The Sunflower

Over the weekend I invited folks out for my first cruise as a boat share-holder. Despite some early morning thunder showers, it turned out to be a gorgeous day, hot and sunshiny. Thanks to summer rains and flooding, we were able to meet the boat on the outskirts of Bashundara, a section of Dhaka. I was a bit worried about finding the boat. There isn’t a dock or pier in Bashundara. The boat just gets close enough to the land to lower a short ramp to shore. It has been awhile since I’ve met a boat here, and the only directions I had were “Go to Bashundara, turn left, and drive until you get to the water.” Fortunately, enough of us had been to that spot that it wasn’t too hard to find The Sunflower.

Once boarded, we set out on the flood plains. It’s pretty amazing that at this time of year the area looks like a very large lake, but in the winter months the area is all rice paddies. There aren’t many hills in Bangladesh, but it seems that there is enough variation in terrain for people to build houses that (hopefully) remain above the water line after the monsoons. All over you can see little islands of houses, cut off from the rest of the village by these seasonal waterways. Along the shores are gi-normous fishing nets. The fishermen stand on a series of bamboo poles that help them to pull up the nets. It seems like a great amount of work, and they never seem to catch more than 2 or 3 teeny fish.

I like the variety of boats on the flood plains. There are other cruising boats like the one we were on (although not too many of those right now since it’s Ramadan). There are various sizes of canoes, some with sails. There are slightly larger canoes with low, tunnel-like thatched roofs that people sometimes live on. There are brightly painted barges that carry sand that has been dredged—when they are empty they sit high on the water; when they are full their gunwales skim the water. Everyone seems to smile and wave as you pass.

We brought a feast of a picnic with us to enjoy while we cruised (I checked around a bit and found out it was just fine to do this during Ramadan). Fred even brought his iPod and mini-speakers. It is still quite hot and humid in Bangladesh. Fortunately we were a small enough group that we could always sit on the shady side of the boat. When there was a breeze, it was really quite lovely. Much of the time there was no breeze, and it got fairly hot (even the Bangladeshi boatmen and fishermen had cloth on their head or umbrellas to shield themselves from the fierce sun). Still, it’s hard to complain when you are lounging on pillows, floating around on a flood plain, with plenty to eat and drink, and great friends to talk to. Life is very good indeed!