Wednesday, March 20 (#2)

I've arrived in Dhaka!  Once off the plane we all stood in long immigration lines.  The "Foreigners" line was much shorter than the others but still took at least 30 mins to get through.  From there, everyone went to baggage claim.  After 20 mins, I began to worry that I was at the wrong baggage return.  I went searching through the 3 other choices and then came upon the biggest pile of "lost and found" luggage.  Imagine the floor of a room 20x15 covered completely by bags piled at some points 2-3 deep.  Where were the owners of these bags?!  Thankfully, my bags were not in that vast wasteland.  By the time all the luggage was off the plane and available to us, everyone in the long immigration lines was waiting with us.  A friendly local man waiting next to me must have sensed my concern.  He said that picking up luggage in Bangladesh always takes a long time.  Since then, others have said that Emirates flights are the ones that take so long... maybe because these are huge international flights with hundreds of people.  In any case, knowing that the wait was expected/normal, I relaxed and had confidence my bags would show up.  And after more than an hour, they did.

"We've lost Mom in Bangladesh!" 

The last phase of getting here was to exit the terminal and stand at the curb to wait for Abu and their driver to come fetch me.  This is where it would have been really good for all of us to have the same understanding of how, where and when this was to happen.  Unfortunately, there were a few communication issues:

*  My cell phone wasn't working to call Abu and/or Lisa.

*  I was at the Terminal 1 exit and they were at Terminal 2

*  My plane landed at 8:30 and that is when Abu arrived to pick me up.  With the delays  I described, even if I'd been right where Abu thought he'd find me, it would have been over 2 hours later.   

*  Lisa was frantic without anyway to reach me.  She called her brother, Ryan, (at 1:30am MN time to see if he would be able to track down my flight and find out if I was actually on it.  

*  Ryan was sound asleep and didn't quite comprehend.  Once he did, he tracked my flight, made a call to Emirates and learned that I was indeed on the plane.

*  Abu left his driver to circle the airport till he was dizzy.  Meanwhile, he begged his way into the secure part of the airport in order to look for me.  

*  Strangers who noticed that I'd been waiting for what was clearly an unusual amount of time insisted I use their cell phones in order to call for help.  (In the hour I waited I used 3 separate cell phones.)

*  I was calling the house phone and not Abu's cell phone.

*  Call #1 was answered by a woman speaking Bengali.  This turned out to be the maid.  I talked at her and she talked at me - there was a pause and we both hung up.

*  Calls #2-4 were answered by Abu's brother.  First, he was sleeping (like Ryan on the other side of the world) and didn't comprehend.  He hung up.  By the fourth try, he repeated what I'd been saying all along and said he understood and would get the message to Abu.

At that point, I heaved a sigh of relief, hung up and looked around to hand the phone back to the stranger.  As I did, there was Abu, standing behind me!  I find it ironic that the only communication issues I had were not because of different languages!

Little green taxis

Traffic in Dhaka

Abu and Lisa live about 20 mins from the airport--when there is no traffic, which would be due to a national strike.  On my son's recent visit here, Ryan happened to fly in during a strike, so it was a speedy trip from airport - home.  When Abu and I got into traffic it was mid-day and the peak of congestion.  The positive side of the hour + trip home is that I got to see most everything in slow motion.  I was stunned to see people walking between the (jammed) cars and selling anything from maps to washcloths!  There were also women and children begging at the windows.  This was heart wrenching!

School bus filled with  students

Vehicles come and go through the literal bumper-to bumper traffic.  Every move seemed risky to me and everyone honksThere were no rickshaws on the "highway" but there were mini-taxis and interesting looking vehicles that I had to ask what they were--like the mobile jail for transporting prisoners.  It seemed that every road was under some kind of construction.  The workers were in regular clothing, no uniforms, and instead of wearing steel toed boots while taking turns with heavy hammers and huge stakes, they wore flip flops!  

The buildings are fascinating.  Parts of our drive reminded me of being in Times Square because of the crowding of buildings, advertising, people and traffic.  The similarities end there, however.