The area I'm living in and where the University is located, Uttara, is supposedly one of the nicest neighbourhood's in Dhaka, save maybe for Gulshan - an expat hub. It's a hard concept to grasp that your next door neighbours don't even have a house, but are just living off some vacant property in a small tin shack. Agriculture has been urbanized and maximized to fit every square foot. And again, it seems that almost every building in Uttara is undergoing construction. The men outside my window arrive every morning at a quarter to seven and will stay well past ten at night mixing cement. Maybe they're already residents?
[Outside my apartment - the family that lives on our first floor]
["The Boss" - security guard]
[Walk home from IUBAT]
I always scoffed at pictures of 'third world' children taken by my contemporaries. Maybe I was uncomfortable with the idea? It was probably more selfish, I was more likely just jealous. Either way, I'm a hypocrite. These kids are just too damn cute and they love to have their picture taken - for reasons I'm not quite sure. They are well aware that they aren't going to be tagged in any album, and were not quite FB friends yet. I guess it's the novelty of the digital camera.
These pictures are taken about half a block from my home, on my walk to the university. All day long the children (and some adults) will come running and yelling "Hi! How are you?" to come shake your hand. That's pretty much the extent of their english - still better than my Bengali.
The kid in the last picture is named Abi. He's super legit.
With Love,
Daniel R. Hawkins
ps Mom, you can click on the images to make them bigger
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