A bit of local colour

Hi guys, I thought that I'd share a couple of piccs with you all to show you a bit of where I am.

Below is (almost) the street where I live - I'm about fifteen seconds away from where this picture was taken. Note the cheeky little CNG tucked away behind the rickshaw.






Below is a picture of the New Market, more of which later. We'd just got off a rickshaw and were about to head inside at this point.





And finally, a view of the traffic (human and otherwise) from the overpass outside New Market.





I hope you're all well and expect more from the Scanblog in due course. Much love!

a room with a view...of sorts

And, no the view from my room is not great - it’s the balcony of the next door neighbour. What’s more, the ‘curtains’ are strips of very thin material that only cover about four fifths of the window. This now means that any strutting about in the buff calls for a certain amount of caution so as not to offend the conservative Muslim sensitivities of the elderly matron across the way; my arse-in-the-moonlight walks will have to be suspended.

Before I had a chance to pen a strongly worded letter to the Radio Times, copy to the Member of Parliament for Bromsgrove, complaining about this appalling state of affairs, we were whisked off to the VSO office where we were all formally introduced to each other, as well as to the Project staff.

The cast of this particular development-in-Bangladesh spectacular (the working title is currently 'Devbangtacular! - an old shaggy wives' dog tale') is large and varied so right now I’ll stick to a couple of key players and expand later on. Firstly, there’s the lovely Marufa. She runs the induction programme for volunteers and has essentially been holding our hands from day 1.

In terms of my fellow volunteers, there’s my fellow Brits Jo, Meagan and Laura who are on the same programme. They’re kind of like Charlie’s Angels, except they share an unshakeable determination to raise awareness of gender as a cross-cutting theme in international development. I’m not saying that Cameron Diaz doesn’t, but it’s certainly something she doesn’t seem to bring up very much while she’s solving crime in a bikini. She’s probably too busy being coquettish and sassy.

And then there’s Keith. Keith is a great bloke, from the US, who shares a similar sense of humour to my good self. While waiting for the introduction session and then subsequently in the lunch hour we thus swiftly descended into a full-blown (and I dare say, somewhat stereotyped) transatlantic exchange of profanity. It went kind of like this:

"How 'bout you pour yourself a nice, tall glass of shut-the-hell-up."

"I bite my thumb at you sir, with aplomb and gusto I do bite my thumb."

“Screw you, you douche bag.”

“Prat.”

“Jerkoff.”

“Git.”

“Quit harshing my mellow.”

“Montebank.”

(brief pause, Keith looks like I've physically slapped him) “What the hell is a ‘Montebank’?”

“Traditionally, a montebank was a purveyor of quack medicine.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So then, ‘harshing my mellow’…”

There will be more exchanges between myself and Keith in my next blog entry. Sleep tight everyone!

The Scanblog begins...

Yes friends, here beginneth some of the more random utterances to be committed to virtual paper in a wee while, and probably not before time either. Its been a week since arriving in Bangladesh, and time has passed in a veritable blur of rickshaw drivers, excessive amounts of aubergine and spirited bids to avoid contracting water-borne diseases.

But maybe I should begin at the beginning.

I walked out of Dhaka airport to a sensory assault that hit me like a multicoloured kangaroo shouting "Hey there chump, welcome to the third world!" through a megaphone five centimeters away from my face. Hot? You betcha. Humid? Oh indeed; Satan's crotch after a day at the beach-style humid. As we climbed into the VSO minibus, the thought struck me that, had I been a small black dog, a slight girl with pig-tails, a blue dress and a white apron would surely be telling me that I wasn't in Kansas anymore. Not that I'd be able to understand her...being a dog. Stupid Dorothy.

Driving down the airport road into Dhaka, I was afforded a startling introduction to the role a thorough and well-respected code of traffic law plays in the Dhaka transportation system, to wit, absolutely none whatsoever. Cars veered in all directions, vying for every single inch of space. Between the almost negligible space between the bumpers of different cars, it wasn't unusual to spot a rusting motorbike, ducking and weaving between the traffic with all the grace of a tired ex-boxer just fired from his night job as a doorman for coming to work drunk once too often.

Then there were the CNGs - essentially green go-carts with a passenger seat bolted on to the back that can (allegedly) carry up to four people. They are shining proof of what can be achieved with only one gear. Watching them buzz around the roundabouts leading up to the bangladeshi parliament recalled the fond days of Pat Sharp and the fun house grand prix, but with fewer mullets and without little tokens you could reach out and grab - try sticking your arm out of these little critters and most likely it will be taken off pronto.

Finally, there were the rickshaws - bikes towing little carriages ridden by people who are literally often bags of bones but who can tow 150kgs of foreigner around all day they're that fit. There are aapparently over three-hundred thousand rickshaws in Dhaka, though with the way they crowd the roads ringing their little bicycle bells that seems at times like an underestimate.

We were dropped at the flat provided by VSO for induction volunteers. As we opened the door on what would be home for the next four weeks, I said a silent prayer for a decent view.

Find out whether I got one in the next instalment - ooh the tension!