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.....