The streets of Dhaka are eerily quiet

We are now in the middle of the Eid holidays and the streets of Dhaka are unbelievably quiet, in fact many of the smaller streets and roads are virtually deserted, it's rather eerie. However, it certainly makes going for a walk much easier, and I am enjoying the peaace and quiet, with all the horns honking, sirens wailing and thousands of people, Dhaka streets are normally very load.

On the way home from work on Tuesday, my driver hit yet another car. I can not remember a single journey that I have had with him as driver when we haven't managed to hit a car, or a pedestrian, or a rickshaw, the difference this time was that the entire front bumper was ripped off, thus making the car pretty much undriveable for the long weekend, so happy I am Not. In fact I was so angry with him by the time we got back to the guest house, that I could hardly talk to him. He obviously knew that this was the end of his job, which is hard, because it's not as if he meant it and jobs are so hard to come by, but he came to me saying he was a good driver and knew his way around Dhaka very weel, neither of which are true. He came to the guest house this morning saying that he would pay to have the damage repaired, which I rejected because the vehicle belongs to ICDDR,B and so all repairs must be done through their contractors. He asked me about his job, and all I could tell him was that it wasn't working out and so I would pay him what he was owed up to Tuesday, and that he would need to find another job - not nice, but necessary as I need to feel safe when being driven around, and I sure didn't with Hala at the wheel.

So, without a car to go driving anywhere, I went for a long walk this morning, through a part of the city, that I have been through before, but only by car never on foot, and so it gave me the opportunity to see things that you miss when driving, take some photos (see below) and smell the nice and not so nice smells of big dirty Dhaka.

Believe it or not, there is a lake beneath this carpet of green (you can just see some water between the buildings at the very end in the last photo). This is actually the other end of Banani Lake, which is the lake in the photos on my previous post.

 

This photo shows the beautiful colours that so many of the Bangladesh women and children wear, which outrages many of the Muslim clerics, because the Quran says that women must dress in a manner that does not bring undue attention to themselves, meaning, no bright colours, not too tight, and only the face and hands uncovered.

 

Walking the streets of Dhaka can be very dangerous because in addition to trying not to get run over by a ricksahw, car, bus or truck; there are numerous trip, slip and fall hazrds, including almost every manhole and pit cover either missing completly as in this shot, or so badly broken that you dare not step on them. Believe me, you do not want to fall into one of these holes, many of which are very deep (I estimated this one to be about 3 metres to the water below), and contain stuff that you really don't want to be swimming in.

 

When you hear people say that the bus drivers in Bangladesh are the worst in the world, they are not exagerating. Many of them are driven by kids as young as 13 or 14 years who have no understanding of road rules let alone a drivers licence. It is estimated that up to 20,000 people die every year on Bangladesh roads, many of these in buses. It's a huge problem that is getting more dificult by the day, and the government is not only sanctioning what goes on, they are a part of it. One of the senior ministers was recently found to have issued almost 50,000 licences to people without any test, and some of who were as young as 12 years old, but he excused it by saying that so long as they can tell the difference between a goat and a person, what else does a driver need to know. To make matters worse every time, the government or police try to do something, the bus and truck operators all go on strike, forcing the government to back off. The bus in this photo is believe it or not a highway coach, and in comparison to many of the buses on the road is in reasonable condition. At least it has most windows intack, has lights (whether they work or not is another matter), and does not look like it has yet been rolled over. Note also the 'Exclusive Business Class' sign on the rear window, imagine if it was Economy Class?

 

Unlike in the west, where buses stop on the side of the road to drop off and pick up passenger, in Dhaka, they literally stop anywhere on the road, frequently in the middle of multi lane main roads such as in this photo which is very near to the entrance of the ICDDR.B centre where I work. This is a very quiet day, but on a normal working day, there are literally hundreds of buses and rickshaws all stopping at this spot which is where 3 main raods all converge - it is a nightmare.

 

Some more photos of buses, which apart from again showing the wonderful condition of buses in Bangladesh, also gives an idea of how many people they manage to cram inside; again remembering this is a very quiet day, on a normal day it is not unusual to see people on the roof and hanging out of the windows. All women and children must stand at the front of the bus) even if there are spare seats or standing space at the rear), which of course means that in the event of a head on collision (very frequent), they are the first to die (good to see chivalry at work). Note also the Bus wallers who hand out the door of the bus, taking peoples fare money, dragging them onto the bus while still moving, and indicating to other vehicles what the bus is doing e.g., turning or stopping, or just coming into your lane so back off. They are aamazing adept at what they do, but they probably have a life expectancy less than a tail gunner on a WW2 bomber.

 

There are 3 things that Bangladesh has an almost endless supply of; sand, water, and people; and as such pretty much everything involves at least 1 of these 3 things in some form or another. For instance the only thing available as land fill is sand, which means that half of Bangladesh is built on a sand foundation, and with the exception of traditional thatched huts, most other buildings are constructed using bricks. It is amazing how many uses bricks have in Bangladesh, because apart from their obvious use they are also used to fill potholes by crushing them up and mixing with sand, and because Bangladesh has almost no stone, they area also broken up and used as aggregate in concrete and asphalt. And beacuse of the abundance of people, everything is done manually, including the crushing of brick and rock for aggregate. The streets sre full of brick crushers such as the lady in the photo. Note all of the full bags of brick chips beside her.

 

 I forgot, the other thing that Dhaka has no shortage of is garbage, and because the system of garbage removal is rudimentary to say the least, it is just thrown into the streets and waterways and just builds up into big piles on virtually every street. The Dhaka City Corporation pays rickshaw pushers to go around collecting what they can. They then take it to central dumpng points (still on the street), where it is shovelled into trucks and taken awy, or at least most of it is. The one saving grace is that almost everything has some recyclable value, which means that all of the piles of garbage are picked clean of anything worth anything (plastic bottles, cans, any sort of metal, clean paper etc), which reduces the amount of garbage at least a little bit. These photos show what the rubbish in the streets looks like, the rickshaw garbage bins, and the bigger garbage trucks. Not pretty and smells bloody horrible.

These are some photos of Gulshaan 2 Circle, which is Dhaka's equivalent to New York's Time Square and London's Piccadilly Circus. It's very close to the apartment that I am looking at renting.

 

 These photos show how deserted the strets are over the Eid holiday (it was really weird walking around). The last one is Dhaka's version of a road house.

 

This is Wonderland, Dhaka's Dreamworld. It is the only place of it's type in Dhaka, which makes it extremely popular with families on weekends and holidays. It's a sad excuse for an amusement park, but better than nothing. Unfortunately like so many other things, they just don't have the money to keep anything maintained.

 

These photos of Gulshan Aven ue which links the city centre with the posh residential areas of Gulshan, Banani, and Baridahra. It also runs through Dhaka's financial centre.  The last photos is of the Westin Hotel, which is a 5 star hotel (rooms start at $300 per night).

These photos show an area behind Gulshan which is being filled in (with sand of course) to build on. The filling in of all these areas is one of the reasons that Dhaka is suffering much more from flooding now than ever before (the water has no where to go, and far too little storm water drainage is put in because of the cost).