Dhaka Adventure Continued...

       Today was very exciting! It was spent in Old town Dhaka! Before we arrived there however we had needed to stop for the bathroom. We found one, well our translator did, at the stadium (I think it’s a cricket stadium!). This bathroom turned out to be the one the guards of the stadium used. It was rather gross! To understand why it was difficult to find a bathroom, let me explain the culture. In Bangladesh, men just go to the bathroom anywhere. You look beside any road, you will find at least one man squatting; they squat for all bathroom needs!! The women of Bangladesh just let it run down their legs according to Mrs. Waid, so even if you do find a bathroom facility it is usually just for men.

        Old Dhaka was where we went to get material; material for girl’s dresses, boy’s shirts, dishtowels (the handicraft ladies make I think), for bed sheets and curtains of the new rooms. We first got the material for the dishtowels. Then Mrs. Waid, Chantel, Lauren, and I took rickshaws to another material area for the rest. This was a real adventure, we can’t speak Bangla of course and in old Dhaka, not many speak English, especially not rickshaw drivers! We split up, Lauren and Chantel in one, Mrs. Waid and I in the other. The one with Lauren and Chantel took off, and Mrs. Waid was yelling at it, we hadn’t got on ours yet. They were waiting for us at a corner and we continued on with Mrs. Waid and mine rickshaw leading. We arrived to our destination just fine and got all we needed. We then had to hire a rickshaw van to get us and all our material back. We made it to the other shop just fine, but then we needed to add that material and one more person to this rickshaw van. That was a real experience! A nice man helped our driver, who was an old man and rickshaws are all bicycles, by pushing from the back the whole way back to where our van was waiting for us. The two men than wanted more than Mrs. Waid thought reasonable and so they weren’t leaving us alone to get paid, but they finally did and we drove off. Dhaka is pretty big, but it really shouldn’t take like 2 hours, maybe not quite, to get back to the dentist clinic!! The traffic is awful in Dhaka! It is always bumper to bumper, I don’t think it ever lets up!