Ten Things I Love About Dhaka

The Fabric
I realised in a few of these blog posts I've focused on some pretty 'heavy' topics, and may be giving the wrong impression of how I experience Bangladesh.  Of course, all the poverty, massive inequality, and entanglements with personal guilt and agency are always present, informing all the threads of life here.  But these are inter-woven with another strand - that of wonderment and life-vitality.  There is just so much vibrancy out on display here; a stranger-flaneur-interloper such as myself has the privilege of seeing and experiencing things that would otherwise be shut up indoors back home.  Of course, the very real factors of poverty, over-crowdedness, and inequality contribute to this situation - however  I do not wish to dwell on this here. Together these two threads weave a heady fabric for the naive visitor.

Unraveling a thread
Not long after I arrived I started collecting small, random experiences and sights that I came across during my walking around Dhaka.  Here are some of them (in no particular order).

- Watching with awe as a predatory kite circled the sky effortlessly over the water, riding the air with the mastery of an animal angel

- Pouring much anticipated cereal into a bowl and adding milk only to find scores of tiny ants float to the surface - but bursting out laughing at the sheer tenacity and veracity of life over here, then feeling Bangladesh sliding ever so slowly under my skin

- A mangy street dog's eyes following me and the moment opening up as he began to wag his tail

- Coming to the rooftop and sharing the expansive twilight sky with a handful of other people lounging around on their rooftops, chatting, laughing, and watching the world go by

- Crossing the busy Kamal Attaturk road in the middle of the upmarket Banani area one morning on the way to work, and finding a group of large, docile cows crazing next to the police checkpoint; an old man caressed the flank on one as he milked he, standing on an ancient wooden stool

- Watching the storm roll through from my bedroom, the cooling air rushing through the stuffy room carrying in the wet scent of the city

- Walking past a women in a bright red-orange sari sitting on the ground slowly sculpting a new rounded cooking stove from rich brown clay

- The warm rains pimpling the dreamy green Banani lake

- Picking up a seemingly dead beetle on my spartan balcony which started to revive and as I tossing it down towards the garden to the south it spread blue-green wings and took off in a determined line through the air

- A small boy leading a blind man with a cane across the road near the lake.  A spirited conversation between the two, the man's smile


I hope that some of the photographs below can give you a sense of this melody of life.

Air Conditioning, Bowls of Water, and a Long Hose

All of the above objects were combined in unexpected ways last night.  I had got back at around 10:30pm from a Bangladeshi play (which told the heroic/tragic story of the murdered Bangladeshi Christian-Indigenous leader Alfred Soren).

My room was predictably sticking hot and I turned on the ancient air con unit, which grumbled to a start.  I had left the room and was just about to pop into the shower when I saw a flash of light and flames erupt from the geriatric unit.  Clad only in a towel, I ran around the house looking for a water receptacle - the best I could find was getting a setup involving plastic tub to transport the water to the room and a small ceramic bowl,  to dowse the fire in discrete upward throwing motions.  The flames were resilient though, and kept growing despite my heroic actions.  In between bailings I called the building manager Kamrul who eventually came with a more advanced piece of fire-fighting equipment - a thin black hose which he proceeded to attach the bathroom faucet.  By this time by some stroke of divine luck my repeated bailings seemed to have extinguished the visible fire, and Kamrul used the hose to soak the whole thing down thoroughly for good measure.  The sweet smell of incinerated plastic and melted electrical components lingered in the air in some kind of fragrant mocking way. 

Together with a supportive housemate Carla (who brought me some iced ribena after the ordeal), I requested over email that other Australian volunteers should be advised of the fire risks and adequate mitigation measures taken etc etc.  This is being currently taken care of, and hopefully the net outcome of the incident may be positive in reducing future fires, and risk to other volunteers.

However standing out on my balcony in the balmy July Dhaka night, I looked down on the shacks clustered around the building site next door.  It's estimated that between 25-30% of the Dhaka population live in slums, which are at continual risk of being set alight by faulty or unattended cooking stoves.  Standing on that balcony, feeling lucky to be unscathed,  I had the backing of the Australian Government to mitigate my risks, as well as my own relative affluence in this country.  But who was looking after the risks of the people who were down below?  It reminded me again how culturally, economically, and geographically relative the perception of 'risk' is.

Kolkata Trip

Myself and two other AYADs (both called Victoria) took the opportunity to sneak away from hot, dusty Dhaka to evener hotter, dustier Kolkata for a brief holiday.  Actually it was a wonderful trip, and break away from both work and social routines.

I had first visited Kolkata in 2004 on the first Friends of Kolkata volunteer trip, and had many challenging, moving and beautiful experiences teaching photography to children and learning about the inspiring work of the Centre for Communication and Development and the Institute of Social Work which I volunteered at.  I returned again in 2007 with a new group of volunteers.  But I had never had much time to just wander around the streets and take in the sights (and smells!).

Most of the trip is conveyed in photos below.  But a few interesting observations can be made about Kolkata compared to Dhaka:
- It was interesting to see many more women on the streets, as shop keepers etc.  Dhaka has few.
- The Western influence is much greater - more trendy street wear, and in particular women wearing jeans which is pretty rare in Dhaka, more western shops and cafes. 
- There seemed to be far more activities around and on the street - more vegetable sellers, more cold drink stalls, more coconut juice-wallas, more risque underwear street stalls, more people lying in the shade, more goats playing acrobats.  Driving back from the airport in Dhaka I was thinking 'where were all the people', something which I never would have thought I would say about Bangladesh.
- It has a beautiful, mesmerising flower market next to the river banks which remind me a little of Varanasi.


I hope you enjoy the photos!

The Dhaka Streets (I)

To indulge in gratuitous stereotypes, anyone who has traveled amongst Asian countries knows the broiling pot pouri streetlife that makes anglo-saxon streetscapes seem like ghost towns.  Dhaka is no exception.