our hosts calls out to us to be careful because there are giant snakes in the ponds! I would think this information would be valuable prior to starting on out little journey. But I guess they assumed we knew/ didn't want to bother us with important details that could inconvinience us or put us out in any way.