Category Archives: Local people

Henna

Ever since I came here I wanted to try henna. One day the bride (and now a wife) from the wedding I showed you before did a great job making both of my hands beautiful with mehndi (what the locals call it)

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It took about 20 minutes per hand for her, but then it takes a while to dry.

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Henna stays longer on the areas, where the skin in thicker, so it was gone very fast on the outside part of the hands, but on the palms you can still see a bit even after almost 3 weeks.

Will do it again for sure 😉

Wedding. Last day

Like I said, I don’t really understand the logic of the wedding celebration in Bangladesh yet (it seems also that it varies a lot), but I have visited the final celebration.

First, as usual, getting properly dressed with the help of the local

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And that was the first time I saw the bride! Woo-hoo!

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The most interesting part of the wedding (imho) — looking at the local women

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Bride getting ready (read: family is putting tons of jewellery on the bride so that she could hardly move)

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And… picture taking time! (that will last for hours!!)

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Beautiful henna

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Since the bride has henna and kilograms of jewellery, she cannot eat by herself, therefore her family is helping her out.

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This celebration, unlike the first one, was in a special venue. The food for men and women was served on different floors — ground for men and first for women. The setting from the pictures above was on the first floor.

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Beautiful women

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And guess what? Picture taking continues! On the screen people can see the shots from the previous days (in total, the celebration has been on every day for a week)

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This is us with the bride and the groom. A bit of the context. The absolute majority of the weddings in Bangladesh are arranged and so was this one. The groom has a brother who is married to a girl and the bride is this girl’s cousin. The groom is currently living in Australia and the bride has been living in Bangladesh. A few days before the wedding it the first time when they actually saw each other (if we don’t count skype). The guy is returning to Australia now and the bride will follow him in a few months.

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Happy marriage!

Wedding. Day 1

Remember the wedding invitation I showed before? Well, it was real. We got invited to the wedding in a very traditional family that is living in the Old Dhaka.

Bangladeshi wedding consists of at least 3 celebrations, but there can be more. The logic is still not very clear to me, but I’ll just tell/show you what I saw.

Bride and groom have separate celebrations and then also common ceremony.  We were from the groom’s side and got invited to 3 events (only 2 of which I could attend).

This first celebration was a kind of chilled one, where women could wear shalwar kazeer (not necessarely sarees) and there was a concert! Everything started very late though and by late I mean that the concert only started around 10 pm.

We didn’t get to see the bride that day, it was only the groom and his family.

First we were getting ready — asked my local colleague and housekeeper to help us with sarees (I also borrowed the whole outfit from the colleague)

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It was pretty easy to spot the wedding location

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Since we got there pretty ‘early’ (around 8 pm), we were just hanging out meeting the family and taking pictures with everybody

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And wondering around the house where we saw some of the presents being prepared for the bride (sarees, bangles, shoes etc.)

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And got a chance to see how these locals live

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Many people were there after 9 pm, but the decoration guys weren’t in a hurry at all

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People waiting…

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Notice that some of the outfits are made of the same fabric. That’s what they do — some friends/family members decide on the fabric for every party and they get their dresses/shalwar kameezes/sarees made of it but in different designs, of course!

At some point the show finally started!!

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Around 11.30 pm we had to leave, but the concert was still going on and people didn’t start eating yet! We checked out the food though. Notice: everything was sent my the bride’s family

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To be continued…

For Fred and Oleg

Preview for the soon-to-come post!

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Pharmacy

There are of course pharmacies with fridges and stuff, but most of them look like this. And it was about 30+ degrees.IMG_6236

Coffee shop

Haha, here is the local coffee shop, but of course it doesn’t serve coffee, it serves cha — black tea with milk and A LOT of sugar

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Usually some local snack is being made/sold in the same place. In this particular case it was singara — thin pastry-like dough with potatoes, lentis and spices (of course) deep fried!

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Trip to Tangail

Another trip outside Dhaka this weekend was a trip to Tangail, or to be more precise, a village nearby. This time Google was almost right, but this was probably because we left at 6.30am!TangailOOn the way there we saw a JP Morgan marathon finisher deepfrying some samosas or other dough-wrapped something

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We were traveling with a person who owns the land in the village and recently planted the garden there. So first things first — we are picking up peppers! And the whole village behind the fence is watching us!

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The newly built house from inside looks like this. If it not a mud house, it is made of this material

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The owner of the land is resolving a dispute

IMG_6147Then we went on a tour in the village. Tangail area is famous for its hand-sewn sarees and in this particural village there were plenty of houses where sarees are being sewn. One of the men offered me to try it myself and of course I agreed! At first it was a bit confusing -both hands and both feet are involved and things should be done in a particular sequence. So in the beginning I totally sucked, but after quite a few unsuccessful attempts I slowly made a few stiches that were sort of okay. It is a very labour intensive work and therefore it is usually men who are doing it. And it is very very loud.

P1060150 P1060153 P1060152What do women do would you ask? They manually cut off all the extra threads with a pair of scissors

IMG_6153Just like this. On the ground, anywhere in the village.

So you see all the kids everywhere? They were following us everywhere

IMG_6154There are also machines for sewing sarees. And many kids who would like to be in the pictures

IMG_6160One hand or mashine sewn saree in the village costs about 700 taka, which is 8,5 euros.

And some random picture. For example, how bananas grow

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Tiny little mangoes on a soon-to-be big mango tree

IMG_6148Below is the grave of the inviting family’s ancestors. They were the first to bring islan in this area. As the legend goes, when they arrived from India and maybe some places in Middle East, the local hindu king’s daughter was dead and people were about to burry her. The ancestors were not just muslim, but spiritual people as well and told the king that she was not sick, brought a burning hot stick to her body, she woke up and as a gratiture the king gave a very big piece of land to these ancestors and allowed them to spread islam.

IMG_6165 IMG_6164After the village we were invited to their home in Dhaka. I have never seen so many books here (this is just one of many shelfes). So many books I will never be able to read

IMG_6173The father of the family used to be very interested in communism and such when he was young. In fact, the overall concept was very popular here, especially before the Liberation War in 1971. He still has some of the book, for example, to the right from the Lenin’s books is Engels in Bangla

IMG_6170Here is a photo with a mother and a father of the family

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And a beutiful picture at the end taken not by me!

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Trip to Comilla

This weekend we went to Comilla, a small town that is here

Screen Shot 2015-05-24 at 21.54.11As usual, Google is very optimistic and it took us almost 4 hours to get there.

Comilla is famous for Salban Vihara, which is place where the ruins were found and also that in the nearby there is a village where our maid lives 🙂

Once we got there, first we visited the museum and got a few pictures (even though it is of course prohibited) with some ancient statues

IMG_6054 IMG_6059Visited the ruins of what people used to think was king’s palace but it was in fact a buddhist monastery

11348069_10153258194675170_2134973916_oIMG_6088 IMG_6096 IMG_6098 IMG_6105Watched guys posing with a bush

IMG_6107And how dates are growing

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IMG_6110And took a picture of the guys following us

11354376_10153258194770170_185763008_oIn the park next to it I became friends with a goat sitting alone on the bench

IMG_6065At first I was very shy

IMG_6066But then I decided to test the limits

IMG_6069 IMG_6072 IMG_6074And in the end — a selfie!!

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After we went to visit my maid in her village. Her son (23) lives there with his family

IMG_6120The girl is about 18 now and the little boy about 8 months old. I didn’t take many pictures in the village, because it just didn’t feel right, but basically the family of three people lives in a little room, where they have a bed, a fridge and some shelves. They eat and sleep on the bed (although I was told that they eat usually on the floor and it was only for the guests that we were eating on the bed).

Sometimes the streets of the village are covered in pants

IMG_6115That is for the rainy season to soak up the water.

The kid was afraid of me, which everybody found funny

IMG_6128And here is the final picture

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Old Dhaka. Again x3

So far we covered hinduism and islam. Didn’t I say before that Old Dhaka is amazing? Well, they even have an Armenian church here. There used to be a big group of Armenians living here, but there aren’t any anymore. There is still a church and usually it is closed to visitors, but not when you have a local guide and a few takas.

The wall by the church and the view from the ou

IMG_5956 IMG_5957And here we are inside

IMG_5958 IMG_5961 IMG_5960 IMG_5962 IMG_5963This is a henna tree

IMG_5964There are plenty of mango trees in the church garden. The season comes in about 2 weeks, but we tried a small one (a different kind than on the picture) and to me it was super ready!

IMG_5965The man who is looking after the church asked us where we were from and when I said that I was Russian he got very excited! Apparently, there is an Armenian man working at the Russian embassy (from what I understood) and he comes to the church every Friday when he is in Dhaka (not that Friday). He was so nice, so sweet and offered us some drinks and snacks, gave mangos and invited to come and visit him anytime. It was one of those rare cases, when being Russian actually helped 😉 I am definitely going back to visit him and chill at the church garden with mangos! And this is the interior and my new friend!

IMG_5967 IMG_5968 IMG_5969 IMG_5970 IMG_5972As we were three girls, we agreed that going to the fabric market is very important and inevitable 🙂 This pictures shows a tiny little fraction of fabrics you can find there (and it is on the weekend, so many places were closed!!)

IMG_5974 IMG_5976 IMG_5977I bought some souvenirs. 3 piece is the most common women’s wear (pants, dress and scarf) and they sell it usually like on the picture and then a lady should take it to the tailor and get it fitted. Beautiful, isn’t it?

IMG_5999 IMG_6003And the last stop of our tour — the main Dhaka attraction — the Pink Palace

IMG_5987Inside there is a museum in a sad condition. Apparently you cannot take pictures there (and fairly speaking, there is not much to take pictures of), but before I was told this I took the pictures of how the books are stored

IMG_5985How the locals enjoy the paintings

IMG_5981 IMG_5982And a couple of portraits. It was hard to choose which one of them had the most different right and left sides of the face.

IMG_5983 IMG_5984Leaving the palace I saw these friend posing in front of the bush one after another. Could only take a picture of one guy, was too busy laughing when I saw it!

IMG_5992At the end of the tour it started to rain. A lot!

IMG_5994We got soaked, caught a CNG and drove to our part of Dhaka. CNG died a few times before we finally got home, I managed to take a picture of the flooded street (which totally reminded me of the everlasting puddle I had in front of our first apartment)

IMG_5995And then there were a thunderstorm, heavy rain and lightenings for the next few hours. Very refreshing!