When I walked out of the airport, lugging my suitcase and backpack
into the hot, humid and hazy morning of Dhaka, the capital city of
Bangladesh, there were cows everywhere.
We had inadvertently planned our training right smack in the middle of two massive holidays for both Muslims and Hindus. It was the Muslim festival of Eid, in which every family must sacrifice either a cow or a goat to atone for their sins throughout the year. The ritual slaughter is followed by a big feast when they eat the meat. It's a lot like Christmas for Christians, in that they will travel across the country to be with their families and all the businesses close.
At the same time, due to the lunar calendar, it was also the Hindu festival of Lights, or Diwali.
According to Wikipedia: "Diwali involves the lighting of small clay lamps filled with oil to signify the triumph of good over evil.[11] These lamps are kept on during the night and one's house is cleaned, both done in order to make the goddess Lakshmi feel welcome.[12] Firecrackers are burst because it is believed that it drives away evil spirits.[13][14][15] During Diwali, all the celebrants wear new clothes and share sweets and snacks with family members and friends."
I didn't see any firecrackers or lamps or candles but there were strings of lights draped over some streets.
All of this festivity meant that the wide, two-lane roads crisscrossing the city were packed with traffic: cars, charter buses with people crowded inside and also on top, rickshaws, dump trucks, bicyclists, tuk tuks (three-wheeled taxis that are smaller than a small car), motorcycles and mopeds. There is no adequate way to describe a Dhaka traffic jam, except to say that it's everyone honking at once and zero respect for lanes, with every vehicle crammed into every tiny space between every other vehicle, constant and dangerous cutting in lines, etc.
We
got caught in a couple of these traffic jams. In one of them, we were
coming back after having been on the road already for from 2:30 p.m. to 6
p.m., because we had gone out of Dhaka to the countryside to see some
development projects related to helping poor women start their own
businesses, as well as compost their cow feces and plant sustainable
crops. When we reached the city it was dark. We couldn't turn down
several streets we needed to be on because there was a massive cow
market there and they had closed the roads. The cow market was so that
the Muslims could buy cows for their ritual slaughter. Also, the roads
were full of people leaving the city to go to their families in the
country.
Unable to turn left or right, we remained trapped in the stream of cars inching forward moment by moment, or often simply sitting at a standstill, with bicyclists and motorcycles weaving through. The road had a median in the center, and at every opening in the median, traffic police had blockaded it so that no one could make a u-turn into the opposite lanes. So we were stuck for about an hour. Finally, our driver pushed his way through one of the blockades and we pulled into the crazy sea of cars going in the opposite direction, in an attempt to get back to where we had first started and try to go another way.
I
was so thankful that during what became a two-hour jam, I did not have
to go to the bathroom. We finally made it back to the district center
about 8:30 where we had dinner and collapsed into bed at 9:30.
On
another day, we were driving to the south of the country where the
training would be held. At one point we were sitting for 90 minutes to 2
hours to get on a ferry. We passed about an hour of that time
attempting to gnaw through sticks of sugar cane, which were hard as
rocks. The locals chewed right through it, but Dorli
and I struggled and struggled to get to the sweet, sticky, drippy pulp.
After about an hour of fighting with it, we finally got there, and along the way provided a lot of amusement to each other and our co-travelers.
We had inadvertently planned our training right smack in the middle of two massive holidays for both Muslims and Hindus. It was the Muslim festival of Eid, in which every family must sacrifice either a cow or a goat to atone for their sins throughout the year. The ritual slaughter is followed by a big feast when they eat the meat. It's a lot like Christmas for Christians, in that they will travel across the country to be with their families and all the businesses close.
At the same time, due to the lunar calendar, it was also the Hindu festival of Lights, or Diwali.According to Wikipedia: "Diwali involves the lighting of small clay lamps filled with oil to signify the triumph of good over evil.[11] These lamps are kept on during the night and one's house is cleaned, both done in order to make the goddess Lakshmi feel welcome.[12] Firecrackers are burst because it is believed that it drives away evil spirits.[13][14][15] During Diwali, all the celebrants wear new clothes and share sweets and snacks with family members and friends."
All of this festivity meant that the wide, two-lane roads crisscrossing the city were packed with traffic: cars, charter buses with people crowded inside and also on top, rickshaws, dump trucks, bicyclists, tuk tuks (three-wheeled taxis that are smaller than a small car), motorcycles and mopeds. There is no adequate way to describe a Dhaka traffic jam, except to say that it's everyone honking at once and zero respect for lanes, with every vehicle crammed into every tiny space between every other vehicle, constant and dangerous cutting in lines, etc.
Unable to turn left or right, we remained trapped in the stream of cars inching forward moment by moment, or often simply sitting at a standstill, with bicyclists and motorcycles weaving through. The road had a median in the center, and at every opening in the median, traffic police had blockaded it so that no one could make a u-turn into the opposite lanes. So we were stuck for about an hour. Finally, our driver pushed his way through one of the blockades and we pulled into the crazy sea of cars going in the opposite direction, in an attempt to get back to where we had first started and try to go another way.
I
was so thankful that during what became a two-hour jam, I did not have
to go to the bathroom. We finally made it back to the district center
about 8:30 where we had dinner and collapsed into bed at 9:30.
On
another day, we were driving to the south of the country where the
training would be held. At one point we were sitting for 90 minutes to 2
hours to get on a ferry. We passed about an hour of that time
attempting to gnaw through sticks of sugar cane, which were hard as
rocks. The locals chewed right through it, but Dorli
and I struggled and struggled to get to the sweet, sticky, drippy pulp.
After about an hour of fighting with it, we finally got there, and along the way provided a lot of amusement to each other and our co-travelers.
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