The sourdough starteth

At long last our belongings have arrived. I shouldn't say at long last really as we didn't have to wait long. The kids are in toy heaven, all those charity shop specials I found before we left have gone down a treat. Obviously though the things they found the most fun were the giant cardboard boxes! We are keeping a few for making castles and palaces and the like.

Today I thought i would share two things. Firstly, the traffic in Dhaka is a shocker. It's chaos. Madness. Just close your eyes and go! Two lanes become 5, cars driving on the pavements, cars driving the wrong way down the road, rickshaws, more ruckshaws this time broken down in the middle of the road. And yet in the midst of the chaos, a semblance of order. Red traffic lights. People stop. I mean they stop, and wait and wait. Then something happens (what that something is I don't know) and they all go - with the light still on red but slowly changing to green. How very random!

Secondly, and perhaps the most exciting for me, the sourdough experiment has started. One starter now waiting in cupboard to spring to life. This time I used River Cottage for my quantities. Lets see how it goes!

Oh I am a happy woman

Is this because Arty is sleeping later than 6am and not waking his sister up? Er, no.

Is this because Isobel can swim a length of the pool on her own? Er, no (although that does make me very happy).

Is it because we have found a lovely lady with a great pink sari to help us in the house? Still no.

Is it because I have found the Great British Bake Off on YouTube? Yes! Peter is out and so far I am two hours in. Custard tarts at the moment. Oh it's making me want to bake.....and it's causing a massive baked product craving which I fear cannot be met. Well certainly not this evening. An apple with some "sweet curds" just isn't doing the trick!

God bless the GBBO.

Stock cubes called what?? Chilly Willy?

Chilly Willy - brilliant

I was looking through the receipt from Peter's first Dhaka shopping experience today and I saw a reference to "Chilly Willy". What has he been buying I wondered.  The answer? Beef stock cubes. What a great name.








In my last post I promised a few facts and figures about Bangladesh for those who are wondering what it's like. So here goes:

- it has a population of 150 million people (in a land size approximately the same as England and Wales);
- 1 in 3 live below the national poverty line;
- over 3 in 4 live on less than $2 a day;
- it has been referred to as the most vulnerable country in the world to climate change;
- 1 in 19 children die before the age of 5;
- 44% of the population lack access to adequate sanitation; and on a positive note
- GDP has averaged 6% per year since 2003;
- numbers living in poverty has reduced from 63 million in 2000 to 47 million in 2010

So there we go.  A small snapshot of Bangladesh.  The picture I managed to take the other day doesn't really do justice to the sheer numbers of people as you can see:

A wierdly quiet road when out walking with Arty

I thought I would also share a few family stories from the past few days.

Firstly, Isobel started school.  The excitement was building all day yesterday.  She has even been practicing her American accent! She posed nicely in front of the map of Bangladesh Peter purchased from someone at the side of the road, climbed into the school bus and whoosh, she was gone.  At home trying to get any details out of her regarding her first day at school was like trying to get blood from a stone.  Apparently she had soup for lunch though!

Secondly, we have bee undertaking some water related hygiene processes which I thought I would share.  Basically the advice is to soak all your fruit and veg (and eggs) in a Milton type solution for 15-30 minutes:

Hard to do justice to the size of those mangoes!

Amazingly it doesn't appear to make it taste too foul which has to be a good sign. Then we have been filtering our water in this large water filter - a candle filter (see http://www.safariquip.co.uk/brands/british-berkefeld/faq-british-berkefeld-gravity-water-filters/ if you want to read more about how they work).  For those who are unfamiliar, here are some pictures of the device itself:




Finally, we have experience the sewage - rainwater mix.  Walking home the other night after a really heavy downpour left us trying to negotiate the roads, or more precisely where the road ended and the drains began. Mmmh. Nice.  Still, no poorly tummies yet so let's see how much longer that continues!

Can't wait for the shipment of our stuff to arrive. Sourdough Dhaka style is calling me.....

  

  

  

Job seekers allowance....Dhaka style

Well, we have made it. All safely here in Dhaka. Kids are beside themselves with excitement and exhaustion. Walking is slow progress - apart from everyone staring at their blonde locks, Arthur is fascinated by the tuk-tuks and so we have to stop to look at them. And there are quite a few!
Flight was ok, kids were brilliant. Isobel dealt quite well with the almost fatal blow - the TV isn't working. What, no TV? Peter and I almost cried. We had promised her TV and then there was none. But she was easily distracted by mountains of food.  The second flight was good preparation for arriving. The aircon didn't appear to be working, it was practically sauna like on that plane and again, no TV. That's what comes with saving a bit of money and not flying Emirates I supposed.

The final disappointing part of the journey was the lack of airport cake on offer. As mentioned in an earlier blog, I had wanted to post pictures of cakes seen in various airports.  Manchester airport did not score well, only a few gingerbread people on clear display. Istanbul was too much of a rush to even see any.  However, we have seen some truly yummy (?!?) looking ones here in Dhaka so will have to take a snap when things are calmer.

Having spent three hours in the pool today the kids are shattered. We are hoping that the 15 wake ups of Isobel last night won't repeat tonight!

Peter is going to the meeting of the "women's group" tomorrow, to help gender-neutralise it! Then he will be signing on for his allowance. With me. We joked about it being his job-seekers allowance with the option of an increase if he has some evidence of looking! Sounds like job seeking here though will consist of playing golf with his charity shop special clubs! Tough life for him by the sounds of things.....(??!). Unlike the bulk of the population here.

Onto the numbers of people in poverty in this country in my next post.

Gingerbread people in Manchester Airport!

How to pack up and move a family - some tips!

I hope you aren't looking for serious tips here.  I'm not good at those.  The tips below started off trying to be serious but then the lack of proper sleep and lack of chocolate on this train to Preston (long story) interrupted and it might have deteriorated....

1. Get the packers in.  We've never had packers before.  It's always been us wrapping things up, trying to stuff things into boxes and so on.  The packers make it soooo easy.  They come in, drink endless cups of coffee (and then diet coke as it was very hot....unfortunately they didn't quite look like the man from the diet coke advert back when I was young!) and then in a whirl of activity wrap the entire contents of your house in white plastic stuff or place in boxes.  They then load it all into the crate, filling every last nook and cranny, a little like a giant jigsaw.  Brilliant.
2. Don't forget a plastic cup.  For water.  We packed everything up and then found we didn't have anything to drink water from (apart from direct from the tap).
3. Keep the kids away if you can.  Well away. We stayed at some friends (where we had the lovely duck in a tin).  The kids barely slept ("a sleepover mummy?  two sleep overs? I'm overcome with excitement and can't possibly sleep now!") but they left the house when it was still full of their things and didn't see it slowly emptying out to become just a shell, empty of personal effects and the life and laughter we'd filled it with.
4. Don't let anyone find the sharpie, especially not a 2.5 year old with a slight tendency to draw on walls.  It's not good for your stress levels.
5. Hide your jars of particularly nice jam and marmalade in pots and pans.  The packers said we could only take 'dry' products (hence a quick trip to the shop to buy a mass of porridge and Mornflake muesli).  However, I couldn't be parted from my M&D Mango Chutney (yes, I know, coals to Manchester and all that) so we wrapped it up in tea towels and hid it in the casserole dishes!
6. Don't leave the gas meter cupboard key hanging up in the cupboard in a vague attempt to be helpful to the tenants.  The packers packed it.  Result - new task added to list which wasn't quite long enough (?!) - buy a new one.
7. Don't lose the list of telephone numbers you've put together in a fit of uber-organisation - you know, the utility companies, water companies, council tax people etc. After all, you thought that moving out day would be all calm and there would be plenty of time to phone in your meter readings. Surely you wouldn't be on your hands and knees scrubbing away at the floor 2 minutes before the kids are due home from nursery! No, not at all.
8. Don't hire a Mercedes estate to pack your remaining belongings into.  Admittedly we didn't actually hire one, they gave us an 'upgrade'.  I say upgrade, I mean they gave us a car with an amazingly small boot which we then had to pack with far too much stuff (where were those packers when we needed them?) and hence deposited several bags of random stuff with the neighbours who no doubt couldn't decide whether that was helpful (unopened jars of pasta sauce and rapeseed oil) or annoying (half a jar of marmite).
9. Don't leave your daughters learning journey from 3.5 years at nursery on the roof of the car and drive off having seen a dent in the said hire car which sends you into a panic as you have only got the cheapest insurance.  Luckily for us the lovely nursery people picked it all up and put it back together.  So another tip - have some spare thank you cards for the thank yous you haven't planned for!
10. Find a bottle of champagne you've forgotten about at the bottom of the cupboard, open and enjoy.

It's been emotional....but we have had duck in a tin!

We have finally left the house.  It's funny how emotional it was.  I wasn't expecting it but it's a little annoying to have finally managed to decorate it and turn the garden into a garden rather than a mud bath only to leave the country and rent it out! Oh well.

The kids have almost missed the whole process.  Admittedly Isobel had a slight fit when I had to stop her running into the newly cleaned house.  She was a little confused as to why she wasn't allowed into her home.  But after pulling every muscle in my body scrubbing the floor and wiping down the toilets, I couldn't bring myself to let her run in with her playdoh covered shoes! 

We had scheduled in our last day to be a day for the mammouth clean.  No kids, they were meant to be in nursery.  Just a day of scrubbing and dusting.  However, Arthur had different ideas.  Conjunctivitis ideas.  Nursery wouldn't let him in so he came to help.  Running around the house with a sharpie (i.e a pen that doesn't come off - no matter how hard you try!).  Not quite my idea of helping.  We finally left the house and headed off up North to visit family.  Straight onto the M25 and straight into the biggest jam we've ever had to deal with.  Two kids trying to kill each other squashed into the back due to the slightly overfilled car pushing their car seats together and a traffic jam.  It took an hour to go 2.5 miles.  And not a gin in sight. Oh the trauma.  But, with a positive view on things, I suppose it was preparing us for the Dhaka traffic.

The biggest challenge has probably been saying goodbye to my mum and dad.  They are old now, mid 70's.  But still young in spirit! They aren't the most emotional of people, well not when it comes to expressing it anyway.  I've never really been able to talk properly to them about the depression, I just wasn't sure how they would react.  When my mum and I did talk about it it was clear that she had had challenges too and in an era when it was a lot less talked about.  She is emotional about us going.  It really dawned on me that one day she won't be here and for all the times you think your mum is nagging or whatever, the positives easily outweigh all of that and one day she won't be there on the end of the phone chatting away about someone in the house next door and whether they have or haven't cut their hedges.  She says she won't see the kids grow into adults, unless she lives for another 12 years which is possible as I pointed out! She said she won't see me open my little B and B I'd like to open in the Cheviots where I would bake sourdough for breakfast and feed to weary walkers.  Our leaving for Dhaka has made her think about all of this and made me feel even more emotional about leaving.  Isobel likes to just look at me and ask "why mummy crying?"....

Anyway, on a different and more uplifting note we have eaten the duck in a tin.  What a delight it was!  I was hoping to share some photos but they won't upload so a description will have to do - the tin was opened, and inside there was a mass of duck fat (mmh, yum...?).  Hiding beneath were 5 duck legs, already cooked, just waiting the reheat.  Into a pan for a few minutes and then out onto a plate, complete with lovely green beans and baked potatoes with rosemary and garlic.  The result?  A lovely lovely meal.  The french sure know how to tin a duck!

This post is for Becca who isn't worried about photos of duck in a tin and looked after me so well last night with pizza and red wine! Thank you.