Welcome to the Third World!

On the day of my last post, my friend Adina and I made plans for me to stay with her and her family in the Gulshan residential area for a few days, and then I’d head back to my grandmother’s that upcoming weekend. On the way home from work, she picked me up. It was so good to see her! Adina and I studied together at UNI (University of Northern Iowa) as undergraduates before she headed to Texas and I started graduate school at UNI. Yet, we remained fast friends for years. The last time I’d seen her was on my way back from my uncle’s home in Texas.

Staying with her family was completely different than staying at my grandmother’s. Her family is so much more easygoing and open-minded than my family. Also they are really nice and gracious as well. An example, I could walk around wearing my jeans, or if I’d brought a pair, my olive green capris, and a top and no one cares. They live on the fifth floor of an apartment building which occupies one half of that floor. Two other apartments occupy each corner of the other half. Three balconies face each of the three outer sides while the fourth leads out the main entrance to the elevator and the other two apartments.

Thursday led to an interesting event which I may just call my initiation into the third world. After taking a shower, I noticed that the shower area, separate from the rest of the guest bathroom with glass doors, was flooded. The door had been installed wrongly and ran right on top of the drain so that water was unable to recede. At that time, I was under the impression that only the shower area was flooded. Well, I had to get out of there somehow and just hoped that I wouldn’t flood the rest when I opened the door. Big surprise! The whole bathroom was flooded with at least an inch of water. At this time, I was thinking that I hope the water doesn’t seep into the guestroom. So I checked the door to see if water was lapping at it or seeping under. Noticing that the water wasn’t going anywhere, I was glad to note that the door was that solidly sealed.

My only option at the time was to close the shower door, keeping as much water out as possible, and soaking up the rest in the bathroom. With the tank top that I’d been sleeping in, and having no rags handy, I began soaking up the water with it, and squeezing it out in the sink. This whole process took a good hour. Meanwhile, when both Adina and her sister stopped at the door to see what was going on, I told them to move the furniture and entertainment center away from the bathroom door, and anything else around in case the room flooded when I opened the door.

After I finally sopped up most of the water so that only a dry rug would be needed to wipe the rest up, and after I moved the rug out of the way and left it dripping into the sink, I opened the door only to discover what really kept the water from flooding the guestroom: a raised doorstep. I felt a little silly but relieved too that the water was trapped in the bathroom and couldn’t have spread.

The maids at her house, used to cleaning up all kinds of spills, were so surprised that I’d put the effort into cleaning up instead of calling them, that they called me out for it. Some comments on the occasion of discovering what I was really up to in the bathroom: “What are you doing?! Why go through all that trouble when they can do it?” My favorite comment was “Well, you got your workout done for the day.” Well, I did leave the entire shower area for them if they really were that eager to clean up.

Actually they’re not, (who would be?!?) but that’s the way things are here. People do what little they can, leaving the maids and menservants to do the “dirty work.” These servants expect that they will be given the work to do because that work is their job, whether it’s cooking, cleaning, ironing, mowing, washing clothes, and drying them on the clothesline, sweeping and dusting, etc.

In any case, I got a taste for how tough cleaning up is in Bangladesh since not all the types of products one would see at a supermarket in the states are available, nor were they available to me at the time. I’m more likely to just chalk this up to another interesting learning experience.