Setting the Scene...
on From Banglatown to Bangladesh (Bangladesh), 19/Oct/2008 12:30, 34 days ago
It is now the end of my first week in Dhaka, and time to attempt a description of the organised chaos surrounding me. Dhaka, my home for the next month or so, is a city of 12 million people, crammed together in a maze of unlabelled streets; rectangular apartment blocks; crowded roads full of traffic (going in all directions when it's moving, or stuck in miles of honking, ringing, beeping traffic jams when not) including cycle rickshaws, CNGs (like autos in India or tuk-tuks in Thailand), cars, falling-apart buses (including double-decker buses so packed they lean sideways), motorcycles and pedestrians; mosques (sending out deafening prayer calls five times a day); markets (selling live chickens, dead fish, weird and wonderful fruits and vegetables, mobile phones, clothes, haphazard stacks of pharmaceuticals, and probably everything else you can think of); and more.And, of course, Dhaka's full of colour: women's flamboyant saris and salwar kameez in luminous shades, often with added rhinestone or sequin glitz; bright flowers and green trees, vines and grass covering empty spaces and climbing over buildings; advertisements painted in Bengali (the symbols of which are still alien to me), or 'Bangla-style English', lining the streets (the best so far include for 'Mysterious Broadband' and courses at the 'London School of Economics').Travelling through Dhaka induces an all-out assault on the senses: the sights I've described above; sounds of horns, bells, calls to prayer, traffic, people selling everything from fruits to Dhaka city maps to fish and chickens; smells of sewage and car fumes, but also flowers, food, spices– and, only occasionally so far – rain; it even feels possible to touch the air around you because it’s so heavy and humid. The tastes of Bangladeshi food warrant a post of their own at a later date, so all I will say for now is that Alta, the VSO cook who does our lunches, is amazing.A description of my time in Dhaka so far would be incomplete without a note on a few of the characters involved. My VSO induction group consists of ten volunteers: there are four of us British Youth for Development volunteers, two Americans, two Filipinos, one Ugandan and one woman from the Netherlands. Together, we are learning about and trying to negotiate Dhaka: the journeys from our houses to the VSO office, to our Bangla language classes, to the markets. And together we are a sight: a group of ten bideshi (foreigners) of different ages, nationalities, appearances and languages, causing - to put it mildly - quite a stir wherever we go. We’ve been stared at, greeted, shouted at, laughed at, smiled at, helped and welcomed. Heads turn as we walk down the road and buying vegetables in the market draws crowds of 20 to 30 people, who stand still, just watching us.Particularly notable was a trip to a mobile phone shop which resulted in a two-hour conversation with two eccentric middle-aged Bangladeshi men which covered topics from Princess Diana (they are a fan) to George Bush (they are not a fan), Bangladeshi love songs to offers of help (including on how to find beer and whisky– Bangladesh is mostly a dry country), and finished with them buying us coffee and samosas and phoning us the next day to invite us for more. It’s a strange privilege being the local entertainment.To end, and to borrow a phrase from a much loved friend, Dhaka is consistently inconsistent, and the only thing that feels constant is the possibility of a new sight, sound, smell, touch, taste or person just around the corner. It’s exciting, energising and at times exhausting and overwhelming, but somewhere that – for now at least – I feel very lucky to find myself in.