A sail across canals and oceans of time, a voyage so fantastically different from my normal life that I can hardly describe it. That is the last three days in the Khulna region of Bangladesh.
My photographs will come later, as will more descriptions. I’m writing this post now thanks to the generous loan of a colleague’s iPhone “hot spot.”
But I felt today that I had gone both back and forward in time, seeing a communal past … and a watery future.
Today I flew from Dhaka to Jessore to interview victims of human trafficking. Here are several who became friends through the ordeal and are now growing beans and eggplant together on leased land to pull themselves up from poverty.
Later, we went to a community meeting where a trafficking survivor explained how to safely migrate out of the country. It’s her way of paying forward the kindness shown to her after she was victimized.
“It is my pleasure to help others,” she said, “so they don’t have to suffer as I did.”
These people are no strangers to suffering. They live on rice, endure torrential monsoons — and generally work hard for everything they have. But they offered me their only chair and pressed cold drinks in our hands. As we left, they said one of the only English words they know: “Bye bye”!
Pushing my curtains aside this morning, at first I saw only a gray mist, moisture rising from a thousand rivers and inlets, from the sea that is steadily stealing this country away from the 169 million (about 3,279 people a mile) who live here.
But as the sun rose beyond the haze I could see tall buildings rising, lush rooftop gardens and this view from the breakfast buffet bar.
Almost nine million people live in Dhaka — which means that when it comes to photographing the place, above the fray is the right place to be.
“It’s your Bangladesh welcome, Madame,” said the Winrock driver as we sat in snarled traffic on the way from the airport to my hotel in Dhaka.
I was almost asleep. Now that I’m the hotel, of course, I’m wide awake. Hoping a few minutes fully stretched out on what looks to be a comfy bed will change that directly.
But there are a lot of thoughts and images jangling around in the brain: motorcycles whisking in and out of the traffic, brightly colored tuk-tuk taxis with wire-cage sides, vendors hawking popcorn and peanuts in the gridlock, and, finally, a quiet hotel down a quiet lane. Ahhhh….
Writing this post from Dulles Airport, a gateway to the world that just happens to be 15 minutes from my house. Out the window: rain, clouds and the gigantic nose of an Airbus. Inside: people from many nations milling around in search of coffee, water and connecting flights.
I’ve been planning this trip for months, and will be preparing even in the hours I have en route. But in truth, nothing can prepare me for the people I’m about to meet, the roads and rivers I’m about to travel, the interviews I’m about to conduct.
In the end all I can expect is … the unexpected. That’s what travel is about.
Beach walkers are purposeful creatures, and when you hit the strand early, as I did today, you see them in droves: arms pumping, shoulders squared, feet clad in tennis shoes or serious sandals. I fit right in.
For the beach walker, the ocean is a backdrop, the sand a soft cushion for our plantar-fasciitis-prone heels. No shell will tempt us from our mission, which is to make it from the old jetty to the first (blue) lifeguard chair before being overcome by tropical heat and humidity.
But even the most driven of beach walkers can’t ignore gulf waters lapping, shore birds peeping, the glorious mixture that is life where land meets sea.
Every year when I’m at the beach I finally fall into vacation time. Never completely. There is always a part of me that is about efficiency and completion. And never right away. It may take days.
I knew it happened this time when I completely forgot about a meeting I said I might attend. It wasn’t a conscious slip of the schedule. It was a complete and utter forgetting. And when the reminder text came, it was as if my colleagues were hailing from a distant world.
This world is waiting for me — I’l return to it all too soon — but right now it is deliciously foreign, the sort of place I used to know but have almost forgotten because of the strangeness of its exotic customs.
When I traveled to Kentucky regularly I’d hit the road early and be in Lexington by mid-afternoon. But now when Ellen and I drive together we leave late on a workday, drive partway and stay overnight. Traveling becomes less a duty and more a road trip.
Last night we pulled off in Fairmont, West Virginia, and are now cosseted in a roadside hostelry. How sumptuous these places have become! A gym to die for. Bowls of fruit and raspberry tea. Soft lighting. High-thread-count sheets. This is not your grandfather’s no-tell motel!
A funny feeling takes over in these places. You are not quite here, not quite there. You are comfortable, You are just off the road or about to hit it. You are … suspended.
Less than two hours west is a different world, one bound by green and dripping boughs. Chalets on the hillside, mountain paths, water trickling over rocks. I won’t glorify these trickles by calling them waterfalls. But the water sings as it flows over stones and through leaves, so these trickles have an aural presence.
Some of the lanes here are paved and some not. Foot paths cross them, heading up the mountain. I may tackle one of them today. But yesterday was a get-acquainted stroll. The end of a long week.
I marveled as I strolled at how much difference a walk can make. And a mountain walk makes even more.
