24
THE BELIZE TIMES
Four Days in Bangladesh November 21, 2012
Flashpoint
“Supporting papers”, demanded Mainul, a tall, beefy, dark-skinned police immigration officer, obviously not Godfrey Smith satisfied with the reason given for my presence in Dhaka. I showed him my dossier which, to him, might just as well have been the Cecil Textbook of Medicine. He thumbed through my passport muttering “Belize” quizzically under his breath, scrutinized my visa, stood up and exited his cubicle, leaving me to watched his starched, uniformed back disappear into the swelling crowd in the arrival hall. Flying into the Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Bangladesh with Rickshaws Capital of the World its deltaic swamps, mangroves and lazy serpentine rivers is reminiscent of the approach into Belize City; the lush vegetation dotted with scruffy, pitted terrain; a terrestrial hostage lying prostrate to the ravages of climate change. Mainul returns with Farazul, his bespectacled, fiftyish supervisor who saunters over and enters Mainul’s cubicle; he officiously inspects the arrival hall. Through a crackling, scratchy radio - and in between barking orders to subordinates - the master of all he surveys made inquires in his native Bangla. I recognize the words “Belize” and “Washington”. The passport and “supporting papers” are handed over to Abubakar who, after more questions and a few calls, finally releases me into the maelstrom of Dhaka, the most densely populated city in the world. Soon I am engulfed in the vortex of the city’s turbulent, headache-inducing traffic. The press of people; the crush of colorfully decorated rickshaws; the lurching of crumpled, beaten up buses seemingly soldered together from recycled metal and scraped down in readiness for a long-awaited paint job. Vehicles, motorbikes, mini auto-rickshaws and bicycles converge from all directions in a ceaseless cacophony of the bells, tooting and blaring of horns redolent of an election night victory procession of vehicles, except that here it is daily, looping four-part disharmony of chaos. Shankharia’s bazaar is lined with some ageless houses with intricate carvings and tiny workshops. I wander desultorily through, savoring the smells and longing but not daring to sate my proclivity for street food. But I muster the courage to climb into a rickshaw. My lungi-clad, slipper-footed wala takes off, skinny legs pumping, cigarette pinched between index and middle finger while the third and pinkie fingers clutches hand brakes. He deftly kicks back the pedals to the six o’clock position to keep pressure going up the incline of bridges. Down Green Road we go, fearlessly negotiating the traffic, passing Muslim men whose once white beards look oxidized, the henna creating a sharp, rusty-coloured contrast to their flowing white Punjabis; against a wall a mural reads “they shall beat their swords into guitars”. Night sets in by the time we enter bhuter-goli (ghost alley); I cling on desperately as we careen around blind curves in the dark, inches away from rickshaws hurtling at us from the other direction. Close shaves are the heart-racing rhythm of the city. On the greasy, muddy shores of the Saderghat port, I gingerly board a tiny wooden sampan, the “gonodolas of Dhaka”- except this is no Venice. The grim, gaunt oarsman silently yanks his single long yuloh and slowly ferries me down the Buriganga, like Charon transporting souls of the newly dead across the river Styx. On this branch of the mighty Ganges, the sampans glide and weave fluidly among steamers and sands boats as they take passengers from bank to bank across the flow of traffic moving up and down the river. This is the raw and earthy essence of life on the main artery of the city; shirtless men suspended on wooden scaffolding bang, scrape and wash down the steel hull of a ship. Trapped in the traffic that moves at a glacial pace, I stare out at the panorama of life from my air-conditioned cocoon, quickly averting my eyes from the emaciated, one-eyed woman with tiny blackened teeth, naked baby boy straddled on “Gonodolas of Dhaka” her hip, rapping piteously on the window of the car. This is a genuine encounter with the “masses”, that universal collective whose name, as a socialist, I once so freely invoked and on whose behalf (unknown to and unsolicited by them) I had inveighed against the evils of capitalism. I am reminded of that Stalinist saw that a single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic. Here there is only the daily struggle to survive; there is only life and death; silently I offer a prayer to my Darwinian god for revealing to me the mystery of life. A ten-year-old girl intercepts me at the memorial to the martyrs of the Bangla language and tries to sell me a pink lei. I try to avoid directly looking at her but, too late, our eyes meet. Within a second of looking into her eyes, her plaintive, innocent face and (practiced) wistful smile, I am caught, like a weak-minded spectator under the spell of a hypnotist, and drop a 50 Taka note into her bucket. She stares at the money, looks at me, smiles and hurries off across the plaza. At the magnificent fifteenth century Lalbagh Fort, men, burqa-clad women and children stare at my uncovered legs, still outré in Bangladesh - only children are expected to wear short pants. It dawns on me that for the duration of my visit I have not seen a single tourist, not even at the sites recommended by Lonely Planet. Bangladesh is still the road not taken; the untrodden path. That is why, even with trousers, Bangladeshis stop in the crowded streets to stare with curiosity; but they are among the kindest and most welcoming people to be encountered. The interminable traffic delays frustrates my plans to see more of the country’s interior, the tea gardens at Srimangal and the tiger infested Sundarbans, the largest mangrove forest in the world. I would gladly go back; yet, to quote Frost, knowing how way leads on to way, I doubt I shall ever return. This article was reproduced from www.flashpointbelize.com
Sunday, November 25, 2012
Ministry of Health gives green light to “TLEMOL” Belmopan, November 20th, 2012 Earlier this year, reports were made to the Ministry of Health concerning the sale of a pharmaceutical product being marketed as “TLEMOL.” The Ministry sent the product for testing shortly after. This week we received a Certificate of Analysis from the Caribbean Regional Drug Testing Laboratory in Kingston, Jamaica concluding that the pharmaceutical product marketed as ‘Tlemol’ has met the United States Pharmaceutical requirements for Acetaminophen tablets. The Ministry of Health assures the public that the active ingredient in this product “TLEMOL” is acetaminophen 500mg, which is the same ingredient in the similar product, TYLENOL. As stated in our initial release, preliminary investigations revealed that Tlemol is marketed in the United States of America under this name and it was legally imported in Belize by the company, Generic Club Ltd and duly registered by the Belize Intellectual Property Office (BELIPO.) (Press Release)
POEM MACAW
By Rashim Pitts
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