Taking Tea with Chi Chi: How to Motivate People and Win Friends in Bangladesh

Chi Chi stands with her carpentry team

No construction project every progresses according to plan; Bangladesh is no exception. Workers show up hours late, materials arrive of the wrong specifications, and the weather doesn’t always cooperate. As the architecture intern for Panigram, Chi Chi knows first hand the difficulties that arise during construction projects in Bangladesh.

Rising every morning at six A.M., Chi Chi faced the challenge of working with unfamiliar building materials, supervising her first construction project, and leading a construction team as a female in a male-dominated culture. Last night, I had the opportunity to sit down with Chi Chi and discuss the details of her pavilion project. We talked about her design, her team, and how she managed to overcome the many difficulties that arose while building the pavilion.

BRIAN: This is your first project, Chi Chi. Can you describe the challenges that you faced as a young architect working with an international crew?

CHI CHI: First of all, I really like my team. I even know how to say that in Bangla.

BRIAN: Say it.

CHI CHI: Okay, “amar team khub bhalo lage!”

As a team we have done a lot of bonding. We have taken tea, gone swimming, ridden bicycles, and even played soccer. I’ve tried to lead as a member of the team. I’ve carried mud on my head, hauled bamboo, and done heavy labor alongside my team.

Chi Chi carries mud on her head

Take the mud wall, for instance. I could never know what the consistency should be until I actually stepped in the mixing pit. I had to step into the muck and keri (rice straw), to know when the mud is ready.

I think that because I am willing to get dirty and lead as a team member I’ve earned the respect of the Bangladeshis working with me. My team has accepted me, a girl, into their “man circle”. Which is really cool since I’m the only girl on the site and also because I really need their help constructing the pavilion.

I have very limited experience with building actual structures. I’ve drafted mock construction documents in school, but accurate calculations and blueprints aren’t very useful here. My Bangladeshi team doesn’t use traditional blueprints and my materials are not uniform, so exact calculations would be useless anyway. I’ve been challenged by the fact that bamboo is never going to be straight, that rain tree timber is never going to be completely flat, and that mud won’t dry as fast as I want. All these little things added up and proved to be quite a challenge.

Chi Chi discusses her design with her bamboo team

The difficulties associated with building materials were overcome because I have great people working for me. They know exactly what I want and they know shortcuts to do things certain ways. They know how to save time. They know the secret ways of how to attach this to that. My local builders, they know what’s up.

The roof team connects a bamboo girder to a cross beam

BRIAN: I know you’ve been waking up at six A.M. for the last two weeks for an hour long commute. Can you tell me a little more about your daily routine?

CHI CHI: Six AM! Auto rickshaw! Every morning!

My daily routine is funny. To me its normal now, but if I told anyone else back home at the beginning of the summer that I would be doing an internship where I wake up every morning at six am to commute an hour in a tiny 100cc motorcycle rickshaw to a little town in Bangladesh where I would walk around a construction site barefoot with no safety helmet, they’d think I was crazy.

Not only is my commute ridiculous, but also I have to do all my work wearing long pants and long sleeved shirts - and a scarf, because I’m a girl and need to be conservative - in 34 degrees Celsius weather.

Our first aid is Purell. When I cut my foot, one my roof team bandaged the cut with a cigarette wrapper and netting. Our running water is the nearby river, which is also our shower. It’s my normal day; I don’t think it is weird anymore.

BRIAN: Quite a change of pace from daily life as a student at Cornell. Do you have any funny stories from the site?

CHI CHI: Today, my team made me eat with my hands on the floor. They cut a banana leaf down, put it on the floor, made me wash it with with water using my dirty hands. Then they dumped my rice and shobji on the leaf and giggled as they watched me struggle to eat with my hands. Seeing me uncomfortable, Muku, the foreman of the roof team, said that he would be willing to make me some bamboo chopsticks.

BRIAN: Whenever I’ve had the chance to visit the construction site, it always seems like we draw a large crowd. How have you managed to work with so many curious Bangladeshis watching you?

CHI CHI: It took me a few days to get used to it, but now the crowds are just part of the scenery. The people are very hospitable and really want to make friends with you, so they give you fruit. I’ve tried every single type of guava there is to try around the area, from the little rock hard kind, to the big ripe ones. Some people gave me some huge pomello fruits. People really like to give you fruit.

Curious Bangladeshis watch us work

BRIAN: Bangladeshis are notorious for their disregard for punctuality. How have you managed work around this cultural difference with your team?

CHI CHI: So, in Bangladesh there are two different times: Bangladesh time and digital time. Digital time is what the rest of the world runs on and Bangladesh time is about two hours slower. I’m not joking when I say that I’ve had people ask, “Wait, Bangla time or digital time?” to confirm a deadline.

To make sure that my team arrives on time, I asked them to meet me at the ‘Union Bar’ before we start work. The ‘Union Bar’ is my nickname for local tea stall where most of my laborers hang out. After I asked them to meet me at the ‘Union Bar’ they started to show up to work on time, because, you know, everyone in Bangladesh likes to “take tea.”

BRIAN: You aren’t fluent in Bangla, so how you communicate on the site with your team?

CHI CHI: I try to speak Bangla and my team tries to speak English. Usually, we try to meet in the middle: the middle being 20% of either end. I know the important Bangla words like: eta (”this”), ota (”that”), agamikal (”tomorrow”), kaj koro (”work!”), bash (”bamboo”), shundor (”beautiful”), shundor na (”not beautiful”), and kato (”cut”). Since verbal communication is difficult, I’ve found that pictures, photographs, and models work best.

BRIAN: Why did you pick the site? And, why did you pick this site over the two other you had in mind?

CHI CHI: I had two other sites in mind. Both were located in different Mahogany groves and had a constant cool breeze. The shade and breeze were positive elements; however, the trees and the surrounding crops obstructed the view of the river. Panigram means ‘water village’ so I felt that it was very important to have a beautiful view of the water. Kristin and I chose our current site at the junction of the river and the canal because of the scenic view.

The stunning view from the pavilion deck

BRIAN: Describe the view from the pavilion.

CHI CHI: As you look out across the river from the pavilion, in the distance you see the bridge that connects two villages. There are many villages surrounding the site; along the riverbank you see villagers cultivating jute, fishing from rafts made of hollow tree trunks, and harvesting water lilies. It is peaceful, bucolic, and refreshing, especially after visiting the noise and commotion of Dhaka.

BRIAN: Describe the layout of the pavilion.

CHI CHI: The layout of the pavilion follows our needs for the upcoming investor meeting. We built a dining room, a foyer for our guests to mingle, and a kitchen for Janine’s team to prepare the meal. The structure follows the curvature of the land in order to maximize the view of the river and mask the noise from the kitchen.

The roof, modeled after the banana leaf, changes the direction of the slope as it curves over the foyer area.

Chi Chi's roof model she used to show the team the 'twist' she wanted

BRIAN: Following the curvature of the peninsula definitely frames the view well. I am curious as to why you designed the roof with the twist?

CHI CHI: The twist in the roofline evokes the shape of the banana leaf. The first time I visited the site, looking for locations for the pavilion, all of us were caught in a very heavy downpour. The villagers gave us large banana leaves to keep us dry, I observed how the veins on the leaf point downwards, so the when three breeze blows and twists the leaf it still kept me dry. I wanted to convey the organic nature of the banana leaf to my roof design.

BRIAN: How did you arrive at the final design?

CHI CHI: With the time constraints, my first idea was the simplest idea: A thatch roof and plain gazebo style house. I’d seen it done around the area and it was simple enough to do very quickly. But of course, the design had to develop into something more original.

I had two things I wanted to accomplish with the final design. First, I wanted to incorporate important elements from the village life: water and local, sustainable building materials.

Water is very important in Bangladeshi village life. In order to convey this importance through the pavilion, the main entrance is accessible by land during the dry season and by boat during the monsoon.

Everything I used to build the pavilion is local and sustainable. These are materials that our village neighbors see, use, and experience in daily life: bamboo, golpata thatch, and mud.

We definitely used a lot of bamboo. It is cheaper and stronger than timber. Bamboo is also locally available. I saw it cut from the bamboo forest, carried by men, and cut at the construction site. Bamboo as a building material is definitely sustainable for the community because we are buying it locally, supporting the local economy. Plus, bamboo is fast growing, so the wood that we harvested will be quickly replaced.

The golpata thatch roof is made from dried palm fronds, split into two, and then woven between the crossbeams and girders. It is waterproof without any added chemicals. I am still surprised that the thin leaves are waterproof.

A member of the roof team weaves golpata thatch for the roof

Mud is really easy to work with too, because it can be any shape. And it’s locally available and it’s free! We literally got it from underneath our platform - straight from the source. To make the soft mud into a building material, we mixed locally available rice hay, called “keri”, into the mud using cows.

Bamboo, golpata thatched roofs, keri mud, and rain tree timber are all local materials. Everything that we have is straight from the source, a sustainable practice for the local area.