Old Dhaka

Language school is over!  That’s right, last week was my final week of language school for the semester.  Basically from the time I got here, language school has been the main event of the day, five days a week.  As hard as language school was - and I can honestly say that it was one of the hardest classes I’ve ever taken - I really enjoyed it.  It’s hard to learn a new language, but even interacting with the teachers is a fun thing to do.  I think that some of our best conversations were those about differences in our cultures.  While the class is meant to teach reading and writing in Bangla, you can’t avoid learning culture in the class.  And when those discussions about culture came up, the teachers were just as interested in learning about my culture as I was learning about theirs.  In fact, there were several times when I would be reading aloud from my workbook, and the teacher would interrupt to ask a question about culture that was totally unrelated to what we were reading.  I think we regularly went off on 15 minute side tracks talking about subjects ranging from politics to how they say “ya’ll” in the south.   

But with language school done, other things are starting to pick up.  Last week we started teaching English classes to street kids three days a week in the evenings.  I’ve gotta say, those kids sure pick up English faster than I pick up Bangla!  Most of them have actually been in the class before, so those kids already know the basics, but it’s impressive to me that they’ve been able to retain so much of what was taught several months ago.  Since many of them have grown up on the streets, this is an opportunity that most kids in the same situation don’t have, and it is a huge privilege to be involved in sharing my language with them.

On Sunday I got to go to a part of the city known as Old Dhaka.  In the same way that Seattle has different districts like Ballard, Queen Anne, Sodo, Capital Hill, West Seattle, etc., Dhaka is also divided into different subdivisions.  I live in a relatively northern subdivision called Gulshan, and Old Dhaka is on the Buriganga River less than ten miles south of my apartment.  

To beat the traffic we left at around 7:30 in the morning, getting us there in only about half an hour.  Considering that the average speed of traffic in Dhaka is only 9 mph, we made really good time.  For comparison, when we drive back home from the English class it usually takes us one and a half hours.  The distance of the route we take: 7.2 miles.  Needless to say, there is A LOT of traffic in Dhaka.

The National Mosque

So back to Old Dhaka.  This part of this city is notorious for the huge amount of people that flood the streets.  But being there so early, we beat the foot traffic that comes with the 10 o’clock opening time for most of the shops.  That isn’t to say that all was silent in Old Dhaka.  No, there was still plenty going on.  We made a quick stop at the national mosque and then went into the “nucleus” of the whole operation.  Old Dhaka is a maze of small roads lined with shops.  There is everything from fruits and vegetables to goats waiting to be butchered in front of their still-living friends.

Is this meat fresh?  Why yes it is!

One of the many shop-lined streets in Old Dhaka

We walked down one of the many roads for a while before getting on a rickshaw to take us to the ferry docks.  

Rickshaws rule in Bangladesh

The passenger view on a rickshaw

A smiling rickshaw wallah, what do you know.  Bonus points if you can spot the foreigners.

The ferry dock is crammed full of boats getting ready to set sail to various places throughout Bangladesh as well as India.  They were all passenger ferries from what I could tell, but they were also carrying lots and lots of cargo.  Compared to the ferries, our boat didn’t amount to much more than a large canoe that would take us up the river just a little ways.

There were tons of ferries sitting at the docks.  This is just a small representation.

The street in front of the ferry docks.

From the ferry dock, we boarded one of the large ferries that was being prepped for the next voyage and walked to the back of the ship where we were going to board our small boats.  It took two boats to fit our group and before long we were sailing through the (black) water of the Buriganga River!  

One of the boats all set to go.

We don't stick out do we?

Boat traffic

The river was pretty busy with boat traffic.  Everything from ferries, to other little canoe things, to larger canoe things with motors.  But compared to the roads of Dhaka, the rivers are wide open!

I'm on a boat.

A lot of boat traffic in this river.

My following.

Our river ride was fairly short and before long we were back on shore walking to the van for a trip to Uttara (another subdivision in Dhaka) to finish off the day’s outing with lunch.  So what was lunch like?  We’ll I’ll put it this way; we were a group of Americans in Bangladesh, eating Thai food at a Chinese restaurant while listening to music with Spanish lyrics.  You don’t get more of an international experience than that.  And yes, the food was good.

Until next time!