A Slow Pedal Cab Ride Through Chittagong
On our last day in Chittagong before flying back to Dhaka and home, we took a pedal cab for a tour of the town’s central area. We created quite a sensation, attracting spectators throughout our ride. By then, we were used to the attention. Once we felt reasonably certain that our cyclist wouldn’t kill us […]
Village Life
We walked through a couple of villages with our guide. Both were very much the same, except the second was seemingly empty. People did not come out to greet us or follow us; instead, we caught glimpses of a few women and children in doorways or peeking around corners. One woman clearly did not like […]
Bathing
Most of the bathing in the countryside is done in public, either in the rivers and lakes or beside a well with a hand pump. Always with clothing on. Most of the villages we passed through only had a well in the center for water. We watched this young woman bathe herself at the community […]
Village Schools
On our weekend with our guide, we visited a village school. I taught in a village school in Botswana while in the Peace Corps. School buildings were concrete with no windows for ventilation; desks were metal, like those in American schools in the 1940’s, and kids often had to share them because there were not […]
The women are beautiful!
Almost all of the women we met were dressed in beautiful, elegant saris. The women at the school wore modern versions of traditional dress. Those out in the countryside or on the streets of Dhaka and Chittagong looked as if they had been worn for many years. Regardless of whether the women were in the […]
Curious and shy
The children we met along the way were so curious about us, but ever so shy. They occasionally engaged with us, but mostly stood and stared, sometimes out in the open but often hidden behind a doorway or an older sibling. Every once in awhile we’d get a smile.
You will grow a tail!
We had a few days in Dhaka, Bangladesh, before we started work in Chittagong with the Asian Women’s College. We hired a guide for the weekend. In the morning, we met our guide, Zia, who gave us our suggested itinerary for the few days we would be spending with him. He added that, of course, […]
The Hanging Bridge and Stone Divers
Looking at the map of the Indian subcontinent, it is not geographically obvious how the borders of India and what was then Pakistan (East and West) were decided. On first inspection, it looks similar to the division of Northern Africa after WWII and to what is irrevently referred to as Churchill’s Sneeze: a nonsensical zigzag in […]
School Kids
Everywhere we went in the countryside, we drew a crowd, but nowhere like we did when we stopped to tour a school. At first, a few students came out to look at us, but as we walked around and enticed a few of the more bold among them to talk with us, we soon had quite […]
Move over cockroach, it’s time to cook!
We arrived in Chittagong last Sunday, and we have been chauffeured around like royalty ever since. Neither our hosts nor we have been eager to walk anywhere. It is an understatement to say we are feeling a little claustrophobic. Our greatest joy in traveling is to get out and “walk the city.” Yet, a van […]