Hannu is a 32 year old Swedish male who as been on the road since April 1998. He has visited the Middle East, Africa and now south Asia, and then the rest of the world. Watch for updates on Hannu's whereabouts, thoughts and experiences.

CALCUTTA INDIA AGAIN
Mar 15, 2000

A little bit on Bangladesh...

So I am back in India and Calcutta, after 3 1/2 weeks in Bangladesh. It feels good to be out of it actually. I'll explain why...

In Bangladesh ordinary people got on my nerves... Sorry to say, but it's true.

At the end I just could not cope that well any more with the constant staring and shouting and following around of, or at, you -- the foreigner. Yes I know, it's all done out of curiosity and sure it's meant to be friendly, but... I felt a bit stressed by the end. In Bangladesh, there's nothing wrong with staring at someone, and naturally you are the month's big attraction when you turn up in town.

But crowds of 30 following you around, looking at everything you do, cramming in on you and encircling you as soon as you stop... Phew, it does get annoying after a while. Nothing is private. If you stop to have a look in your guidebook, everyone on the street peers over your shoulder, if you stop to look in a kiosk, everyone comes rushing to see what you will buy.

And also the constant shouting as you walk down the road. Someone on the other side of the street shouts "Hello, friend!" and when you turn your head someone passing you on a bike says (or rather shouts to you) "what is your name?" while whizzing by, and before you have smiled and waved back at the first guy someone from a shop on the other side of you shouts "Hello! Come here!" to you, probably to invite you for tea, and by now you have waved and smiled at the first guy and start turning your head to the shop owner, but before having shook your head "No thank you" to his invitation, someone runs up to you from behind and starts walking next to you. That person starts asking the same tedious questions as everyone in Bangladesh that knows a little bit of English, and you sigh and answer "Sweden", "Hannu", "Yes, I am just a tourist here", "My fathers name is Kurt", "no I am not a muslim, I'm born christian" etc. etc... This is about all the discussion most people in Bangladesh engage you in... While you are answering these questions some people who want to hear the answers come rushing and start following. They probably just want to hear you talk -- most likely they won't understand English and the person speaking with you will have to repeat it all in Bangla to them. Some of the persons who came running and who DO speak English start asking you the same questions over again, still others shout to you from the sidewalks of the street going "Hi Englishman" or "Hello! Hi!" or "Hello uncle/bother/baby(!)" and there's just no end to it....

So, PHEW, it's a release to be in Calcutta where they have seen a foreigner before and you can actually walk in your own thoughts...

Anyway, I am happy I went there but I don't think I'll return. At least not in the near future.

There is not that much to see or do in Bangladesh, and few people go there. I think I met about 6-7 other tourists while there. Even the tourist bureau admits this -- their official posters say "come before the tourists come"! And I can see why people don't come: there just isn't much to see, especially with such a magnificent pearl as India to explore next door. Historical temples and mosques are almost all left to fall into ruins. Same with the Raj-era mansions. There's no great nature and wildlife. The food is very bland and as I've written above, people WILL get on your nerves...

In 3 1/2 weeks you actually have time to see almost all of the sights there are. Some of the best sights I saw though, were of the more "no-touristy" type: like the shipwrecking beaches north of Chittagong, where big tankers bought up from around the world are driven on shore and then dissembled - almost entirely by hand! It takes about a year to completely destroy a tanker, and everything from inside them are sold in shops along the main highway between Dhaka and Chittagong. One shop sells sinks from the kitchens, another one flags, a third sells all varieties of chairs from the bars and restaurants on board, a fourth sells pipes, a fifth sells life jackets, a sixth sells toilet seats... It's amazing how many things are on a ship. And at the end, big thick steel plates from the ships body are loaded on trucks and driven away to be melted down and reused...

Another great thing to have seen are all the bicycle rickshaws in the capital Dhaka. There is an estimated 400,000 rickshaws plying the streets, and that makes it the rickshaw capital of the world -- by far outnumbering any city in India. The rickshaws here are also the world's most decorated ones, with metal sheets at the back with prints from Bangla movies, and the canopy is decorated with patterns and flowers of canvas and on the canvas, while the rest of the bike is just full of brightly colored plastic stripes and brightly painted flowers etc. And to see mainly them causing a massive traffic jam for kilometers of a six-file road is truly something to see from a walking bridge above it. And to hear as well! The sound of not that many car horns, but from hundreds of bicycle bells!

Bangladesh is also riddled by big wild strikes, called hartaals. Actually, it was Mahatma Gandhi who invented this form of protest. In his time it was a means of showing the British that ALL the Indians were serious about their demands. Basically, the idea was that EVERYBODY laid down their work for a full day; absolutely NOBODY worked or opened their shop or drove the bus or did ANYTHING. Must have been a peaceful great silent massive protest in those days...

But today Gandhi would probably rotate in his grave if he knew how it works in Bangladesh. There, it is the political parties fighting each others that call for these strikes, to get the ruling party to step down and get into power themselves. The opposition says that day so and so there will be a hartaal, usually from 6 am to 6 pm, and they want nobody to work that day -- no matter whether you vote for the opposition or support the ruling party! To make sure this happens, they send out groups of bullies on the streets, that sometimes do anything to ensure people don't go to work. If they find you on the street they might humiliate you by forcing you to undress completely, or they might beat you to death. Shop owners don't dare to keep open, the bullies might smash the windows. People don't drive and buses don't go anywhere -- the vehicles might get smashed. Riot police are there to protect every street corner, but still things happen. It's just total anarchy, one could say. There was a hartaal in the country, called for by the opposition party while I was there, on the 28th of February. Since I was told it's safe for foreigners to walk the streets -- we are obviously not going to work -- I went out on the streets of Dhaka. The strike was not a full success, although the opposition party insisted so in the papers the next day. The streets of Dhaka were only half empty of traffic (almost no private cars though), and quite a few of the shops stayed open. There was police everywhere, but I saw nothing more than a loud demonstration take place. In the papers the next day I could read that 4 people had died from bombs thrown into buses in the capital, but otherwise the day was quoted as having been quite calm. From other people -- NGO's and others whom I met that were there for a long time -- I heard that Bangladesh has great economical problems because of these hartaals. A lot of working days are lost, 30 of them in 1999. Which is said to have been a year with exceptionally few strikes! Business contracts from abroad are broken because the country's factories can't deliver in time, and a missionary couple I met up in the north of the country said that a couple of years ago there was an almost completely successful hartaal going on for a month!

Finally I'll tell you a funny story that a Swedish missionary I met told me. He had been in the country for 10 years and so spoke the local language almost fluently. He was stationed in the north, and told me what happened a few years ago...

From the distant and isolated villages on the other, northern side, of the river, and closer to the India-Bangladesh border, an older man came to see the missionary. He told him that a foreigner had turned up in his village a few days ago. A white man who claimed he was Scottish; therefore his not so easily understood English. The Scotsman had explained that he had had all his money and belongings stolen, and now he was walking from village to village begging money for a busticket to Dhaka, so that he could get help from his embassy. The villagers had, of course, taken pity on him and had given him food and a place to stay for a while, and also some money. "But why doesn't he come here, to the town", the missionary wondered, "We would help him"? The old man said they had suggested that to the Scotsman, but he had replied he didn't want to go to town. Very strange, the missionary thought, and kept talking a bit more with the villager about the case. Suddenly it dawned on him what it was all about: It was indeed a white man, but not a foreigner, walking around amongst the northern villages. Instead, it was an albino that had found a way of income! The missionary told the old villager to go back to his village and tell the " Scotsman " that the people from the missionary house would come to get him the next day. Of course the "Scotsman " had left as soon as that was mentioned to him...

Well, well folks, I'll stop there. Tomorrow I'll leave for Chennai where a friend of mine will be arriving from Europe on Sunday morning. I'll write more to you about my adventures soon...

Hannu

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