Rising waters of Dhaka
Tuesday December 19, 2006
Bonnie CarlsonI had been promising Aiden and Esme that I would take them to a craft shop. Aiden and Esme are my kids and both are in primary school. They require care, feeding and regular bursts of planned entertainment. They had been bored since we arrived in Dhaka and crafts were everywhere, so I thought in the absence of fast food restaurants, water parks, swimming pools, amusement parks, cinemas and all the other diversions my children had grown accustomed to at our previous home in Bulgaria, I could at least find them a few crafts.
So I called for a taxi and told them where I wanted to go. Perhaps I didn?t ask this very clearly but I attempted to explain that I wouldn't actually want to go to this place, which was purely an optional journey, if there was any flood trouble between here and there. The waters had been rising in Bangladesh and some areas were a bit soggy, let?s say.
"No, no, no, Madame. No trouble. We pick you up 3.30. No plood."
You would think in this country they might be able to say "flood" properly, but no, it always seems to come out "plood". It rhymes perfectly, but they have the firm belief that all Ps and Fs are absolutely and randomly interchangeable.
Sure enough, there was a plood on the road the shop was situated on. I looked to the left at one point and realised that this wasn't just a road that had a massive puddle that we were leaving our wake in, but was in fact the lake itself, just so, so, so much bigger than it had been the last time I'd been there.
Esme said the kids at school said you could swim in the plood water. I told Esme I'd better never catch her eating a fish dinner at any of those kids' houses, and no swimming, my friend, unless chlorine is involved.
They thought it was cool. I kept saying things to the driver like, "OK, well, I didn't know the plood had got this far. We can just turn around now and go home. No need to shop for crafts today." All very light-hearted mind you. As in, "Ha ha ha, a plood. Well, waddaya know? How about we just call it a day then, hmmm?" He either didn't understand me or chose to ignore me. Frankly, I think Bangladeshi drivers are way too goal-oriented.
I said I couldn't imagine the shop would actually be open, being on this particular plood plain ? or would it be plood flain?
It was. The shop was open.
They had turned four tall metal bookshelves onto their sides, put them head to foot and laid long planks of wood along them, but none too thickly, just two skinny planks wide, all along the yard from the car to the door, crossing a completely deluged yard between the one and the other. The children jumped out of the van with springs on their feet and smiles on their faces (?what fun this strange and magical place is,? their giggles said), traversed the boards, and were in the shop in a jiffy. They thought it was a big hoot.
The driver said, "OK, Madame. I be back one hour." Really? He really wasn't going to wait for me? For us? He was going to leave me in a craft shop with a six and an eight-year-old in the middle of a plood? There was a less than polite invective before ?plood? in that last sentence when I first thought it, but time heals all wounds and softens our fear and panic.
I'm a sport. That much I'll say about myself. If this driver had another ride he had to give someone, then who was I to tell him he had to wait in the flooded road until my kids had picked out all manner of bizarre and pointless ephemera, which was so hastily assembled it could not possibly last more than three days before breaking.
"OK," I said meekly. "See you in an hour then." And I climbed up the overturned bookshelves, walked cautiously along the slippery, skinny planks that made up a bridge to the wide world of craft products. I proceeded to spend way too much money on nothing that I needed, assuming that they must be really desperate for money to open in the middle of a plood.
The taxi didn't leave us there after all. I will never know if his other ride got cancelled, or if it was just that we looked pathetic ? me the poor mother trying to maintain the last vestiges of dignity while traversing those planks, and my two kids who were so oblivious to the actual power and force of a plood as to be giddily frolicking along the boards on top of the shelving furniture and into the shop, waxing philosophical on the relative fun value of jumping in and having a quick swim in the fetid, rising waters of Bangladesh.
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