Dhaka Diaries

Bangladesh is a trip... I really don't know where to start, so I will stick to a chronological approach, at least to start.

I was reminded upon boarding the flight to Dhaka of one of the few things I dislike about being in this part of the world - the incessant need for people to push / cut / dart to the front of lines.  As we were walking down the jetway doing the usual boarding shuffle, guys kept blatantly cutting in front of me. I just chuckled, but I really wanted to ask them if they thought getting on the plane sooner would snag them a better seat or get them to their destination sooner.

Apparently the answer was yes, because when I got to my aisle bulkhead seat, there was a man sitting in it. I asked him if he was in 8G, to which I received a courtesy nod. I pointed to the "8G" printed on my ticket, and he pointed to the third seat in, next to his wife. So I pointed back at him, and then we had a non-hostile staring contest that I won.

One of the things I love about this part of the world is that everything is a free-for-all. As we're taxiing to the runway, people were getting up to grab things out of the overhead bins, people were talking to each other on their mobile phones, putting their bags in the aisles, etc.

Similarly, as soon as we landed, people popped up and started getting their things down. The flight attendants tried a couple of times to get people back in their seats, but quickly recognized the futility. Naturally, as we were standing waiting to deplane, people were literally shoving their way up the aisle. I suppose at the point they could make the argument that they will get home earlier, but really?

As we stepped off the plane, I found it strangely comforting to smell the warm, humid wood fire + diesel perfume that marks the developing world. Back in the cultural chaos of South Asia, my level of happiness snapped up from the "Miserable Africa" notch to "Happy and Content". (I think the nation I most want to visit is Myanmar / Burma... I just may go sneak across the border to pull a stunt like this guy and shop my story to the highest bidder... though I may want to wait until Tiger's women stop coming out of the woodwork.)

Since I'd just received my emergency passport, I didn't have a business visa to enter Bangladesh. Luckily, Bangladesh will let Americans apply for arrival visas under a limited set of conditions, including if you are coming from a country that doesn't have a Bangladesh diplomatic mission. Nigeria (the godforesaken country) is on that list, and since I was supposed to be there prior to Bangladesh, I had my letter of invitation and all the other paperwork necessary for the arrival visa, fully prepared for a laborious explanation of my situation. Turns out I just had to pay the guy 100 takas (Bengali currency, about $1.50 USD) for a 15-day landing permit, no questions asked.

There are some advantages to being in the world's 39th most corrupt country (tied with Pakistan, the Philippines, and Belarus).

The first thing I see once I clear immigration:

Bangladesh is a Muslim country, but I didn't think it was THAT observant. Turns out it's not - those were pilgrims returning from the Hajj in Mecca.

I also found humorous the luggage of choice here. Also telling was the section of baggage dedicated to jugs of water. Apparently when Bengalis travel, they bring big containers of clean water with them (I forgot to take a picture, but will try when I fly out). I have yet to fully understand what the deal is, but I will find out.

My first impression of Bangladesh was that it's a more crowded (earlier I'd posted India's population density of about 1,000 people per square mile compared to about 85 in the US... Bangladesh is about 2,900, squeezing 160M people into a country slightly smaller than Iowa), dirtier, poorer version of India. For good reason - like Pakistan, Bangladesh used to be part of British India, and even further back they share cultural and ethnic heritage.

When the British granted independence in 1947, modern day Bangladesh and Pakistan decided to join together as a single Muslim state comprised of West Pakistan and East Pakistan, despite being physically seperated by about 1,000 miles of India. West Pakistan was effectively in charge, and proceeded to exploit East Pakistan's resources (not just natural resources but also all of the industrial outputs from the British-built factories) and treat those in the East as second-class citizens.

When West Pakistan decided to declare Urdu as the official language of the country (most people in East Pakistan only spoke Bengali and English), that appears to have been the last straw, and Bangladesh launched a successful nine-month war for independence (given it was a war with modern Pakistan, India naturally helped out the Bengalis). Today Bangladesh straddles the fence, maintaining amicable relations with both India and Pakistan.

However, that doesn't mean it's a stable country. The first president and "Father of the Country" was assassinated in 1975 when army tanks rolled into the presidential compound and assassinated him, his family, and his staff. Two of his daughters were in West Germany at the time and survived, and today the eldest is the current prime minister. After the coup, the officers leading it changed the constitution to give themselves immunity from prosecution... the Supreme Court just recently got around to ruling on the case and invalidated that amendment and sentenced the officers to death.

One of the risks we have to take into account is the risk of a coup / major political upheaval. The current prime minister has supposedly survived something like 27 attempts on her life. I cannot confirm it, but I was told the 2008 elections were the first in the history of the country without some sort of post-election strife.

Clearly Bangladesh has a lot of problems and a difficult road to developed nation status. Among other things, Bangladesh is one of the poorest countries in the world, ranking 162 out of the 194 countries listed on the CIA's Factbook, with a per capita GDP of about $1,500 (compared to about $2,900 for India, $6,000 for China, and $47,000 for the US).

As if they didn't have enough challenges with overpopulation, malnutrition, dismal literacy and education rates, pollution, malaria, water tables poisoned with naturally-occurring arsenic, etc., about one-third of Bangladesh floods on an annual basis during the monsoon season. As you can see in the following map, most of Bangladesh is a river delta.

If you thought New Orleans had a rough time during Katrina, on more than one occassion over 100,000 Bengalis have been killed by typhoons (about 500,000 was the worst in 1970). Bengladesh is one of the first and worst places being hit with rising seas and changing weather patterns (irrespective of to what you attribute the underlying cause, things are a changin' here).

Things aren't all doom and gloom here. Like India, the people are extremely nice (though Bengalis seem to be a little bit less warm than Indians... not totally sure yet what I'm picking up there) and the place feels like it's alive.

One of my favorite encounters so far was in a meeting today with CARE, a US NGO focused on fighting poverty. In the middle of the meeting, our Bengali consultant got on his cell phone and was working on scheduling additional meetings - full volume, sitting at the table, not making any effort to be discreet. I literally burst out laughing when the guy from CARE answered his own ringing phone a few minutes later, leaving me and the other Accenture consultant sitting there exchanging smirks while they wrapped up their calls. I was reassured that sort of thing happens all the time.

Also like India, mid to high-ranking officials in both government and the private sector always have little remote controls they keep on their desk. When they need something, they press the button (which they do about 5-10 times in any given meeting), a chime / bell rings, and one of their minions scampers in to see what the boss wants (coffee, a file, an adjustment to the A/C which is always turned on as a courtesy to us Westerners, etc.)

The following are just some photos from today. The first is one of the kids hustling on the street - unlike beggars, he was actually working to sell popcorn and got angry at me when I took his picture and didn't buy anything. I felt badly, but really, should I be supporting third world child labor? Probably, since there aren't many other options for him, but I'm rationalizing to myself.

These pictures were taken outside Dhaka's wholesale produce market. It looks like mud churned up on the street, but it's really crushed / decomposing lettuce / generic roughage. No, it didn't smell that great.

Here is a view of the same market from CARE's offices. You can see how massive, crowded, and chaotic it is (not to mention polluted).

As we were leaving, I had to jump out of the way of this car backing down what I naively thought was a sidewalk... you know, not being paved, people were walking on it, etc.

This piece of utility artwork is for the Bagel... China has nothing on this place.

Some of the Bengali scenery.

This guy was singing Qur'anic verses for money... thought it was kind of cool.  Like an idiot, I used my photo camera to take the video instead of the HD Flip camera.  I am going to for sure get a lot of HD video here though... it's hard to appreciate the energy, vitality, and chaos here from the pictures.