Little known fact about Bangladesh, it can get really cold here!! Who knew?!?!!? Apparently not me, because I didn’t bring anything warm here to prepare. The past week and a half there has been a bad cold spell across the Bangla region, causing temperatures to plummet to the lowest point in 50+ years. In Dhaka it’s been in the mid 60’s during the day and the low 40’s at night. Ordinarily this wouldn’t be an issue, (I did grow up in Michigan after all) but there is NO heat here. As a matter of fact, the buildings are built to keep heat out because of the 100+ temps in the summer, so there is zero insulation, and the apartments are all made of marble and tile, which means it’s colder inside than out. No buildings have heat, and almost all of the expat clubs are outdoors. That coupled with the fact that there are no warm cloths to be found, it has been very uncomfortable. My apartment is so cold that at night I’ve been wearing 3 shirts, my hoodie and a scarf to bed to sleep in, and it still doesn’t help! My nose is frozen in the morning! My office is no better, it’s marble from top to bottom. We’ve taken to opening the windows during the day and braving the mosquitos because it’s a good 15 degrees warmer outside than in. I wear my one coat that I brought all day long sitting at my desk, my coworkers have been making fun of me, but I don’t care, I HATE being cold!!! The people on the streets have taken to pulling down branches from trees and setting fires in the streets/garages to stay warm. It’s very sad to see street kids who have nothing more than shorts a t-shirt and flip flops running around when it’s so cold out. And if I’m freezing, I can only imagine how cold they must feel.
Besides the weather, apartment hunting has been the other painful part of my life the past week. I have to move out of my temporary apartment at the end of the month, and am trying to find a newer apartment that doesn’t look like Aladdin’s living room. It’s much easier said than done. Bangladeshi’s prefer a style which I like to call “Little Saudi Arabian”. Lots of gold plated furniture, fake chandlers, big drapes and stained glass everywhere. Not exactly like Pottery Barn, much to my dismay…. I’ve looked at 20+ apartments and they are all awful. Here’s a list of true things that happened to me this weekend:
1. You know it’s going to be a bad day when I go downstairs from my apartment to meet my driver to look at apartments and there are 4 goats in the garage. Hum, that’s weird, I think to myself, what are all these goats doing here? Next thing I know, one of the garage attendants wrestles the goat to the ground, and another guy runs over with a machete and they slaughter it right in front of me. There is blood everywhere, the goat is flailing around, and I scream because I was totally not prepared for that at 9AM on a Friday morning. It’s so gross! One of the drivers says to me plain faced, Madam, you no like mutton (goat’s meat)? I promptly left, there were still 3 live goats there, and I didn’t need to see the encore presentation.
2. After leaving my apartment, the next apartment that we drive up to, a man walks up to me with a chicken in either arm. No, no, I don’t need any chickens I say trying to back away. Oh, no Madam, this is for you to watch! And he sets the chickens on the ground to fight each other. I’ve never seen cock fighting before in person, and I don’t ever need to do that again. I get upset again, and my driver (bless his heart) intervenes to get me out of there. I can’t live in an apartment where cock fighting is a regular occurrence in the garage. I know I am sounding high maintenance here, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that’s a deal breaker.
3. On to my 5th apartment of the day, I’m in master bedroom and open the curtains to see what the view is like. It’s directly on the Gulshan lake, so you get the lovely view of the slums across the river bank. In addition, there is a large tin shack below. What’s that I ask? Oh, it’s a cow shelter! I open the windows and am hit with the smell of manure, and many cows mooing. I suppose it did mask the rotten smell of fish in the lake, but still not what I want to sleep next to every night. Why in the middle of a huge residential area, which is supposed to be the nicest area in the city, is there a shack with 20+ cows in it?!?! I got a blank look from the apartment broker that I was with. Madam no like cows?
You would have thought at this point that I would have given up, but I proceeded to look at 10+ more apartments the rest of the day. My poor driver was exhausted by the end of the day, since he had to do all the calling and talking for me. I know he thinks I’m crazy and a total spoiled brat seeing how we are looking at apartments that are almost 10 times what he makes a month. But, he did a good job humoring me apartment to apartment, and when he dropped me off at the end of the day he even said… Madam, you had a very hard day, don’t worry you will find something. If it were me, I’m sure I would have rolled my eyes and said something very sarcastic. Joshim is very good to me! ( I need to write a separate post on all the funny things he says every day, he doesn’t understand why expats do half of the things that they do, running for example).
So I’m still on a quest to find an apartment. I don’t know if I have the patience to see many more, but I still have faith. Hopefully in the meantime it warms up!
Blonde And In Bangladesh 