On feeling far, far, far from Holi.

Today is Holi, in India, or rather for Hindus all over the world. If not for Facebook, and the friends from /in India whom I'm in touch with via this social media tool, the day would have gone without my having the slightest notion that a mere 45 minutes (lucky birds) away from where I live, people are happily throwing colored powders at each other, and by the end of the day, millions of men, women, and children in India, young and old, rich and poor, will look as if they all plunged into a gigantic tub of multicolored paints.

Here I am, and my older daughter is the one
drenched in paint, on the left.
Holi 2010

As I sat at the diplomatic warehouse where expatriates buy their liquor (unlawful in Bangladesh), waiting for the clerk there to enter the items in his computer, I noticed pictures of Hindu gods under the glass top of his desk. Dare I ask him whether he's Hindu ? He might have been siting at someone else's desk. But then, I saw a red thread wrapped around his wrist.
"Is this your desk?" I finally asked.
"Yes," he answered, looking up at me, clearly puzzled by my question.
"Are you Hindu?"
This time, he seemed astonished. "Yes, I am."
I gave him my brightest smile. "Happy Holi."
There was a long silence. "How do you know about Holi?" he asked after a few seconds. I'd had time to sign my cheque.
When I told him, he relaxed, visibly, and told me that they celebrated Holi yesterday, at some open area close to the airport. But his hair had no trace of colors, nor did his skin. Quite different from India, where you see people with purple, bright pink or green hair or patches of skin for up to two weeks, afterward.

My younger daughter with one of her friends - Holi 2010

Still, I felt happy to have connected with someone who knows about Holi. On the way back, I was caught in the usual traffic, and I was trying to think of ways we could celebrate Holi with the girls. But where? I don't imagine our landlord or the people working in our building, all Muslims, would like it if we started throwing colored powders at each other, my daughters and I, in the narrow patch of grass in front of our building. I was thinking I could welcome them each with powders in my hands, and spread some on their faces when they walk in, this afternoon. Or maybe we could hold a Holi session locked in a bathroom. Mm...

For a crash course in playing Holi, or just a walk down memory lane, here is the link to my post, last year.

HAPPY HOLI EVERYONE, whether you're in India or not...

Have bicycle, will ride it in the streets of Dhaka

 So, I was a blogger gone mute, these past few months. I'd like to think I'm slowly extricating myself from this dark spell, and one way to do that is to shed my own bit of spotlight over an event I participated in, this past Friday.

Yes, it involved bicycles. And women. And a movement launched by an active and passionate young Bangladeshi woman.

AROHI:Pedaling the path to empowerment. 

Arohi means "rider" in Bengali, but the Sanskrit root "Aarohana" means ascendance. And the goal of this young initiative is to give women more mobility by encouraging them to use bicycles as their means of transportation.

The objective of this first ride through the Dhanmondi neighborhood was to get a feel about how women on wheels are perceived, in Dhaka.

Dhaka is plagued with one of the worst traffic situations I have ever encountered. Lagos, Nigeria, was pretty bad, too, but Dhaka will really stretch anyone's patience to its extreme limits. Spending fifteen, twenty minutes in a spot, without moving an inch, is routine. And of course, it's not exactly safe. To give you an idea, our car got into an accident, only today. An auto-rickshaw towing another auto-rickshaw, the driver totally heedless of the fact that the machine attached to his was going right and left, bumped into our car, parked on the side of the street, of course tried to continue without stopping, and the second auto caught our fender and tore it from our vehicle. Routine.  

Encouraging people to use bicycles would seem like a great idea, and a good way to reduce the number of cars circulating, but also, maybe, to reduce the number of buses. I will have to write a post about the buses that transport people, in this city. There again, I had never see anything like that. Not in India. Not in Nigeria. Nowhere in my travels. It would also give women more independence. It's certainly an ambitious goal. 

We started the ride in a quiet area,  but the itinerary took us along some busy avenues, and across some chaotic intersections. We had to deal with the traffic, and that included swarms of rickshaws coming at us from every which way. At some stage, I thought I'd lost the group. I was stuck behind several rickshaws, with no way through. Thankfully, one of the riders in our group was wearing a bright red scarf, and I was able to spot it, and follow it from afar - and eventually, to catch up. 

I could give you some funny details about how a fellow rider suddenly caught up with me and said : "it looks like you have a flat tire." And indeed, the rear tire was flat. Thankfully, it was not punctured. Or how I realized, after a few uncomfortable minutes, that I had taken my daughter's bicycle instead of mine (they are the exact same model, but of course my daughter being smaller, the seat was lower). As the organizers had thought of involving a mechanic, the tire and seat situations were promptly resolved. 

We had a car riding along with us, several photographers, and even a young woman in a rickshaw carrying  her two-weeks-old daughter in a baby sling - the little darling slept peacefully through the whole ride, I may add.

Below are some pictures that may give an idea of the kind of bedlam we found ourselves in. Add the noise, the pollution, the frequent stops to allow the whole group to remain together (not an easy feat). This was no peaceful ride in the countryside. But I enjoyed it. And I hope to do it again.

A visit to the slum

So, the title is bizarre. Are slums something to be visited ? Of course not. But this particular slum is located on the banks of the lake, just across the river from our hotel, and the stark contrast between our life, and the lives of the people and children living a few meters from us seems even more glaring when you have it under your nose on a daily basis.

Of course, we are used to the blue tents that pop up on all the constructions sites, in India, tents where entire families live for the duration of the work, until they move to another construction site. And of course, I am forever trying to highlight how lucky we are compared to all those who have nothing, or next to nothing. My children listen to me with that expression on their faces that's part baffled, part all-knowing-bored, so that I never quite know what they understand, and wether they even listen to me.

So when a few weeks ago (yes, we'd been here a week, or so) I received an email from a person involved with an NGO helping this particular slum, and inviting all who wanted to come and bring paper, crayons, pencils so they could organize a drawing contest, I thought this would be an opportunity to get a little closer and allow our daughters to maybe understand better what I mean with all this clumsy/sententious talk. Especially as we had seen these same children on the lake below, fetching rags and what not from the water aboard their little rafts.

I cannot say it was a success. The children were hot, bothered and maybe even a little scared by the intense proximity, the smells, etc, and they ended up leaving with their father, who knows all there is to know about slums, while I stayed a while longer, interacting with the children, and having a blast taking pictures, and showing them.

Bangles, conveniently hanging from the ceiling/roof.

At some stage, I was stuck in one room/shack with something like twelve kids. Each child had a piece of paper, and there were bags with crayons on the bed, but nobody dared touch them. We waited a bit, and as nothing happened, I suggested they take the bag of crayons, open it, and start their drawing. They were so eager to begin. 

All the children in that little room drew a house, local fruits..., and the national flag !

Shopping in a new country

The last update on my Facebook page goes : I miss Q Mart !!! Q Mart is the supermarket where we found pretty much everything we needed in terms of foods, cleaning supplies, etc, during our six years in India. It was our regular supermarket. I know. How more pathetic can it get, right? And yet...

When we arrived in Hyderabad, Q Mart was on the second floor of an ugly, small building, a little place crowded with dusty, overflowing shelves. But then, it moved across the street, and became this shiny, two floors, luminous supermarket where we found new surprises almost every week.

Adios India. Hello Bangladesh. On my first day alone, the driver took me to the places where expats do their grocery shopping. I looked around, was not overly impressed, but as we were staying at the hotel, and I was in my newcomer-eyes-wide-open-honeymoon phase, I didn't look too closely. There didn't seem to be much in terms of cheese, apart from the same old imported Cheddar, and some canned brie or camembert from Denmark, but, oh well. We'd survive.

Then, a couple of days ago, I realized that if we are to camp out in our almost empty apartment, we need cleaning supplies in order to scrub the place properly before, and once we move in. And so, here I am back at the supermarket, standing in the aisle, looking at bottles of pink, blue, green and yellow liquids with labels written in an alphabet I can't read, wondering how I will know which one is the floor cleaner, and where are the brushes, and I don't see the dishwashing sponges, and everything looks so foreign I feel a big lump in my throat. Of course, it's not a big deal.  I, the seasoned expat who's been there, done that, know that, and because I know it, I breath deeply and go in search of a basket. I can't find one, but they have small carts, the type that children love to push in supermarkets.

I take it back to the aisle, return to the row of shelves, grab a bottle at random, and unscrew the tap to smell the content. Well, yes, if I'm not going to know what I'm using, at least, it's got to smell good! A few people stare at me, probably wondering why I'm spending so much time in that aisle, and what on earth am I doing, anyway, sniffing all these bottles? I start filling the small cart, and each time I touch it, some sticky stuff remains on my fingers. I wipe it on my pants, thinking I will empty the jar of antibacterial gel as soon as I reach the car. Finally, I walk to the cashier, and honestly, I'm not feeling so hot, and that's when I see a separate shelf carrying the pink bottles of Lysol that I used in India ! I take one and feel like kissing it. It's like I just got reunited with a long lost friend.

Of course, I still have to find buckets, and a broom, and a mop...

I ended up visiting a couple more shops before I got everything I needed, and you understand, now, why I say that I miss Q Mart? Who wants to spend more than two hours shopping for cleaning supplies? Then again, once I know my way around a little better, I won't waste all that time, and by then, I'll know that I'm home - meaning a place where I've lived long enough to know where to find the barest necessities.

Another kind of exploration

So, we are still waiting for shipment to arrive, still waiting for apartment to be cleaned, repainted, etc, but this may well happen before said shipment reaches us, and after a month at the hotel, the overall feeling is that time has come to move in already. Which means camping out for a couple of weeks, or so... We can do that, right?

And so, the wheels start spinning in my little, overcrowded head. What does a family of four need, absolutely, in order to camp out in a big, empty apartment for a few weeks?

- Mattresses. Fortunately, one of our new friends, here, offered to lend them to us. Check.
- Sheets, linen, pillows, towels. I brought them in one of our suitcases. Check.

- Plates, glasses, cutlery. As luck would have it, Bengladesh is a big exporter of all types of chinaware. So, this morning, I entered one of the dozens of shops you see all over town, and bought a set of Pierre Cardin plates (can't take the French out of me, entirely, ever, it seems, but what can I say? The plates were cute.) And some bowls. And glasses. All we need is forks, spoons, knives, a couple of pans, and we're all set. Check.

- We also need a table and four chairs. I can't possibly ask the kids to eat (although I bet they'd love the idea) or do their homework on the floor. And if they can, I'm the one who will not spend three weeks working on my translation (due in December, clock is ticking) while sitting on a tile floor. There again, no issue. Another new friend  (do I need to emphasize the importance of quickly establishing a network of expat friends when moving to a new country?) sent me to this market (picture left). It's on the second floor, she said. What she didn't tell me was that I would find a maze of hundreds of shops selling pretty much everything under the sun, and some more. As it turns out, we can buy a table and four chairs, and already agree on a reselling price, so that in two or three weeks times, when our shipment arrives, we can bring them back to the same shop, and get a slightly lower price for them. A bit like renting. Isn't that marvelously convenient?

Next on my list of necessities: cleaning supplies. This will be another post.

First exploration of Dhaka

Three and half weeks into the school year, and the kids have their first school break (8 days) for the long Muslim festival, Eid-ul-Fitre. It celebrates the end of the holy fasting month of Ramadan. The last days before Eid, we saw what it supposed to be the worst in terms of traffic, in Dhaka. Or so we're told. We also saw the city empty itself as entire families returned to their villages. And so, the last few days were quite peaceful, and we took advantage of that to take a cruise along the Dhaleswari river (more about that in another post) and to go and visit the old Dhaka. So far, I had not seen much, except for the Gulshan area, the Baridhara embassy zone, a busy street in Banini, and the airport road.

Old Dhaka reminded us somewhat of Charminar, in Hyderabad. Small streets, cables running everywhere, and I mean, everywhere...

Cables, cables, and more cables. And to think that it works.

and all of a sudden, the remnants of what must have been a beautiful old house,






or a small mosque.








We also went to see the docks where a long line of ferries waited for the passengers they would transport back to their villages, and we watched all the action there. People coming and going, loading or unloading boats, carrying bundles or boxes on their heads, repairing sandals, selling pan, etc.