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