Ey, Rickshaw! - 165 days in Dhaka

Freitag, 20. Mai 2011

Put yourself in their place

If you like animals, don't visit Dhaka Zoo. I like animals, except the ugly ones. My visit to the Dhaka Zoo was on the one hand caused by curiousity to see how it has changed over the last decade. And it was a weekend activity for the family.

Together with my little cousin Jarrar, family and a befriended family of ours we went to Mirpur, where the Dhaka Zoo is located near a Coca Cola botteling plant (yay!).

The zoo is run by a government ministry, probably the cause why it is so bad. The entrance is crowded with little stalls that remind of a street fair. Quite fun to see all the stuff you can buy at the zoo: from kitchen aids to plastic jewelry and balloons. The animal housing is poor and has nothing fancy to it. Therefore our visit ended in a walk, the viewing of some animals and was followed by a visit to the Botanic Garden "next door", where the picnic made up for our zoo visit.

Dhaka Zoo has changed. The cages are painted blue and green now.

10 Taka entrance fee only

Peanuts for humans, not for elephants

The red is a monkey butt, the brownish yellow are bananas

Jackfruit tree; can be seen at lots of public places. Tasty fruit.

Souvenir (stamp)

"You are mine"

One of the best things I've seen so far!!!

I doubt that anyone cares

You don't have to pay, to see this animal. It was just there.

Fat monkey and skinny monkey

Montag, 16. Mai 2011

Suit up at the "Tangail Saree House"

The "Tangail Saree House" at Bailey Road is pretty famous I was told. Well I don't know, since I don't wear any Sharees. And I really didn't have any intention to go there, I just went along for the ice cream afterwards (thanks mama).

A Sharee is a piece of cloth, really colorful with patterns. It comes in differents types of fabrics, colours and types of processing. With a length up to nine meters, the Sharee is wrapped around the hip and then draped over the shoulder. A matching blouse and pettycoat underneath complete the dress, which is typical for women in the South Asian region apart from the Shalwar Kameez. Let me give you some impressions, of how I don't walk around:

Donnerstag, 12. Mai 2011

Master of Ceremony

As some of you might know, I was invited to a school summerfest a few weeks ago. Not only was I some sort of chief guest, I was one of two people that was gifted a colorful ribbon, that looked like this:

Now imagine, you are dressed up properly, hold a speech and then are wearing something that looks like it was stolen from Alice's Wonderland.

Anyways. The basic function was to award students on their academic efforts as well as their achievements on competitions such as best poetry reader or fastest runner.

Sitting all the way up front and facing firstly pre-schoolers pulling hair and picking their nose was fun. The older students were sitting in the back, and the parents in the back back.

As I was informed two days prior, I wasn't only to smile and clap, I was supposed to wear a tie and hold a speech. Now wearing a tie was not the problem, the speech of some sort was. Speeches in Bangladesh are extremly formal in language, contain wise words and are hard to pronounce. Luckily I was introduced as the person, that doesn't speak properly (which I think is not true at all).

After all the speeches, that pre-schoolers somehow didn't really care about, came the fun part: the prizes. Apart from "Spiderman and Barbie pencil cases" and money stipends, kids were awarded - check this out - dishes!!! No joke. If a student did well, he or she might have ended up with a set of four plates for the family dinner table (one for fastest runner, one for best singer, one for most academic...).

All in all it was a fun experience to have joined these "festivities" with songs, recitations and mostly happy kids. Well, I guess I was the only one who didn't end up with a plate. But I got the colorful ribbon and a jute bag!