Tuesday, July 26, 2011

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...

13 comments:

  1. Frogger - that's the name of the game I could not remember, I wrote about similar traffic chaos in Chennai - our generators take anywhere from 3 - 45 mins to kick in though...frizziness and sweat come with the territory I guess - glad you are adjusting to your new digs!

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  2. Kolkata (Calcutta) is not Dhaka, I know. But your post really brings back sweet childhood memories of mangoes, fearful road crossings, overcrowded bus rides, and "load sheddings". Thank you for the vivid description :)

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  3. slowly the niceties of the great heritage city will creep into ur system and u will refuse to leave dhaka when the next posting order come, it is a replica of kolkata which ram enjoyed with its rasgollas, gulab jammons, mangoes, pretty bengali girls (all successful heriones of indian movies were from bengal in those days), rabindra sangeet and so on. let emil pick up some bangla! it is amazing to see how u are able to adjust so well to the new environs, perhaps on account of your short exposure to chennai in feb/mar 2009!

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  4. Wow-I'll never complain about traffic again. That's amazing! Though the roaming elephants made me laugh. That's not something you see in the states! I'm glad the people are so nice.

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  5. We miss your wit here in DC! I'm glad you all are settling in. I can only imagine the humidity. I think we'd both have poodle hair, but alas, I'm not there. :-) Hope you all are doing well. Give The Diplomat a high five (or hug...your choice) from me.

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  6. Great to hear your humour did not dampen one bit in the humidity! Miss you and enjoy your postings here and on Google group.

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  7. welcome to bangladesh! looking forward in reading more of your dhaka adventures :-)

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  8. Thanks for the share! 5 liters?! That's a ton! You may want to consider getting a high capacity Dehumidifier Rental to handle all that moisture!

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  9. Very accurate comments. Dhaka has ghastly traffic. When people complain about traffic in Manhattan, Madrid, Mexico City, Cairo, Delhi, Seoul, or Istanbul, I can only smile. None of those places comes close to the level of frustration of Dhaka traffic.

    And though all over the world people claim to be the friendliest, in my experience, Bangladeshis indeed are the most welcoming for foreigners, and the most likely to share a smile and a hug.

    Also the "perfectly broken Bengali" is a perfectly turned phrase. At first, it sounds like off-putting braggadocio, but then the reader realizes it's the opposite.

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  10. William, are you by any chance stationed in Chittagong?

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  11. I traveled to Dhaka last summer, interesting place and people but it's true it a very humid place.

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  12. Wow that is some nice experience, really funny things happened to you there !

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