Love happens

 

 

 

 

 Life brings many surprises. I have been confronted with a wall of love, generosity and friendship.

This little, overpopulated country has occupied a corner of my heart. Totally unintentionally.

I couldn't ever imagine that leaving Bangladesh would be so difficult.

 

There is a saying that one cries when one comes to Bangladesh and one cries when one leaves Bangladesh. 

There has been a lot of crying also in the meantime. Life has not always been easy for me but  definitely not for most Bangladeshis  with so much poverty, misery, injustice, inequality, sickness and suffering. 

160 million people, 160 million destinies - with the majority living very modestly, a large number in utter poverty. 

 

The hardest - and the best - lesson has been to realize that people can be totally happy with very little. And that they work really hard for a better life, especially for their children. Many have, fortunately, understood that education is the key for better jobs and a little easier life. 

 

 

Our driver K. is a good example of the hard-working Bangladeshis with a will and stamina. K. has no formal education but he knows everything about cars. His uncle taught him to drive, and now K. knows every single street and shortcut in Dhaka. 

His plan is to give his children a good education, the opportunities that he never got. 

Some of the pictures in this posting are from K's village.

 

But let's not get too sensitive, this is hard love. There are many things that I will definitely not miss:

Open sewages - they smell, host mosquitoes and do not exactly beautify the city.

 

 

Urinating men in the streets - too common a sight. It's not the men's fault, Dhaka has no public toilets. Women suffer even more.

Spitting men - sometimes walking the streets was like wading in fat saliva.

 

 

Dhaka airport - a total turndown, ugly, worn, slow, cold in the winter, hot in the summer. Often waiting for luggage takes more time than the actual flight.

 

 

Local dress code - in clear contrast with the climate. The temperature calls for shorts and armless tops, the religion for covering your body from top to toe.

 

 

Mosquitoes - are the most dangerous beasts in Bangladesh.  "Everybody" is nowadays suffering from chikungynua, which causes high fever, joint pain and rash.

Traffic - After Dhaka, any traffic jam is a joke. After Dhaka, any public transport form feels like business class.

There are also many saddening things:

Girls' and women's position - More and more women feel unsafe. More and more women are fully covered. Child marriage is still a huge problem.

 

Growing gap between the really poor and the really rich - The social safety net is non-existing, solidarity is scarce.

Fierce competition for opportunities - leads often to foul play, bribes and violence.  The weakest suffer most.

 

Goodbye Bangladesh! 

Cruelty, beauty, and bat poop - Cambodia edition

  

Cambodia was the destination of our final regional travel while living in Bangladesh. Torture, violence, genocide, Pol Pot and Khmer Rouge are the first things associated with Cambodia. 

Consequently, my expectations were rather low but it was surprising to see that despite the traumatic past, Cambodia is moving forward. 

We spent first four days on the coast, in a beautiful little village called Kep. It was a perfect place to slow down, binge read and do small trips.

The area is known for pepper, so we visited a pepper farm. I had no idea that it takes nine months to grow a pepper, that peppers grow on trees or that white peppers are actually black peppers without a "jacket". 

I was most fascinated by the fertilizer the organic farm used: the pepper trees get their power from bat poop. Large caves in the vicinity have created a flourishing bat excrement business for the locals who collect the valuables.

Kep has a famous beach where locals spend long hours in hammocks, eating and dousing. Unfortunately, it seems to be a tradition to throw rubbish in the streets.

Crabs are the most important source of income for the coastal society. 

The crab market in Kep offered a little insight in the hard work of crab catching, sea food and vegetables. 

Phnom Penh was a mix of tragic history, beautiful parks, temples and modern life. 

Since I love walking, I dragged my poor husband around the city - in scorching heat. 

After about 15 kilometers along the Mekong River, temples, the Royal Palace, small streets and big streets, markets and stores, my husband just wanted to find a chair at the National Museum. 

Phnom Penh is really not a city for walking, even I admit it. 

Subsequently, we found our own tuk-tuk man, a very good driver who knew every single short-cut in the city. We paid him well, and he took good care of us for three days.

The toughest, yet the most memorable place was Cheung Ek, a killing field and mass grave some 10 kilometers from the city center. 

Approximately 17 000 men, women and children were transported to the place, killed brutally and thrown in mass graves. Thousands of skulls are piled at a memorial.

This killing field was just one of many others.

We also visited the Genocide Museum, a former high school, where up to 20 000 people were tortured and finally transported to the Killing Fields.

Sadness and resilience

Exactly a year ago a group of religious extremist gunmen attacked Holey Artisan Bakery in Dhaka. 

Inside the popular cafe, they held clients as hostages, and brutally killed 22 people with guns and machetes. The heinous terror deed was primarily an attack against foreigners and Western values.

Ironically, many of the victims were in Bangladesh in order to help and support the nation. 

Unfortunately, the world has seen many and worse terror attacks since Holey. Therefore, it is more important than ever to fight the bad, cherish the good and live on. 

Today was a day of commemoration in Dhaka. People gathered outside Holey and paid their respect to the victims and their families.

It was sad but also encouraging. Holey has continued its activities, it has shown an unusual resilience. We can buy their bread and cakes in several outlets. We show our support (just have a look at our waistlines) and  hopefully contribute to a more peaceful world.

Last Ramadan in Bangladesh

Half-way Ramadan. First 12+ hours without food and drink in scorching heat, after sunset intensive overeating and extensive shopping. 

Days go past in slow motion, exhaustion and hunger, nights are full of activity. 

Strangely enough, fasting people don't seem to suffer, on the contrary. Everybody tells me that not drinking a drop of water in boiling heat is totally fine.

I have seen Ramadan before and in different countries but still the idea of on-and-off fasting for a whole month is rather incomprehensible.

The staff in our building from security to cleaners and technicians and on-lookers gather to an hour-long praying and loud chanting every night. They kneel on their brand new praying mats, probably sponsored by a well-off, very religious apartment owner.  

You might have heard this: Dhakas traffic is crazy. Ramadan-Dhaka's traffic is insane - in capital letters.

Everybody wants to get home before sunset to enjoy iftar, the meal breaking the fast. The chaos also attracts large crowds of beggars and hawkers. At worst, you can make a kilometer in an hour with beggars hanging (literally) on one side of the car, hawkers on the other.

In a way, this makes sense. Ramadan is the time for generosity and good deeds. In Dhaka's streets the principle becomes a bit overwhelming. 

Ramadan has also become very commercial. Big companies, organizations and government offices invite to lavish iftar parties with no limits of grease and sugar. Most restaurants offer iftar packages containing food for a week but meant for a meal.

It all ends with Eid-ul-Fitr and gifts. Bangladeshi people are generous and this time they really go scary wild - clothes, food, money, jewelry, flowers. More is not enough. Many employees get - hopefully - gifts or an extra month's salary from their employers. 

The pictures here are things that are worth buying in Bangladesh. Many people think that Bangladesh is only cheap t-shirts. Not true.

The tailors here are wonderful, the fabric stores incredible. I have had made several dresses, my husband suits and pants.

The leather industry has a bad reputation - for a reason. But there are also several companies with sustainable production and an acceptable social profile.

Bangladesh is a pearl country which was an unknown fact for me - well, most things were. The pearls are collected from fresh water mussels. The pearls are beautiful in a modest way.

The most controversial things are objects from ship wrecking industry. Yes, the work conditions have been awful but due to international pressure and a certain will inside the industry, it is possible to buy some objects with a goodish conscience.

Ramadan mubarak!

Old Dhaka - a surrealistic melting pot

Old Dhaka is one of the most fascinating, incomprehensible and surreal places I have ever been to.  

Recently, I was fortunate enough to join a guided walk through the narrow alleys with Urban Study Group which is a group of enthusiastic young people with respect for the past and hope for the future. They do a wonderful job and I really pray for that their dreams of restoring the run-down historic buildings could become true one day.

Old Dhaka might have had a glorious past but its present shape is rather shabby. 

We toured the streets and sailed the river early on a Friday morning. It was really "quiet", especially after shab-e-barat, when muslims pray all night. There were a lot of tired and sleeping people in the mosques, streets and shops.

A bright young student became my personal guide. He has lived all his 23 years in old Dhaka and knows every corner of the for me totally illogical and crazy part of Dhaka. Nothing is functional but everything works - either you live in a soap factory or in the ruins of an old mansion. 

If Old Dhaka is the worn out heart of the capital, the river Buriganga represents the extremely dirty veins of the city. Buriganga is a water highway filled with river rickshaws, small boats, big boats, total chaos. 

The traffic rules are the same as in the streets: size matters, no respect. 

The water is extremely polluted but still people do their laundry in the in river, it is their shower.  As a transport way it has a huge economic impact.

Economic success hits very few,  this boy for example  "joins" social media by biting a phone line.