Old Dhaka

This weekend my coworker and I took a tour of Old Dhaka, which is the original fort from the 1600’s when traders were traveling on the silk and spice road. The area now is an extremely crowded with streets and streets of small factories, plastic processing plants, and other raw good processing facilities. The conditions were pretty bad. We went into one plant where women were making fake Adidas flip flops. They were sitting on the ground with stacks and stacks of shoes around them, making the same motions over and over again. The women lived inside above the floor of the factory, working in shifts so work wouldn’t stop.

It’s also where the river front is, which is where all the ferries come in for commuters coming to the city to work. We ended up taking a short boat tour of the river, and came to a slum area that they let us get out and tour. Immediately after we got off the boat we were swarmed by a group of children who followed us for over an hour. They were adorable, and amazingly so happy and excited to see us. Most of the children didn’t have shoes, and about half were only wearing underwear. There was this one girl who followed me the entire time, and at first she was too scared to talk to me, but would turn up right in front of me every time I turned around. I finally had one of the tour guides translate questions to ask her. She was 10 years old and lived in the area. When I asked my guide to ask her what she wanted to be when she grew up, he didn’t understand. So I said, ask her if she wants to be a teacher, a nurse, a business person when she gets older. Several of the guides then chimed in… no we don’t ask that, she won’t understand. Why? Because she has no future was their response. I must have had a total look of shock on my face, because they quickly followed up with, well the girls who grow up in the slums will be married off at 12 and will go to work for her husbands family… so basically an indentured servant. I was horrified. How could someone so young be pushed into that situation against their will? It ensures that they will endure a life of poverty and abuse. She followed me all the way back to the boat, and before I got on she turned to my guide and whispered something. He then translated- she says you are the most beautiful person she has ever seen. I almost started crying right there. Our boat went about a half mile down the river then came in again to pick up water for the ride back. When we pulled up the same group of children and that same little girl were there, they had followed us the whole way down the river. She stood there the whole time and just stared directly at me with wide eyes, until our boat left the dock again and was out of sight. I don’t think that I’ll ever be able to erase her face from my memory. I can’t stop thinking about her, and the other children that we saw that day, which will have that same fate.

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She’s the little girl in the green sari above, with the pink hair clip.

After we returned from the boat trip, we went to the Nordic Club to watch the goat races. Talk about a different world. Two hours earlier we had been in the slums, about 10 miles north we then were at a party where wealthy expats rented goats to race against each other in a fake track set up around the tennis court. They also hired Bangladeshi’s to run the event, which entailed them corralling goats, and chasing them around the track so they would go in the correct direction. It was quite the social event.

Tomorrow I am heading to the southern part of the country, to a city called Khulna. It’s the gateway to the Sundarbands, which is the National Park with the largest mangrove swamp in the world. It’s also where the tigers live! I’m not sure if we’ll have a chance to go, but fingers crossed. I want to see some tigers!