Food (curry): The simple unexpected truth is that Indian/Bengali food in England is much tastier than the food here. Not sure why that should be, but the local curries are surprisingly bland and lack the savour of spices to which our palettes have become accustomed. More than that, there are remarkably few ‘Indian’ restaurants – I’d expected it to be like Malaysia where you can pop into a kedai serving a range of curries with roti and rice. But they don’t seem to exist, at least here in the suburban (sic) delights of Gulshan. So we’ve eaten mostly Thai and Chinese (there’s a large Chinese population here in all branches of business) more often than local. But travel to the districts has been a real gastronomic pleasure: delicious fish, chicken, mutton, more fish with delicious vegetables, rice and paratha.
Mango tree: Mangoes not yet in season unfortunately. My room looks out on a splendid huge specimen, weighed down with flowers. It will deliver a bumper crop if only small a proportion of the flowers set. Our agro-economist tells me that the fruit is ready to eat 70 days after flowering.
Air pollution: The lack of rain exacerbates the air pollution. It is acknowledged to be one of the world’s worst capital cities (Taipei, Jakarta, Lagos??), caused by dust and traffic fumes. I’ve had a sub-clinical cough ever since I arrived. There’s a permanent haze spread over the city – and it was a real relief to get out into the countryside for our project town visits. Since so many city journeys are made in open rickshaws, this is surely more than an inconvenience and must be a major public health hazard.
Arsenic: poisoning from ground water drawn from shallow aquifers is a major problem in B’desh. It is has no taste, so one is not aware of being affected (no-one has given an explanation why this problem is so particular to B’desh – yet there must be one; presumably something to do with geology). In mild form it causes unpleasant skin disease; prolonged exposure causes cancer. Only the large towns and cities have piped water supply derived from lower strata. So the vast majority of the population – including our project towns – gets its water from shallow tube wells using hand pumps. The harsh reality is that there are not the resources to ensure safe water supply for the masses – our project funding won’t stretch that far even for our 12 towns. Shallow wells are progressively being supplemented by deep wells – but not only is drilling more expensive, they also need electric pumps; hence the cost escalation.
Islam: A big surprise is how low key it is – whether in Dhaka or the small towns – compared with Indonesia or Malaysia You’re barely aware of the sound of mosques, or of mushollas in offices, or workers breaking off work to pray; yet it is clearly profoundly institutionalised in national social and political life. And there seem to be very few mosques, compared with the one-in-every-kampung in Indonesian small towns. We (the mission) surmise that Islam can afford to be less demonstrative here because it is more confident and better established; whereas Indonesia and Malaysia form the Muslim geo-political frontline in Asia, and there is a corresponding emotional need to make a loud declaration of faith in the face of the heathen hordes on the horizon. Having said that B’desh is surrounded on all sides by non-Islamic states: mostly India, with a tiny frontier with Burma.