Dhaka,Bangladesh Trip

Here is a piece I wrote in Jan of 2008, after a flight to Bangladesh;


As some of you know I had a flight to Dhaka Bangladesh a few days ago. Bangladesh is one of the poorest country in the world. Talking with other flight attendant's about the city sparked my interest and I decided with a few others to take a trip into Dhaka to a place called "Bongo Bazaar". Others had told me that Dhaka is the worst place in the world to go visit and if I were smart I would stay in the hotel and not leave the pool side. But.. it was like a car wreck... you should look, but you do just because you really want to see.
Samantha, Satisha, my cabin manager Ahmed and I headed out to the side of the road to hail a cab. We didn't take any thing but the clothes on our back. No purses, no cameras, no earrings no watches... just clothes and money stashed in our shirts. I wore a simple pair of jeans a t-shirt and a pasmina. Nothing special. After seeing about 200 people in a bus and a monkey ON the bus, we finally got a cab, jumped in and headed to "bongo bazaar".
I kept pretty quite in the cab. Maybe it was because I didn’t know the people around me very well, or maybe it was because I wasn't feeling well, ( as predicted I came down with a cold, as most new flight attendants do within their first month of flying) but I'm pretty sure I didn't say much because I was trying to take everything in. Visiting the city of Dhaka was the worst experience of my life. The poverty was unreal. It was just like something out of a live aid commercial. picture the absolute worse.... then times it by ten and you get Dhaka. While waiting in a cab in traffic, beggars tap on the window and try to sell you any thing from books, to towels, pop corn or flowers. Beggars from 5 years old to 70 years old. It was dirty and it smelled like burnt tires. We finally reached "bongo bazaar" after about 30 minutes in the cab. Well what we thought was bongo bazaar. We were "welcomed" by about 30 (not even kidding) children from the age of 3 to 18. The deal is that you hire one of these children and they take to you to places you want to go. You say "women’s t-shirts" they take you there and barder for you, because they know the language and they make sure your not ripped off. We picked the first kid we saw. she was wearing a three piece bright green traditional Indian dress and had a huge wad of gum in her mouth.... smacking it. Her and her 2 male friends took us around... and fought off the crowd. Everything was "here sister! buy this sister! you need t-shirt sister?!" They were all amazed with my fair complexion and blond hair, and they all yelled "Eithad" when we walked by. I was the only blond I saw the entire time I was in the city. My "nothing special" outfit become gold when I saw what some of these people were wearing. Some had probably not changed their clothes in a year... if not longer.
We weren't in the bongo for 5 minutes when our girl told us we were in the wrong place and we wouldn't find much there for women. We walked around just to experience things, and we quickly became out numbered by not just children, adults now. We quickly paid our girl, about a Canadian dollar, which is an unreal amount to her, and got a police man to hail us a cab. We needed to get out of there and fast before we were jumped or mugged or even killed.
On the cab ride home, one beggar came to our window. I had my head down so that i wouldn’t make eye contact with him. Samantha told me to look up and look at the man beside me. I saw something that i will never forget as long as i live. This man had clothes that he must have been wearing for years, tattered and wore out. His hair was one big ball of knots, and his face covered in dirt. His eyes were big brown and filling with tears. The man had no hands only "stumps" that he tapped on the window with. We assumed that he got caught stealing and his hands were cut off. I couldn't give him any thing for he would have been jumped and killed if any one had seen him with money.
The children who followed us around would tap me on my elbow and point to their stomach, or their mouth. They had clothes on that they have had since they were born, and they were just enough to cover them. They had no shoes and their feet were cut to pieces. They were just so sad and hungry and i wished I had something to give them. They had the coldest fingers I have ever felt before in my life. A coldness i will never forget. "Madame, Madame!" is all they would say.
What got me was the hotel was beautiful! Wonderful food, and a lovely hotel! Beds were soft and the soaps were great. But once you walk out to the end of the driveway your in hell again. The airport was a joke. It had four wall but barely. Immigration for cabin crew to get in the country was a large book that everyone wrote in. You wrote your name, your nationality, and staff number and there ya go "welcome to Bangladesh". We were stuck at the airport for 2 and 1/2 hours for our aircraft that we were taking back to Abu Dhabi couldn’t land in the fog. And to add insult to injury, you cant eat outside of the hotel unless you want to have diarrhea for a life time.
So all in all, next time I say "I'm hungry" I know I'm really not, or next time I say "I'm poor" I'm not. When I was in Dhaka I saw things that no one would ever want to see, but I'm glad I saw them. It makes me love home so much more, and makes me tolerate Abu Dhabi more... for a bit longer at least.

Sorry no photos from Dhaka because I was too worried I was going to get mugged. This photo however was the beautiful hat I wore as a part of my uniform.