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Health & Fitness

Patch Blogger: Life Among the Ruins

In which I reminisce about the old days in post-cyclone Bangladesh and begin my travels in post-earthquake Haiti.

Leaving the airport in an unfamiliar country can sometimes be a little overwhelming. As an example, my arrival in Dhaka, Bangladesh some years ago springs to mind. I remember walking out of the terminal into the usual crush of touts and taxis, the intensity of which was heightened significantly by the fact that I was an obvious foreigner. Things seemed to start flowing smoothly once I got things settled with a driver and we began to make our way out of the airport. We stopped at a sentried gate which was about 15 feet tall, and as it swung open to release us into the streets of Dhaka, all hell broke loose.

Our car was immediately surrounded by dozens of people banging on the windows and trying to climb onto the car. One woman was holding onto the door handle and would not let go. When the driver finally began to push the car through the crowd she fell down. I looked back at her through the rear window, and to this day I can still recall her hands lifted in desperation towards the car as we accelerated into the city. It was profoundly disturbing, and in some ways the things I experienced in Dhaka have stayed with me to this day.

There had been severe flooding in the countryside leaving millions homeless, a large percentage of which had fled to the city. The streets were filled with IDPs (internally displaced persons) who had arrived in town with little or nothing. I saw people on the street with no clothes. I saw a woman catch a street pigeon with her bare hands.There had been severe flooding in the countryside leaving millions homeless, a large percentage of which had fled to the city. The streets were filled with IDPs (internally displaced persons) who had arrived in town with little or nothing. I saw people on the street with no clothes. I saw a woman catch a street pigeon with her bare hands.

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I arrived at my hotel, a vast, creepy concrete building which seemed simultaneously ancient and uncompleted. The walk to my room led through an unfinished concrete labyrinth of graffiti covered passages, past small knots of people and dark hallways. And then all the lights went out. Not just in my hotel, as it turned out, but in the whole district. Apparently Dhaka generates less power than it needs, so to make up the difference they use rolling blackouts which darken entire sections of the city for a while before the darkness rolls somewhere else.

Please forgive me for the digression, amd I am grateful to you for coming with me on this little detour down Memory Lane. But the reason I mention all this is because I have now arrived in a place which makes Dhaka look positively humming.

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The foreign airport I walked out of today is in Port au Prince, Haiti, scene of a post-apocalyptic cityscape unlike anything I have ever experienced. I am traveling on business and will not bore you with the mundane details of my assignment but will instead try to give you a sense of what life is like in Haiti two years after the earthquake that shook the Etch-a-Sketch on an already poorly drawn city.

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