10 Things About Bangladesh

A Few Things About

Bangladesh

2019

In 2019, I spent 5 weeks in Dhaka, Bangladesh.  I was teaching leadership skills to college women at a university. I was very unfamiliar with this country. The only thing I knew about Bangladesh was that they had a famine in 1970 and George Harrison released an album to raise funds for this country. Here are some things I discovered:

1- A cup of coffee was just as expensive as Starbucks.

2- I couldn't find alcohol anywhere.  I didn't look very hard but it was nowhere where I went. So I went five weeks without a beer.

3- The public buses are the most beaten up buses I have every seen anywhere in the world.

4- Domestic violence is prevalent and too acceptable. 

5- The traffic in Dhaka is insane. There are no traffic lights and no right of way so it's a game of chicken to cross the street.

6- They pray a lot, five times a day. Most people are Muslim.

7- At noon, stores closes down so that everyone can pray. The mosques get so crowded that people line the streets to pray.

8- In my classroom, some of the women are dressed in western wear. Some of them cover their heads and others cover up everything but their face.

9- While the country is 99% Muslim,  Christmas Day is a national holiday.

10- The educated community speaks both English and Bangla and they will speak both languages in the same sentence. This makes it very difficult to follow a conversation.

11- They eat lunch at 2PM and I didn't realize this until my 4th week there.  I could never understand why no one was in the restaurants with me at that time.  And I could never understand where everyone in my office was a 2 PM.

12- Their weekend is Friday and Saturday.  I never got used to working on a Sunday.