Into The Slums

First Foray

Nothing really prepared me for what I'd experience in the Dia Bari slum.

The first sight that greeted us was an open area filled with garbage.  It wasn't a landfill, less of a mountain and more like a small lake of trash and filth.  As a group of foreigners we attracted a lot of attention before we even stepped into the slum, curious faces surrounding and following us as we made our way in.  Care packages had been prepared with muffins, fruits and snacks, but we held off on handing them out just yet.  

Led by Nahid and escorted by our drivers, we ducked into a narrow corridor, to do our first interview.  This block was lined on both sides with corrugated tin sheet, and had 12 rooms housing 60-80 people.  We spoke with a wrinkled lady holding her infant granddaughter.  Three generations of the family lived in one room, with one bed and scattered belongings.  They didn't own it, but rented through a manager from a landlord they never met.  The family uprooted to here from the village, because they had no land and thus the conditions were even worse.  At least here in the city the husband could work as a rickshaw driver or sell vegetables for money.  As bad as things seemed to us, they were unquestionably better than the old rural life these people escaped from.  Children went to school, but were expected to leave early in their teens to start earning for the family. 

With a cloud of flies buzzing around my head, I ducked into her home for a quick inspection and a picture.  There was no light inside, so it was flash, snap and go.  Cooking was done either outside the doorway or at the end of the block.  No electricity or running water.  There was however a communal low commode, a makeshift cover over a hole with little in the way of privacy.  Toddlers and shawled women wandered out to stare at us.

Halfway through our interview I thought of the bottle lights.  When we directed our questioning to their sources of light, one woman brought out a simple kerosene lamp that produced a large flame and thick, oily smoke.  They used these and candles at night, nothing during the day.  I started to tell Nahid to translate the idea of bottle lights to her, but it seemed too complicated for the moment.  After that though I started paying a lot more attention to the roofs around me.

The next house we stopped at was surrounded by a low stone wall, forming a small yard around it and the adjacent unit.  All the other kids had been playing and running around us outside, while this young girl sat on her ankles at the end of the bed, studying.  Sunlight angled through the doorway just enough so she could read, but the rest of the house was unlit.  Her name was Sunni, just like our Sunnie, endearing her to our group even more.  She was studying hard to pursue her dream of one day working for the government.   

We finished our interviews and started handing out goodies.  That's when the kids around us erupted, making it impossible to walk through some of the single file alleys.  We were happy to take pictures of them, visit their houses, hold their hands and give them props.  Some of the kids spoke rudimentary English, but the moment transcended the need for language.  Looking at the ladies in our group, I couldn't help but think of Lady Diana in the villages.  The infectious energy warmed us all on that cold winter day.  I myself got caught up in the moment and started yelling with the kids, and became a simple matter of rocking the crowd.  We told them we loved them, and to stay in school.  The kids followed us all the way out of the slum onto the streets, and waved at us through the car windows until we pulled away.

I knew I'd be back.

The Stark Contrast

My second slum experience was not as magical as the first, though very educational.

Carole and I went with BRAC to visit their operations in the nearby slums of Korail, the largest in Dhaka.  BRAC is the largest NGO in the world, and has been instrumental to the development of Bangladesh in many ways.  We got a sample of their work as we walked through the massive slums, home to some 300,000 inhabitants.  Sitting in on a microfinance group meeting was an interesting contrast to Grameen Bank's in the village, though the mechanics were similar.  Close by was a section of the slum that had been forcibly demolished by the government using bulldozers and arson.  We then went to a workshop at the maternity and child health clinic, where I learned of an injectable contraception that women prefer so as to hide it from their husbands.  Finally we visited a BRAC-run school with very well disciplined students.  Most of them wanted to be doctors.   

Everything was smoothly run, and the slum itself was in relatively good shape.  Like Dia Bari it was a dirty, corrugated tin jungle, but the similarities ended there.  In this labyrinth, avenues were lined with shops and markets, everything from food to telecoms and even barbershops.  There were drainage systems, and the electricity stolen from the grid powered the TV's in many shops.  It was a bustling neighborhood, and a far sight different from what I'd come to expect in a slum.  

It was plain to see that even within slums there is a huge difference in quality of life.  It seemed that BRAC was taking care of Korail quite well, and especially through microfinance families were working their way out of the poverty cycle, buying land in the village areas for retirement.  

I kept thinking about Dia Bari, and Sunni's sad smile. 

Dusty Dhaka

Into the Smog

Dhaka is a beast, easily taking the mantle from Kathmandu as the craziest city I've visited so far.

An estimated fifteen million people pack into the 360 square kilometers of Bangladesh's capital, a population that swells everyday with newcomers from rural areas.   Since I'm from the big city, I go in the other direction; a metropolis acts only as a hub to access parts of the country I'm more interested in visiting.  I wasn't exactly in Bangladesh for sightseeing though, so most of my time was spent in Dhaka, the centre of the country where all the action was.

Long before I stepped onto the street from my hotel, I could hear the cacophony of traffic outside.  Trucks and buses ruled the road, and on top of cars and motorcycles, CNG's and rickshaws battled for survival, jockeying for position while all incessantly blaring their horns.  My ears got used to it quickly, and I stopped noticing the concerto outside my window late into the night.  Still, on some days the din was enough to wear me out.  

Clouds are rare, but the sun regularly shines on the city through a perpetual haze.  The dust is everywhere, and has a life of its own.  Bangladesh's soil is dusty to begin with, during dry season you cannot escape it.  Adapting to this was a taller task.  After a day in Dhaka, even with a face mask on, I would blow my nose and it would come out black.  The first few weeks, it was often a struggle just to leave the hotel.  I could handle maybe two or three hours maximum in the city before I had to retreat back to my hole.

CNG taxis: caged chaos

I wasn't adventurous enough to take the buses.  They only performed rolling stops, passengers scrambling to get on or off while the bus maneuvered through traffic.  The one time I did sit on a bus, it hit a pothole so hard that I caught a two foot vertical of air off my seat.  More often than not, exploring Dhaka meant a ride in a CNG, a three-wheeled, caged tuktuk.  The drivers are fussy, you have to hail down at least two or three before you get a ride, depending on whether they're willing to go to that district.  There is a meter, but you have to negotiate a price beforehand.  Without fail, the driver reminded me that if police should stop us, that I should tell him that we're going by meter.  Otherwise (I presume) the police will give them trouble, pending a bribe.  

Though Dhaka is a small city, traffic clogs the roads.  The only exceptions were during the hartals, 'strike days' organized by the Islamist political party Jamaat to disrupt the government.  Hartal is more effectively translated as 'shutdown', and Jamaat forced the city to a standstill by the threat of violence and terrorism.  I enjoyed the first few hartals, because there'd be no traffic and it was good to be out and about.  By the fifth hartal though things were really getting dangerous, and reports of molotovs, burning vehicles and explosions kept me from taking advantage of the traffic conditions.     

During my first month in Dhaka, I stayed at the Grand Prince Hotel.  It was the closest hotel (never mind how many stars) in the vicinity of the Grameen complex, and most of the international visitors and interns were housed there.  In between my sorties outside of Dhaka, I occupied no less than six different rooms at the Grand Prince, and settled in as part of the neighborhood.  

Barefoot to the concrete

At first there were a number of reasons why I refused to give money to the hoppers, my name for the shoeless kids begging outside the hotel.  I gave them all props instead.  But after one freezing night when they shouldn't have been out on the street, I gave them their 'quota' for the night so they could go home.  After that I kept a stack of two-taka notes at all times, ready to hit up the hoppers.  The only thing I couldn't stand (literally) was when they grabbed onto my leg, not allowing me to walk.  One night they refused my money and asked for food instead, so I bought them some sweets.  If I had fruit with me, I'd give them a choice: money or fruit.  

Letting It Settle

So far, Bangladesh is the only country where I don't look like a local.  Everywhere else, it's been relatively easy to blend in without catching the attention that attaches to Europeans.  There are pros and cons, but I try to make the situation work.  In the newer, more commercial parts of the Dhaka like Gulshan district, there were more foreigners, along with big banks and brand names.  Mirpur, where I lived, was far less polished with a gritty local character that I came to appreciate.  I picked up some basic Bengali along the way, learning enough to negotiate, direct rickshaws and follow the general gist of conversations.    

It took a while to get used to the dirtiness, but I did get used to it.  When I started out from Hong Kong, everything I owned seemed too clean and new.  I happily accumulated dirt until Dhaka, when it became too much.  The week spent in the slums didn't help.  While I tried to maintain personal hygiene, it was an adjustment of  standards to fit this new environment.  I didn't shower daily (lack of hot water or otherwise), but I did wash my hands and face multiple times throughout the day.  Garbage littered the landscape, to be burnt in trash heaps at night for warmth.  Though I felt guilty about it at first, I ended up littering everywhere.  When in Rome.

I'd read about the huge strides made by the women of Bangladesh through microfinance and the garments industry, but the daily reality spoke differently.  A conservative Muslim culture clearly dictated gender roles.  After dark, Dhaka was a city of men; the women stayed home at night, regardless of age.  There were exceptions to this rule, but not many.  Very sad.

It was a no-brainer to move into an apartment once I extended my visa;  it cost one quarter of what I was paying at the hotel.  Nahid introduced a roommate quick: one of the guys at Yunus Centre named Tanbir had a wife and son, but was living with his in-laws and wanted a place closer to work.  We found a house even quicker, putting down a deposit in two hours.  

Space was ample in the 3-bedroom, 3-bathroom, double balcony flat.  Even the address was boss: Road 1, House 1, Flat A1, Mirpur-2.  Landlords usually rent to families and rarely to bachelors, but this became a non-issue as Tanbir has a family.  I couldn't have rented for just one month on my own, but Tanbir was willing to take the place for three months.  He filled the house with his own furniture, including a large bed and sofa for my room.  A domestic helper that came in every other day.  The kicker was that, because Tanbir was a family man, he couldn't really leave his family.  The entire three weeks I was there, he managed to sleep in his room once, instead coming over after work to hang out for an hour or so before heading home.  I couldn't have imagined a sweeter housing situation.

The Gamechanger

Once I moved in, the first order of business was extermination.  There was an uneasy truce with the mosquitoes while I was at Grand Prince, but this was my house, and I wasn't going to be terrorized.  The cockroaches also had to go.  In the first two days, I must've killed 200 mosquitoes by physical then chemical means.  Once I powdered the kitchen, 21 cockroaches turned up dead or dying the next morning.  

The roaches were big and ugly but stupid.  By far my deadliest enemy was the mosquito, and once I got an electrified swatter, it was on.  Every night was a glorious battle, and I kept score.  These little suckers were organized and extremely intelligent, coming at me using guerrilla tactics.  Like ninjas, they preferred to hide until I settled down to use the computer, then sneak up and bite my toe or any exposed skin.  They would also escape via subterfuge, instead of flying into open air and getting fried.  They certainly won my grudging respect, if not their lives.  It was a matter of survival, and I didn't sleep soundly until I killed every single one.    

The new neighborhood was much quieter than around Grand Prince, but no less dusty.  Options for food were even more limited, and I ended up averaging 1.5 meals a day.  By this time I could eat whatever the locals ate (mostly) and drink the water they drank.  It was more a combination of food stalls closing early, and my laziness.  

All things considered, it was comforting to finally stay in one place I could call my own, to fall into a bit of routine.  I even hosted a Chinese New Year / housewarming party, with a CNY birthday cake and popping bags of muri.  Last time I had my own apartment was over six years ago in Toronto, and I've never lived on my own.  Maybe because of this, Dhaka started feeling like home, and I was sorry to go. 

Ridin' in my Rickshaw