Day to Day Dhaka
Dhaka still has me tongue-tied. I’ve lived here now for four months and I know my way around a very limited area of the city. It’s a massive city, but much harder to get around than anywhere I’ve ever lived, including Istanbul. I really miss the public transportation in Istanbul. That city was difficult to get around because it was so geographically huge, and divided by the Bosphorus.
Dhaka is divided by “lakes” which are the remnants of the swamps that were here before the city was built. They fill up during the rainy seasons, look thick and scummy during the dry seasons, and are always a scary shade of green. They have fish that I don’t think anybody should eat, no matter how hungry they are. Dhaka has a lot of very hungry and desperate people, but I haven’t seen anybody eating from the lakes.
Daily transportation for me here is a school van ride to work, a school van ride home, and rickshaws. I am working on renting a car, despite my best intentions to not contribute to the air pollution here.
In most of my photos, the air looks terrible. In a few it’s actually foggy, in a few it’s dust and in most the haze really is just nasty pollution smog. The bottom line is, me getting a car is not going to help matters, but will give me the ability to get out in the evenings. There are some interesting things happening here, but it’s so hard to get around I miss out on a lot.
Two weeks ago, the Banff Film Festival came to the Goethe Institut of Dhaka. This is my favorite film festival and I used to love going to all three nights when I lived in Boise. I never expected to be able to see it here. I planned for over a month, got tickets, but only managed to get a ride for one of the three nights. I arranged for a school van to take me right after school, even though the films didn’t start until 5pm. I was told that it wasn’t too far away and getting there might take 30 minutes, or it might take two hours. I was assured that coming back would be much worse, and that if the films were over at 7, then I shouldn’t expect to be home before 9. It was a Wednesday night. If I wanted to go at 4am on a Friday, it would take only 15 or 20 minutes. In the end, I didn’t even get to go to the festival for that one night, because there were protests and the roads were blocked.
Last week was the Dhaka choir’s concert at the American school, which is only a 5 minute walk from my apartment. It’s not often events happen within walking distance, but I always appreciate it when they do. Ultimate Frisbee is usually held at my school, which is a 15 minute drive on the weekend, and doesn’t take much longer on a bike. Of course, when there’s a lot of traffic on weekdays, it can take over an hour to get there in a car, with most of that time stuck in traffic. Since I don't have a car, the decision is still rickshaw or bike. If I'm on a rickshaw I can cover my nose and mouth with a scarf and not breathe in so much dust and smoke. If I take my bike I can go faster and weave around the traffic jams, but my nose and throat burn by the time I get there.
The part of the city that I have gotten to know is sometimes called the “diplomatic enclave” and is four neighborhoods spread over several square miles. They’re divided by lakes or major roads, and each is somewhat self-sufficient. I can go weeks without leaving my neighborhood, Baridhara, and the two areas that border it, Gulshan on the west and Bashundhara on the east. I know my way around those parts of town fairly well so far, but hope that getting a car will open me up to exploring the rest of the city.
