Eid Mubarak!

Yesterday was the Muslim festival Eid al-Adha, that is, the "Festival of the Sacrifice." In essence it is the celebration of Ibrahim's (Abraham in Christian and Jewish theologies) willingness to trust utterly in Allah in sacrificing his own son, Ismail (Ishmael) only to find that he had in fact slit the throat of a goat instead of his beloved only son. There are a couple of good wiki pages out there with further reference on Eid al-Adha and Ibrahim's sacrifice if you want to find out more, but I'd rather blog about what this has meant for me, personally.

There has been great changes in Dhaka city over the last few days. Many streets in the heart of the city have become cattle markets, where families can buy a cow, goat or other livestock, for them to sacrifice to Allah. (This has not been easy for me to live with.*) Some of these animals are huge and would easily dwarf a regular English sized cow. They also, somewhat strangely have humps on their backs, just behind their shoulders. The animals have been shipped in on huge yellow lorries, to be sold from the street corners. There are white ones, brown ones, big ones and small, but all are eventually sold for people to take back to their houses, where (at least in my neighbourhood) they are tied up to a convenient tree and closely looked after, day and night, by the residents; fed, watered and cleaned before eventually being dressed up with colourful garlands around their necks, horns and humps to celebrate the sacrifice.

The meat does not go to waste after the sacrifice. There are quite strict rules as to how the meat is divided up between the family, the extended family and the poor, with each being given it's equal third of the meat. Around 5pm yesterday, about an hour before sunset, there was a great commotion in the streets around my apartment, with young children and mothers running and shouting trying to find the next house that was performing the sacrifice, in the hope of acquiring a small portion of the third allocated to the poor.

Today I ventured out to Gulshan in the hope of picking up some bread and washing up liquid, which despite most of the shops being closed today, I did eventually manage to do. On my travels I noticed three important things. Firstly, it was extraordinarily quiet. I had heard that many families leave the city and travel to the villages of their roots for Eid, but it really was very very empty in town. Secondly, that with the small exception of a very occasional pedestrian walking the suburbs with a bag of meat, that you really wouldn't know that anything important had happened yesterday at all. And finally, that once into the centre of Gulshan, near the shops, it was immediately apparent that nothing from these sacrificial animals is wasted, as on every street corner there was a pile of bloodied hides waiting to be bought and made into shoes, or bags or maybe a new rickshaw seat.

* I'm not going to even pretend to understand the theology or doctrine behind what I have seen happening over the last few days. I'm not going to ignore it either; indeed it would be futile to try. As a westerner and a vegetarian, the idea of sacrificing an animal seems to me very unconscionable. However, as an expat, one is always challenged by cultural differences, and one needs to learn to accept them for what they are; deep seated ways of life that to the native Bangladeshi's are nothing out of the ordinary and just the way things are.

Elephant in the Road

Just a quickie....

A few days ago, I was riding the bus home from work, just as I usually do, when we passed an elephant in the road. Yup, an elephant. I don't think that this city will ever cease to amaze me! It seems like almost every day I see something even more bazaar than the last, stretching my perceptions of what it is like to live in Dhaka. I will, of course blog lots more about all the other stuff that amazes me, but for now, I think seeing an elephant in the road is amazing enough, isn't it? So, anyway, there was this elephant. Unfortunately, we had passed it and gone before I had time to get my phone out of my pocket and snap a picture, so a description will have to suffice. I will do my best.

The elephant was standing by the roadside, mounted by a bearded man with a large stick, which he presumably used to control, punish or direct his elephant. Gathered around the elphant were many men, talking to each other, but none seemed as excited by the presence of the elephant as I was. To them it was obviously commonplace, which in itself seemed strange to me. There were no Police around, and nobody seemed to be in any way put out by the fact that there was an elephant standing at the side of the road. One might have even expected a gathering of curious children, but no. It would seem that I was the only person who found the whole sight in any way remarkable.

The following day at work I just happened to mention it to a few people, in as casual a manner as one might possible be able to when actually rather flabberghasted by the whole affair. And it seems that many of them had heard about the man with the elephant, and a few even seen him before. So it would seem that actually I am the odd one out here, and it really is quite commonplace to see an elephant on the streets of Dhaka. However, it seems that the elephant is quite unique, and furthermore, that the elephant in question was previously a circus animal and is quite tame. The elephant is apparently still a working animal, in that the bearded man makes his money using the huge animal to perform quiet a simple but lucrative task. He rides the elephant out into the road, thereby stopping the traffic and charges what is termed by the locals as "Elephant Tax" for him to move the animal back out of the way and let the traffic move once more! Now I really am flabberghasted!

A New Big City

Dhaka is a huge city. Well, it's pretty huge by my standards. Most of the cities that I've lived in, worked in, or just had the opportunity to visit through my life so far have been kind of small cities. Even the fantastic Lisboa, which I lived so close to for three years, is tiny in comparison to Dhaka. Wiki currently quotes the population of Lisbon at about 550 thousand people; a mere drop in the ocean compared to the 15 million people living currently in Dhaka. And having all those people living all together in one big city means that you really do feel the enormity of it all.

Of course with so many people needing to get to work, or school, to the shops or just running the odd errand, there needs to be a strong transport infrastructure to get all those people moving. You may well have seen the pictures of trains and buses that are so full that people are sitting on the roof, but until you've actually witnessed it for real, in the moment, it is difficult to believe that it actually happens. The buses are old, beaten up and scarred, wounded from a thousand scrapes, patched over and over with recycled sheet metal from other things. The lights are gone, and the holes where they were patched over with more sheet metal. In some, the windows have long disappeared, never to be replaced. I'm told that travelling on a bus here is quite an experience; one that personally, I'm not in such a hurry to try out!

Further down the Wiki page, Dhaka is described as "The Rickshaw Capital of the World" with 400 thousand rickshaws working the streets of Dhaka every day. They are everywhere, on every road, street and back alley. Some of them are fantastically decorated, most are obviously well used, and all are driven by very lean, hard working men. And these men are fearless. Or possibly mad. They drive these rickety rickshaws around the city, ferrying people from A to B, fearlessly dodging their way between the cars, trucks and buses, trying to make a living. Of course my kids absolutely love traveling by rickshaw. I'm sure that the novelty will wear off sooner or later?

Rickshaws and buses aren't the only way to travel in Dhaka though. You could always take a CNG (which stands for Compressed Natural Gas) to get you to your chosen destination. These are basically a cross between a Rickshaw and a Reliant Robin, having a small motor and (so I'm led to believe) scary manual brakes! Again this really isn't something that I'm in a hurry to try. Being trapped inside one of those green cages while darting between the other traffic just simply doesn't appeal!

With 15 million people to transport around the city it is inevitable that the traffic is often slow, stationary and even gridlocked in "rush" hour. Junctions of course are the worst (and easiest) areas to get caught in traffic, where cars, buses, rickshaws and CNG's run nose to tail with barely enough room between for pedestrians to cross the roads. Horns sound in a chorus, with little result other than to make a noise, and yet somehow, the traffic keeps moving through, creeping, weaving, dodging in and out until the junction is passed.

Of course, I'm told by many that the traffic right now is easy and generally not too bad. "Wait until Eid," they say, "when everyone is out celebrating, visiting family or just trying to get in or out of Dhaka. That's when it's really bad." The next Eid (festival) coming up is Eid al-Adha, which this year falls on October 4th in the Gregorian calendar, so not long to wait to find out!

A New Big Adventure

When I moved to Portugal I had a well thought out vision for the future. I thought at the time, and proudly told people too, that it would be for life. That I would move there, find a job and set down roots (hence the tree related pen name!) for a new and long life in Portugal. I had these visions of the future where, many years from now, my wife and I had retired in Portugal, out in the countryside and my children would all come on holiday to visit us.

Well, it seems that Fate has a different plan up her sleeve. Bangladesh. One thing is for certain, it is going to be oh so different from Portugal. I've seen pictures and videos on the internet and it all looks very busy and bustling in Dhaka, which is where we'll be heading out to in just over a month's time.

As you'll know from my old Portugal blog, my family and I are part way through getting our tropical vaccinations done, but there are still more to do. In about a fortnight's time, our second dose of jabs are due and the remaining ones for the kids that missed out on the first time round because the Pharmacist didn't have them in stock. But we're up to full speed on how that all works now, so it should (with luck) all go smoothly.

But that's just the start...

There's shipping to organise. Most of our worldly goods will be going on ahead, in a shipping container by boat and will take about six weeks to get there. We've found a company to do the removal, had a home visit (to assess the volume) and a couple of emails but that is that.  For that we need to get organised, since there is a requirement with Customs that we supply a full list of all the items that will be shipped, in Portuguese, for Customs leaving Portugal, and also in English for the Customs Office on arrival in Dhaka. We then need to arrange it all in our house so that we can easily tell the packers what needs loading up, and what does not. And all of that means that we actually have to decide for ourselves what needs to be sent on ahead, what we can take in suitcases on the plane and what needs to be sold off or thrown out.

Suitcases? Oh yes, we'll need some new ones. I remember when we moved to Portugal that at least one of our cases at that time arrived in a somewhat worse condition than it left England. I'm not completely sure how many survived that trip in good enough condition to now make it all the way to Bangladesh, and so we have some choices to make. Do we buy expensive new ones in the hope that "you pay for what you get" and that by doing so we are investing in new suitcases that will not only get us to Bangladesh but also see us through next year's obligatory holiday to Blighty? Or do we hit the basement in the Chinese Shop in Cascais, buy cheaper ones and risk that they will be "One Trip Wonders"? And how many to buy? And what size? It's a minefield out there!

Of course one of the big things to do is sell our car. Last week I set up an advert on Stand Virtual (which is like Portugal's version of Exchange and Mart), but aside from the initial couple of enquiries that were clearly trade offers, not one single interested private buyer as yet. I did set the price at the high end of what I believe to be a good price for the car, expecting to have potential customers haggle it down, but alas, I think the time has come to lower the advertised price. It will truly be a sad state of affairs if it doesn't sell and I am forced into flogging it off dirt cheap to a car showroom for half of it's true value. This is unfortunately a harsh reality for Expats in Portugal, in that it can be difficult to sell your car when trying to leave Portugal.

Then we also have to tidy up the Portuguese loose ends with the taxman and the social security, after all, I don't want to at some point in the future find a letter in my mailbox, having taken 6 months traversing through various international postal systems, informing me (after I have Google Translated it!) that I have 15 days to pay a large fine for not following the correct procedure before leaving Portugal. Perhaps I'm exaggerating, but who knows, I mean really, who knows this kind of stuff? I know people that have left Portugal, and as with these kind of things, everyone has their own experience. The trick is, or so it would seem, to build up a comprehensive knowledge base of as many different people's personal experiences as possible by polling as many expats and locals as you possibly can, and then carefully sift through the plethora of conflicting information, filtering out what you need. Or, maybe I'll just take a trip down to the Finanças office with a good book and  take a numbered ticket.

The Last Post

Hello Again! It's nice to be back!

"Back? But this is the first blog post? I'm confused," I hear you say. Well, yes, and no. It is the first post on my Bangladesh blog, but most of you will no doubt realise that this is a continuation of my blogging career after my old blogging escapades through my life in Portugal.

Either way, if you knew me before, or are a first timer reading my blog(s), I wish you a hearty welcome and hope that you stick around for a while and check up now and then on my goings on, inane dribbling and occasional photo blogs. I can't guarantee any kind of regularity to my posts, so you'll just have t keep coming back now and then and checking up on me.

But before I get lost in my new life in Bangladesh, I have one final post (coming up very shortly) that I wrote in Portugal and never somehow managed to get around to clicking on the Publish button before everything else about moving to Bangladesh just became so enormously terribly urgent and important. So, read on, for one final time, about the last few weeks of my Life in Portugal, before we move swiftly and deftly on into my new life as an Expat in Bangladesh.