Buying plants

We entered our apartment one week after our shipment was scheduled to be delivered, and five weeks after we left the neighboring country of India. Almost one month later, and we're still camping.  As it turns out, the ship with our container did make it to the local port, but the person in charge of all the paperwork was much too busy drinking to have the time and/or clarity of mind to do this work. For the past three weeks, he's been telling us all sorts of tales about why the delivery of the container was delayed, when in fact, he hadn't even begun to work on the process. This, by the way, in a Muslim country where alcohol is forbidden. We are now told that it will be delivered next Thursday, but by now, I carefully avoid thinking about it too much as it only makes things worse. If it comes, great. If it doesn't come, we'll go on camping out and try to be reasonably gracious about it ... Hm ! In the meantime, we do our best to try and fill out the empty space so it feels a little less like a transition hall, and more like a home. I bought some cushions. This week-end, we went in search of plants.

There are several nurseries along the road, not far from where we live, and no sooner had we stopped that men approached us eagerly. Except that one of them was not a man at all, but a young 10 year old boy. At first, I thought he was the son of one of the sellers. But he seemed so earnest, he was so fast to run into the masses of plants to lift them out - including some pretty heavy ones -and show them to us, that I started to wonder. As it turned out, he works there all day, is paid 1500 Bangladesh Thaka per month for his work (that's about 21 US Dollars) and goes to school in the evenings.

When he saw my camera, he took a pose, and said: "camera action !"

In the meantime, a crowd of people had gathered on the road and the sidewalk. Some were rickshaw wallahs hoping we might need their services. The rest were just watching us, passing the time, always curious to observe foreigners as they go about their lives.

As it turned out, two of these rickshaw men were right to have waited patiently, because they carried each a big plant  for us, after carefully tying them to the sides of the rickshaw with a piece of cloth (not sure if I would call it an orna, which is is the equivalent of the Indian dupatta.)

Our car looked like a jungle, but at least, now, we have a few heart-warming touches of green in the apartment.