Thanksgiving in Dhaka

I have always loved Thanksgiving.  What's not to love?  Food takes the center stage.  The last few years, I've had a great time at the Thanksgiving party hosted by an American family with long ties to Bangladesh.  But this last summer, they moved back to the states.
Luckily, Amanda's friend who works for USAID had offered to host a dinner, and generously extended the invitation to Shazzad and me.  US Government staff had the day off, so they were started at 4PM, but we said we'd be along a little later, once our workday was over.  By 5:30, we were en route.  We swung by the VERY upscale Uni-mart, which is definitely aspiring to be something like a fancy Sam's club or Target.  It even has North End coffee shop in it!  So we order a coffee while picking up starters to take with us.  Clearly there are still some kinks in their inventory--we can find salsa but no tortilla chips.

Amanda at the North End, in Uni-mart.
Dhaka's moving up!

All that mumbo jumbo

Mambo! Jambo! Or “Hello!” “Hi!” in Swahili.  Seriously, it’s so simple that it’s astonishing that "mumbo-jumbo" could somehow morph into a term for confusing jargon! 

Going (coco)nuts about Zanzibar.

 Dar es Salaam is an impressive place.  It buzzes with activity.  Yet there is a running joke about “no haraka” (hurry) in the city; when ordering lunch, expect it to take at least an hour to arrive. The beaches are spectacular.  I steal some time to enjoy them—mainly at night when the crowd disperses and the breeze comes in.  But I see the ghost crabs scurrying around, so I am a little wary of wandering too far.

There are so many references in development to the success of Coca Cola in setting up universal supply chains.  “If we can get coke to remote villages in Africa, why can’t we get (fill in the blank—malaria meds, clean water, etc.)??”  I find it irritating and in most cases, a false comparison point.  Plus, there are so many places in Bangladesh where you can’t find coke!  Though perhaps you can find one of the more dubious local beverages, like mojo or thums up (yes, I spelled that correctly).  But in Tanzania, coke was everyone.  I loved the billboards near the Coke factory that said, “One billion reasons to believe in Africa’s future.” (there are roughly a billion people in Africa).  I thawed a bit on my annoyance with the Coca cola references in development.  And will postpone the launch of my #nocokehere campaign.  For now.

Pic and choose

Amazing how time goes by when you are having fun!  I've been delinquent about blogging--my last post was over 3 months ago.

But I have a lot of photos to share from my many travels.  Today I'll post the link the the portions in the United States, with the Africa and Europe portions soon to come.

In September, I went to San Francisco for a conference on Social Innovation and got to visit Travis and Holly for the first time since Thanksgiving, 2010.  We spent a lot of time outdoors, and rarely went more than a waking hour without eating something very yummy.  I learned that Travis is doing this running streak (at least 1 mile per day, every day), and was inspired to try the same with push-ups.  I set my minimum at 10 per day.  But I seem to forget more than he does--he's done over 365 days straight.  I started on Sept 16 but have only managed to get to 28 days straight.

Then in October I went back, this time solely for fun and accompanied by Shazzad.  We went on a trip that even Jack Kerouac would envy!  Flew into Chicago, then to South Dakota, then to Vegas with my parents, where we rented a car to drive to Denver, Colorado, via the Grand Canyon, Bryce, Zion, Aspen.....more beautiful scenery that your brain can process.  From Denver we flew to Raleigh, took the bus to DC, and then flew to our respective next stop (for Shazzad: Dhaka, for me: Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania).

Hope you enjoy the photos and the (occasionally witty) captions.