Hi from Bangladesh #3

Hi from  Bangladesh #3

I wrote this yesterday (Monday the 13) so I could send it before leaving Dhaka to come to Mustafa’s ancestral  home in the village. I will save village stories for another writing. Today I will write about our times from last Friday on.

On Friday we went to Mustafa’s youngest sister’s house for lunch. Her name is Momota. The picture of that family is below. Momota is 0n the left with the blue shawl. Her husband, Kashem, is on the small couch holding the baby, his granddaughter, Myiesha. The baby’s mother is the oldest daughter. Her name is Poppy, and she is wearing the pink scarf. Her husband is Shoikat who is sitting next to Kashem wearing the brown coat. The boy in the blue jacket is the younger son, Fahmi. Fahmi is hard of hearing and also develop-mentally disabled. It is very sad…he is a fine looking boy. There are not training facilities her to teach him skills he might need to have any degree of independence in his adult life. He goes to school but is in a grade far below where he should be for his age. Momota told Mustafa that they will have to take care of him for their whole life. Healthy children are a blessing,

That night we went to visit another niece and her family. She has a son who is Sudman. I saw him when he was five and then when he was tem. Now he is fifteen and speaks English very well, I spent most of the evening speaking with him while the others spoke Bengali. It is always nice to have a person who speaks English in the middle of all that Bengali. When I saw him before he looked cute but totally different than he does now. I just looked for a picture but apparently I did not take any of him. I wanted you to see how gorgeous and likeable he is now. (He used to be a devil when he was young, but all that is over now. He is vert serious  about his studies and doing well in the future. His father worked in Italy and saved his money so that they can build a house that has seven floors and flats to rent. That will bring him a good income and his family will live in a big one in the building. Their flat is on the fourth floor will be the only one…1900 sq. ft. All the other floors will be divided into two flats for rent. On the ground level of houses here there is a car parking area.

On Saturday we went with Shopon and his family to a craft and artifacts museum called Shonargoan, which is about forty miles from Dhaka. The trip took us two hours to go and over three hours to return. I will talk about the traffic here in a later writing. We had a good time and the kids were enjoying themselves. We ate lunch there on an outside table…kind of like a picnic. We had rice and chicken. It was quite good. Before we ate we had to wash our hands in a 1800.s style water pump. The picture is below. That is Shopon/s wife, Nurpur, and his two daughters, Zayma – 12 and Zasrah – 6, who is doing the pumping. Zasrah likes to be in the middle of things and insisted on pumping for everyone.

After lunch the children and Shopon went on a  paddle boat ride in a small pond. They loved it and we old people just sat on the shore and cheered for their boating expertise.

We walked around the grounds, and it was a pleasant day. One interesting

thing was the dogs. There are lots of dogs who are not owned, They just fend for themselves. Lots of then were sleeping in the sun that afternoon. Mustafa told me that they do not sleep in the night. Sleep in the sun during the day when it is warm and then wander around at night. The dogs are wild dogs but they are not aggressive. Here is a picture of all of us outside one of the buildings of the museum. It was a fun day. The boy next to me in the grey jacket is Shopon’s son Abiaz – 9. He is the boy we took to the school to try to get him admission. No call from the principal, so I guess that would be a NO!

About the traffic…sigh! Dhaka has had a lot of growth in the last twenty years. They have torn down many one family houses to build multi story flats that are filled with people and cars. The picture below does not adequately show the jams that happen. There are cars, trucks, busses, baby taxis (see green vehicle in pic – they are three wheel taxis) rickshaws ( see the vehicle beyond the man in blue - they are bicycles that are propelled by a man who is called rickshaw walla.) In addition there are pedestrians who run between the vehicles. I have not seen anyone hit, but it is a miracle of God that they are not.

We are in the village now and will be here until the 17^th. I have no internet and the electricity is off more than it is on…so no charging stuff. Mustafa just sent our nephew to buy a generator for the house. Remembering all of you/God bless
Corinne