She works 60 hours a week and gets paid .10 cents/hour ($6/week or $24/month). She rents a single room on the 6th floor of a building that looks like it has been gutted by a fire. To afford the $43/month rent, she shares the room with 6 others.
She may work harder and get paid less than mom’s in the USA, but she still has the energy to attend to her daughter’s stubbed toe.
Today, I met many men and women, girls and boys just like Arifakter. They all have their own stories, hopes, and dreams.
I’m in Dhaka until the 29th and I will be spending much of my remaining time meeting the people…
Admission for one-day for one child at Disney World is $67. The average American family can handle this.
Admission for one-day for one child at Fantasy Kingdom in Dhaka is $2.60, a price beyond the reach of the average Bangladeshi family.
Fantasy Kingdom is surrounded by garment factories and rice fields. Many of the locals will go their entire life without taking the first step under FK’s bright, welcoming gates.
Today, for the price of one Disney World admission, I took 19 kids and one old farmer. We had the park to ourselves. There was no line. We were the line.
Roller coasters, playgrounds, and pizza filled our day. At times it seemed normal. And…
The night of the Bangla New Year, I went to an amusement park named Fantasy Kingdom with some friends. The place was packed and it didn’t take long for them to realize what life is like in Bangladesh for me: blatant staring, people wanting to touch me, get their photos taken with me.
My friends started to call me Tom Cruise and we brainstormed a business: Get your picture taken with Tom Cruise. We assigned rolls. Tuhin would be the manager and Kamrul the security. I, of course, was Tom.
You’re probably thinking that all of this is an exaggeration. That you’ve been places where there was no one like you and people stared. Trust me. Unless you are famous or are a whitey at…
Happy New Year if you are Bengali, happy Saturday if you aren’t.
My day started at 4am. I am beat. I’ll write more later, including how my “White Boy” fame nearly started a riot at a rock concert. This day was so, so very long. For now here’s me and Bibi on her rockin’ truck of Bangla beats…
The night bus rolls on and I make a pact with my bladder: The next stop, I’ll let him go.
I’m in the twilight that comes with sleeping, not so much because you need to but because you don’t want to see what rules of the road and physics the bus driver is trying to break, and don’t notice the bus has stopped. Finally, I awake and step off the bus. A shanty town bus station. I ask a lonely ticket saleslady where the toilet is. She points around to the back of the buildings.
“Hey boss. You need toilet? I show you.” Says the bus attendant.
My brother, Kyle, introduced me to Kurt Vonnegut. I’ve only read 3 or 4 of his books, but enough to know that I enjoy being inside of his head for a few hundred pages at a time.
He may have died, but I look forward to getting to know him further through his work. He was from Indiana and loved Indiana. Any writer from the Midwest is a hero of mine, especially when they are as funny as Vonnegut.
Vonnegut flatulated my all-time favorite quote:
I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you different.
Speaking of which, a random thought…
Bangladesh is the most densely populated country in the world. What would happen if its 150 million people…
