This is a typical scene - old truck, narrow country lane (though this is a main highway) - filled
with breadfruit (the national fruit of Bangladesh). The season is short and the stuff rots fast
so they have to get it to market quick. We followed (and passed blind) hundreds of these trucks
during my first weeks.
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Bolts of finished cloth are peddled to market on bicycle rickshaws.
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Bangladesh has few cash crops. This cotton represents one of the very few commodities
it can sell on the world market.
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These guys are UNloading firewood. People cook on very small fires, on the floor, in their
homes - even in modern homes and appartments in the city. If thy are lucky enough to have an
actual floor, they put down a tile to hold the fire.
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This is a scene from a typical market town on a market day. During breadfruit season,
every day was a market day. Notice how the market encroaches on the road.
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The activity intensifies as you near the center. The covered truck was unusual and caused
speculation among my crew that day. They suspected smugglers from India.
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Retail breadfruit and I don't know what the stuff with green husks is in the background.
And, I don't know what the wheely thing in the background is either but there are little
ones by the shop on the right.
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Pineapple vender. I saw very few pudgy people in Bangladesh.
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Here are two manufacturing enterprises side by side - yarn and firewood.
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Finished lumber (poles) is awaiting redistribution at a riverside lumberyard and dock.
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One man tends these paddies along the road outside the walls of the Bhaluka gas pumping station.
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Many roadside venders wonder the country selling what they can. This fellow sold sugar popped
rice. Colored with food coloring, it is tasty, festive, and filthy. (The
guy on the right is the one with the cow from before.)
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Shahinul Islam and our day's driver, Punjab, buy a fish from a lucky young angler. Shahin allowed
himself to be out bargained and paid a premium for the fish because of the sellers age.
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Barbers lined the road in one section of the market. I stopped counting at twenty on one side but
they were on both sides.
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Shops like this appear frequently in and near small villages. They are open quite late and
carry a surprising assortment of useful stuff.
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Being more up-scale, I shopped at Safeway in a fancy mall.
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I often dined in tea houses like this one where they served goat, vegitables, tea and
fried bread.
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I sometimes got to eat in fine resteraunts like this one where I ate goat and chicken
won-tons with Rachid and the waiter stuck his fingers in the glasses.
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