Bangladesh Impressions

16:12 Mon Jan-21-2008
Dusty. And rundown. That would be the adjectives for my first impressions on Dhaka. But it's also - familiar. It's like what I felt when we were in Aceh - like being in some area of home.
Rickshaws- that would be the image I will have for Dhaka.

10:23 Tue Jan-22-2008
The sound would be - constant honking.
It's morning. At the rooftop restaurant of Ambala Inn. It's cold, actually. Like Baguio's morning chill these days.

00:35 Wed Jan-23-2008
The people do rise at the arrival of a king.

I commented how the people here- the Bengalis, actually, all seem to look the same, and how that makes me appreciate the diversity of Filipinos. I was looking at the different faces of the CHT indigenous peoples I'm working with and remembered how I was so surprised, when I met them for the first time, that they didn't look like the Bangladeshis I had in mind. I look at their faces again and smile, they look so much like Filipinos.

13:29 Wed Jan-23-2008
Oh, and crows. A new found friend said there are two things that you can see in Bangladesh. People and the black bird. Apparently, the government forbids the killing of the birds. Some say when you attack a bird, all the other birds attack you back. They're everywhere. Like pigeons in other parts of the world. Only they're not the kind of birds you play with and feed in the park.

23:42 Thu Jan-24-2008
A garbage sorter singing on a street side garbage heap.

Sudipto, Nmong, Achok, Mathura, Mrinal, and other heroic and admirable Adivasi brothers. Oh yes, and the Bengali consultant, who's making sure everybody thinks indigenous enough. We had dinner at his apartment. He has a German wife with a dragon collection. She had many interesting things to say about dragons. Their driver, jackie, gave us a lift home then picked us up again the following morning so we could get back to work.

The hotel restaurant cook who regarded us as friends when he learned we were Filipinos. He would come to our table with a Filipino greeting, and other Filipino phrases. He had worked in Kuwait, some 9 years ago, and he was the only man and only Bangladeshi with a bunch of women Filipino overseas workers. We had dinner at the hotel restaurant tonight, and he told us he gave us more servings than what should be. He started asking about our husbands, then commented how Filipino wives work so hard. He began naming his Filipino friends, asked us another time if we were going to come back to Bangladesh, then offered if we could take the boy waiter beside him with us back to the Philippines. Or we can give him our address and he could send the boy, then we give him a job.

17:55 Fri Jan-25-2008
Roller coaster rides - whatever mode of transportation it may be. But the most scary is the rickshaw. It's like you'll topple after every bump. The CNG crisscrosses like it does not share the street with another thousand CNGs and rickshaws and cars, and people, who even jostle with the wheeled machines at intersections.