Everything is different, nothing is moderate

 

 After two months in Dhaka, it's time to sum up some impressions.

Extreme weather.
There is no light rain, no mild sunshine in Dhaka.
When it rains, it pours.
When it's warm, it's burning hot.
When it's humid, you shower in your own sweat.

No traffic flow.
Have you been jammed in a warm day in the Dhaka traffic, hell must feel like an airy freeway.



Upstairs downstairs.
Or rather a rooftop and cellar society.
The few really rich people have endless means and a second address abroad. The really poor people have nothing and no address anywhere.
The middle class is said to be on the rise, social mobility is the nation's hope.



Dirty.
And getting dirtier. The infrastructure is insufficient and halting. There is rubbish all over the place, the sanitation methods are not sanitary.

Power outages.
Daily phenomenon but there seems to be an unwritten law that nobody comments the power outages. Even in sudden pitch darkness people tend to pretend that nothing has happened.



Good morning!
Shame on me - I don't speak Bangla. Fortunately, many locals speak English much better than I do. Still a large number of people have a relatively small vocabulary which consists of two words 'good' and 'morning', useful in any "conversation" at any time of the day.



Smiles
are abundant and nice. Most people are friendly, helpful and extremely curious.



Food
is delicious, spicy, exotic, keeps your stomach in action.

Terror
The last few days have been rather special since on Monday an Italian aid worker was shot dead in the diplomatic area of Dhaka, rather close to our house.
The Islamic State group claimed that is was behind the murder. If true, this would be the first attack of the group in Bangladesh.
According to police there is no evidence of the claim but Bangladesh has been struggling with a rapid rise of hardcore Islamists.
So far, no one is arrested. The international society has introduced a number of tight security measures, closed schools and postponed planned events.
I marked the security threat by taking a several hours walk in Dhakas busy streets far away from the diplomatic quarters.

Eid-ul-Azha, a bloodshed

Warning. Please don’t read further if you are a sensitive person, explicit pictures will follow.

Eid-ul-Azha is an important religious Muslim holiday, celebrated on Friday this year. This is the official definition.

In practice the streets in Dhaka flooded with blood, bowels, carcasses. All in burning sunshine with a consequent smell.

The tradition is based on the story where God commanded Ibrahim to sacrifice his adult son. Ibrahim obeyed and took his son to Mount Moriah. Just as he was to sacrifice his son, an angel stopped him and gave him a ram to sacrifice instead of his son. 

In Bangladesh Muslims commemorate the event very literally: they slaughter sacrificial animals in the middle of residential areas. In most other countries the celebration is more symbolic.

Eid-ul-Azha preparations were visible a couple of days before the celebration. The city was suddenly full of cattle, parked in front of houses, in walkways, in garages. We had at least four bulls in the basement of our apartment house.

The pre-Eid-days were kind of exciting. My husband compared the bulls to christmas trees. And the allegory is not so bad. Like christmas tree vendors, the cattle sellers do everything to make their merchandise look attractive. The bulls are washed, brushed and decorated. I many cases they are also artificially fattened. The richer the buyer, the bigger the bull.

Authorities claim that the animals are from Bangladesh but probably a large number of the bulls are smuggled from India. Kind of ironic that holy Hindu cattle become sacrificial animals in a Muslim country.

 

The animals are transported to the buyer’s house either by truck or by men who walk them.

The repulsive part of the holiday started this morning. (I have chosen the more modest pictures).

 

The air was full of desperate animal cries. The creatures were lined up in the streets, slaughtered one by one while the others were looking and waiting for their turn. 

An imam in white, later blood stained clothes, moved from animal to animal to with a sharp machete in his hand. More than 1,2 million bulls, cows, goats and camels were slaughtered in Dhaka during one day.

After the deadly cut, a crowd of men attacked the animals with their knives and saws, took off the skin, bones, internal organs and meat. Everything was done in the dirty, hot street by men standing in flip-flops or barefeet in the blood. Female househelps washed the bowels while blood thirsty crows and straydogs were circling the scene. 

 

The meat from the animals should be divided into three parts. The buyer keeps one third of the meat, another third is given to relatives, friends and neighbors. The remaining third is given to needy. Thus, people moved from door to door to collect their share of the meat.

 

 My over-social husband had "a long and nice talk" with a neighbor whose bull was slaughtered in our basement. I really, really hope that the encounter will not lead to meat pieces sent to us nor an invitation to a dinner. 

A short affair with Nepal

My very fresh relationship with Dhaka was on a tiny break due to a five days intensive affair with Kathmandu. Once again, I was lucky enough to be able follow my husband to a seminar (don’t worry, I pay my own travel).


Nepal is still recovering from the earthquakes that killed more than 9 000 people earlier this year. Entire villages were flattened but the damages in Kathmandu were less severe.





But in the historic town of Bhaktapur only ten kilometers from Kathmandu the earthquake damaged hundreds of houses and distroyed a vast number of heritages.







The reconstruction seems to proceed very slowly, many people still live in temporary shelters.






Bhaktapur is an area full of temples, narrow streets and historic sites where people also live their everyday life.












Leaving Dhaka meant also a temporary change of religion from islam in Bangladesh to hinduism in Nepal.

Hinduism was very visible in the streets with small temples and cows wandering freely, monkeys hanging around the holy places and dogs everywhere. 

The other holy animals - snakes, tigers and elephants - were present in pictures and sculptures.


One of the strangest experiences was to see open air cremations at the Bagmati river, a Hindu tradition.



Family and relatives of the deceased carried a strecher with the body on it. The body was covered with a cloth. The family members dipped the body three times in the river and then discreetly undressed the body. They threw the clothes in the river where they were soon picked up by young men who sell the pieces.
The body was then taken to the cremation place, a row of funeral pyres by the river.
Our guide told that the chief mourner is the eldest son who also lights the pyre and guards the fire. The body has to burn several hours.



There was one funeral after the other, closely followed by the public on the opposite side of the river. The audience consisted of locals, tourists and monkeys.

Our visit coincided with a historic event: Nepal adopted its first democratic constitution, after more than 65 years fight to create a modern state. There have been many and violent protests against the constitution but on Monday it was time for celebration in Kathmandu. 



I just happened to walk in the middle of the celebrations and enjoyed the show.



The day after there were rumours of unrest and possible shortage of gas. Consequently, there were very long lines of motorbikes and cars to gas stations. Which also might have lead to shortage of gas.

Old Dhaka

Life in Dhaka is very busy. A newcomer becomes tired just by looking at the craziness.
Still, it would be offensive to describe the historic Old Dhaka as "only" busy.
Intense is closer, exhausting is correct.

Last weekend we hired a guide and visited Old Dhaka for the first time.
Our little tour started from Sadarghat River Boat Terminal where hundreds of passenger river boats arrive and depart. The terminal is ranked as one of the largest river ports in the world with about 150 000 daily passengers.
It felt that all the 150 000 were there at the same time with us. Plus all the other hangarounds from salesmen to beggars and watertaxi drivers.


The boats leave in the evening but already early afternoon 3rd class deck passengers had started building their little base camps with food, clothes, bags, babies, grandmothers on their blankets. It looked more like a refugee camp than a boat.
A deck place at an overnight tour along the Buriganga river to the southern parts of Bangladesh costs a couple of euros.

Things calmed down at our next stop, the Pink Palace which was the official seat of the governing elite from the latter part of the 1860´s.
Now the building is a museum, in severe need of a loving curator. Even the cobwebs seemed to be original.


As we walked round the Palace, our group of three grew almost as rapidly as the population in Bangladesh. Our new group members were, however, not interested in Bangla history but in us.
It was not allowed to take pictures in the museum but outside the building everybody wanted to pose with us.

From the palace gardens we continued to Hindu Street, an area of narrow streets settled 300 years ago by Hindu artisans.

A conscientious Western health inspector would probably get a nervous breakdown of food vendors sitting in the middle of mud and rubbish.

But the atmosphere was kind of charming with a plethora of small shops, decaying houses, clothes lines, hindu temples. And the best: no cars