July 25: Chittagong to Cox’s Bazar
Fields … vegetables, sugar cane, rice fields … freshly plowed, either by hand, by oxen plow, or mini-tractor. A small town… cities, tight squeezes, and near misses on the highway. Men loading and unloading trucks. Rickshaws picking up and dropping off customers. Dogs, goats, cows, and people, thousands of people pass by on the way from the port city of Chittagong to our new location of Cox’s Bazar (yes one a), home of one of the longest beaches in the region.
Roads in Bangladesh are narrow, two lane highways with a small shoulder that is almost constantly filled with people or animals. Organized villages, moveable shops, and squatter communities sprout up along the highway. When we see this narrowing process, the road narrows because the shoulder is being used for human and animal uses. As the road narrows, traffic congestion increases, reducing speeds, and adding time to the journey.
In this photo, multiple modes
of transportation in a village
can be seen. The roads are indeed
marked, but the proper uses of the
markings can be ‘negotiable’
based on the circumstance. |
Our Iowa experience concerning traffic is to hop onto the interstate, set the cruise control, and go. Even on two lane highways, country roads, and gravel, speed can be kept pretty constant. We have all made way for the tractor during planting season or the combine at harvest time in the fall. You may see a line of five to ten cars waiting to safely make their way around the farm equipment. We have to slow traffic down a few times during a country drive a couple times a year.
With Bangladesh, things are a little different, with the same square miles as Iowa and fifty times the people; there are several rice planting and harvest seasons, which makes for a constant flow of farming equipment. Additionally, here in Bangladesh there are narrow roads, many small tractors, plows, and rickshaws carrying crops. So our Iowa experience is multiplied several times over.
Moving on…
We made a small stop at a BRAC office for a little break. BRAC is an acronym for Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee. In the hallway of the building there was a poster series on living a proper life. The message of the poster series was that both men and women created this world and they must work together to succeed. Some of the components of BRAC projects are education, empowerment through micro-credit loans, and health.
Along the lines of health, we made a side stop at a hospital in Malumghat, outside Cox’s Bazar. On the plane from the UK, Kay Weller, from UNI, sat next to a couple who worked at a hospital. During the flight, she made arrangements to stop by at the hospital when we were close by, and this we did as a side-stop for the day. We were greeted by the hospital administrator, who was the father of the young man Kay met on the plane. He was originally from Peoria, Illinois, so there was an instant Midwest connection. The son, that Kay sat next to on the plane, rode up on a motorcycle and we toured the hospital. This hospital sees about 300,000 people in a year’s time, so it is a busy place. Most of the people who access the hospital are impoverished. To combat these hardships and others like being all alone, or with no family support, the hospital has a shop to create small things to sell. Personally, I am not a big shopper, but when you can put someone to work for a good cause, count me in. So anyone expecting little Bangladeshi gifts… be pretty certain that they came from this shop.
After seeing pond water everywhere
for the last few weeks and being
advised not to swim in it, the
Bay of Bengal was a welcome sight. |
When the time came to reach the sea, we crested a small hill and the sea was in plain sight. After lunch, we got on our swimwear and headed to the beach.
Swimwear is loose term, because by our standards, you probably would be under dressed at this beach. We were about the only folks in shorts, the native lungi (men’s cotton mid-wrap) and saris were commonly seen on the beach.
Needless to say splashing around in the Bay of Bengal was splendid!
After dinner we watched a family just outside the hotel property. A family of 7 lives in a small hut that farms a small piece of ground and takes care of a couple of cows.
Although it does not sound like the perfect evening activity, I learned a lot about the family and their way of life. Not really the type of life we would call ideal, but they seemed happy and it was clear there was a great deal of happiness in the family.
--Dan Walsh, Cedar Rapids
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