Beautiful Bangladesh by blissfulwanderlust

Oh Dhaka. This is a brief description of what living in Dhaka is like. I have been living amongst you and your beautiful people for 2 years now, and I have had some amazing experiences...from exploring the markets filled with the stench of rotting cow hides and over crowded chicken pens to freshly slaughtered goats and cow carcasses hanging throughout...the sound of the hot sun on the tin roof, the noticeably blood stained floor, the smell of stale air and the sight of men dressed in white robes holding sharpened machetes in preparation for EID.

In addition to the markets, I have been exposed to more textiles than I ever thought possible...designs, colors, material. To go with the textiles, there are tailors on every street corner. Tailors who make whatever you can dream up.

Whether you are walking or driving, you will first hear Beggers. In your car...you hear tap, tap, tap on your window and upon first glance you see that they are missing if not one arm, but two. You wonder how that happened for a brief moment. It's hard to look away, but the more you look, the longer they stay. You put your window down for a brief moment to say "Jao", or "leave", and a waft of this stale, all too familiar smell envelopes your car...the urine soaked streets, the unregulated factory byproduct, the smell of burning plastic and dead rotting animals... It takes your breath away. As you sit in traffic, you see stacks of books and DVDs for sale, baskets and flowers, and more beggars. You all of a sudden miss traffic lights and lanes and rules of the road. My driver once told me, "Madam, everyone knows the rules. No one follows them", and yet somehow, some way, people get from point A to point B without incident (although the other day a rickshaw wallah jumped off his moving rickshaw to fetch something and his rickshaw slammed into the side of my car...I kept going and he got what he had lost). There were days when I couldn't see the end of the street through the thick, dense and brown brick fog that line the streets and blanket the city of 44,500 souls who reside in this city. Thunderstorms, electrical outages, terrorism, endless construction, brick breaking, photo walks, floods, incredible heat, polluted air and typhoid infected water...my senses have been on overload since moving here in July 2015 and now I am preparing to leave. To leave a place that has tugged at my heart, daily. The children, the poverty, the smiles, the hard work that I see each and every day inspires me and allows me to find gratitude in the smallest moments of my day. To you Dhaka, I say Dhonobad and Abar Dekka Hobbe.

Beautiful Bangladesh

Beautiful Bangladesh

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