Life on the River in Dhaka, Bangladesh

At this moment the country of Bangladesh is passing through a kind of anguish. Old wounds from the civil war with Pakistan are being dredged up in trials against Bangladeshis who sided with Pakistan and are accused of war crimes. So, an alliance of opposition parties has decreed a series of strikes, “hartels.” Buses, cars, trucks only move at the risk of being bombed with molatov cocktails during a hartel. So, in order to reach a seminary for leading a devotional on creation care we used a river boat.

In spite of being oily-black with pollution, the river has life! We even saw large dolphins—several times—but every time I was too slow to photograph them. There was an amazingly colored kingfisher: I think his colors could be described as cobalt blue and satiny rust. There were women washing their sari dresses in the river, too. And there were men doing the incredible heavy labor kind of work that seems so typical in south Asian countries. I don’t know how they do it!

Brick Boat on Weighed Down on the River