5 Days and 3 Cities!

I wish I could make more creative titles for these different posts but for some reason all my creativity is currently hiding. However, as the title suggests I am back in Dhaka after a week away with my supervisor to different cities in the north were the third phase of a WaSH, water, sanitation, and hygiene program is about to begin. My job during the ceremonies was to take a lot of different pictures during the ceremonies, after the ceremonies if there was time we then spoke to the staff of the local habitat offices concerning advocacy. We first went to the city of Mymensingh, this was the largest of the 3 cities we visited, and was out base for all but the last night. The first ceremony was on Monday morning and it was held at a large conference hall. Although the each ceremony was entirely in Bengali I was able to get a sense of what was going on thanks to my supervisor, the other staff, and different English phrases they would use. The staff at this Habitat Resource Center, HRC, were very welcoming and had a lot of ideas about advocacy and made for a great start of the week. The next day we went to Modhupur, this was a smaller city but on the way we saw monkeys! We drove through an area that used to be a very big forested area but with time a lot of it has been taken down. Our last ceremony was the furthest north, very close to India! We could actually see India in the distance when we went on a walk around the village. Our last night was really nice, we stayed at the YWCA in the city, it was the most secluded place we have stayed and the most calm night in terms of the amount of honking, etc, it was great but also very eerie not hearing what has become usual background noises. 

 Before leaving on this trip I got my keys to the apartment I will be staying in for June and July, it is directly beside the habitat office! The location is definitely ideal and it is so nice! A lot more space than I need but being so close and having the easiest possible commute is wonderful. Last night was my first night here and it was a great night! This morning I had my first grocery shopping experience and my first rickshaw experience, the rickshaw was actually a very easy process, I was worried about it but the driver understood English and once I realized he thought I meant a different area of the city and made it clear, we were on the right track. 

During this past week I was able to see so much more of the country than I had expected, it was so interesting and although I was in a van for most of the time, it was still really eye-opening. As I shared in my previous post, Bangladesh has a very large population. One thing I kept wondering was where are all the people, well I can partially answer this now, they are everywhere! Back at home there are a lot of places where you will see no one, but the areas that we saw always had some people within view. It was really interesting to see the similarities and differences between Dhaka, a city with millions of people, and compare them to some of the small villages we drove through. Rickshaws and these small vehicles called CNGs were the primary vehicles we saw, a long with some construction trucks that have very pretty paint jobs. There were also a lot of different animals from cows, chickens, goats, and sheep, it was really fun to keep a look out for what would be coming on the next part of the road. Again, I have to give a lot of thanks and credit to the drivers here, especially the driver for habitat. It is amazing all that the drivers here can handle, at times very bumpy roads, with a plethora of people and vehicles, even animals, and still they are able to successfully meander the roads safely!

Again, this was a great week and I still have a lot of reflecting to do on the experience and see how it can help in the advocacy program development. Below are some pictures that I took over the past week, I will be adding more later but here are some of the highlights! 

 Above is a quick pic of one of the construction trucks.

Left, my bedroom at the apartment.