Living the Ex-Pat Life

Our last day in Bangladesh started with a tour of Shankhari Bazar. Anne has been working with two local architects to preserve this historical Hindu neighborhood, a narrow street full of artisans, vendors, Hindu shrines, and beautiful buildings used as tenements which are in danger of being torn down. This was the first part of our day hanging out with the embassy, NGO, and ex-pat crowd as Anne had arranged this tour to help introduce this crowd to this endangered neighborhood and the campaign to preserve it.

First, we made our way along the crowded street to get a sense of the artisans and vendors who have called Shankhari Bazar their home for generations. Among the artisans are carvers of shakhari-- beautiful bracelets made by carving a design into a conch shell, polishing it for shine, then slicing the conch horizontally. The bracelets are worn by Hindu wives as a sign of their virtue and are not removed until they are smashed apart upon the death of the husband. Anne has a pair from previous visits made here, and in fact, while we were visiting the Martyrs Memorial and Demrhai Metal Crafts, she was asked if she was Hindu based on the presence of the bracelets. Apparently, "I wear them because I like them" doesn't translate well as her inquisitors insisted that she is Hindu as all one needs to do to convert is to say, "I am Hindu."

We also made our way into several music shops and were treated to improvised performances on the tabla (traditional Indian drums) and on the harmonium. The streets were crowded with rickshaws and large sewage lines. Apparently, one person in our party spotted a man who was panning for gold in the sewer-- a job that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. The streets were also lined with produce vendors, meat shops (including one vendor who was selling freshly killed turtles, even slaughtering some for proof of freshness), and the delightful smell of roti being griddled and ready to be topped with curry. Unfortunately, with such a large crowd, it wasn't very conducive for snapping up a roti-- but settling for a lemon popsicle while watching a lecture on shakhari under a fan was a nice compromise.
The heat and the crowds were also a little taxing. Although I've gotten a little used to being stared at and having broken, brief discussions in which I essentially say that I am American and that I am a student, the bazar brought out a new form of gawking: people riding by in rickshaws or in the homes that we visited pulled out cell phone cameras to snap pictures of us-- a large crowd of 17 foreigners. Where the pictures went, I don't know. Sam attracted the usual crowd of fans, and was a trooper despite the heat and constant barrage of strangers pinching his cheeks an poking his little belly!


We also toured some of the tenements, homes to up to 20 families each. After braving the narrow, steep, and dark stairways, we would find ourselves on rooftops, with colorful saris and other laundry set out to dry and looking down on the bustling streets below. Some of the buildings had rooftop Hindu temples or shrines, beautiful despite some of their decay or partial destruction due to crossfire in the Liberation War in 1971.

Our tour guides pointed out specific buildings that are currently endanger by threats of demolition. The beautiful detailed facade pictured to the left is threatened to be demolished in less than two months. The landlords of many of the buildings here demolish the buildings and replace them with boring, but supposedly profitable living spaces such as this (pictured right). Although some destruction is government sanctioned, many demolitions and constructions are done without a permit.

Our final stop on the tour was at a home that is currently saved because a family of monkeys live there. The family who live in the house provide the monkeys with food and indeed, it does make for a good (if slightly unnerving) tourist stop to see monkeys so close.



For more information on efforts to declare Shankhari (or Shakhari) Bazar as a historical heritage exhibit, you can download a pdf file from here.

After our tour, we hung out at Anne and Randy's-- ate a pizza from the American Club and watched while John discussed various medical records with Anne and Randy's driver Harun and his mother. Luckily, the visual Bengali dictionary that John and his family gave to Anne before she arrived in Bangladesh has the seemingly useless for tourist purposes, guide to the human body in Bangla!

We then went out for Korean food (yes, Korean food!) then ended our night at a rooftop party hosted by friends of Anne and Randy as a combination going away party for some embassy and NGO workers whose terms ended this week and a traditional Swedish "Midsummer's Night" party. The latter is a celebration of the summer solstice when it is mostly light all day in Sweden. The roof top garden was an amazing departure from the usual Dhaka sites-- a tent covered an area with throw pillows and the whole garden was alive with twinkling white lights, votive candles and flowers. There was also a "Maypole" around which we were forced to dance and sing a Swedish song... something about little frogs having no ears. Although it was a lot of fun getting to see how ex-pats de-stress from the complications of living in a developing country, I'm sure that the singing "kuoacha cha" while jumping around in a circle, made us all the more bait for the various rickshaw wallahs down below eager to take people home-- a surreal, yet somehow fitting, way to say goodbye to Bangladesh.