After just a short time here, I
am about to leave. So, as usual I am doing a newsletter before going to the next
country.
Before coming here I met a couple of people who had just recently visited
Bangladesh. When I asked them what they could recommend they burst out laughing,
not a good sign. They did mention a couple of interesting things, but the gist
was that they thought Bangladesh more of an experience type of place and less of
a sightseeing one. With this in mind I made way to East Bengal. Getting here was
quite easy, involving just a short, but uncomfortable train journey from
Calcutta to the Bangladeshi border. After passing through Indian and Bangladeshi
immigration formalities I caught a couple of buses to get to Khulna in the south
west of the country. Khulna is at the top of the Sundarbans, the largest
littoral mangrove forest in the world. Apparently quite interesting to visit,
unfortunately though too expensive as there was no other with which to split the
cost of boat hire, so that got skipped. I did visit Bagerhat though, an area
with the greatest concentration of historical buildings in Bangladesh, all
mosques or tombs. A couple of them were quite nice, most were not very
impressive and I didn’t think it boded well for the historical sites of the
country. The crocodiles that live in the area were nowhere to be seen either.
From Khulna I got a couple of
buses, much more comfortable than any in India, to Dhaka and then straight away
from Dhaka to Chittagong in the South East of the country. One advantage of
Bangladesh being that it is not very big at all, so getting from one place to
another doesn't take very long.
From Chittagong, which is not a
very attractive place itself, I went to Rangamati a town set on a lake man made
with a number of islands, inhabited by some of the hill tribes. It was in this
area that a Briton and two Danes were abducted and held for a month in
February/March 2001. As a result there is heightened military and political
sensitivity, with checkpoints on the way in and out of the area, where tourists
must register as they enter and leave the Chittagong hill tracts. It was on this
bus that I had the most unexpected experience in Bangladesh, namely meeting
another tourist, not only this but coincidentally having the seat next to him on
the bus. There are very few people who visit Bangladesh for tourism, as an
example the previous occidentals registered with the checkpoints on the way in
to the Hill Tracts had come through two weeks prior to us. So, Craig the
Australian bushman I had met and I wandered around Rangamati and found a boatman
who would take us around the lake for a reasonable price. He took us to a number
of islands where the hill tribes live in his incredibly noisy little diesel
craft. It was interesting to see not only the villages where these people lived
etc. and seeing them pick fruit, fishing etc. but most interesting to see the
ethnic difference here. This was the end of the Indian sub-continent and the
beginning of South East Asia. The tribal people being of Tibeto-Burmese
ethnicity, as opposed to the Dravido-Aryan ethnicity of the sub-continent. It is
unusual to be able to see such stark contrast I such a small distance. The lake
was pleasantly scenic and the people nice enough as well, but after a few hours
it was enough. We went back to Rangamati, had a look around town a bit more and
then got the bus back to Chittagong.
The next day we went for what was quite possibly one of the more bizarre outings
I have done, but also probably the high point of my experiences of Bangladesh.
We visited the ship-breaking yards. This is a long stretch of beach with
super-tankers and container ships run aground, being stripped by the minions of
Bangladeshi breakers. The only other places I am aware of where this is also
done is Karachi (Pakistan) and Gujurat (India) as it is only practicable in
places where the labour cost is extremely low and the health and safety
considerations are almost non-existent. It is a difficult scene to try and
describe. Huge hulks of ships in various states of dismemberment, some that only
just arrived merely have numerous ant-like people scurrying over the carcasses
scavenging anything left on board as well as all the fixtures and fittings,
which are then put into huge piles of urinals / doors / windows / etc. The beach
is littered with ships funnels, sheets of steel, etc. and filthy workers with
Oxy-acetylene torches cutting up the last bits. The boats are in various stages
of being stripped, some with only a few sheets of steel so far removed by the
men with the torches others where the only parts that remain are the massive aft
sections that are slowly being pulled towards the beach by massive winches, for
the final sejunction. There are skeletons of ships, that for some reason seem to
have been stripped of everything, but the central structure and a bit of the
hull, so they look like massive steel racks.
After wandering over the beach
for while, we managed to find someone who was willing to take us out in his
row-boat so we could get up close to the boats and see them from the sea. The
boatman was not very pleasant and did not really show us what we wanted to see,
so when another guy with a motor-boat came alongside we jumped into his boat to
get a proper tour. He took us around the ships and a out to sea far enough that
we could see how far the boats stretched away for. From this vantage it was also
possible to see where the boats were from Lemasol (Cyprus), Monrovia (Liberia),
Detroit and New Orleans (USA), Nassau (Bahamas) amongst others. One of the
unfortunate side effects of this industry is the amount of pollution that goes
into the sea, with oil slicks lapping the beaches. One of the more disturbing
images of the excursion was to see young children wading and swimming through
the oil slick, trying to catch some fish, with oil on their faces and clothes.
Even if they did catch any fish there, it would no doubt be extremely unhealthy
to eat, but they don’t have the luxury of being fussy.
We then wandered through the
various emporia that lined the highway, selling various things from the ships
including but not limited to: Life jackets, Fire-proof asbestos suits, winches,
helmets, lifeboats, sonar, radar, metal-working lathes, standing drills,
compasses, foghorns, telephones, lifeboat radio bags, instruction manuals, life
rings, paddles, oars, rope, chains, toilets, urinals, video recorders, tape
recorders, televisions, radios, basins, washing machines, posters, safety signs,
bottles, lifeboat food rations, water rations, toilet paper, corn flakes,
paintings, cutlery, windows, crockery, safety manuals, video cassettes
(including “recording marine incidents” and various Greek films), overalls,
braces, harnesses, belts, assorted fastenings, refrigerators, crates, chess
sets, backgammon boards, hydrostatic release valves, clocks, gauges, dustbins,
gas masks, buckets, nets, tarpaulins, scuba equipment, oxygen bottles, lanterns,
lights, torches, search lights, mooring posts, pulleys, gears, batteries,
magazines, engines, exercise equipment, metal stairways, glass, hoses, doors,
gloves and a lot of scrap metal. It was as interesting walking around this
paraphernalia as the boats themselves. It did however beg the question ?who did
they expect to sell this stuff to, as we were the only people looking around it
and we had almost no interest in buying anything. So after spending some time
perusing the wares we hitch-hiked back to Chittagong, where we had a bite to eat
before getting a bus to Dhaka.
Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh
has managed to attain the unenviable position of the worlds most polluted city.
This is made all the more impressive by the fact that the rest of the country
has almost zero pollution being lush and verdant. I have only been here a couple
of days, but already have a sore throat from the noxious air.
Craig and I went around the city
looking at various bits, we tried to find the Liberation museum, but were
unsuccessful, but we did however find huge piles of rubbish and a number of
abandoned cars, as well as flooded streets. Although there had been only
moderate rain over the previous day, some roads were more submerged, it makes
one empathise with how the country suffers during the monsoon season which will
be coming soon. Many of those roads that weren't submerged had a thick putrid
slime of mud and waste on, making it particularly unpleasant to walk through.
We decided to visit Lalbagh
fort, apparently Dhaka's premier tourist attraction. This is not a very big or
impressive fort, but is an island of calm amongst the tumult and noise of Dhaka.
Some of the Bangladeshi tourists were more interested in us than the fort, and
we were photographed and filmed as we wandered around. The main clientele of the
place seemed to be courting couples walking around the grounds. From there we
walked down through the side streets to the bazaar area. As we were walking
through the bazaar, a man walked past with a massive bulbous elephant shaped
foot, something I had previously not seen. The bazaar was as hectic as any other
in the third world, but the people more curious about Craig and I than most
other places I had been, walking up and staring at us or shouting Bondur (we
thought it meant foreigner, actually I later found out it means friend), to
retaliate, we would go up to them and stare at them and shout Bangladeshi at
them, some took this in good humour, others freaked out and ran away. We visited
the Armenian church, the oldest church in Bangladesh, built in 1624 for the
small but influential Armenian community. The custodian of the place told us all
about its history and about the community. We then went to see the artisans
making conch shell jewellery in Hindu street, where they cut and carve the
shells into rings and bracelets and file patterns on them. We then went to the
Pink Palace which was closed for some undisclosed holiday, but where we met some
Bangladeshi women who spoke English and invited us to join them for a boat trip.
We all boarded the small boat and the boatman propelled us through the water at
some surprising speed, considering he only had one paddle and used it in similar
vein to a Venetian gondolier. The trip was only for about ten minutes, so we
decided to hire him for a proper tour, the Bangladeshis disembarked and we went
up river.
Further up river one could see ridiculously overloaded boats. Many of the boats
were so overloaded that the water was actually lapping over the deck and the
boatmen had actually moved the controls on top of the wheel houses. These boats
were so precariously low in the water that I’m sure all it would take is one
reasonable sized wave to go over the deck to sink them, but we didn’t see that
happen, although I’m sure if we waited around long enough we would have. We
also saw something neither of us had ever previously seen, people breaking up
the bottom of the new, soon to be opened, concrete bridge that spans the river
and stealing the rock. Bangladesh has almost no rock anywhere, so rocks are
valuable here for use in aggregate. There was a cow bobbing along upside down
with an exploded stomach next to the ship repair yards, where it seemed the
steel from the ship-breaking yards was being used to keep aged vessels afloat.
After seeing them working on these boats we paid closer attention to all the
others and realised they were all patchworks of steel, there didn’t appear to
be one boat on the river that hadn’t been extensively rebuilt. After each
having an unsuccessful attempt at trying to row the boat we went back to
Sadarghat, where we had started from and tried to head back towards our hotel.
The traffic on the way back was so horrendous (the main reason for the horrific
pollution) that after a short while we decided it would be quicker to walk. This
also gave us the opportunity to stop and chat with the hundred or so riot police
waiting to get violent with the people gathered for some political rally. We
considered taking the stage ourselves, but decided against it as we would
probably insight a riot.
Craig has now left back to India and I am off to Myanmar in a couple of days. I
plan to try and see a couple more things here, including the national museum and
Pink Palace, but they were closed again today.
Bangladesh has been a peculiar
but enjoyable experience. It is somewhere that has so few tourists, that there
is almost no tourist infrastructure as a result. The locals, even in the big
cities find seeing white people so novel that they will stop and stare and shout
Bondur at the top of their voices, to make sure everyone else notices there are
aliens afoot. This can be a bit annoying, but at the same time it has a certain
charm. The people don’t realise they are sometimes being rude, but are so
overcome with this new experience that they just gather in packs around one,
just to see and here the Bondur. It does however get one better service in
places, when I went to the barber I didn’t have to queue, on the bus the
locals will give up their seat for the white man, and when the bus stopped for a
snack stop en route to Chittagong, Jerry the Bangladeshi who had been sat next
to me would not allow me to pay for what I had had, as I was a guest. When the
light in my hotel room started flickering madly, I called the room boy to sort
it out, he said it was too late in the evening to do anything, so I called down
to reception to see if they could sort it out. They didn’t understand what I
was talking about so they brought a businessman who spoke English up with them
to help with the translation, they saw the problem but also said it was too late
to do anything, whereupon the businessman unleashed a tirade of abuse at them,
telling them ¡°He is a guest in our country, fix it now!¡± which they then
managed to do. So, this aspect of being something unusual here has had its
benefits and drawbacks, but ultimately it has been that, that has made the
experience more special. This is one of the more unusual countries I have been
to, but I have enjoyed it. Although I would have only been here for ten days, I
don’t actually feel I have too much more to see here and to be honest I could
quite easily see the place becoming wearisome after much more time, but I am
pleased I came here, if only to satisfy my curiosity about the place.
______________________
In Myanmar there is no internet
access, as far as I am aware, so you will probably not hear from me until I get
to the other side.
Seeing as I am unlikely to have
internet access in Myanmar, and have more bits to add to my Bangladeshi
newsletter, I have decided to do so this evening, for my peace of kind, if not
yours.
So, what could have happened
that required me to go to the effort of writing about it, nothing revolutionary,
but a couple of interesting bits, or at least I thought so.
Yesterday after spending some
time e-mailing you my first "Bangladeshi Breakdown" I wandered through
Gulshan, which is the wealthier bit of town. What I was looking for in
particular was some shops that sell the end of the garment lines being produced
here. Bangladesh's biggest export is apparel, being one of the biggest producers
of clothing in the world. This includes many of the brand names you are familiar
with (Calvin Klein, Polo, Lee, Wrangler, Mizuno, Burtons, Wilson, Marks &
Spencer’s, etc.) and there are a few shops that have the privileged position
of selling the overflow of production runs to the public. Mostly the stuff goes
with the seconds and rejects to the markets, where it is more difficult to see
whether it is decent quality although cheaper. So, I went to Westecs, the best
known of these shops and browsed through all their stock (men's wear at least)
and came out with a pair of convertible utilitarian trousers and a couple of
t-shirts for about six and a half quid, not bad. If I had been in the market to
get some more respectable clothes, I could have bought a fair amount more as
there is quite some range.
I then headed along through
Gulshan and stumbled across the National Shooting Range, with police and
sportsmen doing their target practice. I asked if I could have a go and was told
that I could but not then, I would have to go back the next day. This I did,
just as they stopped for their lunch-break, bad timing again. There were some of
the Bangladeshi Olympic shooting team, who told me I could come back and shoot
on the ten-metre range at four o'clock. I thought that would be fun, but then
found out it would only be with air guns, a bit too tame for me, I wanted
something with more destructive capability, so I stood them up.
After having a fruitless search
for the Liberation War museum a few days ago, I decided to have another go at
finding it this morning. I had seen a picture of it on a notice board and
thought that might be useful in identifying the building. After wandering up and
down the street it is in, just a couple of times I eventually stumbled across
it, it had a big sign in front as well as military guards and colourful railings
in the street, how I hadn't noticed it previously is an enigma. The museum is
very good; it briefly charts the history of Bengal and the independence movement
and partition of India, but really gets going from partition onwards. It
describes how the war and independence movement came about and the atrocities
that took place during it. There are numerous newspaper clippings from the
international (particularly British) media as well as photos of all aspects of
the war (fighters, emaciated refugees, the politicians, carnage, women who have
just been raped and killed, children who have been torn apart - the being fed to
the dogs, mass graves, etc.) and artefacts and documentary evidence. One room
has a pile of skulls and skeletons atop ammunition boxes, all of which was
excavated from a mass grave. Needless to say, the whole exhibition is an
education. Without a doubt it is biased, but it is difficult to see what
justification the Pakistanis could give for any of what occurred.
For those who don’t know
anything about the history of Bangladesh (David, that's you), and therefore what
I am talking about, here is a brief summary of Bangladesh's history that may
help.
India underwent partition in
1947, as Jinnah wanted a separate Muslim state, so it was divided into India and
Pakistan. Pakistan consisting of an eastern and western part on opposite sides
of the sub-continent. The only thing in common between these two halves was
religion, they spoke different languages, ate different food, wore different
clothes, had totally different sources of income - basically very little in
common. West Pakistan (or the Pakistan as known today) was the dominant half of
the country with the political power resting there, which in turn steered
funding and aid towards the West Pakistanis and their infrastructure and almost
no money went towards the impoverished East Pakistanis who despite being the
agricultural producers did not reap the benefits in anyway, the tax revenues and
incomes going to West Pakistan. This understandably built up more than a little
resentment with the Bengalis (East Pakistanis) but there wasn't any major
outcry, yet. Then they were told that the only language for all of Pakistan
would be Urdu, a totally alien language to them, the equivalent of telling the
English we would all have to speak in Swahili. This provoked a big reaction from
the Bengalis who were unsurprisingly unimpressed with this new mandate. So in
1970, when the next prime ministerial election came, there was almost total
support in the east for the Bengali candidate, Sheikh Rahman. He won one hundred
and sixty-seven of the one hundred and sixty nine seats available to East
Pakistan and this meant that he actually had a majority in the Pakistani
government, which has a total of three hundred and twenty-four seats. This was
an unacceptable development for the West Pakistanis who did not want to lose
their political might and so the Pakistani president declared the vote null and
void and sent troops to East Pakistan to sort out the problem. The general in
charge of this action Gen. Tikka Khan was more commonly known by his nom de
guerre "The Butcher of Baluchistan" which later was changed to the
“Butcher of Bengal”. By his own admission, at least thirty-five thousand
intellectuals alone were killed, although the number is thought to be much
higher. By the end of what was a comparatively short war; millions of
guerrillas, politicians, intelligentsia, freedom fighters and civilians were
killed. This was reported in the international media, but the Vietnam War that
was also going on at the time took most of the attention away from the genocide
taking place in Bangla Desh (as it was originally known). There were some big
fund raisers - George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton and others held a
concert for Bangla Desh; Alan Ginsberg (the Beat poet) wrote a poem and a few
artists released records and the like for the cause. The Bangladeshis are
understandably a little peeved that several prominent Pakistanis have never been
indicted for war crimes despite the evidence against them (Gen. Khan went on to
become a provincial governor in Pakistan and then retired honourably).
The museum seems as much to be
about generating a feeling of national identity and solidarity as remembering
what took place in the war. Several of the Bangladeshis I have spoken with have
said that there is no sense of national identity here (being part of a divided
Bengal, divided India, a divided Pakistan, then finally it's own nation), which
means there is very little patriotism or even sense of belonging for many. A
simple example of this was when Craig (the Australian I spent a few days with
here) was going around the market trying to find a cap or hat with something
Bangladeshi on it. We found Pakistani cricket caps, American baseball caps, etc.
but amongst all the hundreds of different hats on offer there was nothing
Bangladeshi. This lack of national identity has mean that many of the more
educated, or those that simply have them opportunity, leave for India and other
countries where they see a greater chance of survival and prosperity.
After the Liberation War Museum,
I went to the National Museum, which is exceptionally good, perhaps even
surpassing the Indian museum in Calcutta. The exhibits cover: The environment;
agriculture (the largest proportion of the population are involved in
agriculture) and farming; geology; fauna (with displays of stuffed wildlife and
the skeleton of a humpback whale); an ivory collection - including some
beautifully intricately carved netsukes, a throne, chess set, tusks, etc. The
most unusual piece is a mat made of ivory, with fine threads delicately woven to
make a rather unique floor covering; armaments; a woodwork collection which
included some impressive pre-Islamic carvings as well as the largest beds I have
ever seen, the mattress of the larger one was at least four feet from the ground
and had more than twice the area of a king-size bed, as well as being
impressively carved and with a huge canopy hanging from its four posts;
porcelain; metalwork; embroidery; stone carvings from Hindu, Buddhist and
Islamic homes and holy sites; a Liberation War exhibit; and finally an
impressive art gallery. The art gallery was probably the biggest surprise as it
contained some quite interesting and impressive pieces and even had several
nudes (something one does not expect to see in a conservative, Muslim country).
From the museum, I went to the
firing range as mentioned above and then tried to use the diplomats duty free
shops, but to no avail. That was the biggest shame as they had a litre of
Napoleon Brandy for five dollars. I then headed down to the Pink Palace, home of
the Nawab of Dhaka, a powerful politician and magnate who died in 1915. His home
was left in disrepair until recently, but thanks to some photographs that were
taken in 1902, they have been able to not only restore the palace, but also to
have it appear as it did in it's heyday. It is an impressive time-warp back to
the time of the Raj and the few with unbelievable wealth, most of the stuff
would look entirely at home in an English stately home and that was the effect
the Nawab apparently desired, as he used to entertain viceroys and generals as
well as more lowly politicians and businessmen. Once again there were impressive
items on show, the strangest and most memorable being crystal chairs, that look
to fragile to sit on, and an octagonal table the feet of which are stuffed
tortoises.
Otherwise I have just been pottering around through the insufferable traffic and
pollution sorting various bits out and tomorrow morning if all goes to plan
should be heading to Myanmar, finally leaving the sub-continent.
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