....and Finally

As I fully expected, the weekend is fixed up for me, place to place, full of enjoyment meting people and seeing interesting things.

I soon realise why I loved Abu Dhabi so much and still do. It’s the way they are trying to build a great society here, not just flash buildings. Not that the buildings aren’t flash! Lots of people saw what had been built for the F1 Grand Prix last November. And we are seeing one more use of the money to bring people here to do interesting things.

Many years ago, I used to go around Saadiyat Island, just to the east of Abu Dhabi Island, to survey the marine waters there. It was basically a sandbar with a few mangroves on and nothing much else. There are now plans for a dozen hotels, a Guggenheim Gallery, a branch of the Louvre and a performing arts centre, all built by top class architects. We have come here to see the opening of a perfect links golf course in the seaward side of the island, every hump, hollow and pool constructed.

The course has been designed by Gary Player and he is here to give it a soft opening with a few other circuit pros and some celebs as well. Boy wonder Rory McIlroy is there and so is Darren Clarke. All the tickets have been given to the Abu Dhabi golf community and there can’t be many more than 200 here.

There are supposed to be degrees of security here to keep the relaxing golfers away from the spectators, but my hostess Anne starts to work her charm on the guards, all of whom she seems to know by name, doors open for us and we’re in, even to the extent that I share a toilet with the Great Man. I told the ladies, to great laughter, that I had asked Gary to sign my tag, which was hanging from my belt at the time.

The next day we take a trip with husband Dick to see the development on Reem Island, just to the south of Saadiyat and much the same as Saadiyat in character. Dick is the environmental consultant to the developers, so he knows every nook and cranny of the place. It’s a giant construction site at the moment but in 5 years time it will house 200,000, and have its own golf course. The only things on the island now are two giant tower blocks and a branch of the Sorbonne, fully functioning but at the moment with more staff than students.

So, no lack of ambition here. But unlike Dubai, they are trying to build a society, concentrating on the needs of all its people. I for one can’t wait to go and see the Louvre when it’s built.

My weekend ends with a dinner and wine tasting, and Dick and Anne have tried to get together all the people I had known well in Abu Dhabi during my years there-a nice gesture. Too much wine was drunk, with the result that breakfast, and the drive up to Dubai for the flight home was a more than usually quiet affair.

26th January

Tomorrow I finish the job and get the flight back to Dubai for a long-awaited weekend with friends. So what do I take from this mission? First and foremost the utter chaos of life in Dhaka, unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. Next, the very interesting office I have been working in, full of bright young things, all Bangladeshi (except for one British lady) but with a very western outlook; this was a real surprise to me. Finally, and a real positive here. Three weeks and more in the country and no Dehli belly!

The job itself was not a great surprise; one more country with institutions that didn’t really work too well, but not unlike those I have seen in parts of the former Soviet Union. Last of all was the reason I was there-the water bodies of this part of Bangladesh-absolutely filthy, black and almost certainly completely dead, the result of a complete breakdown in pollution control over very many years.

Will I come back? Yes, if asked, I guess. The people are pleasant, the place seems to be safe, my hotel was comfortable and the office works well. But will I get asked? I suppose that depends on how well my report is finally received by our ultimate clients, the World Bank.

But before I have to think any more about work, it’s back to my old stamping ground of Abu Dhabi and some much needed R&R.

Sightseeing

On my last weekend, at last a chance to see the city. Robbie, the office assistant/factotum/Mr Fixit had arranged a car and driver for us, and we were joined by two of the bright young things from the office. Mushfik speaks good English and Raisa speaks perfect American, having spent a year in High School in Minnesota as an exchange student.

They took us first to the Mogul Fort, and then to the Pink Palace, the home of the Nawabs of Dhaka., effectively the rulers of East Bengal during the Raj. The Pink Palace did remind me of a National Trust property, laid out very similarly, route of visit, dining room, bedroom…. Both were notable for being havens of peace and tranquillity in this noisy, crowded city.

But then the interesting stuff. They took us into the old city, a warren of tiny streets where no car could go, and the better for this. The place they took us was in fact a Hindu quarter, full of small temples and with a different atmosphere to anything we had seen before, not least because there were monkeys walking along the balconies of the houses above us. And, to our surprise, people were feeding them; but this we were told was because to Hindus monkeys are lucky.

And then the biggest surprise of all; in the middle of this great Muslim city, with its substantial Hindu minority, we came upon an Armenian church, beautiful and in beautiful condition , lovingly looked after by the custodian. They told us that now there are only two services held in the year, at Easter and Christmas, and that there is no priest here, but it is looked after the Armenian Archbishop of Australia. The Armenian community in Dhaka numbers 9 families, all of whom live in the wealthy quarter of Gulshan, where our hotel is.

And so for a meal. We couldn’t find a Biryani house open so we ate Mexican!

Sylhet

I was off to Sylhet for my one and only field trip. Sylhet is the third city of Bangladesh, after Dhaka and Chittagong, but its real claim to fame is that most of the “Indian” restaurateurs in the UK are not Indian at all; they are Bangladeshi and they mostly come from Sylhet. Don’t ask me why!

Sylhet is in principle a 4½ hour drive. I say in principle because this is Bangladesh and the traffic can give you anything. On the way I soon learn the rules of the road and they are frightening. There are tricycle rickshaws on the road. They battle to overtake each other, but are mown down by tuk-tuks, who in turn are run off the road by cars. The cars get run off the road by lorries, but the kings of the road are the coaches; thousands of them, and they give no quarter. If they overtake, no matter who is coming the other way they carry on. It’s up to you to get out of the way. And of course all the time everyone is “giving it that” with the horn. Absolutely deafening when a coach is right up your backside. And all very Darwinian. Our driver is an old hand, and knows when to attack and when to drive defensively; but for this newcomer to a new set of rules it’s absolutely frightening. But (and this is a change from Russia) there are working seat belts in the car-thankfully.

So we make our way, gingerly, towards Sylhet, through paddy fields which are just being planted with rice from the many nurseries by the side of the road. It’s an interesting time of year because just as the new season’s rice is being planted the harvested rice is being prepared for being packed in great yards by the side of the road.

I can’t tell you anything more about the countryside, because there is nothing else to say, apart from the fact that there are also loads of brickworks as well. But that’s it. Bangladesh’s countryside. Done.

So after our 4½ hour drive, we get to the Sylhet offices of the Department of the Environment, find it’s a small villa with 6 people, not the 28 on the organogram, and that it has a tiny laboratory with non-functioning equipment. Still, if I hadn’t seen it, I would have made big mistakes in my report. But we’re on our way back after an hour and a half, and that included lunch-Ruby Murray of course. And this is where the trouble started.

We made good progress as far as a rest house about 50km, or two hours (!) out of Dhaka, had a cup of tea and pretty quickly drove into the biggest traffic jam of my life. A traffic jam shouldn’t be confused with a British, disciplined traffic jam. It’s full of people jockeying for position, horns blaring, getting through gaps that you wouldn’t believe possible. It went on like this for about 30 km, which we covered in 4 hours, making the journey just over 7 hours. It was absolutely awful, and the worse for being on the way into Dhaka, not on the way out. Because that’s what you learn here-that traffic jams are absolutely random. Wonder how I’m going to get to the airport in time?

But at least I’m alive; quite a feat given these roads.

Déjà vu

I remember a previous trip away, in 2007, when I first saw on CNN, in my apartment in Kiev, the devastation that was Tewkesbury after that dreadful day’s rain on 20th July. As if only yesterday I recall the following days when I watched everything unfold on the news but also had my own reports from home and from mum in Tewkesbury; how my uncle and cousin Lyn had been flooded out along with hundreds of others. And the surrealism of it all in the Ukrainian cloudless summer.

So here I am now, in the warmth and dust of a dry January in Dhaka. I came home this evening and switched on Sky News to see the reporter at Upton Marina, talking about the flood defences and the flooding at Warwick, Evesham and Tewkesbury against the backdrop of a flooded Severn. Weird!
He says that so far the flood is not forecast by the Environment Agency to be severe. Let’s hope he is right. But I guess in the next day or two I’ll be seeing a little more on the TV of the place I always call home.

Consultancy Colleagues

One of the joys of this job is the people you meet-not just the clients. In my last post I spoke about the Pompey fan. He is staying in another hotel to me-perhaps a wise precaution, because one can only give and take so many insults.....

My own hotel mates are Robert, a German from Heidelberg and Samir, from Dehli. Both, interestingly American educated in part, Robert in New Orleans and Samir in Houston. Robert has excellent English, Samir excellent American. Both are about 40, so I am most definitely the old man of the party.

Samir can eat for India; although, let us say, of regular size he has the most enormous appetite. He eats with us in the evening but he will probably already have snacked on half a chicken before he gets to the table. Big breakfast, lunch, nibbles on the hoof, everything. Then, possibly something from room service late at night. Amazing!

He has been making up for Robert who, unluckily, has had a dose of Dehli belly, something that has so far eluded me. He had three days out, surviving on chicken soup, for another hearty eater, but as I write this he is starting to rev up again.

Our hotel is about 10 minutes drive from the office and we get picked up and dropped off every day by the office driver, Amin, or one of his colleagues. I say 10 minutes loosely. It can take an hour or so, with traffic conditions as they are. And even a long drive like that is kept to the minimum by Amin's extraordinary skill. He weaves in and out of traffic inch-perfect, missing trycicle rickshaws and tuktuks and somehow squeezing out the big 4 x 4s that are the big shots' mode of transport. This precision driving is assisted by thin bull bars which are attached to every car and which give just that little bit of extra security. Because collissions are inevitable. Not much chance of injury though-it's absolutely impossible to go more than 30mph in the city.

Whilst I was working yesterday Robert and Samir went into the Old Town for a recce-and came back saying that Gulshan, our neighbourhood, is almost empty compared with downtown. Difficult to believe, because here there are people and vehicles everywhere.

Hello Sailor!

I suppose it had to happen, a bit like finding among the infinite number of monkeys the one who can recite the works of Shakespeare. But today I achieved a first in my long career as an itinerant Consultant today.

In our office there are two consultancy teams. Mine is dealing with – yes – sewers and industrial effluents. Yes, I know how to live. The other one is doing a rather more acceptable task - town planning - but they were hamstrung by their Team Leader’s absence through delays in getting a flight from the UK because of the bad weather there.

So when he came this morning I uttered the normal words of sympathy that one would on this occasion.

“Yes” he said “bloody bad time. Just couldn’t get up the A3 to Heathrow”

Oh yes? I thought. From where? This needed a bit more careful interrogation. So I changed the subject to football and we discussed the Arsenal – Everton game the previous evening that we had both watched on TV.

“Arsenal are a great team when you give them room and Everton gave them none. We gave them all the room they wanted and they took us apart”

“Oh yes? Where was that?”

“Fratton Park”

SKATE ALERT!

So I did the only thing that was possible under the circumstances and called him a Pompey scummer, explained my own allegiance, was in turn insulted and like British Consultants everywhere got on and did our job, pausing only two or three times during the day to swap cheery insults.

And it will go on.

An Evening Out

Bangladesh is said to be the fourth most populous country in the World. When you see that the city states of Monaco and Singapore are numbers 1 and 2, and the tiny island of Malta is number 3 you can see that, in effect, Bangladesh is actually the No.1. And you only have to be here to understand why.

Dhaka is teeming with people. They are everywhere. Crowds on the streets, crowds in the shops. Even crowds along the roads in the quite prosperous quarter that holds my hotel. So what a surprise when I went out to supper last night.

Let me put it all into context. My boss here is Farook who, despite is name, is a resident of Washington DC. Sometime long in the past his family came from here, but he is an all-American boy. Farook had arranged to take me out to his club. Sounded interesting, as we drove (very carefully) along the streets trying to avoid the unlit motorised rickshaws that is the transport of choice here. Much to my surprise we only drove for two minutes, parked the car and walked through a small gate into…..a completely open space. This was about a block in area and, in Central Dhaka, would house a couple of thousand people. But all that was there was a swimming pool, a couple of tennis courts, an adventure playground for children and a clubhouse. For this was the American Club.

If we had any doubts that this was in fact the American club, a couple of seconds in the bar (in this devoutly Muslim country) would dispel them. Most of the people appeared to be drinking Margaritas, in my experience the beverage of choice for the American abroad. Yes, I do remember a very sore head in Abu Dhabi, trying to match an American colleague Margarita for Margarita.

The menu confirmed the impression. Absolutely no Bangladeshi dishes, but pizzas, cheeseburgers, ribs, fajitas galore. And, as I can testify, the French fries were pure McDonalds, and absolutely delicious of course. The menu was priced in dollars.

Me? I let the side down. I had a lovely kingfish en papilotte and a couple of bottles of Becks. But oh those French fries!

New Year, New Challenge, New Continent

Well, it’s travel time again and a first for me, Dhaka in Bangladesh, my 48th country, give or take. And it looks as if I left UK just in time, courtesy of Emirates from Birmingham. I left the day before the first snow came and so there were happily no delays to speak of. By the way, Emirates have got it absolutely spot on. They do two flights a day-600 people- from Birmingham, two from Manchester and one from Glasgow, serving mainly the UK provincial Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi community. On my flight every seat was taken. The same goes at the Dubai end. Once those Indian expats get to Dubai they can choose from 21 airports on the subcontinent. The Dhaka flight (once again twice a day, 600 people was also absolutely full.

It’s 7 years since I visited Dubai airport, my brief stopover before the flight to Dhaka and my goodness how it has changed. I’ve never seen so many shops in an airport nor (more to the point) so many people shopping till they drop.

I added to my portfolio of films watched, more or less the only occasion I ever do, having a notoriously short attention span. Having the opportunity to choose one of 50 films I chose Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, pretty dark and, strangely unfinished.

And then I arrived to the bedlam that is Dhaka. I had a little hors d’oeuvres on the flight with a sense of chaos going on-nobody sitting down for more than a few minutes and all shouting (cheerily) at each other. When the flight landed people were up in a flash, walking down the aisles even when the aircraft was braking on the runway. Chaos at Immigration, chaos at the baggage carousel, a little haven of normality outside the front doors (the reason for all this is a high fence keeping the mass of humanity away from taxis and punters) and then the utter, utter chaos that is Dhaka, cars, buses and three wheeled tuktuks (Filipino word: I will find the Bangladeshi name in due course) all weaving between lanes trying to gain a few cm advantage, beggars at traffic lights staring into the cars longingly, jaywalkers seemingly coming to within a cm of sudden death as they cross the road and above all the cacophonous noise; car horns all the time.

The Civic Inn, my home for the next three weeks, is a little haven of modest civilisation and normality, where I can, if desired, have a mixed grill (but with chicken sausages) and watch the snow in Worcestershire on Sky News. But not much time for that in these frantic first few days of this project.