Rice Workers
According to Wikipedia, rice is the dominant food crop of Bangladesh and accounts for close to 75 percent of the agricultural land use. According to our guide, the people of Bangladesh eat more rice than anyone else on Earth. After being here for a week, I think that is probably right. The countryside is rice […]
The Land
Traveling along the highway outside Dhaka, we passed mile after mile of waterlogged land. Now that the monsoon season has begun, the land will stay wet for months. Much of it will dry once the monsoons are over, but some will simply disappear, either washed away by a storm or permanently submerged. The streets of […]
Chicken Curry, Chicken Curry, Chicken Curry
I used to love chicken curry, and maybe I will again someday, but a steady diet of it for lunch and dinner has simply become too much. Moreover, we have seen too many scrawny chickens, packed too tightly in baskets, heading somewhere on the back of rickshaws for my squeamish tastes. The final coup de […]
No Traffic! It’s a Holiday!
Mr. Zia, our guide, picked us up at the Dhaka guest house on Friday morning to begin our three-day driving tour of the northeastern part of Bangladesh before we head to Chittagong on Sunday. The 7-hour, 222 km drive from Dhaka to Sylhet was the most fascinating and terrifying road experience Kevin and I have […]
Everyone Flies First Class to Dhaka
The passengers on the flight from Dubai to Dhaka were altogether different from those on the Atlanta-to-Dubai flight. On the 13-hour flight from the US, the mostly male passengers were heading to war-torn Iraq and Afghanistan to do all kinds of work that most of us don’t even know about. Think government contract workers, special […]
Bangladeshi Time
We have been trying to get on Bangladeshi time, but it is proving difficult. It is 4:30 am. We are wide awake, sitting in bed with our computers on our laps, working on the dataset for the Asian University for Women. Because we are starving and we are in the middle of a tea plantation […]
There but for fortune. . .
It is impossible to travel somewhere new and leave behind all your preconceptions about the place. I would like to believe, though, that space can be made that allows a new place to unfold, in its own time. With each passing moment, the visitor adjusts her understanding of the people and the place, blending what […]
Journey to Bangladesh
Bangladesh – who goes to Bangladesh except relief workers and Peace Corps Volunteers? Actually, the Peace Corps suspended its program in 2006. Fearing the possibility of volunteers being targeted by Islamic extremists, they brought them all home. Yet, we are headed there to spend almost two weeks working with the Asian Women’s University in Chittagong. […]
A Blue Thumb!
It was voting day in one of the villages we visited. Political flyers were strung everywhere. The voting booth was merely a table set out under a tree. When you voted, you had your thumb stamped with blue ink. This young man was very proud of his.