Settling in Dhaka--mostly

And so, we are settling in Dhaka. I am not entirely sure where to even begin. My first foray into the Foreign Service has been a solid if uneven mixture of hysterical contrasts, frustration, wonderful people, exhausting social life, missing shipments, absurdly frizzy hair, infamous traffic, constant staring, improving Bangla, amazing work, occassional loneliness, constant surprises and perplexing English.

For starters, Dhaka is a severely congested city. As you can see, we battle traffic on a daily basis—crossing bigger streets is a life-sized and much more frightening version of “Frogger” where the real danger are hundreds of colorful and vastly dilapidated cycle rickshaws and public buses from which people are hanging out of the windows or the roof. Last weekend, a new Bengali friend of ours invited us to his villa in an area called Gazipoor. He enticed us with stories about a swimming pool and fabulous BBQ. On the map it showed that Gazipoor was about 30 km from Dhaka.

Three and a half hours later, after multiple improvised Gin and tonics in tin cans of tonic inside the van on our way to the estate, we finally made it. Yes, my dear friends, traffic is so bad, it took us 3.5 hrs to pass 30 km (about 18 miles).

Thankfully, the villa was spectacular and the housekeepers kept bringing fabulous BBQ delights to us until 3 am in a gazebo in the middle of the estate grounds. The next day we battled new 3.5 hrs back. As you will notice, the insane driving conditions take their toll.

The elephants strolling nonchalantly amongst the apoplectic drivers did not help one bit. No one knew why indeed there were elephants on the road, it is not a common sight in urban Bangladesh, really.

Dhaka is also a severely humid city. Every day we remove litres of water from the air through our 5 dehumidifiers. Thanks to the humidity, my curly frizzy hair has taken on a life of its own. Every morning I stare in disbelief at it, while it tries its best to look like a maniacal poodle perched on my head. After walking on the street for just 5 minutes, you start feeling rivulets of water running down your body and every single particle of you quickly becomes sticky and possibly smelly.

Dhaka suffers from frequent power outages. The diplomatic residences are blessed with monstrous power generators, which kick in seconds after the power goes out but it still takes you by surprise, especially since it gets dark fairly early here and there are no street lights. So, for a few disorienting seconds, as you were in the middle of cutting a particularly juicy mango in the kitchen when the lights go out, you sit there blinking helplessly, sunk in complete and blinding darkness. And then, the generator starts gurgling outside and the lights come back on.

Dhaka is also filled with possibly the nicest people on the planet. Wherever I go, after the Bengalis first recover from the shock that I speak in perfectly broken Bangla to them, they melt into a mush and try to speak back in perfectly broken English, in an attempt to reciprocate, I think. My housekeeper, for example, loves to go marketing. When she first asked me if I wanted her to go marketing, I was quite taken aback as I thought she’d wanted to promote us in the neighborhood. Then, seeing that the conversation was revolving around cooking fish, it dawned upon me that she meant shopping.

Since this is turning into a monstrous post, I will stop now. Clearly, there is much more to be said about this fabulous, contradictory and quite crazy city of Dhaka. To be continued...