A Broke Man in Canada, A Rich Man in Bangladesh
When preparing to come to Asia, I was warned about the culture shock I would face — expect the humidity to hit you like a brick wall when you get off the airplane. Expect to not be able to communicate with people around you, to have people stare at you and to sometimes feel out of place. Before coming to Bangladesh, I traveled to Hong Kong and Shenzhen, China; there I felt everyone of those things, uniquely. In Hong Kong, I played basketball on an outdoor court around 1pm with the sun beating down and I almost passed out after 20 minutes. My first night walking around LKF, the bars district in Hong Kong, I was featured in many snapchat stories, some people lacking more subtlety than others. My second day in Hong Kong, 2 friends of mine sent me on a mission all the way across the city to meet them for a hike. This trip meant 2 trains and a bus, which only held 16 people, and from what I could tell, had no definitive bus stops or any standard way to signal that you want to get off. That left me trapped on a bus, driving through a place I didn’t know, no data on my phone, and surrounded by 15 people who did not speak English. It took about 5 minutes and 4, I’ll be it confused, but friendly strangers to get me off that bus. Not at the right bus stop of course, but I eventually turned up to our meeting point.
After about a week in Hong Kong, I no longer felt the culture shock. I still felt that I was in a different environment, I still often felt out of place, and I continued to see new things that I hadn’t seen before, but I had accepted that. More so than I felt out of place, I felt comfortable and I really enjoyed it there. After my 12-day trip, I believed that I could move to Hong Kong and be perfectly happy. Here I am now, a month and a half into my stay in Bangladesh, and to state that I’m still experiencing culture shock everyday would be a dramatic understatement. I have still yet to adjust to transportation in Dhaka, where it takes me six hours to drive 8km, drop off files at a manufacturer, and drive 8km home. And every moment of the drive I am almost certain we are about to get hit, or hit someone else, when at the last possible second someone jams on the breaks. Or sometimes they don’t, that’s not uncommon either. Because the roads are so jammed, people try to make use of public transit so they can avoid driving, but the ratio of people to cars that you can fit on the streets is a gross mismatch. There are trains with a 200-person capacity, and once full, you may see up to another 250 people sitting on the roof of the train headed towards their next destination. The same can be said for buses, 40 people inside and another 30 on the roof. Although it is a bit scarier to watch on a bus, since they are always accelerating and stopping so quickly. Seeing the buses here, a part of me misses the mini bus from Hong Kong. In Dhaka, not only is there no bus stops, but no buses will stop. If you are on the left side of the bus where the door is located, you just hop off into the traffic while driving and do your best to avoid getting hit. If you are on the right side of the bus, you wait for the bus to slow down and then you jump out the window into the streets. The process is similar for those on the roof, they just jump a little further.
And the architecture of Dhaka is a mix between high rise buildings, and slums. My living situation has been unique to say the least. The company I work for is rather large and has it’s headquarters here in Dhaka. I live at the company’s guest house on the top floor of their main office building. The property is gated and has 5 or 6 guards, armed with riffles, on duty at all times. If I need to leave to attend meetings or head over to the shops, a company driver will take me and I am escorted by some engineers. In the guest house, workers will clean my room daily, and do my laundry when needed. There are also 2 chefs who cook 3 meals a day for me and are on call if I ever need anything else. My company is very invested in the success of the project that I’m leading, so they basically throw unlimited resources at me. I had them pick up a 3D printer when I arrived, something that is impossible to get in Bangladesh, they will gather supplies for me from the shops when I need them, and I even have a personal assistant living with me in the guest house to facilitate my meetings and to help organize anything else that I need. He has his degree in mechanical engineering, so he is technically more qualified than I. Here, I find the whole concept of having other people doing everything for me rather uncomfortable. At first, they wouldn’t even let me get up to make my own coffee, they insisted they would do it for me. Over the weeks I’ve been here, they’ve come to understand that I prefer doing most things on my own and it is more balanced now. One thing that is evident in Bangladesh is the distinctive levels of class amongst people. Not everyone is allowed to come and have a conversation with you.
A few days ago, I was with some engineers at my company, and with me I had my laptop (ASUS), my phone (Samsung) and my tablet (iPad mini). They examined them all and determined that I must be a very rich man back in Canada to be able to afford such things. In reality, my bank statement usually starts with a negative and that’s before including the student loans I have so fortunately acquired over the years. One night sitting around dinner — myself, a man from Bangladesh, and a man from China were discussing clothing. The man from Bangladesh said the shirt he was wearing was very expensive, 250 Taka, which converts to roughly $4 CAD. I told him that my t-shirt was $25 CAD and he was shocked. The Chinese man then said that his t-shirt was 1,250 RMB ($250 CAD) and we were shocked again. Although the prices of all of our possessions varied wildly, none of considered ourselves rich, nor poor, but somewhere in the middle.
In just 3 weeks, I will be touching down in Toronto for the first time since New Years. Vancouver, California, New Zealand, Hong Kong, China and now Bangladesh. Disregarding the fact that it was -20 with a few feet of snow when I left, there is no way that Canada is going to look the same when I fly in.
Name: Ashton J. Stoop
Company: Libra Group
Position: Project Manager and Design Lead — Department for Medical Devices
Location: Dhaka, Bangladesh
Date of Arrival/Work Start Date: July 4th, 2017
Date of Departure: September 1st, 2017
