Boat Trip on the Turag River

As a farewell gift, my students took me and Corina on a boat trip along a nearby river.  I wanted to go boating at some point during my stay, but hadn't found the time to do it, so I was thankful that they arranged a trip for me!  Here are a few pictures of the event...

This is the boat we took.

Here I am trying to row the boat.  As you can see, my students got a kick out of this!  There is only one heavy paddle, and it isn't very easy to use!  I really thought it would be easier (since I have done a lot of boating in my life), but the technique was completely different than what I have ever done.  I told my students to jump out so the boat would be lighter, but they didn't listen to me, so we just went in a circle.  Eventually I gave up!

Group shot!

Bamboo bridge across the river.

Party boat - these guys (and yes, all of them are guys) were having a dance party to very loud music on the top of their boat.

Kids playing on barrels and pipes in the water.

And, my personal favourite!  Naked kids showing off for us - diving, jumping and doing flips! (My students were encouraging them and told them to do flips, which is why I was able to get this picture!)

I loved seeing the kids playing in the water - they were having a great time.  The water was pretty dirty, though, and as you can see, the kids use industrial equipment as their playground so it isn't exactly the safest environment for swimming. But they were definitely enjoying themselves!

This boat trip was a great way to spend time with my students, and I am really glad they thought of it and arranged it!  (Thanks Nisha, Shraddha, Sahina, Dalia, Rubina, Sharif, Shahed, Shuvashish, Asha, and Chanak!)

Kids in Dhaka

These kids are selling cigarettes outside the shopping centre near my apartment.  They were pretty happy that I took a picture, although they don't all look it! 

Looks like one of these little guys was telling a really funny story!

These little guys ran in front of me and grouped together so that I would take a picture, although it took them a little while to organize themselves!  Showing them the picture on my camera resulted in a lot of excitement and laughter - they were pretty pleased with themselves!

This little guy lives in my neighborhood - so cute!

I love the smile of the woman on the left - so beautiful!

Finally, here's picture of one of my apartment spiders...but I'll spare you the close-up, because I know that not all my blog readers appreciate my bug pictures!

Things don't always go according to plan...

Today, I worked at home preparing lectures for my classes, so in late afternoon I decided to go out for a walk to buy some mangoes.  I figured I would be out for 30 min or so.  I texted my roommate, Corina, to see if she wanted to come.  She did, so we planned to meet between school and our apartment...I'd walk, she'd walk, we'd meet in the middle...but that didn't work.  But a couple of phone calls later we found each other, so it was all good.  So we started walking to find mangoes. 

The corner where we like to get mangoes had some for sale, but they were rotten.  So no luck.  So we kept walking.  Then, walking along under a sunny blue sky, a small cloud appears and it starts to rain.  So now we are walking and taking a shower at the same time and drawing a lot of stares as we walked in the rain.  We had to walk further than we expected, because mango sellers were in short supply, but finally we got to a fruit and vegetable market.  We found some mangoes, picked out a few that were okay, and asked the seller "How much?"  He tells us, "120 taka per kg."  Corina and I both react to this with, "What? No! Too much!  60 taka per kg!"  (60 taka per kg is the foreigner price in mango season, and when mangoes are in shorter supply we pay 80 taka per kg.)  He tried to convince us that he was charging everyone 120 per kg, so we gave him a couple of looks of displeasure and left.  We wandered through the rest of the market (which was actually really interesting...think Granville Island market but a lot more dirty and with a leaky roof) but made it out to the other side without finding any more mangoes. 

At that point, we were damp from the rain and still mango-less, so we decided to just go to the grocery store and buy them there (sometimes I really appreciate fixed-price stores, as they call them here...a little more expensive, but much less work to shop there!)  So we got on a rickshaw, and then we realized a few minutes in that he was riding the wrong way.  (Rickshaw drivers often nod and say yes like they know where you are going even though they didn't understand a word you said, so it's usually a good idea to have a general idea of where you are going before you get on one!)  So we had a very nice neighborhood tour...saw some really nice apartment buildings, discovered a park and playground (where the local kids were out playing and the adults were all out getting their evening exercise by walking around the park), and finally made it to the grocery store.  We bought mangoes for 80 taka per kg, a bunch of other stuff we needed (because we were there), ate an ice cream bar, and took a rickshaw home.  So two hours later, we had some mangoes and a really interesting experience to go with it!  I observed to Corina on the way home that you definitely have to be flexible in a country like this and just be able to enjoy the experiences you have, even if they are totally unplanned!

I am writing this post sitting the in dark because the power is out yet again, and I am hearing large cockroaches jumping/flying around my kitchen...kind of gross sounding, but oh well.  Really, I should try and get on top of this cockroach issue...but I think I am just going to accept that in order to have a low stress life, I will have to peacefully coexist with them. 

Power outages, cockroaches, and very long trips to find mangoes...it's all part of the experience of Bangladesh! 

Critters...

Bugs, and big ones at that, are a part of traveling to a more tropical climate.  (Although, it is worth noting that bugs are a part of my life at home too...I think my sister killed over 40 spiders in the first two weeks she lived in my apartment). 

Mosquitoes are plentiful here in Dhaka (and they love me), so I sleep under a mosquito net. Thankfully, they don't carry malaria. Cockroaches are also plentiful - they mostly live in our kitchen, but I also have a fairly large cockroach family living in the cracks and crevices in my bathroom.  There are so many that it is usually not worth killing them - more just emerge from the cracks.  It's a bit of a losing battle.  However, I have learned that you have to kill them carefully, or you have a really big mess to clean up afterward!  I think it is really funny when the cockroaches are "hiding" in holes in the sink, but you can still see their antennae sticking out and moving around...reminds me of when little kids play hide and seek! (you know, when they just can't quite get themselves fully hidden even though they think they are!)

Here are a couple of my bathroom cockroaches...these are some smallish ones...

There are also some impressive spiders in Bangladesh - they are huge!  I've seen one big spider in my house which I just pretended didn't exist and I've never seen it again, but the really big spiders can be seen close up in Lawacherra Rainforest (the same place I saw the gibbons and got leeches on my feet)!

Here's a couple of pictures - they were pretty cool to look at because you could see their body parts in so much detail!  In this first one you can see the bug the spider had killed and wrapped up (beside it in the web).  This picture is of the spider's underside.

Here's another shot...

And, one more, just because!!

Traffic in Dhaka

So, just to give you a sense of where I live, this is a short video I took of the traffic on an average day in Dhaka. This road is one of the main roads near my house - about a 20 minute walk away from my apartment. Thankfully, there are many pedestrian overpasses on this road, which is where I took this video from.

Things that you might notice in the video...

-car alarm sirens that some of the buses install as their horns in an effort to get other vehicles to move out of their way (it's not terribly successful, and just irritates their foreign passengers (aka me) to no end!)
-people crossing the street despite the presence of pedestrian overpasses!
-rickshaws waiting to cross the highway (I was trying to get the video to include that sight as well, but didn't succeed).
-cars and buses cutting each other off constantly...

When I take a rickshaw and I need to go across this road, I always get off the rickshaw on one side, pay the driver, and then walk over the pedestrian overpass and get on another rickshaw. No sense in risking my life and his!! There are traffic police that stop traffic, but they are not always listened to and I am just not ready to risk crossing in a rickshaw when I can walk much more safely!

The buses are all dented and scraped along their sides from cutting each other off in traffic...pretty scary looking. Dhaka is not the place to drive if you are concerned about the condition of your car...you will get scraped and bumped by other vehicles.

The honking really got to me in the first couple of weeks, and some days it still does irritate me because it seems so senseless (why must we all honk when no vehicle is moving???) but for the most part now I can tune it out.

Traffic in Dhaka...always interesting!!

Tea Estates & Reflections on Poverty

One of the highlights in Srimongol is seeing and visiting the many tea estates in the area.  The tea plants grow on many of the hills, and there are often tea pickers working, picking the tea leaves that will be used to make the tea.  Pictures show it best...

Notice the tea picker in this photo?

A tea picker...

The tea grown in this area tastes great, and I'm definitely going to bring some home with me! 

I found it easy to look at the tea estates and the tea pickers and think about how beautiful it all looked, but then I found out that the tea pickers only make 48 taka a day (about 70 cents Canadian).  This was a bit of a sobering realization and it saddened me - 48 taka is barely enough to buy food to eat, let alone have anything extra to spend on other expenses of living.  This is an unfortunate reality for millions of people in Bangladesh. 

Bangladesh is one of the poorest countries in the world, and it is also the most densely populated.  As a result, labour is cheap, and so you find people like the tea pickers working extremely hard for very low wages.  And even still, there are millions in Bangladesh who are unemployed, and many resort to begging on the streets.  Nearly everywhere I go, I am asked for money (taka), and the condition that many of the beggars are in is heart-wrenching.  People with paralysis, missing limbs, birth defects, and blindness, the old and the very young (babies & toddlers) can all be found on the street.  Bangladeshis do give to beggars quite regularly, so a subsistence living can be made by begging, but it is painful to witness. 

Being here and seeing this first-hand is definitely challenging...gives me lots to process and think about.  At the same time, I am encouraged by the potential that Bangladesh has - the people here are not blind to the challenges that face the country, and bit by bit they are working to improve the situation here.  Many of our nursing students are passionate about doing this, and that is really exciting - they want to go and make changes in their country, be leaders in health care, and provide care to those who need it most and who are often overlooked.  I'm excited about the potential that they have to accomplish this!

World Cup fever!

Well, the World Cup has just started, and preparations have been underway in Bangladesh for the last month. Flags are flying on rooftops, from apartment windows, from flagpoles in the middle of villages, and men are sporting jerseys all over the place. The two favourite teams here are Argentina and Brazil, and pretty much every Bangladesh male has chosen one or the other to support. They are not half-hearted in their support…apparently, fights between the two groups of supporters are not uncommon. I was surprised that even when we left Dhaka, the World Cup fever was just as strong…it was great to see even small towns/villages flying the flags of Argentina and Brazil.

I had a pretty funny interaction with one boy as I was walking in the rural areas near the town of Srimongol. Most Bangladeshis know very little English, but most people know “hello, how are you?” and “good afternoon”, and boys and men will often ask us “where you from?” or “what country?” So this kid who was about 13 or 14 walked by Corina and I on this rural road, and he asks, “Where you from?” So we tell him – “Canada” and “the Netherlands”. Then I said to him, “World Cup – Brazil or Argentina?” At that point, his face broke out into a huge smile, and said, “Argentina! Argentina!” with his arms above his head in a cheer for his team. It was pretty cute! World Cup fever surpasses all language barriers, apparently…

Here are some pictures of Argentina supporters in Srimongol town…the flag they were carrying was pretty impressive!!

 The flag was long!!!  And it definitely attracted attention!

They paraded through the down-town area too!  Go Argentina!!

And, just for fun...here's a couple of guys taking cell phone pictures of Corina and I when we are out walking...they asked if they could take our picture, so I agreed with the condition that I could take theirs too!  People take our pictures on their camera phones all the time...and usually they don't ask...it's a little weird, but oh well!  Foreigners are really uncommon here, so we tend to attract a lot of attention.