Sunday, August 26, 2007

"Suspicion of being a student"

Things have certainly settled down here and for the last few days we have only had curfews at night - from 10pm/11pm until 6am the following morning - and hopefully they will end soon.

The riots seemed to have ceased, with the major universities being shut down and students sent home (pretty much all students stay on campus).

There has, however, been some interesting reports - such as someone being arrested "on suspicion of being a student", charges being laid against 80 000 people - the majority unnamed - and reports of a group of ~100 'students' (including those who couldn't prove they worked) being rounded up from a particular area (indoors under curfew) and being beaten.

Here's a link to a BBC report on the situation from a few days ago (hope it works) -http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6961543.stm

Thursday, August 23, 2007

Dhaka is in chaos!

We are currently in day three of some major riots in Dhaka, that have spread to other areas of the country. Subsequently, a curfew has been imposed since 8pm last night and I am going a little crazy being housebound – especially as I was home all day yesterday as I was sick. I did just pop out of the house then for about 5 minutes – but the streets were eerily quiet, with only a few shops open and the main road near our house, normally chaotic, was completely empty except for the odd ambulance (they are allowed to move around hence a number of people “hire” them in these situations) and police.

You may have heard in the news at home about the riots so I won’t go into too much details here but what started as students protesting against the army treatment of a student and their presence on campus at Dhaka University, has escalated into a combination of protests against the army backed caretaker government and the lack of democracy - plus hooligans jumping on the bandwagon and joining in the violence. Some strategic places have been targeted by the students such as particular officials houses, but there also seems to be a lot of random hooliganism - for example outside one friend’s workplace yesterday people started throwing rocks at a bus and as passengers started jumping out the windows they set it on fire.

There are a lot of theories and rumours about the bigger picture of what is actually going on. Probably best if I don’t document them on here but will be interesting to see how this all pans out...

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Flood Relief

Hi everyone,

Just to let you know some good news in that our organisation has received some funds from our donors and started doing flood relief for people in our project areas that have been affected.

I went along today to see the packages of rice, potatoes, lentils and water purifiers being distributed – and was amazed at how patient and dignified people were.

I also went to visit one of our health clinics in the area. The waiting room was packed full of patients and the clinic was in a semi flooded area.

Here’s a couple of photos:

A Beachside Weekend!



The Lonely Planet states that one of the highlights of Dhaka is “getting the hell outta there”. While I do think that is a bit harsh, I have been craving some clean(er) air and a little less chaos and so last weekend headed south from Dhaka to Cox’s Bazaar for fellow Aussie, Lindy’s birthday bash.

Cox’s Bazaar is apparently the world’s longest (uninterrupted) beach – I’m still working out how/if that can be true – and although it is hard to measure up to our West Aussie beaches at the best of times – it was nice to be near ocean and a lot of greenery.

Highlights included swimming in salwar kammezes at the beach together with a group of children; eating yummy seafood and dancing in the darkness on the sand at the “Mermaid CafĂ©”; having a ride home in the back of a paddy van and getting in trouble from a policeman when we tried to get back to Lindy’s place at 2am (oops) – and having the most comfortable bus ride I’ve ever had – with so much leg room and built in massagers in the chairs!!

Wednesday, August 8, 2007

A celebration (Tuesday 7th August)

Today I was reminded of how generous people can be.

There was a religious celebration in the Bihari camps and although people couldn’t tell me exactly what the religious significance of the day was, it involved different families taking the responsibility to cook a special type of food for the whole community. A ring is hidden in the food and the person who gets the ring takes the responsibility of providing the food the next year.

We were invited by some of the teachers from our organization who work in the camps to attend the festival. As I mentioned in previous entries, the conditions of the camps are very poor, but today they were alive with festivity and scattered houses full of people eating the food, which was a yummy sweet rice and milk dish (payish) and a fried flat bread (loochee).

We ended up visiting quite a few homes and the generosity of all the families we met, not only to us but to their fellow community members was humbling.

My most humbling experience came in the last house we visited. At that stage I was extremely full but our hosts kept insisting that we eat more. As we sat and chatted, the community members who had gathered started to tell us that there had recently been a government order to destroy the slum they were living in – and that it was due to happen sometime this week. In comparison to some of the other camps/slums, this one was fairly clean and ordered – as it had been destroyed last year by a fire and had been rebuilt.

No provision has been made for where these people are meant to go and the families that I spoke to said they have no plans yet and they will sort things out as they happen.

It is so difficult for me to comprehend being in that situation, but I think that if I was, feeding and entertaining my neighbours would be far from being a priority, yet alone a couple of complete strangers!!












Quote of the Week

“Tinjon mota” = “You three are fat!”
from our language teacher at our weekly lesson. It was elaborated on by telling us how good we were looking because we had got so fat and that no one would recognize us back home in Australia “especially you Amy”.
Think I need to cut down on my daily rice quota!! :)

HitchHiking - Bangla Style


As if the poor rickshaw waller didn't already have a full load - yet alone someone jumping on the back!

Floods are not Fairytales (Monday 6th August)

When I was young, the notion of a flood conjured magical images for me. I imagined being able to jump out of my house and go for a swim whenever I wanted in a never ending swimming pool, to row a boat over to a neighbours house and that a flood could pick up my whole house and transport it to a completely different place, fully intact, where new adventures could begin.

Of course, as I grew older (and wiser) I realized that floods were no fairytales. But it wasn’t until today that I fully comprehended what nightmares they can be.

As most of you would hopefully be aware, devastating floods have hit South Asia, particularly India, Nepal - and Bangladesh. Being located in the delta has meant that we have known the floods were coming, something that has been talked about matter of factly, without any signs of panic. And I guess when a country gets hit by floods every couple of years it does become normal. Even talk about the possibility of this being a “big flood”, that seem to occur in Bangladesh every 10 years (the last one was in 1998), has been focused around the fact that hopefully this isn’t it – as it’s a year early. A big flood will affect everyone. Right now, with almost half of the districts of Bangladesh being underwater, it is the rural areas and some of the poorer slum areas of the city that have been most affected. I think it may be a case of ‘out of sight, out of mind’ for many people.

From my daily trip to and from my home in central Dhaka to work in the north of the city I haven’t seen any signs of the flood. If I hadn’t been reading the newspaper, I would have no idea that the country was going underwater and even then, reading about something is way different to seeing it.

Today I went to visit one of our project areas in the south of Dhaka that has been affected by the floods. I have included some pictures below of what I saw as they probably speak more effectively than anything I can write. We rode around the area in riskshaws, although a boat would have been far more effective. The water was about knee deep, but as the tide came in it rose quickly by another 10cm and apparently at night it rises up to waist depth.
Apart from the obvious problems of peoples houses and belongings going underwater, the major concerns are increasing prices of food and clean water plus the waterborne diseases, such as cholera, malaria, dengue fever, etc. The hospitals are being flooded – with diarrhea patients – and children have died from it. The drownings that are occurring devastate me – but deaths from diarrhea, which should be treatable, absolutely crush me.

While I looked on today, devastated by what I saw (as one of the photos indicate – I promise that wasn’t a posed look) – people seemed to be going about their lives and wading through the water that I was scared to stand in (the smell of it is something that still hasn’t left my nostrils) and looking for options of how to feed and shelter their families.

The children, like I once did, thought that the water from the flood was great fun – and were playing and dunking in it, their parents otherwise occupied looking for necessities.

My perspectives on everything seem to have become relative in Bangladesh. The only glimmer of hope for a fairytale ending now, is for the flood waters to recede soon and that a repeat of the ‘98 flood will not occur.








The only people profitting from the floods are the boat makers...

A day in Old Dhaka (3rd August)



What a lovely Bangladeshi day yesterday was!

I spent the day traipsing around Old Dhaka with housemate Lucy (Hopkins – a Perthy – Sarah Mills, you’re our sole Perth connection so far) and seeing some of the sights.

The highlight was a boat trip in a small local boat – which was the type of image I expected of Dhaka, and provided an insight into how Dhaka would have been in the “olden days”.

A perfect day was capped off by eating bruschetta and drinking wine in the coolness of our rooftop (it was a stinking hot day) while listening to music and looking out over our lake and mosque.

Bliss…

Day trip to Comilla (28th July)

Today we did a day trip outside of Dhaka – to the Maynamati Ruins in Comilla, as part of our in country orientation. It was so nice to get out of the city and into some greenery and although it was an exhausting 3 hour drive each way and with a group of 20 Bideshis felt a bit like a school excursion, it was fascinating to see the ruins of some Buddhist Temples from the 6th and 7th centuries.

Highlights of the day included somehow being convinced to dance Bangla style with a group of Bangladeshis – something that housemate Shelly captured on video which I will try to upload on here at a later date - and being saved by Deepak, Nubia’s fiancĂ©, from a major stack down a muddy path in the rain. Poor Deepak is about half my height but luckily proved be quite strong as he caught me while I slid down. I’m just thankful that Nepali etiquette about touching women is different to Banladeshi, as I’m pretty sure the Bangla guys would, by instinct, have let me fall rather than touch me!

Here’s a couple of photos from the ruins.