Voyaging in new waters

I have not blogged for a while as I have been going through an unexpected medical issue which I have been dealing with over the last couple of months.  .My family and many of my friends are now aware of the new challenges that I will be facing in continuing to live my life as I want to in countries far from New Zealand, this blog is an update about that.   

After only a few weeks of arriving in Bangladesh with my husband for an adventure in a very different part of the world I discovered that I had a tumour on my brain.    I was very fit and well and the expectation was that it was benign.   I sought treatment in an amazing hospital in Bangkok after having a short holiday on a beautiful island in Thailand.  During the operation the surgeon found that the tumour was malignant melanoma and since then others were discovered elsewhere in my body it was not a good prognosis for me.   This was not the news that my family or friends expected or wanted to get. 

However, my own reaction to the news was not negative, it has not distressed or upset me at all and I have so far avoided any signs of a grief cycle,  I am in a very positive head space and am getting on with doing what I want to do while I still can.  My life is great and I feel fulfilled by the things that I have done in my work and leisure and where my family are at in their lives.  I have been living life to the full and I often feel great joy for how lucky I am to be where I am at the time.   Bangladesh is everything I thought it would be (good and bad) and so much more, .  My husband was loving the work he was doing there and we both were enjoying getting to know some more wonderful friends, how can you not get pleasure out of every day.    

We returned to NZ in the expectation we could easily and quickly enter the public health system to access expert, frank advice about prognosis and options.   My Dr was wonderful and tried to expedite this quickly for me so that I could make some choices about my future. As weeks started to go by waiting we were really disappointed that we heard nothing and were still waiting and reluctantly went private and got immediate appointments with the best oncologists for me here.  I got what I needed to know in two one hour appointments and I have now completed radiation treatment to manage the tumour that remained in my brain.   Other treatment options were not going to enable me to have the quality of life that I want or deliver any results that would be of any significant benefit and so in one weeks time I am excited to be flying out of NZ again to holiday in Italy with my two sons and then we will be returning to Dhaka in February to continue what we started there.  

I can't wait to get back there and to return to some sort of normalcy after the weeks of waiting here to finish treatment. I am not going to talk about illness in my blogs but wanted to let people that I know and love what is happening with me and to thank everyone who has been so incredibly loving, generous and supportive to both me and my husband during this time.  It has been another amazing adventure in learning about how amazing people are and how important authentic conversations are in bringing people closer together.  We have used this time to travel around the north island of NZ again and experience the great beauty of this country.  If anyone wants an amazing weekend with friends in Auckland go to Waiheke Island and rent a house with a view and eat and drink some fabulous food  Visit the volcanic cones in Auckland and eat fish and chips in a cafe by the sea - magic!!! ...

For those that are nervous about what to say to me, you can say whatever you need or want to say, but you don't have to say a thing as I am in a very good space and I am intending to do what one of my Doctors called 'courageously ignoring...'   I am not focussing on illness I am focusing on living life to the full as usual, but I am happy to talk about anything with you if you want to.

Merry Christmas to whoever reads this, we will be enjoying an Italian Christmas in Positano. 

From now on I will continue with my travel blogs.

Found my volunteer role in Bangladesh

I have had a couple of months in Dhaka to find my feet, relax and to have a good look around.  I am starting to get bored...  although a side trip to Shanghai was interesting I am now ready to do more than that.

Well luck is on my side, when we got back from Shanghai I was invited to join some of the teachers at Brian's school to visit a local school called Solmaid that the CEO and a few others from the school have supported to get up and running.  It is a short walk from their school over small, muddy lanes full of very local shops.  I doubt many foreigners would ever venture there except to visit the little school hidden away in these lanes.  Will try to post some photos another time as I didn't think to take any on this walk.

We got to a walled courtyard and entered the school grounds, actually this is a converted house that they rent, using three rooms as school rooms.  The courtyard has a beautiful and colourful mural decorating it that was done by the kids with the help of a rickshaw painter/artist.  Inside the school there were about 30 students at 4.30 pm (one class was absent at the time).  The school has three shifts of children each day so that they can educate about 150.  These children are what some call ''street kids''.  They come from very poor parents who earn less than 6000 taka per month, or about $88 Australian.  They would normally never have the opportunity to go to school.  These kids are beautiful, lively and so polite...

The principal and local teachers were teaching in a local christian school but as Muslims they were unhappy about the bible being the focal point of children's learning and wanted to set up a community school of their own with a local curriculum.   The CEO of Brian's school and a few other teachers helped them to do this.  The school has now been running for two years and provides uniforms, food (via money donated by an Australian Rotary club) and of course good education.   This costs approximately $300 US per child per year which they raise from donations.

I loved this school and its philosophy and so when the CEO said that he needed some help to take over the administration role that he had be providing I put up my hand.  I am off to Bangkok tomorrow, but when I return I will see what that involves and this will be my volunteer work in Dhaka.  I am very excited as this is such an amazing venture providing the poorest of the poor with educational opportunity who would never get it otherwise.

You can check out the rather basic webpage if you want to know more about this school.   https://www.scsdhaka.com

It has been raining a lot here so my walking around has been a little limited of late but am still getting out and about and am just about to head off to the local coffee shop for my occasional coffee fix.

Brian flies out today to take a group of school children to a lovely island - Tioman - in Malaysia, clearly these are not the kids of the poorest of the poor, but the richest of the rich (very rich).  I met some of them yesterday when I visited Brian's classroom when I went to a meeting about Solmaid school and actually they are lovely, confident, smart kids, so hopefully the school is able to instill some strong positive values in these kids as they will be Bangladeshi leaders in the future.   When Brian suggested to one of them that he could be Prime Minister, he said no he couldn't as he wasn't corrupt enough!

Off to Bangkok tomorrow myself and will be going by overnight sleeper/bus then boat to an island called Koh Tau for three nights of lazing around, snorkelling and exploring before going back to Bangkok to join Brian on his way back from Tioman Island.   What a life we are leading!!!

The blog is a bit light on photos this week, so here is one from my wanderings. Health and Safety regulations don't apply here, check out the guy riding on the top of the truck, they weld in sunglasses and jandals (thongs for my Aussie friends), window washers hang from tall buildings sitting on bamboo rods held together by ropes like a makeshift ladder, buses do not stop, if you want to get on the bus slows down a little for you and you run and jump and generally hang half in and half out as the bus is packed:

I hope to be able to blog from Thailand but if not will be back in a few weeks...

Visiting Shanghai

Have just returned from five days in Shanghai.  Brian had a professional development course there and I tagged along as I have never been to China before.   Not what I expected at all, was looking for the ''old China" but it was really hard to find in Shanghai, a lot of the city has been modernised, with the old buildings demolished, although sometimes replaced with replicas.   Once we got over our expectations though we had a good time.

One of the more unexpected elements was how amazing some people were in helping us and making us welcome!   On the plane over I ended up talking to my neighbour who was a business man from Shanghai with very good English, when he learned that this was our first trip to Shanghai he insisted on waiting for us to get our bags, wrote down our hotel address in Mandarin (unfortunately the hotel was located miles away from the heart of the city in the very back blocks of Shanghai near to where Brian's course was) and he escorted us to where the local taxis were and ensured the driver knew where to take us before he said goodbye.  He was the first of several incredible people we met...

We needed help to get taxi drivers to understand where we wanted to go as they didn't speak or read English.   We got our destination written down for us in Mandarin by the hotel staff and even then it was sometimes a challenge.

On our first full day there we tried unsuccessfully to find the old shanghai.  We ended up doing the hop on hop off bus as we didn't have much time (this was Brian's only free day).  The part they call Old Shanghai, has actually been rebuilt in the old style about 20 years ago and is very touristy...   We were directed by

Dumpling Heaven in Old Shanghai

 a local shop owner (selling pearls - we refrained from visiting his shop) to the famous dumpling restaurant in the area, you know which one because of the huge queues to get takeaway dumplings.   We did the easier option and went upstairs into their restaurant.  Amazing choices of a range of unusual dumplings.  We ended up with fairly safe shrimp and pork and some unusual savoury / sweet ones - very good!  

The photo on the right shows the one remaining original old building in that area.  It is very beautiful and so were the replica's but somehow it wasn't the same once we realised that they were not the original buildings....  and the shops were full of tourist junk.  However, I later found some of the more original parts of Shanghai.

But if you love to shop (Steve Adams) this is the city for you, it is full of amazing malls and high end shops.

One night we met up with one of Brian's former colleagues and her partner - living and teaching in a city an hour away from Shanghai by train.  We challenged them to find us a good cocktail bar as we were missing these in Muslim Dhaka.  We ended up on the roof bar of the House of Roosevelt, a beautiful 1920/30's building on the Bund. which is a river front street full of fabulous l buildings of different architectural styles.  Across the river is the newest part of Shanghai full of stunning high rises which are lit up at night and with the colourful cruise boats on the river create a magical view.  The photo below was taken from the bar, looking across the river.   Our friends also met the challenge for great food at the Lost Heaven Restaurant - loved the name and loved the restaurant.

The next day I took the underground to the other side of the city (about 1.5 hours to visit a special garden and an old street famous for its dumplings.  The garden was lovely, although I got a bit lost trying to find it as most streets didn't have english names!   Got there eventually and it was worth it don't you think?

Unfortunately I don't think I had enough water to drink in the heat of that day and had overdone my first go at swimming that morning in the hotel pool - on level 23, cantilevered out over the city with some glass areas in the bottom of the pool so you could look down to the street!   As I went to find the old street famous for it's dumplings I was overcome with something like bad indigestion causing pain and pins and needles down one side and I had to sit down outside a local dumpling shop as I was in too much discomfort to walk.   I thought I was having a heart attack, but don't panic it wasn't and I am fine.   Even though I was in stress I couldn't help laughing at this sight next to where I was sitting...

Cat on a leash!!!

I wasn't getting any better so I asked a shop keeper to get me a Dr as I couldn't stand up.   Our phones were not working in Shanghai and I couldn't contact Brian who was going to meet me at 5.40 pm the cocktail bar from the night before...  Along comes my number two amazing person..  Andy from Singapore who has been living and working in Shanghai for a year.  Spoke English and Mandarin and asked me if he could help.  He got me a bottle of water, that didn't help so in the end he called an ambulance, off I went to hospital!  However, he came with me and stayed with me there, helping to interpret as no one spoke English.  In the end after tests and a drip they couldn't find anything wrong and so after about an hour and a half I could walk again and I told them I would go.   Andy wouldn't leave me on my own and so came with me in a taxi to meet Brian who ended up being late, so this amazing man stayed with me until about 6.30 when Brian eventually found us.  He told me this was his first day off in ten days of working 14 hour days and still he helped me out for several hours and all he got for his troubles was a beer - Stunning.

I was fine the next day and that night we met our third incredible person - Brian and I found this funky Art mall with interesting restaurants so went to dinner at a Japanese restaurant there.  Next to us was a local man eating alone as his wife was getting a hair cut, so he wanted to talk, he said we should try the prawns, next thing we know he has ordered the prawns and a steak dish for us!   He toasted our first trip to Shanghai and then left to meet his wife.  When we went to pay the bill he had paid for everything!!!  Unbelievable as we had barely talked to him except to discuss the food and to say where we were from and that this was our first time in Shanghai.

I found some beautiful old streets on my journey to visit the very interesting Shanghai Propaganda poster museum (hidden away in the basement of an apartment building so very hard to find).  Check out this link, the posters are amazing and tell the story of the cultural revolution through the posters that were created as propaganda at the time.  http://www.shanghaipropagandaart.com/for_3.asp?class=Copy_Posters#

After this I had my first bowl of street food, beef noodles on my way back to the underground through some lovely old streets (in the picture below).  By now I had really warmed to Shanghai.

My last crazy meeting with a man in Shanghai was a young korean man who met me on the way to the subway.   He said I looked just like his ChaCha teacher Annie, an Australian and he walked with me to the train, but kept shaking my hand and kissing my face.  Talk about in my personal space!   He was 19 and had been in Shanghai a week learning to dance.  Luckily he eventually said goodbye to me when we got to his stop as I was well and truly over the hand shaking and kissing from a stranger.

Well we are now back in Dhaka, it was funny to say we were coming ''home'', but it does start to feel like that now.  Loved the soft bed in our Shanghai hotel and enjoyed the easy night life, but found Shanghai too modern for my liking and like being back here in the craziness.  Couldn't get over those amazing men we met.   Next overseas adventure is Bangkok next month - tough life.

This one is for my former Council colleagues

Sorry to friends and family who have no interest whatsoever in Council services, this one is for my old colleagues at Marrickville Council...

I have been quite astounded to see that Dhaka (or at least around where I live) has a visible focus on waste recycling and health promotion, food and other safety, however, this of course is done in a very unique fashion.

My home is supplied with green, red, yellow and blue bins for different types of rubbish.  The sign on the left is prominent in various places around the area.  However, when I take my bins down stairs to empty into the bigger colored bins, no one seems to have taken note of these instructions and all the rubbish is lumped together.

OOps, I guess this wasn't NOW or YOU.

What really happens with the rubbish is that a rickshaw driver with a small bin on the back of his rickshaw rocks up to our apartment building every few days and collects it all.  It then is taken to a larger bin (left) or main road (below) where a number of unfortunate people sort it all out by hand (ugh) but it actually does get recycled to a fairly high extent.  Jeff tell your staff how lucky they are!  Workplace health and safety doesn't appear to be a common concern here and the workers are in the rubbish with bare feet and hands.

When we were out on our river boat trip we stopped at a village and had to walk through a whole lot of brown sheets lying on the ground, we found out that these are sheets of cardboard made from recycled paper that had just been made and were drying.  They will get used to make shoe boxes etc (below right).  We were also told that any paper you throw out might get made into shopping bags so be careful about any confidential material as patient hospital records etc turn up on these...

Dhaka actually has quite a bit of greenery and many of the streets are lined with trees and / or have trees in the centre strip.  Many of these seem to be funded by the banks as a ''goodwill'' gesture.  There are a number of local parks, which in our area are funded by the Baridhara Society and are only open for a few hours each day.  They are manned by a guard but I am not sure whether they keep anyone out or just maintain safety (and give someone a job).  They have signs in them encouraging people (especially women) to walk and to stay healthy.   I walk everywhere and the locals find that a bit unusual as anyone with money gets driven by a driver or a rickshaw and so they don't understand why a white woman would walk.

 Stormwater drainage is a major issue because the whole of Bangladesh is very flat and at sea level.  At the moment a lot of the outlying areas around Dhaka are flooded and many people have lost their businesses and are surviving each day ankle deep in water.   In the city the drains are always blocked because of the rubbish (below).  In our area they get cleaned out regularly but littering is rife as there are no or few bins for people to use.

 And food safety....   Chicken for dinner anyone (Simon would have his work cut out in Dhaka).  Although I believe these chickens would have been free range.  Formalin in food is a major risk and I have been warned to only buy fruit and vegetables from certain shops because most are treated with this chemical to help keep food ''fresh'' longer because of the lack of refrigerated transport and how long it takes to get food to the shop.  Stomach cancer is a real problem here and it is suggested is linked to the use of formalin.   The government is trying to crack down on this but until the infrastructure is improved I am not sure whether that will work.
 

Roading and traffic? - well that is another major challenge due to the monsoons and flooding destroying roads.  There are traffic lights but except for one intersection near us it appears that these are pretty much ignored.   Crossing the road is a whole new adventure where you take your life into your own hands every day.  There are the occasional overbridge like in this photo but most people don't use them.  I went to dinner at a NZ teachers apartment on the weekend.  He has bought a rickshaw for about $200 and he has given it to a driver who battles with the thousands of cycle rickshaws for customers every day.   At the dinner a Bangladesh man who has been to Australia said he much preferred to drive here as the only real rule was to try to keep safe, he found all the road rules in NZ and Australia to be very confusing.  Apparently there are road rules but no one abides by them, certainly not the motorcyclists that ride down the footpath when it is raining or the rickshaws that go the wrong way down roads!

 Disability access? - SIGH sorry Glenn, but not on the agenda yet.

Community development though is a major business here with over 1000 NGO's and others doing work in Dhaka and around.  Many of the countries with embassies here are involved in aide work and that is evident by the number of apartments around our area (the Embassy area) for foreign workers, the majority are involved in embassy, aide work or teaching.  

So count your blessings ...   Keep up the fantastic work you are doing at Marrickville Council, all the best from Bangladesh.

Ins and outs of Dhaka

Here I am four weeks on and still very happy with making the move here.  I have been very lucky in that I am not having to work and have the luxury of time to explore and find my feet, unlike Brian who had to leap straight into work (however, he is loving that too).

Our furniture arrived about a week ago and so the apartment is now looking more like home with our paintings on the walls and a few familiar things around the place.  I can now have a bit of fun sourcing local bits and pieces to brighten it up.There are some fantastic shops that sell fair trade goods like lamps, tablecloths, mats etc.

Our apartment in Baridhara

I have been doing all the cleaning in our apartment so far, I end up drenched in perspiration after cleaning the floors as it is so humid here (need to drink lots of water - bottled).   They need washing every second day due to the dust that somehow gets in.  However after tomorrow a lovely young woman named Sati is going to work for us three days a week cleaning, ironing and cooking a local meal once a week.  I am not sure how I will cope with this as I feel very uncomfortable about employing someone on such low wages, but I am told that the wages we pay are extremely good and so are the conditions and it will feed an extended family and so we are providing much needed income.   I hope I don't get too used to this...

Additionally, to further compound the capitalist guilt, we are now sharing a driver with one of Brian's colleagues.  Brian gets a ride to school and back each day except his day off, we can go out at night and venture further afield in the weekend and I can use the driver if I need to - but I generally prefer to walk unless I need to carry things home.  More importantly we can now get to the medicine shop to pick up necessary supplies (ie. beer and wine which is $20 - 30 a bottle so not drinking much!).

Yesterday I went for my usual walk and was really aware of the inside / outside thing about where we live and about Dhaka in general - the expats who have been here for a while call it the 'bubble' we can live in if we choose.  I prefer to get out of the bubble as much as possible.  As I have previously said, the area we live is fairly quiet, green and protected.  It contains a lovely park (see picture below and another picture of one of the 'helpful' signs in the park  just below that), the lake I posted pictures of in my previous blog, and lots of fairly upmarket apartments.   But then you go ''outside'' and you may end up in Rickshaw Alley just behind the back wall of the suburb.  Rickshaw Alley is definitely outside - total chaos - dirt road with holes and mud, rickshaws and cars vying for the limited space and people everywhere, but how fascinating...

Inside - Baridhara Society Park

Outside - Rickshaw Alley

Sign in the park, lovely the helpful hints and the language 

The photo on the left shows the local butcher in Rickshaw Alley, however needless to say I don't get my meat there, but at the local supermarket where the meat, fruit and veges are safer. There is a real problem here with fruit and veges being sprayed with formalin to keep them fresh as getting to market is a long trip and the heat and humidity don't help with keeping things fresh. Cool stores and refrigerated trucks are not part of the landscape here.  Stomach cancer is widespread here and is possibly linked to the use of formalin.

Our fabulous coffee shop is on one of the main roads, if you didn't know it was there among the Tyre and bathroom shops you would miss it, the outside of it is shown in the picture to the right, you can see the sign hanging above the street - North End coffee.  Inside it is an air conditioned haven.

Fabric store in Pink City

This morning I went for a walk around the lake and then headed for coffee.   Then walked across the lake via a very local road.  I went into a shopping mall called Pink City, four floors of fabric shops and jewellers (very opulent with about six staff sitting around waiting for wealthy customers to venture in).  The fabric is so beautiful and the clothing incredibly colourful.  I have bought some fabric to
be made into a dress, top and trousers, hopefully they will work out.  I think the tailors struggle with western sizes and styling.  They are used to making local clothes.   I might give that a go later on.

  

On the weekend we really got ''outside'' by joining a group of teachers from Brian's school on a boat trip down one of the rivers, stopping at a weaving village (such beautiful, intricate fabrics handwoven on looms in tin huts) and a Hindu local Kings palace built in the 1880's but now a university.  The boat was so funky, it was wooden and built to look like a bird, you can see the front of it in this photo.  It was amazing to get out into the country, but took two hours driving to get there because of the poor state of the roads and the traffic and another three hours to get back home.  Couldn't believe seeing from our bus a painting of the Sydney Harbour bridge and opera house on the back of a truck, they are all fabulously painted and are artworks in their own right.   There is also a rickshaw here with the words New Zealand painted on it and a picture of the NZ flag - bought by a NZ teacher and given to the Rickshaw driver in return for free rides.  These are also all very colourfully decorated.

Sydney on the back of a truck

We were the main attraction for the locals that weekend and they gathered in crowds to watch us.  A win - win as we all enjoyed the experience.   In particular, the kids are delightful and they really light up when they see us, they were beside themselves when we took their photos and showed them to them.  

Check out my Facebook page for Brian's photos of this trip.

So much I could talk about but I will leave it until the next blog.   My Marrickville Council colleagues would be shocked by the rubbish, the stormwater........   Garbage collection and disposal are a whole new challenge here.  Maybe more later.   

14 days in Dhaka

We have now been in Dhaka for fourteen days, it has gone by so fast, but has been an amazing few days of new sights, experiences and friendship.   We arrived here on a Sunday (which is the first day of the week normally), which was a holiday as it was Eid - the end of a month of fasting for Ramadan.   We spent four days in Kuala Lumpur on the way here, which was a good break to manage the jet lag.  A really interesting city, a little like Dhaka in that it has the extremes of wealth and poverty, but overall more wealth and Dhaka is much bigger!  One of the amazing sights was the Batu caves, just on the edge of Kuala Lumpur, housing a number of Hindu shrines. 272 steps to climb up though, but plenty of monkeys to entertain us along the way.

Arriving at Dhaka we had no problems getting through customs and we were met by the fabulous Sandra, DP of the Junior school Brian is teaching at.  Another couple from Canberra who we have now befriended also arrived on our plane and we were taken to our apartment in Baridhara, which is in the embassy enclave.   Our new home is a three bedroom apartment in a five storey apartment with three apartments on each floor, all tenanted by staff from International School Dhaka where Brian is teaching.   There is a guard at the door to let you in but it is very relaxed and he is often asleep so we sneak out so as not to wake him.   The whole area is quite secluded and contains a number of embassies and their staff, it is not gated, but there are guards at the roads going in and the rest of the area is surrounded by walls or the lake in the picture below, very pretty but I think I might be able to walk on water, it is so polluted.  Not sure who the guards stop as the rickshaws are freely available in here.

The streets are not paved, but they are kept clean and they are very leafy.  A rickshaw driver will take you into Gulshan 2 (the local shopping centre) for about $1. It is about a 20 minute walk. The picture on the right is taken by me on the back of a rickshaw going home.  This same street two days later was a foot deep in water after one of the monsoon rains, but it quickly cleared.

The school provided an amazing induction, including a cultural show (see the dancer on the right) with every night for a week out at a different place for dinner and two days for me with the teachers finding out how things work, or don't work...   We have already made friends, everyone is so friendly. The good restaurants are really good, Indian, Thai, Bangladeshi, pizza, you name it,  and a main costs around 400 taka or about $5.   Unfortunately no wine!!!   However the embassy clubs are extremely civilised (the British Club is below) and you can swim, play tennis and drink if you are a member or can get signed in.  We don't have a club to join as NZers but may be able to get into one of the clubs eventually.  We have been signed into clubs though already about four times. 


What have we learnt?  So many things!  You should get a maid and a driver to give people work, we thought we wouldn't have a driver but as our apartment is a bit secluded from the action we have now gone into a partnership with another couple to share a driver, it costs about $100 per month.  One good thing about a driver is they will take you to the 'medicine' shop where you can get a limited range of alcohol, but you feel like it is very illicit, hidden away behind locked metal gates with guards.

We have yet to get a maid as I am home, but the floors need sweeping and washing every couple of days (tiles) as they get really gritty so will move on that one soon. The apartment is quite nice, but very dark and we had lots of trouble initially with mosquitoes which is a real problem as dengue fever is really common here, so an important lesson was to use the local cream 'perfume' Odomos all the time to keep mosquitoes at bay, spray, use coils and my new favorite toy - the mossie zapper, an electric zapper that I now wave around the house regularly instead of playing tennis and we have got on top of the mossie issue I think now.

Brian has done one week teaching and is loving it.  He leaves for work about 6.45 and gets home around 4 pm.  Kids are very polite and work quite hard.  They come from wealthy Bangladeshi families in the main. There are mega wealthy here with ayahs, maids and drivers and all the usual mod cons you see in the west.   

My day starts with a wake up call from the local mosque at 4.45 am, but I go back to sleep until about 7.15, Brian is gone by then but leaves me a cup of tea (cold but I heat it up in the microwave).   I usually get up and clean the floors etc and then go for a long walk.  Of course we have quickly found the best coffee shop in Dhaka which is about a 30 minute walk from home.  One of the issues with coffee is that almost all milk is UHT and so tastes a bit odd to us, but this shop imports 'real' milk.

 After my coffee, which is in  very civilised air conditioned room, I then go walking for several kilometres to explore the sights and get some exercise.   The people stare at me because I am unusual to them, but they are so friendly and polite and so I don't mind.  Even the beggars don't really give you a hard time, they are hard to ignore, especially the women with babies, but we have been warned that to give them money you then get inundated.  Apparently most are part of a professional begging group and so they don't even get much of the money they do get.  Better to donate in different ways.  For instance many of the teachers have helped our driver out as his wife has stomach cancer (perhaps from the formalin they put on the plants) and he couldn't afford the treatment so they raised money for that for him and they have a social program at the school to support other local schools develop.  


Once you leave Baridhara you are really in Dhaka and it is incredibly interesting with such a mix of people, buildings, vehicles of all sorts, animals......  Poverty, rubbish and humidity are the downside, but the upside is great vibrancy, excitement, noise, colour, so many things to see...


 







The women wear the most beautiful, colorful outfits and even the really poor are generally spotlessly clean.  The men wear super white clothes to the Mosques on Fridays, it is hard to imagine how they manage to do this in the dust and mud that is everywhere, but they do.Have cooked a few meals but you have to be careful where you buy your veges as there has been a problem with spraying with formalin to keep them fresh while they get to the markets in the heat and humidity. 

A couple of days ago we met a Bangladeshi man who was from Sylhet area, here to sit his IELTs exam to hopefully go to Australia with his family.  We showed him how to get to the local centre and he talked to us on the way for about 10 minutes.  He then gave us his card and invited us to his home to stay for a couple of days, so friendly and genuine.  I hope he passed his exams and does get to Australia!

Well a real adventure so far and lots to learn.  Have given myself time to settle in before I start to look for volunteer work, am keeping busy and am happy to be here, I feel very privileged and I am.
Enough from me for today.  All the best from Dhaka

New voyage ahead

 

Two weeks to go before we head towards Dhaka.  My final day at work was on Friday the 11th.  Leaving work was hard as I have loved working at Marrickville Council, but I held it together and I had a lovely farewell.  I have made so many friends here, it seems so much easier than in NZ.  On Saturday I had to fill in a form at the Osteo (headaches from the stress as it was quite a stressful couple of weeks leading up to leaving work and getting ready to go) and it was really odd because I didn't have a phone number anymore and I had to write ''unemployed' in the occupation bit - will need to find some other smart response to that one!

We are going to take ten days rest in Malaysia on our way to Dhaka.  When we get to Bangladesh we will be picked up at the airport and taken to our two bedroom furnished flat, somewhere in Gulshan in Dhaka.  We have the next day off and the following day Brian goes to school and I go with him for an induction day.  There is a very comprehensive induction planned for him and I am included in quite a bit of it.  Will keep you posted on that.

I have been both excited and nervous about going to Bangladesh and have made a big personal decision to get my first real tattoo yesterday at the ripe old age of 55!   Gave it a lot of thought and found a Maori tattooist in Bondi Beach.   Whenever I needed extra strength at work for something big like doing a presentation in front of a lot of dignitaries, I would envisage a cloak floating down and draping over my shoulders as a protective mantel (one of my artist father's legacies - John Bevan Ford).  So I gave the artist three of dad's cloak drawings to work from and he designed a tattoo to pick up some of the elements in the drawings.  He loved doing this work for me as it gave him the rare chance to be creative and to use his Maori art skills - I now have a beautiful, colourful cloak on my left shoulder.  Rather painful two hours, but when you have birthed two children.......  It is nothing.   May post a photo once it is healed.

 

Well, I am feeling excited and also have some trepidation about what our lives will be like.  At least we have the internet now to gain some superficial understanding about what this adventure might be like, unlike my ancestors who ventured across the world into the absolute unknown.