Packing Up in Dhaka

We're in our last days here in Dhaka.

As you can imagine, this is a pretty stressful time, even when so much of our move is being taken care of. After three days of packing, our house is now empty, save for the Embassy furniture and four suitcases’ worth of personal belongings. Our calendar is filling up with evening appointments as all of our friends ask to see us one last time before we go. Rabin (our guard) and Shanti (our housekeeper) are sad to see us go and worried about finding new jobs, so we're helping with that as much as we can. During all of this, we still have work to do -- Jennifer has some big meetings and conference calls with Washington over the next couple of weeks, while Patrick will be in Nepal all next week for work. On 11 April we'll board Thai Airways flight 322 to Bangkok.

And then there's Bhago.

Bangkok is not a good place for dogs. It's a big, crowded, modern city. The public parks don't allow dogs. We'll live in a small apartment on the 18th floor of a high-rise, with no garden space or yard. So we've decided it's best for Bhago not to join us there. We have a couple of options for him -- including sending him back to the States to live on Patrick's aunt's farm in Georgia -- but we think finding a home for him here in Bangladesh would be easiest for everyone, especially him.

Still, it's hard. We're really going to miss our little monster, and we know that no one will love him quite the way we have. He'll be fine in a good home, we know – and being a dog, he won’t miss us the way we’ll miss him. It's just tough to say goodbye.

For his part, Bhago has been awfully subdued over the last few days. People project all sorts of emotions onto their pets, so we don't want to go far as to say that he knows what's going on, but I'm sure he's picking up on the various emotional states in the house. There have been movers here, packing up boxes, yelling back and forth, and basically causing a lot of commotion. Normally this would have Bhago jumping up and down, barking, sniffing ... you know, all of that fun doggie stuff. Instead, he's mostly just watched them go by, sometimes with a heavy sigh. Jennifer jokingly said to Rabin (who spends a lot of time with Bhago during the day), "Maybe Bhago knows we're moving." Rabin replied, "I am thinking, Bhago know everything ... he just not say.”

And yet, he’s still his irrepressible self sometimes:

Bonus Pictures from Nepal!

A few more pictures from our recent Nepal trip:

A (sadly) typical street scene in Kathmandu: traffic jam plus garbage heap. While we were there, one of the major landfills for Kathmandu was being blockaded by the people who live near it, so no garbage had been collected for about a week. Here the garbage has blocked half the street, greatly exacerbating the traffic problem (to say nothing of the smell).


This conveyance is very popular in Nepal. We've even seen them on the streets of Kathmandu. We'd bet that if you could make a kit for one of these -- call it the Himalayan Chopper Pickup -- you could make a mint selling them to rednecks in the States.


While we were walking through people's front yards, we came across this family making a phone call. They lived in what seemed like the middle of nowhere, so we were really surprised to see a battery-powered, cordless handset here! We couldn't really find out how they got the phone, how much it cost to make a call, or how exactly the whole thing worked -- after all, we were intruding on their personal family business -- but it was neat to see.


This woman is using a traditional Nepali method of carrying heavy loads. She has everything she wants carry in the basked at her back. A strap is running from the basket to her forehead; she uses her body weight -- and strong neck muscles! -- to keep the load balanced. Sherpas carrying loads up Mount Everest sometimes use the same technique, perfected over centuries.


This was a Red Cross clinic in a village in Pokhara. We spent a while visiting with these two guys, who volunteer at the clinic, doing health screening and giving advice. They were very proud of their work and happy to talk about it, even if you can't tell from the picture (though, to be fair, no one smiles for cameras as much as Americans do).


Believe it or not, this is our hotel room in Pokhara town. It was set up like a traditional Nepali cottage, complete with fireplace. Patrick used his firemaking skills (thanks, Dad) to warm up the place a bit before bedtime -- the bed was in a loft just above the sofa.


During our time in Nepal, a very important Hindu festival, Shivaratri, was celebrated. One of the most significant Shiva temples in the world is in Kathmandu, so thousands upon thousands of people gathered there to celebrate. They even celebrated in Pokhara ... right down to the dogs. If you look carefully, you can see a red mark between this puppy's eyes. It's what remains of his tika, a ritual mark used to anoit the Hindu faithful on holy days.