OK, well we’ve kept you waiting long enough. After arriving in Dhaka we were picked up at the airport by our landlord. He told us we were staying in a temporary apartment until ours was ready. It was a bit disappointing because we were anxious to get into our permanent home, but the place was fine (although a bit strangely decorated – as in nothing was hung over four feet off the ground, but there were lost of decorations from the waist down…). We only had to stay for a few days and then we were able to get into our permanent place.
While we waited, we took our first trips around Dhaka together as a family. It was fun for Sam to visit some of the places that were so familiar to her and finally bring Jon and Atticus along. We took some time to explore our new neighborhood.
PHOTO: Sam and Atticus on a roof
Our first morning out we took a walk around and ended up taking a little rest at Gulshan Park. Actually we were killing time because the coffee shop, Café Mango, didn’t open until 10 am. Since we were jetlagged, we had all woken up at about 3:30am. It was nice to sit and relax outside though.
After we waited for it to open, we went to get some breakfast at Café Mango. This is a little café that Sam used to go to very regularly, and it is just a nice easy place to hang out. The coffee is reasonably priced, the food is good and pretty inexpensive, and it caters toward the bideshi (foreigner) and upper class college crowd, so the environment is comfortable (meaning Sam can take her orna off – the orna is scarf women wear over their chest). Atticus very quickly bonded with place, and now going to Mango is one of his favorite things to do. He especially likes riding a rickshaw there.
On Friday we were able to move into our real apartment at Babylon Gardens. The neighborhood is quiet but there is a main road just down the way, so it isn’t too isolated. There is a shopping center with a little grocery and some other shops about 6 blocks down that is an easy quick place to get water and basic things. It seems a little more expensive than some of the shops a bit farther away though, and certainly the grocery store prices are astronomical compared to the outdoor markets. Sometimes it is just easier to stop by the grocery though. (I uploaded some apartment photos straight from Picasa in a couple separate posts below this one because it seems to work better when doing a lot of photos. The connection is a little slower here.)
Our apartment is actually a three bedroom, because he didn’t have a 2 bedroom open. It is huge, and it has ceiling fans in every room and AC in our bedroom. It seems to stay pretty cool (although this is all relative).
One of Jon’s first encounters here at the apartment was with a little tiny cleaner boy (maybe 5 years old?). He knocked on the door while Sam was in the shower, so Jon had to try and field the communication on his own. It ended with him having to close the door on the kid while he tried to get in. He thought he was asking if we needed him to clean.
A few minutes later, (Sam is out of the shower now), the little guy returned with our doorman. It turned out he wanted a bucket, and so Jon was bringing all our buckets from the back balcony over one by one and he was rejecting them each time. Finally Sam asked if he wanted to come see and he determinedly walked straight to his specific bucket, grabbed it and left.
It raised a few issues:
1) we needed to learn the word for bucket.. Several encounters even prior to the little kid at the door had involved buckets. The word for bucket is balti.
2) Buckets are going to be a more important part of our life here, ie: Laundry is done in a bucket; garbage goes into a bucket; cleaning requires a bucket of fresh water; there are plastic buckets for sale everywhere at a wide range of prices… buckets are ever present.
3) Buckets can be used to help clean up the mess you made when something broke - and everything breaks. Constantly.
So since we’ve moved into our apartment the follwing things have been broken (mostly by Jon who seems to manhandle everything).
The glass door to the tv stand
The towel rack
The faucet in the kitchen and bathroom
A Bucket
2 squeegees
A trash can
I’m fairly confident this list is not comprehensive.
The final major aspect of Bangladesh we’ve had to encounter is the massive bureaucracy. We had to get cell phones, which required sim cards. These are highly regulated. You have to fill everything out in triplicate, provide a copy of your passport, photos, your fingerprint, a local reference, and go though about 3 to 4 people. (Because you can’t pay the same person that collects your paperwork – that must be done at the cash counter and then a receipt is given to the paperwork person. Everything is handwritten on the form, then slowly typed into a computer. Those are then printed and then you sign all the forms, handwritten and printed. Then you get your stamp stamp stamp on your forms and you receive a tiny little piece of plastic (about 1cm by 2 cm) that goes in the back of your phone.
We got our phones through Grameenphone, but later we wanted to get a wireless internet device that works on a cell phone modem and so we had to get another sim card from Banglalink. Before that though, we had to go to Computer City to buy the modem. Actually, it is a pretty cool device. It plugs into your usb port and you can use a cell phone sim card to access the internet. It is nice because it isn’t reliant on electricity and it gives a good backup to the apartment’s wireless connection, which has been problematic.
Even buying the modem required 2 people to help us- one guy told us about it and collected our information while another typed in SLOWLY into the computer in order to print our receipt, which I then ad to sign, and it was then placed into an envelope and given to me. Why did I need to sign that? Who knows.
Well that’s enough for now. Next entry we’ll get into our daily life a bit more – sweeping, school starting, grocery peculiarities, etc…
