Waste disposal in plain sight

This is how my rubbish is treated in Dhaka (see above). The man collects my discarded refuse and sorts it in the street. It is a little affronting to see someone right before your very eyes picking through your waste and segregating it for re-use, but at the end of the day when his work is finished, he transports it all away, returns to his own home presumably, and the whole process can be placed safely out of sight and out of mind. 

This is how my rubbish is treated in Naogaon (our home near Saburo's project site). My waste is dumped on the vacant lot next to my building (see above). I was encouraged to hurl it directly from my balcony but I demurred and I ask the cleaning staff to take it down instead. Then your neighbours forage through your refuse and carry away the items they can re-use. This woman lives opposite me and she is taking the newspaper I used to wrap my coffee grounds away as fuel for her cooking stove. 

This recycling of what I no longer need seems very effective to me. There is no formal garbage collection service in the area and I learned from one of the office administrative staff on the project that this style of rubbish disposal is deliberately employed to create land fill. After a few years, when the "dust" has collected sufficiently, the owner of the land will build here. However,  in the case of my non-biodegradable rubbish which is completely useless to man or beast, it remains being tossed around in the wind or lying in full view forever, 

This is very disconcerting. Already in Bangladesh, I use less plastic than I have in previous countries, and I have read here that it was the first country in the world to ban plastic bags in 2011. (Can it be true that no other country has implemented a ban yet?). Instead the shops give their customers re-usable jute bags, which as jute is a domestic crop that has fallen out of favour in recent years, is a very clever idea. If like me, you grew up around old jute bales in your dad's wool shed (see here) but that was about it, you can learn more about its versatility here in an article from "The Daily Star" newpaper. 

In the old days in Chittagong, I am fairly sure there was  a rubbish collection service of some kind. I remember the cows in the streets eating from the rubbish piles but I don't remember plastic being blown around by the breeze along the side of the road. Maybe I have a selective memory? I will have to ask some friends to see what they remember.

Being unable to escape from my rubbish is, "An Inconvenient Truth" and it has changed my outlook more than Al Gore's film ever did. In fact I am pretty sure I avoided watching the film way back when, and I thereby find it rather ironic that I now have my own personal accumulation of plastic, which is very inconvenient and from which I cannot hide!!! 

It just goes to show you that life will get you in the end, one way or another; i.e. you can run, but you cannot hide. How ironic that it catches up with me here in Bangladesh. I would never have predicted this before my arrival here for the second time...

Our new apartment looks like home now

Here are some photographs of our second floor apartment in Naogaon. It looks a little different now that it has fresh paint and tiled floors. Our bedroom (above) is the room that receives the most abundant light in our new place. I love the light and find it very relaxing and calming, although I expect it will heat up tremendously during the summer and the blackout curtains I brought with me from Manila will double nicely as an extra layer of insulation. The mat on the floor in front of the bed is reminiscent of tatami, and I bought this at the Naogaon market (Tk190) to help keep the room a little warmer back when the mercury dropped to less than 10 degrees Celsius. The seasons have moved on since, and it is nearly time for the air conditioner to be put to work.

Note the emergency light on the bedside table. Thus far the electricity supply has been relatively stable, even though the current fluctuates and it is necessary to use automatic voltage regulators (AVRs) with our sensitive, expensive electrical goods. Once summer hots up and hits its stride that will completely change. A portable electricity generator was installed in the garage (across from our building) in preparation, but the staff and I are a little afraid of the machine and have not felt brave enough to switch it on yet.

It is connected to our power lines by a cable stretching from the roof of the garage and running across the road to our building. This cable is expensive and a night guard will start patrolling the vicinity from Saturday to ensure it does not go missing. It should be safe enough; as after cable was taken from a nearby building several weeks ago, our neighbours began to leave food out for the local dogs, I am told. The word soon spread and the savage sounds of viscious howling and snarling can be heard nightly as all the dogs from the town congregate and engage in stand-off contests to stake out their territory. It appears to be an effective deterrent as I have not heard of any more theft. I am hoping I will not hear about any of my neighbours being attacked by the dogs, either.

Here is our dining room table (above) which is an ubiquitous local design where the table top is balanced on a frame with legs. The cabinet is one I purchased from Otobi. And the lamp is from Dhaka.

The balcony outside has iron bars for security reasons. This balcony overlooks a vacant plot of land, which serves as the local rubbish dump (more about that in a future post). There is another balcony off our bedroom without any bars. This seems quite odd to me, not to mention rather dangerous, as the railing is perilously low. But perhaps that side of the building is more difficult for would-be thieves to climb up? Or perhaps the owner ran out of cash? I suspect it is most likely the latter.

Here is my brown kitchen. I don't notice the colour (much) anymore, although that might also be because I have not spent a lot of time here yet. I returned again to Dhaka today. I had the little stands made for the counters so I don't have to bend over, and they turned out well. I still would appreciate some more counter space. I am considering having a table made for the middle of the room. We'll see how energetic I feel next time I am in Naogaon town.

I designed this cabinet (above) and I am pleased with the result. I have enough storage room for my dishes, and the rice cooker sits on the ledge next to the microwave. My microwave had a little work done by a young chap whom I guessed correctly was 20 years old. I needed the cord to be lengthened for it to reach the power point outlet, which is on the floor behind the cabinet. He fixed it all up for me, as well as changing another power outlet on the wall so I could plug in my oven toaster. 

Note the AVR on the top ledge, which is connected to the refrigerator and the washing machine (in a room to the right of the above photograph). It was a little tricky to connect everything that needed connecting, and I was relieved when I solved the puzzle. The top ledge goes all around the room. I assume it is used for food storage and kitchen items, however I think it would be very annoying to have to constantly climb on a stool to get things down all the time. 

Our living room is quite spacious. The coffee table was order-made here from a Ikea catalogue, and is much heavier than the regular flat-pack I can tell you. The sofa is from DCC 1 Market in Dhaka. The cream poufs (this word is used in Australia for an ottoman) are what is left from the sofa set we had made in the Iloilo in 2005. The curtains are covering a window which faces onto the wall of the very gray and drab building next door, and are from SM (department store) in Iloilo, Philippines. I have been carrying them around with me for the last six years just "in case" I ever need them. The orange silk covering on the piano is from Viet Nam, that also has been with us ever since we received it from Matthew and Bec all those years ago. The piano is waiting for Saburo to have some free time to set it up. It has been everywhere with us since we left Tokyo in 1998. One of our few decorations is courtesy of my niece Ali. She made me a very pretty blue and pink owl last year and I have it on the bookshelf. 

Not much overall in the way of decoration but quite a few memories in the mix all the same.

This room is my "Treadmill room". It is useful being able to lift it up and I can also move it around by tilting it down towards the floor and balancing it on the wheels on the front end of the machine. The room has a view of a construction site, and I enjoy watching the progress of the works. The bike has yet to be tested on the streets. I may have to work up some courage. Despite Naogaon being a small country town, there is a lot of traffic on the roads here. It is also the room for washing racks and all the odds and ends that don't fit anywhere else. Saburo's golf bag is getting dusty unfortunately.

Say hello to Mickey. He is a memento from my first visit to Japan when I was still in high school. Mum kept him for me for many years and I retrieved him last year. I am very fond of his company, I must say.

There is another bedroom to the left, behind the bookshelf so to speak. This is a guest room for company employees. The nearest decent hotel is more than an hour's drive away and occasionally if the rooms on the first floor apartment which is rented also by the company are all full, then this room is used for Saburo's colleagues also. The bathroom is the only room on this floor which deserves the name. Saburo spent time with the workmen explaining how to fit a bath tub in the narrow room. His perserverence paid off and we have a fantastic tub, and also the water heaters are large enough, that the tub can be filled with hot water. It is really wonderful!

And did you say hello to me also??? Did you notice me in the mirror? I did not see me either at first.

P.S. Thank you everyone for reading. It is lovely to have an audience, and it makes a huge difference. I have changed the settings on my blog so that now anyone can make a comment. I was being cautious before and I had closed the comments, but I realised this blog is public already so I have decided to throw caution to the wind. Please let me know if the comments section is working ok. Thank you!