Eid Exodus

I had only spent a few nights at my new house in Ramchandrapur when Carolyn and I boarded an empty bus for Dhaka. After I finished my Bangla classes, I was excited to begin work, but it happened to be the week of the biggest holiday of the year. As the MCC offices were closed for a week, Phil and Rebecca suggested I go to Dhaka with them to discuss my job and its complexities. (They probably just wanted to make sure Carolyn and I didn’t get bored in the village or maybe they wanted babysitters?) Carolyn came too, as her Bangla teacher’s family lives in Dhaka, and when given the choice he would rather teach her in Dhaka than out in the village. Carolyn and I spent six days in an unordinary Dhaka.

In the cities of Bangladesh everyone has a village from where they came and where their family lives. Before Eid the majority of the population of Dhaka leaves for their home villages throughout Bangladesh. Carolyn and I were going against mass migration, and as a result we had lots of traveling space and some unusual sights. As we went by rickshaw to the bus station in Mymensingh, the entire way was lined with scores of walking people. People normally wouldn’t normally walk from the bus station, but rickshaws just weren’t available. When we got on the bus, it was empty. Usually the buses will not leave until every seat is full, but we drove to Dhaka with half a dozen people. The buses coming from Dhaka had standing room only as well as dozens of people and things hanging illegally from the roof. But this made our time in Dhaka more enjoyable as we avoided the traffic jams that exist during the rest of the year.