First Weeks in Dhaka

A cinnamon roll from a social business

We've come across quite a few social enterprises while we've been here. It's been really inspiring. Last weekend we hunted out a new coffee business here in Dhaka. It's called North End Roasters http://www.northendcoffee.com/ The aim of the business is to supply good quality coffee within Bangladesh, which is in short supply. This guy Rick is the only coffee roaster in the country. His aim is to train Bangladeshis to open their own businesses and to be able to serve really good quality coffee. There is also an area of the country called Chittagong where Rick is hoping to get some of his coffee from, which would be a great source of income for the people in that area. So basically he's investing in this country and stimulating creative business activity. It feels like this type of thing could be the answer to some of this Country's problems, building up the economy and providing meaningful, fair jobs for people.  So obviously Chris was very excited to visit this place and we had a tour of the premises which was really interesting. The highlight though was a freshly baked cinnamon roll. And i have just seen that they do baking lessons so i might sign up as my pastry skills could do with some work.

North End Coffee Shop

 I'm also working for a social business www.oasisbamboocoffins.com and i am loving being in the environment of a young business where ideas are everything, it's getting me thinking about what i could start up next!

Chloe

The monsoon is coming...

Thought i'd post some thoughts as it's been a while since the last post. We are both finding life out here pretty exhausting, sometimes just the journey to work feels like it takes all of your energy for the day, let alone having to then do some work! It's probably the heat too and all of the new things to look at and understand that drain energy too. Chris is at home a bit poorly today. I think it was only a matter of time before one or both of us got sick. He's on the mend though. Weather is still really hot but not unbearable yet. We are mainly in the air conditioned office at work so are sheltered from it a bit. We keep hearing about how the wet season isn't very nice here so not really looking forward to that. Some of you may know i have a bit of a thing about severe weather (i don't like it) so it's good and character building for me to be out here and experience some extremes!!! There are a few places that we would have liked to have visited like the Sundarbans area but the rainy season we think will put a stop to that.

It's very different being female in Dhaka to being female at home. Generally life is hard for women here I think. There are lots of stories in the national papers about violence towards women, often related to non payment of dowries. And just in the day to day things, i hate wearing an 'ulna' (the scarf you are supposed to wear that covers up the chest area) it's really awkward and restricting and the last thing you want on your body is another layer of material, but as a women they are what you have to wear here. I get the impression women are seen as second class citizens here a bit. This is how i feel here anyway, that i shouldn't really go out on my own and that Chris should do most of the interacting with people in public. It's very different to how i feel as a female at home, which in comparison feels very powerful and independent. It's one of the things i have realised i take for granted. My freedom as a woman and that for many women around the world they don't have any power and they are restricted as to what they can do, seen as second class or a burden to their family. Hmm. Lots of thoughts.
Anyway, back to work!
Chloe

Some more photos

A few photos of the last few days...

On the roof garden

Chris hard at work in the Oasis office

Revising and having lunch before our language lesson

Girls at a school run by Oasis

The girls get taught about the dangers of traffiking

More girls (and  a boy?! ) at the school for girls

Bangla Bags

Our indian take away bag

To counter all of this cricket talk I'm going to tell you about a little joy I have discovered while being here. The authorities have somehow managed to ban plastic bags and so whenever you buy something you get given a paper or cloth bag. This excites me. They are really lovely things, even for our Indian take away we got a beautiful red patterned paper bag. I'm starting to collect them as i can't bear (is that the right spelling?!) to throw them away. We could learn a thing or two from our Bangla friends i reckon on this one. The little treasure of a bag pictured contained my vegetable shingera snack things that i had for lunch from this cool restaurant near our guesthouse called Adda, which is part of Prabartana an interesting business that we had the day before both bought a little something from (me a scarf chris a shirt) see the link if you like.http://www.prabartana.com/

Chloe

Special Treatment

Bangladesh have a couple of world-class cricketers, and these along with the rest of the Bangladesh national team are presently hosting Australia for a 3 match ODI series. All 3 matches are being staged in Dhaka, the first of which took place this Saturday just gone. Naturally keen to get tickets for one of the games (and with only one game being played on a weekend it really needed to be that one) I started making enquires almost as soon as we landed. Despite several promising leads, including our chaperone working for the Australian embassy (!) with only 2 days left until the game we were still ticketless. You would think acquiring tickets should be fairly straightforward but the online/telephone booking systems that we are so used to in the UK do not appear to be the done thing over here. Perhaps because masses of the population don't have bank accounts or any kind of plastic payment options?? Regardless, acquiring tickets here seems to be an altogether more manual process.

Our continued hope for tickets was fanned by a tip off we received that 'One Bank' were selling tickets. Heading down into unchartered city territory Chloe and I went in search of One Bank and the coveted tickets on behalf of ourselves plus 6 other ex-pats. It turned out that One Bank were not selling tickets. "Do you know where they are selling tickets?" I had to ask; the customer service assistant not forthcoming with any additional information voluntarily. The gentleman did not know, but said that the bank manager might be able to help us. We were swiftly ushered across the floor and gestured to sit in front of the manager's desk while we waited for him to finish a phone call. This was my first ever meeting with a bank manager and for what? To ask where we could get cricket tickets from! After putting our seemingly strange yet honest request to the bank manager, he asked one of his colleague's to make a call on our behalf and before long we were told that tickets were being sold at the Grameenphone (national team sponsor) centre across the road. Looking out through the window we could see the Grameenphone centre heaving with Bangladeshi's; I assume also in search of tickets. We had an appointment 45 minutes from then, in a different part of town, so decided to come back later.

Upon returning from our fascinating meeting with an English guy working here with an NGO called Food for the Hungry, we entered the Grameenphone centre with optimism as well as a little trepidation. The 'queues' were not overflowing down the street by now but inside appeared something like organised chaos. Guessing that the official stood at the centre of a hopeful looking mass of locals might know something about the tickets, I politely made my way through to him and expressed that we were looking for tickets. "10 minutes" he said. Hoping I had been understood we waited. About 2 minutes later another official arrived, who gently took hold of me and moved me to a position by a desk. Assembling a rope-type cordon he then began to organise all the Bangladeshi's into a queue behind me! I had been warned by a couple of ex-pats that my white skin might bring me special treatment in certain situations, but that didn't stop it feeling particularly uncomfortable when it actually did. I had done nothing to deserve a place at the front of the queue; most of the Bangladeshi's were there before me; what were they thinking of me? Were the others in the queue feeling resentful? Nevertheless, given the nature of my quest I did not complain!

Shortly after, a man came out with a book of tickets and I asked how many I could have; "One" he said. One?! I was on the look out for 8, and while I wasn't certain he would give me that many I thought I'd be able to get more than one. I eventually explained that my wife was with me and so he agreed to two (for less than £1 each!) but that was my lot. We were soon told by a nice young man in the queue behind us that the tickets they had sold us as well as to him (the only tickets they were offering) were for a stand without much cover from the sun. He also explained that there was another possible way of acquiring tickets through a mobile SMS system, but all of the instructions were in Bangla.

We queued at another desk to ask if they had instructions in English and after a little while a lady working there came and asked what we wanted. I explained the situation and she said she would see what she could do. 5 minutes later I had 8 tickets! Not 8 together but the additional 6 were pretty much together in a covered stand so I wasn't going to be picky. I think she was slightly bending the rules by getting them them for us it has to be said, but smiles all round. The shadier seats were almost £3 - pricey.

One interesting observation was how quickly and shamefully my behaviour changed following the white skin queueing incident. Only moments later and upon deciding to seek English SMS instructions I found myself walking straight up to the desk, past the orderly queue, feeling like I had some kind of special status. In a way I did have in their eyes, but it was worrying how quickly I was prepared to capitalise on this for my own ends. When I realised what I was doing I retreated to the back of the queue. I was approached shortly after by the lady member of staff, but I at least felt a bit better about the special treatment being initiated by them, rather than assuming it on myself.

Chris

Michael Clarke celebrating his century brought up with a 6 in his first game as Australia captain 

Brett Lee to Tamim Iqbal - Not bad for under £3

A cosy CNG ride home

Cricket

They are mad for their cricket over here! Kids and adults are playing it in parks and streets all over the place. I'm loving walking round corners to find impromptu games going on where you'd least expect them. I haven't had the time to join in with any of them yet but I'm sure I will before long! I did have a session of roof cricket on top of our 4 story guesthouse with a 7-year old fellow resident from New Zealand who now lives in Bangladesh with his family. 'Out if you hit it over the fence' seemed a very understandable rule. Having ground down the young bowler with some textbook defensive resolve I began to take full advantage of William's tiring loose deliveries. Keeping the ball down was forefront in my mind and despite making the relevant adjustments to my shot selection I was disturbed when one fine 'all along the ground' drive bounced up off a plant pot, over the fence and plummeted the 4 stories down to the dusty Dhaka street. "Out" came the 'Umpire's' call. My dejection was quickly turned to happiness however with William's immediate race down the stairwell to fetch the ball and bring closer his next innings.

I've been trying to find out about organised cricket in Bangladesh to see if I can talk my way into a game somewhere. I'm afraid to say it's not looking good at the moment. Opportunities for organised cricket seem available only to narrow sections of society. Despite the passion for cricket and Dhaka having over 159 million residents there are surprisingly few decent cricket facilities in the area. And where there are clubs that train, their training sessions take place during working hours I found out yesterday - so playing competitive cricket and holding down a job is not really an option. Looks like I've got some difficult decisions to make! ;)

Chris

Relative Calm After the Initial Culture Shock Storm

Since the initial shock and unknown of the first couple of days things have been much calmer for us Hardistys here in Dhaka. There are new challenges to be faced on a daily basis but in general we have grown in confidence about town and are walking about and catching rides with relative ease. We are getting our bearings of key parts of the city and the little bit of language we have picked up is helping too.

We have actually started language school this week. We'll be having a one hour Bangla lesson every day for a couple of weeks to give us some kind of grasp of the basics, and then maybe more later if we feel we need it. It's a bit of a challenge leaning the taught content ready for the next day's lesson on top of the demands of work, travel, meeting new people and finding food, but we are enjoying it. I hadn't really expected this but I'm actually finding it quite exciting learning another language. Our teacher Sultana is very nice but has pretty high expectations of her students!

Abar dacha hObe - See you again (hObe pronounced proper 'Lesta')

Chris

Travel Talk

Today has been great but really long and exhausting. My capacity here is about half of what it is at home, the heat and the noise and the travel just takes it out of you – it really does take most of your energy to just get from a to b. The travel is one of the things that is really different here. There isn’t really a city transport infrastructure; it’s quite informal so it takes a bit of inside knowledge to get anywhere. It would be quite difficult as a tourist to arrive and get your head around travel. Even if you were brave enough to jump on a rickshaw, if you didn’t know in quite a lot of detail where to direct the driver to go, he probably couldn’t’ get you there. It’s not like I imagined and they would all have ‘the knowledge’ and be able to get you anywhere you wanted. They are cheap though, between about 10p and 50p for up to a 30 minute journey and when they pick up a pace down a nice smooth road it can be a nice breeze on a hot day.

We tried an auto rickshaw for the first time yesterday which is a little three-wheeled petrol vehicle. I didn’t really like it. There were 4 of us in it and they probably only should have 2 so that maybe had something to do with it but you are really low down in the traffic and the fumes were horrible. It might be ok for a ten minute journey but we were in ours for about an hour trying to get back from the cricket and I was so glad to get out of it. The advantage is they have a meter so you have to barter less for the fare, to drive for an hour though it still only cost us the equivalent of about £1.20.

Our journey to work was via auto rickshaw this morning. Our office is about 45 minutes away from where we are staying at the moment so I was really glad when we were told we were going to get the bus home. It was so much nicer. A lot of the local buses you see are rammed full of people but the one to where we wanted to go was luxury in comparison. We all got a seat and there were fans in the ceiling the first three rows are reserved for women only which I can imagine is nice if you are a woman travelling on your own. Being the biggest thing on the road for a change was nice and we got home a lot quicker and with a lot less fumes in our lungs. It’s harder to see where you are though so you have to keep your wits about you to ask the driver to stop at the right place.

So travel is sometimes challenging, but it’s fun being rattled around on a rickshaw and coming head to head with a massive SUV, swerving to miss it just in time! (It’s quite safe mum honestly!)

Chloe

Early Experiences

Ok so we got here safely, then what? Well, we have been looked after well by Cath from Oasis and her husband Jamie who teaches in an international school here. They fed us dinner on our first night and then escorted us to our accommodation on rickshaws through the city night. The rickshaw ride was quite long, about 20 minutes. When you're fearing for your life round every corner 20 minutes is pretty long! You're not really in that much danger but as a newcomer to this form of transport it feels that way. There's obviously a decent incentive for the drivers to avoid collisions and it's amazing how everything weaves in and out of each other without crashing. There is seemingly a complete lack of rules and order on the roads which causes the heart to race most at junctions - it is every man for himself. But everyone's expectations are the same and no one wants to crash, so when your rickshaw pulls out in front of a car and you think you've had your chips, the car stops at the last minute. Drivers have to be brave or they would never get anywhere. They have to go for it when there is a slight opening, get their nose in and hope oncoming vehicles slow down or stop. And it seems that they do, whether it is out of a respect for that bravery or simply their own vehicle. Perhaps 'respecting him who's nose is in first' is the only rule of the road?

Travelling by foot has not so far been much more relaxing. We headed out to meet Cath at a coffee shop on our first morning here. There are masses of people on the streets. It's like walking through any busy city in that respect, but what seems like half of the people here are obviously extremely poor and live on the street, or some kind of slum dwelling nearby. It's hot, pretty smelly, and it's difficult to walk along minding your own business. Wherever we've walked we have been approached, whether by beggars, children trying to sell something, rickshaw drivers asking if we want a lift or just curious locals wanting to talk to white people and ask who're they're from and what they're up to.

We had our first staring experience on that first morning, or rather Chloe did. A rickshaw driver asked if we wanted a ride, we said no, he asked us again, we said no again, then he just coasted along on his vehicle at walking pace about 4 yards in front of us just staring at Chloe. Not very pleasant. Other than the staring many of these things don't seem particularly 'wrong' in their own right. But as complete aliens to the culture it has felt very uncomfortable so far. We have quickly learnt (and you have to learn quickly here to survive it seems) that it feels much safer when we know or at least look like we know where we are going and walk with purpose. We have also learnt a couple of polite rebuttals to approaches which has helped the confidence. Having said all that, it doesn't feel all that comfortable just 'ignoring' people either. It will be interesting to see if/how our feelings towards engaging with people on the street change as we become slightly more comfortable with the surroundings.

The busyness and the lack of road order brings a lot of noise! Predominantly car horn noise. It's vitally needed with the absence of anything vaguely resembling our lovely British highway code but car horns are sounding constantly. When I say constantly I mean about once every 1-2 seconds! All of the time. It is 8.38pm as I write and I am being 'serenaded' by a cacophony of honks. The accompanying instrument is the little rickshaw bell. Tiny in comparison but valued by pedestrians and rickshaw passengers nonetheless.

When it comes to eating, and I am sure I will post much more about this as the trip goes on, every meal so far gathered has come with a huge serving of relief. We are starting to learn from where we can get trustworthy meals, and the prices are very reasonable, but when all interaction with Bangladesh is such a challenge, the sight of good food on a plate in front of you is a lovely one. And some of the food has been lovely, very lovely. We've not really had much authentic Bangladeshi food so far however. We have been told that most Bangladeshi meals involve a lot of bones, bones which the locals generally crunch through! So I have had a lot of Indian inspired meals (well, one of the things I was looking forward too most was all the curry!) and Chloe a variety, taking the opportunity for a little normality where she has had the chance.

We are beginning to find our feet in it all though; today has definitely been less stressful than yesterday. There will be many more firsts but today there were some seconds, and doing things a second time is definitely easier than the first.

Chris

We've Arrived!

After a tiring flight including a quick pit-stop in Delhi we arrived at Dhaka International Airport yesterday afternoon. Met by someone who 'knew the land' we proceeded outside to a busy taxi rank, just like any airport, plus masses of locals lined up and looking through the railings at those (including us) inside the airport, quite unlike any other airport I've previously been to! "What's going on out there?" I asked, "The world" came my response. It felt like we were either inside or outside some kind of zoo enclosure. You have to pay to get in to the airport over here, and I can see that without that there would be absolute carnage.

It turns out that the former Prime Minister of Bangladesh had arrived at the airport earlier in the afternoon, so the craziness we were stepping into was slightly greater than usual but things are obviously very different here!

Very grateful to have been picked up by someone we could trust we packed our bags into the van and headed out 'into the world'. It wasn't long before we were exposed to more 'craziness' - a guy sat on top of a travelling bus! Half price if you ride on the roof over here - seriously. And then several guys on top of the next bus; no traffic system; constant horn blaring; every man for himself; cars driving the wrong way up/down the opposite 'one way' carriageway. Wow. And then people walking up the 8 lane road weaving in and out of all of this! I was surprised that I was surprised when a train then came rolling past with numerous people sat on the roof.

Apparently Save the Children ran a campaign out here last year to prevent/ban children from riding the trains' cheap seats - I gather the campaign was successful. Now many children cannot afford to travel back home to their villages to visit their families: pros & cons.

Almost at our destination we were halted by a blockade in the middle of the road, vehemently marshalled by some kind of officials. Unable to talk our way through we got out of the car to unload and get a rickshaw the rest of the way. Within 5 seconds we were approached by a beggar, a female beggar with one leg, possibly the first Bangladeshi female we had seen.

Cricket bag loaded, Chloe and I awkwardly climbed onto the tiny little rickshaw. Perched precariously and feeling like falling off at some point was a very genuine, even likely possibility, we set off; the exhilaration of a trip to Alton Towers plus a ride from A to B all for 10p! I am glad to say we made it safely.

A second rickshaw ride later in the evening to our first week accommodation gave us a glimpse of more of the city, including the 'posh' part. Our stay is certainly going to be interesting!

Chris