Strawberries are here! Apparently the season is short, very short. So we have been jam making, ice cream making and generally enjoying them! The jam has been a little bit of a mixed bag - either a bit too solid or a bit too runny....And the advance of the strawberry has raised the other conversation which is relatively constant amongst expats in Dhaka - the level of chemicals in the fruit and vegetables. So, the chats on the expat exchange boards go something along the lines of:
- where can I get fruit and vegetables which don't contain formaldehyde (formulin)?
- have you seen the colour of the pomegranates? Did you know it's all food dyes which are used to make them red?
- all the chemicals are keeping the birth rate low, they are poisoning the population;
- have you purchased food from the organic fruit and vegetable shop?
- I tested the fruit from the organic fruit and vegetable shop - it takes just as long to decompose as that from the normal shop.
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| Something safe - Great Granny's Ginger Snap Recipe! |
So, the question is - is there a risk, what is that risk and what's worse - eating fruit and vegetables with some dodgy chemicals in them or not eating them at all. Personally, I'm more concerned about the air quality which is fairly shocking and which you can't avoid at all and which is often reported to be amongst the worse in the world. External air pollution (particulates) has now been linked to cancer in humans - see WHO from 2013 for more on this (http://www.iarc.fr/en/media-centre/iarcnews/pdf/pr221_E.pdf).
Formulin and other chemicals are reportedly widely used in Bangladesh - it's hard to separate the rumour from the fact though. Professors of post-harvest will say that it's the imported produce which is more likely to be treated, NGOs will say that it's almost everything. Others will point out that between 20 - 40% of the food produced in Bangladesh never reaches the market. 43% of children under 5 are stunted and a similar number malnourished. Some would argue that use of chemicals can help reduce the loss of fruit and vegetables and contribute to helping address some of the major problems with stunting and malnutrition.
Anyway, moving on to more positive stories....we went to the Old Capital of Dhaka at the weekend. It was quite an adventure - it took almost 3 hours to go about 25 km and then when we got there it was, how can I put it, a little on the underwhelming side. The sheer numbers of people who all came along to watch us have our picnic was slightly overwhelming but otherwise it was quite a long way (or should I say, long time to spend in the car) for not a huge amount. We did however see some interesting things:
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| One example of the traffic - all waiting for this colourful lorry to go past |
(a) a field - which was green;
(b) some cows - which were relatively healthy looking;
(c) one of the many rivers and the lovely bright boats;
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| One of the rivers - believe it or not it was a lovely sunny day! |
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| Rubbish Dump, Road, CNG, houses.... |
It's basically been a busy few weeks, in addition to our excitement at getting out of Dhaka, Peter participated in the second ever Rickshaw Relay a couple of weeks ago.
This was part of him building up to the Dhaka half marathon which we're both doing in March (yes, I know, with this air quality? and the dodgy potholes/holes in the pavements and roads which go straight down into the drains!). He did pretty well, although Isobel points out often that he crashed on the second time round....
Rickshaws are apparently very difficult to cycle. If you go too fast they fall over. If you turn too sharply, they fall over. If you crash into a moving or stationery object, they fall over. So, lots of falling over basically.
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| Not Peter but you get the drift! |
We have been baking. Yes, lots of baking. I've started the sourdough up again - we've started the Dan Lepard started and made a couple of good loaves - thank you Dan! Shame that the weevils had invaded my rye flour so it's been a choice of white, white or white recently!
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| The Dan L bread...oh, and some Jam! |
And finally, in addition to the strawberries, two other things have arrived - road digging up (to put new drains in apparently - all done by hand, women carrying baskets of broken bricks on their heads, men using pickaxes with no protective clothing whatsoever (including shoes) to dig up the tarmac, and lifting of the big pipes with ropes and a lot of man power.
And recycling is the other thing which has arrived. We now have four bins in which to sort our waste. What this means for the waste pickers and other people who make money from the informal waste management system isn't clear - although at least they won't be rummaging through broken glass and battery acid (in theory - whether it all goes into the same pile of rubbish is of course another question!).
