To get to work, I am picked up and dropped off by a van in a large traffic circle, which is a 15 to 20 minute walk to my home, depending on how long it takes to cross the road. I tend to take a rickshaw in the morning because it’s so early and in the evening I walk home since I’ve been sitting all day. I often get children, mothers with babies, disabled people, old people calling “Madam! Madam!” and running up to me for money. Usually I’m trying to avoid attention from everybody so I keep walking. On [View Full Entry]

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Kairul claims he is 18, but it is highly unlikely that he is over 15. His waist is not much wider than the bicycle seat that he hovers over, and his legs are barely long enough for him to reach the pedals while seated. He spends most of his work day peddling standing up. His pre-pubescent looks aside, Kairul’s boyish curiosity and fascination with the world also give away his age. As he peddles down the streets of Dhaka, avoiding gaping potholes and confidently pulling u-turns in the middle of oncoming traffic, I often catch him letting his eyes wander around [View Full Entry]

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Tomorrow marks two weeks from my arrival in Bangladesh. Everything has happened so quickly, and already I feel that I’ve come a long way from my first days in the country, when I was positive that my body would never adjust to the heat and that I would never figure out how to say “dhonobad” (thank you) properly. I landed in Dhaka at 6 am on a Saturday and was met at the airport by Elizabeth—the girl whose position I am taking—and a wall of hot sticky air. We hit the ground running, and after a full day in Dhaka we [View Full Entry]

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I finally left Dhaka. I suppose it was about time since there is an entire country and continent that is left to see outside this metropolis. I planned to spend two nights in Matlab, though I ended up shortening it to one night for various reasons. The trip started early at 7:00AM when a car came to my apartment to pick me up. From that I switched to a van, which jostled and honked its way out of Dhaka’s morning commute. After about an hour and a half, we stopped in this little town. A few boys around nine years old [View Full Entry]

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Anyone who has ever travelled in India will know that it doesn't always come easily. Delays, lies, scams and all number of other hassles are simply just something you have to put up with and get used to. To be honest, it all adds to the fun, not necesarily at the time, but afterwards when all you have left are stories and memories. Still, nothing prepared us for Biman Air, Bangladesh's national airline. We found a super-cheap flight from Bangkok to Delhi, but there was a catch: it required spending a night in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. The airline provided [View Full Entry]

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Hi all, I swapped onto this flight. Its not a very popular one and after doing it I cant really see why- yes it is busy and hard as most travelling dont speak English but all the passengers are lovely x I was unsure as what there was to see/do in Dhaka as most crew tell you that its the best places to buy copied dvds but I was looking for a bit more than that!!!! I had heard of an orphanage you could visit and had come armed with crayons, pencils and drawing books hoping that some of the crew [View Full Entry]

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Friday I found myself going past car-packed white mosques to a centuries-old quiet church. Located in the heart of Old Dhaka, the Armenian church is a remnant from a forgotten past when the Armenians (bizarrely enough) become powerful landowners in Bangladesh. Being the oldest of Christian societies, the Armenians brought their religion with them over the Asian continent and built this church centuries ago. It stands as one of the few churches left in Dhaka among thousands of mosques. It’s not easy to find if you come to Dhaka. Old Dhaka is low-lying along the windy and wide Bur [View Full Entry]

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Mollie's birthday, yet another Scavenger Hunt. Anyone would think we would be sick of these by now, but it's such a fun way to interact with the locals. They love seeing us do stuff that to them is just their everyday lives, but to us is crazy. The winners of this hunt was determined by everyone voting on the best picture for each task. It was our first loss. We are now 2 for 3. [View Full Entry]

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The world changes when you’ve got a man around. Our third flatmate, Luke, began work at ICDDR,B in the clinical division working on a cholera surveillance project. So yesterday I began to commute with someone else, which was a welcome relief after a disastrous trip home on Tuesday. I’ll drop my feminism a bit and admit that I never feel vulnerable when I am with a man here. Even when we have an adventure like figuring out the ridiculous bus system. But on Tuesday, I picked up a rickshaw after work whose driver told me he could take me to [View Full Entry]

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Yesterday was fairly uneventful, which can be good and bad. Uneventful leads to not being overexerted and homesick but it can also lead to overthinking and homesick. Not that I feel homesick necessarily. In the morning I did the first level of a work-out video I bought in the States and it was actually really great and kicked my butt a bit. The first work-out video I’ve taken a liking to, I think. Then a car from ICDDRB, my work, came to pick me up. ICDDR,B stands for the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh, but it’s locally known [View Full Entry]

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