DHAKA LOVES ME BACK (because it is about Karma, if you love a cruel city, the cruel city makes you cry -of joy-)

Four days before leaving Dhaka, she gives me back all the love I used with her.
Bashundara Gate, Genius Market, 22th Feb 2011, 09:50am
Express breakfast with Nescafè Cold Espresso (can) and Toblerone (white). Usually is Paratha and Egg, but today Mr. Majid (HITAISHI) pushed me to wake up before our agreement and cross the city in only one hour –impossible- to reach him in Dhanmondi for the Dhaka Development Forum meeting. He uses to tell me the things at the last minute, and I use to wake up at the last minute, too. Thus, I really needed energy to face the hard day. Coffee and chocolate. And there are three different cashier in Genius, but every day I choose the same one, Sazud, because I started with him, and now he is more than a cashier, he is the daily friend to speak about the weather and the cricket matches results.
Sazud gives me a newspaper in Bengali and says: -Look, do you know this guy?!-
I start to cry. Joy, infinite joy. Thank you Dhaka.

"‎Maybe they do not understand bangla language, but these foreigners are fascinated by the love people of this country have for their mother tongue. Wearing the red-green combination of bangla, they were travelling on a rickshaw on international mother language day."

ARE ALL MEN EQUAL BEFORE THE CRICKET? (because I should be ashamed on my self)

THERE IS MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE (because you cannot picture the traffic)

DOUBLE FACE ISLAM (how I learned to stop worrying about one-bad-story and love the nice stories)

Many things have a double face. Coins, politics and –especially- every thing too beautiful to be real. And cities like Dhaka, have a double face. In just two hours of traffic, you can switch from smelly slums around Kamalapur where the crockroachs are as big as your ince and rats kill cicks (M: ”Why do you keep a little cick insiede the dresser?” Old-woman:-Because, if I leave it free on the floor the rats will eat it-) to elegant rooftops around Gulshan where the alcohol flows as easly as cha* and the moonlight reflected on the pounds makea Dhaka a fake-Manhatthan.  Also my personal experience in Dhaka has a double face, switching every day from slums to rooftops: but I am lucky, I know how to keep the remembers about  the firsts, and forget the second ones.

But stronger than the last gap, there is the double face, a real face, of Shamalia (or something that sounds similar to this spelling). Shamailia is one of the Assistant Managers of the MicroCredit staff of HITAISHI, she is less than 30 years old, -like every Bangladeshi female- she has very long and very dark hair, -like half of Bangladeshi females- she is a bit overweight but –like most of Bangaldeshi females- she is really pretty. Usually her eyes show a smart lights, like something that she wants say to me but she cannot, because of the English – but we know, a couple of eyes are stronger than every Babel tower- thus, she has always communicated me more than cold financial figures.

 But today, no. Today, she was not around the office like every day when I come back from the slum. She seated herself in the darkness of the power-cut and only the natural light of the sun showed me the wrong side of the Islam.  The left eye was a mix of blue, violet and black, and –believe me- there were no reasonable interpretations to think about a downfall, a door or a car-crash. The sad-dew around her eye, a mixed result of tears and cream, told me the story. Maybe not, but why not, it was the hand of her husband, her father or her brother.  Okkey, it could be a Spoon River’s game, guessing stories that I could not know, but she was sad, upset and tumefied. I spent one hour more in the office, that after finding the left eye, become dark and dirty and guilty, because –fuck!- she works for one NGO that works to alleviate poverty, aids and domestic violence! Is there a future for defenceless people helped by people that -in turn- are the victim of the same things they are fighting against?! Anyway, I was powerless, I am a bangla-less boy, I could not help her, no words, no hugs. Thus, I took one of my chocolate coins for the slums-children,  I gave her, no words, no chocolates for the others. It was my way to be woman with her.

Anyway the slogan "dark side of the Islam" presents a mistake. Because I used Islam that –here- counts 90% of the population: ignorant, unknowing and illiterate population. The violence doesn’t come from the religion, Islam doesn’t make violence. Ignorance produces violence, Islam is only a great world that allows everyone to find a personal interpretation of the things. And when there is ignorance, this interpretation could become a wrong way to accept the Islam. In poor words, Islam is the fuel that you should use properly and do not mix with the fire of your ignorance.

I have the proof, making a regression with all the experience getting in touch with muslim people, a hundred micro-stories could live down the sad-dewy eye. Only one, just today, after finding the dark side of the Islam. There was this old man in the office, repaying a loan for a poultry-business, who was so surprised to listen my few-bangla-words (assalamalekkum, kamonachen, amarnam teo, amardesh itali) that started to touch me. I was on a chair, he came, he put his hands on my shoulders, he fixed my eyes with his dark and deep ones and –dipping his fingers into my hair- he started to sing a mantra (every two words, there was an “allah”). Only after I discovered that he blessed me, in the name of Allah. The same name that ten minutes before I had just cursed.  

HOW TO FORGET PASTA (because Shamana's Curry has almost replaced Nonna* Sandra's Vincisgrassi**)

* "Nonna" means "Granmother" 

** In Marche, "Vincisgrassi" is the local name for "Lasagne" 

ZAKI DOES NOT KNOW IT (because a butch aunt with a micro-loan can keep away a shark)

City Palli Dhalpur is a licenced slum 35-taka-far-by-rickshaw from Paltan, established in 1988 for homeless people, it has become the largest heroin distribution spot in Dhaka. But my impression was good, streets not so narrow, cement blocks houses, one sanitary for five households, one tube-well every ten. At the gate, there were five girls playing the popular game (in Italy, called "bell") which you draw on the asphalt with a piece of chalk six-seven-eight boxes, than -using a little stone- you have to jump up to the box where you threw the stone and come back. Four girls shared three little stones, and the last one was jumping up to a little piece of orange skin: this is my very first memory of Dhalpur. The second one: two black crows that eat a died rat just over a baby pink t-shirt spread out on a roof after washing. Third one: the micro-story of Zaki, but Zaki does not know it.

Zaki is a 6 months baby: according to me, he is more than 6, but the mother -Shobana- told me that he was born just 6 months ago. Even about her age, she said -twentyfive-: our women try to reduce their age, here they do not remember or they do not know and they guess. Their micro-story is sad, Zaki does not anything, but Shobana -who knows- is not discouraged. They live in one of the little block (ten-twelve sqm), there is also Souban, 5 years old, and Morjena, the elder sister of Shobana. Morjena is single, and she plays the role of the "dad" in this sad-micro-story. She works for Dhaka City Corporation, a public company involved in several services from washing clothes to building constructions: she is a cleaning woman. Where is the dad? The Shobana's husband is the village, somewhere in the north, far from his family, far from Zaki, because he left Dhaka, he deserted his family, he abandoned Zaki. Without a job, with one more son, he decided to run away just after the Zaki's birth. Shobana was alone, with two sons, thus the elder sister come from their village to help her. Theoretically, Morjena's income (6000taka, 63euro) is enough to cover all the expenditure (4500food,200school,1000housing), but the real problem is a money lender (or better, a loan shark) who is still waiting 20000taka (213euro) back.

Money lenders are able to provide 20000taka in ten minutes(every MFI/NGO requires a previous period of savings and a week for the loan processing). The interest is 5% every month that you wait to pay back the capital, thus after receving 20000taka, you will pay 1000taka every month up to be able to pay the 20000taka.

For Shobana and Morjena the emergency was a serious disease of another sister who lives in the village. They received 20000taka in ten minutes, but in ten months they paid back only half of the amount plus more or less the same amount of interests (1000*10months=10000taka). How did they find the money? They joined in HITAISHI BANGLADESH, "my" NGO, they started to save 50taka per week, they got a loan of 10000taka and in 40 weeks -paying 280taka per week- they repaid the loan. In the maintime, they saved also up to 4800taka. Now, they asked a second loan: but there is no business, it is only another loan to feed the shark.

Anyway, there is the serious possibility for them to be able to repay the money-lender. The micro-credit is helping them, a micro-loan should not be used to pay the interest for another loan, but it could work. This micro-story (made sad by the coward husband) is the story of milions of poor. They are not able to face an emergency, and thousands of taka in ten minutes is a big temptation for a poor family that maybe needs fast cash for a disease or a business opportunity (buy property in the village). Actually, the microfinance system helps them only ex-post-facto, but more and more microfinance institutions are implementing savings programs to improve the poor's capacity to face an emergency, building a brighter future for them.

About Zaki and his family...I cannot guess the color of their future, but a dad is not necessary to grow up and become a man -and a dad better than the one that you had got-, Morjena looks like a man and I think she will work as hard as a man and the loan shark will swim faraway. The main thing is that, now, Zaki does not know it: he sleeps, eats and plays with my behavioral-finance-experiment balls. Because tomorrow Morjena will wash clotehs, the shark will be further away and I will buy two new balls.

STREET FREEDOM NEWS (because "freedom-of-the-press" means "how" you read not "what" you read)

According to the last report of Freedom House, the press in Italy is as partly-free as Bangladesh, a But, if you live in Bangladesh, and you are too ignorant to understand the problems of your country or too poor to spend the time reading instead working...the freedom of the press for you is not about what you read everyday: freedom means how you can read everytime.

Differences and Similarities
Italians know that their newspapers are toilet-paper, expensive toilet-paper. They don't need to read newspapers, but they are still trusting on them. There is Internet, but they don't know.
Bangladeshis have a different point of view, newspapers is very often the only way to read or know about the things and often it is the only tool against the illiteracy. They need to read and it is not important what.

Now, there are no differences if you are Italian or Bangladeshi: in either case, what you read could be a fake news or a government's fabrication and -in either case- if you like to read newspapers "spending a penny" in the toilet, you can (in Dhaka, you can "spend a penny" in the street reading the newspaper on the wall - and without paying one penny!): the main thing is that when you know that your country is not a completely-free-country, it is better live where you can get your personal little slice of freedom reading in the street.

COWABUNGA! (because one day Michelangelo, Leonardo, Donatello and Rapheal will avenge all the turtles died)

THE STORY OF THE HILARIOUS SHOVEL AND THE SAD VIDEOGAME (because fifty metres, two boys, one shovel and one videogame could explain how this city is insane)

"If you have diamonds, you will not get anything from them. If you have muck, you will get flowers" Fabrizio De André

The hilarious shovel - Walking on Kalamataturk Avenue (Banani), there are a man and a little boy (one metre and twenty), both of them with a shovel in the hands. They are working to collect the street rubbish (or better, something that looks like rubbish, it is a black and evil-smelling pulp that often is burning and you can recognize only the yellow of banana skins). They are putting this pulp inside a big container (an old-iron box, 6metresX2metres). There is the little boy in trouble with his shovel that seems not working properly, he tries and tries again, he stops and starts laughing. Also the man starts laughing and -swapping the shovels- he takes the shovel of the little boy. After the funny break, the little boy and the new shovel are now able to "work". It's sunday (for them, our monday), there should be the school for a one-metre-and-twenty boy, but there is a shovel for him.

The sad videogame - Still walking on Kalamataturk Avenue, fifty metres after the man, the boy, the good shovel and the bad one, there are a black Toyota SUV, parked half on the sidewalk, half on the road, and a family: dad, mom and son. The dad runs quickly to the DVD shop without waiting the wife, the mom gets out of the SUV slowly with her american jeans without waiting the son because -in the meantime- there is the driver who opens the door to the little boy (one metre and twenty). Also the boy wears american jeans, and also the boy doesn't care about the dad, the mom, the driver, the world, because he is busy with his new-metallic-handheld-game-console. Thus, following the line of the quickly dad and the slowly mom, the little boy enters in the shop without taking the eyes off the videogame. It's always sunday, there should be the school for a one-metre-and-twenty boy, but there is a videogame for him.

The moral of the story - If you are a one-metre-and-twenty boy, you should be at school in the morning but if you live in Dhaka, you have a good excuse. So, it is not important if you are working with a shovel or playing a videogame, the main thing is how you are working and how you are playing: old-iron and rubbish make you happy, metallic-case and jeans make you sad.

S.L.U.M. (because the children are children everywhere and maybe, here, more)

Yesterday, I tried a Dhaka slum. I am here for this reason, not for food and restaurants (even if I am a great gourmet -and Regina and I could write a best-seller-food-guide-book). I spent all the morning in Geneva Camp, Shymoli, in a day-visit with SafeSave. Next time, I will speak about this funny microfinance experiment (64 collectors that with their smart-phone visit every day slum’s poor looking for their savings). But, now I cannot stop my mind that thinks and re-thinks to the children of the slums. I think that I have never seen more people than Mumbai, I am almost sure that I have never seen more children than Bangladesh, and –anyway- never so many children in so small space.
Technically, a slum is a urban area overcrowded where the houses are 4x4 metres block of cement (if you are lucky) or plate and bamboo huts (if you are very poor –but if you are very poor but lucky, you have also a tin roof), in every house there is a huge family or more than one, the streets are so narrow that you can see the TV shows of your neighbors (I know, it’s a paradox but often there is the TV inside the cement or bamboo), there is no privacy, your kitchen is a fire spot in the narrow street because you cannot cook where you live, sleep and work but you have to cook where the people walk, the rain falls and the children play, your bathroom is a common bathroom that you have to share with your hundred neighbors (I cannot guess a ratio N°Toilet:People, it is better to not know).

This disaster is a slum. I don’t know the meaning of the word, I prefer imagine that S.L.U.M. is S for Smiles, L for Lights, U for Under the same sky , M for Morning.
Smiles, because before I had to start to remember the structure of the streets and the houses but the very only thing that I fixed in my mind is every single smile, maybe it was a subconscious strategy that my brain used to survive during the visit, maybe it is their strategy to survive in that hell or –simply- they smile, better than us.
Light, because “Where is the light?”, during the day the streets are so narrow that only a little slice of sun could penetrate inside, okkey there is electricity (usually it is free, it is the government that pays), but in a place where the sun doesn’t work properly because of the smog and the electricity works yet less: where is the light? I cannot imagine the night in a slum. Their no-lights day is our dark night, so for our standard there is no color or definition for a “night in a slum”.
Under the same sky, under different stars, because billions of people are under the same sky, there is also one sky, the same one, but different stars or better same stars that look like different. We live under the same sky with the lucky stars, we use to look the stars when we are in love, in trouble or drunken on the beach. We don’t need to ask more, but we love ask for a better future. They live under the same sky with other stars, they don’t care about the sky and they don’t ask stupid things to the moon. They should ask more for their future, but they work more, eat less and smile however, under the same sky with the same stars that for them are different because –maybe- if you work, eat and smile, you could stop to believe in the stars (especially, because the stars had been really with your destiny if you live in a slum).
Morning, because it is the most important part of the day. They don’t use to look the stars, but they need to hope that every morning is a good morning to get a daily job, to look for a buyer, to sell the rice or finding food. Their destiny is a daily destiny that every day takes a different way, and your way is good or bad according to your lucky morning, it is not because of the stars.

Children, I started to write this post about the children, and now I lost in the labyrinth of things to write, as the real slum, where you cannot go alone without getting lost. I have an idea, because I cannot tell you the experience, writing, especially writing in English, thus I try to make a list of “things that children can do in a slum”, according to the snapshots of yesterday that mind could not forget.
- The little boy with the red t-shirt, the withe smile and the green kite (that it cannot fly in the slum, but –for him- it sounded good) who was running across the streets singing “Sheila Ki Jawani” (a Bollywood’s hit parade song);
- The little girl with the pink dress and the white smile, the little girl with the blue tshirt and the white smile and the little boy with the pink tshirt, the white smile and the blue ball, who were following the little boy with the kite;
- The very little girl with a grey dress sleeping in the arms of a mother who was attached hundred little golden paillettes to a red scarf.
- The very little girl with the big black eyes who was playing with an air balloon listening the sound of the fingers –of her elder sister- scratching the air balloon.

THE DARK SIDE OF THE GLASS (because -from a window- Dhaka is a cheap and dirty bitch)

Actually, there is a glass between me and Dhaka. Inside, it should be clean but the dust on the other side makes the glass foggy. There is always something between me and her. (Her, because Dhaka is a woman, or better a bitch, and one of the worst bitches, cheap and dirty. I have never tried bitches, but I definitely love cities cheap and dirty, thus if I have to chooce a bitch, I will definitely choose the cheap and dirty one.) There is always something between me and her. During the night there is a pink mosquito net that divides her and me, during the traffic jam there is the green cage of the CNG (auto-rickshawn) and during...everytime and everywhere there is my white skin, between her and me, my white skin that doesn’t allow me do everything comes on my mind. Anyway, I tried to sleep without the pink barrier and walking night and day without the green one, but my fucking white skin doesn’t lie.
Okkei, I am lucky than the other blonde&mozzarella guys: more than one asked me if I was half Bangladeshi, almost North-Indian or full Iraniani. Thus, I don’t care about my skin and try to life as a reverse-black-sheep.

Anyway...there is this glass between her and me: 01:19 pm, Banani, Road 11, Coffee World. In the clean side of the glass, there is my notebook, my notes and my books and there are five waiters for six clients, in theory one per each, in practice five waiters only for me, special guest star, once time per week here, where the coffee is good ("the best in town" according to Pieer, the waiter)and the wi-fi is free (only when it works). We have already switched from the formal way to say hello (“assalamalekum”) to pseudo-Italian ways like smiles, sketches and haggis. And in there dark side of the glass, there is her, the bitch, Dhaka. There is the bitch, dressed with her best clothes, but you can recognize if a woman is a bitch, because a beach with a Gucci dress is however a bitch. So, in the dark side there is Dhaka with her Banani dress, but it doesn’t make sense planning a model town with expensive glass buildings, western hot spots and private cars when the threes along the streets are killed by thousand black electricity wires, the rickshawn wallahs (drivers) run inside the traffing splitting and dressing lughi (long skirt for men) without underwear and dust-smog-bad smells invest you and your nose and your lips.

Now, the point is that -even if I have never tried a bitch- I definitely prefer the dark side of the glass. It is stronger than my self-control. I should study and write in the clean side of the glass, but I use to spend my time in the dark one and when I decide –as today- to jump into the clean one, I cannot stop this passion that pushes me to write about this cheap and dirty bitch Dhaka. The problem is that only if you are reading this post and you are in Dhaka, you can follow me. Thus,if you are in any other place in the world, try to imagine following the next list called "Things of the dark side of the glass that I can see from the clean side of the glass":
- a huge pile of dark electricity wires as long as the street, you can find these wires in every street. It looks like the dark hair of the bitch, a ruffled bitch who cannot fix it.
- a frenetic going and coming of people, car, CNG and rickshawn: clacson and smog, dangerous overtaking and mortal crossing, but also energy and adrenalin. It looks like going and coming of distracted clients interested only to pass through the bitch.
- one, two, three, ten, eleven men strewn around the street: close to the cha-shop, in front of the ATM and outside each gate of the buildings. Everyone is not doing apparently anything, but they are working: there is a job for everyone, here (even if you have only to open a door). All these men look like voyeurs of the bitch, too lazy to get in touch with her, too men to resist her erotic appeal.
- one hundred, two hundred, maybe four hundred guys (boys, men and old-men) completely mad and in love with the bitch. They have been in the line outside CityBank Banani for days. Everywhere in Dhaka you can see these men, mad and in love for the Cricket World Cup (CityBank is the only dealer in town, a single branch can sell only 480 tickets per day and only two tickets per person, I am looking for to get the tickets, but I am not ready to spend two three nights and days in the line to get them). They look like platonic lovers, in love with the bitch, with few money and many dreams, ready to all for the bitch but I guess that more than half of them -this evening- will come back home without love and without tickets.

MICROFINANCE: A PERSONAL VIEW (overestimated solutions for underestimated problems) - Part one

Ten Things to know before to read this post
1- Finding “Microcredit”, “Grameen Bank” and "Muhammad Yunus” on Wikipedia
2- “One day our grandchildren will go to museums to see what poverty was like” M.Yunus, 1996
3- Grameen methodology: 5 poor women join in a group, each of them presents a proposal to obtain a loan (business/i=20%, housing/i=8%, education/i=15%, beggars/i=0%) and attends a training program about rules and advices. If the borrower gets the loan, she will start with a basic loan, little weekly repayments, little weekly compulsory savings. Now, if the borrower is able to repay and save the first weeks of the program, she will obtain other money till reaching gradually the final amount of the loan. The 5 members receive the loan individually, but they attend the weekly center meeting as a group. The low amounts and the social responsibility’s method work as commitments for the borrowers to re-pay and save, every week;
4- Grameen offers also other voluntary savings devices and a pension scheme (GPS), but only if you are a member of a loan-group. Thus, you can save but only if you borrow;
5- “Not all the poor are budding entrepreneurs” Johonson and Kidder, 1999;
6- For the poor –and their financial culture- borrowing is easier than saving;
7- YOU CANNOT SAVE ALONE: ROSCA’s is one of the most popular informal mechanism of savings. Imagine 10 women in a village, and everyone wants to buy the same good, a basic cooking stove. The cost for a cooking stove is 1000 BDT, too much for the monthly saving of each. Month 1 – every member saves 100 BDT and with the total pot one of the member could buy the stove. Month 2 – every member saves other 100 BDT and the second one buys the stove. Month 10 – finally, also the 10th member can buy the pot. After 10 month, 10 women -that couldn’t save 1000 BDT for a cooking stove- have bought the good: 9 of them have received a benefit buying the good in advance (the first one, 9 months in advance; the second one, 8 month in advance; etc…) and only the last woman has not received a benefit from the ROSCA’s membership (but the next time, she could become the first member to receive the money and buy the good with an advance of 9 months);
8- Weakness of informal savings clubs (ex: ROSCA): 1/lack of safety (there is no safe place to keep the money), 2/hard to replicate the model in urban area (lack of social responsibility), 3/a formal savings device could offer the chance to invest in a business opportunity or to face an emergency (withdrawing money from the saving account);
9- SafeSAVE, a cooperative working in the slums of Dhaka collects daily saving with a sixty-four staff members. Every day, customers are visited in their house or business, without the “logic of social responsibility”: they are saving and building assets for the future, for future business opportunities, for future emergency.
10- Anyway, the Grameen Family is bigger than one bank that works for the poor. Not only money, but a solid system of sister-companies get involved in health services, environmental projects, green energy, food and water and social business.

Beyond Grameen
I have no doubts to say: Yunus is one of the most important innovators of the last century, he deliberately did the opposite of what a conventional bank would do. And it worked, and it is still working. Okkey, 1/ it is not completely clear “how”; 2/ we cannot yet evaluate the real impact of microcredit; and 3/ we are really far from getting tickets for the museum “Once Upon a Time the Poverty”, dreamed by Yunus: but, despite that, microcredit works. Because when you try the magic green of rural village, when you seat in front of twenty-three-colored-saari-women, when you speak with them, when you visit their house, when you drink the tea that they made for you, when you note that tube-well, sanitary and electricity have arrived in their house only after Grameen Bank, when you reject the lunch that they offered you, when you play marbles with their sons, when you smile with them…you cannot misunderstand that something in their eyes has really changed. And if it is true that the eyes are the mirror of soul, the eyes of a micro-borrowers show the evidence that microcredit works.

In the same breath, I have no doubts that the phenomenon of microcredit is overestimated. Not only in Bangladesh, but everywhere. I am sure that this overconfidence is naturally inside every utopia, thus the idea to help the poor with a bank –that usually it’s only for the rich- makes the dreamers enthusiastic, too much enthusiastic. I think that the microcredit programs lack of a Plan-B. For more than 30-years, a lot of NGO’s and Microfinance Institutions have provided loans to borrowers that would like to change their destiny starting or improving a business. These institutions have always offered more than a simple loan: financial assistance, training programs, collateral projects about health-education-women empowerment opportunely created for the borrowers. But, it's not enough, they are still forgetting the hidden side of Microfinance: saving!

Borrowing VS Saving
Borrowing is the only way to start the escape from the poverty, if you lack of everything: food, job, house, health. For this reason Prof. Yunus, and other after him, started to lend micro-amount of money -asking an interest, because the charity has not ever worked and the poor need to build an own financial culture. Borrowing money is the first step, could be the second one, …but should not be the third one. This way could make the borrower a microcredit’s addicted (Debts Spiral).

But, incredibly, a lot of poor don’t need money and they don’t ask loan. They live with 2$ -or less- per day and they can save, or better, they need to save but they lack of devices to save. Portofolio of the Poor reported stories of poor like Himid and Khadeja: a couple that -though living in a Dhaka slum with an average earning of $70 per month- generates a total turnover of $965, larger than their annual income of $840. So each dollar of income earned is subjected to $1.14 of intermediation – of being pushed and pulled through financial instruments of one sort or another. The Himid and Khadeja story is the same story of other millions of poor and expresses a need for savings to sustain their financial structure, made of smoothing consumption, loans payment, insurances.

Borrowing is extremely easier than saving, because the self-control that you need to put money into a voluntary savings account –reducing your consumption- is weaker than the one that pushes you to pay every week an instalment because all the other members pay the instalments.

But, borrowing is extremely more dangerous than saving. […to be continued]

23- DRIVING A RICKSHAWN IN DHAKA, CARRYING THE REAL RICKSHAWN WALLAH IN THE BACK: DONE

THERE IS NO SUCH PLACE AS FAR AWAY (because differences make you different)

The Danish girl, the major sister, she’s blonde but walking in the street her hair became a respectful golden chador. She introduced me to the healthy world of Oats. She left, but the flag of Denmark lives in our flat. I love her business card, with the yellow network of world cities visited.

The Dutch girl, the tallest one, she has got the longest Punjabi in town, to avoid in case of group picture. She’s veg, she loves Shawarma House restaurant and she hates Gulshan Plaza Restora (but only because Regina and I have survived after the meal, and she got diarrhea). She lives in Rotterdam but she’s punctual as a Swiss clock.

The Japanese girl, the cartoon one, she asked me if all the Italian are “funny and hot” like me, I didn’t ask anything because –now- I know the answer to an old doubt: what we see and call “Japanese cartoon” are for them simple sit-comedies and reality shows. She loves chocolate.

The Australian girl, the quickest tongue, I have ever known that kangaroos are able to jump, now I know that often they jump directly into the pot: murderers. Her father is a photographer.

The Austrian girl, the pretty daughter in the family TV spot who -with blonde curly hair and green eyes- pushes you to buy something that your daughter doesn’t need. Dhaka doesn’t offer anything, even she’s the only one that comes with me, we practice night-urban-trekking, English lessons, wi-fi fishing and Lonely Planet’s upgrading.

The Hong Kong guy/1, the mountain with a tender heart, he’s big as much as he’s good, I would like hug him every night before sleep, he’s really in love with his girlfriend. He’s watching “Love Actually”, and for sure he’s thinking about her.

The Hong Kong guy/2, the chinese metaphor, serious-folk-clever-hardworker, he’s a big eater –like China- that will eat all of us. He’s really in love with his girlfriend, very often I listen him and it’s incredible how love makes nice a frigid language as chinese.

The Japanese guy, the other half of the apple, he’s my exact opposite and for this we are a magic couple, he’s polite, he respects the rules, he doesn’t joke with the girls, he speaks few but he’s always right, he’s constant. His girlfriend is beautiful, and he loves her. He’s watching “Titanic”, and for sure he’s thinking about here.

The Indian guy, the Indian metaphor, young-dreamer-smart-still inexperienced, he’s full of hopes and –like India- there will be a better future for him. He’s 4th dan of Karate, he practice transcendental meditation, he will introduce me to meditation because I have to be quite even if the tea-seller asks me 10 taka for a chai that costs only 6. He said that he started to love Bangladesh “only after knowing Regina and me”.

CHOICES (because 10 is better than 8, but the quality is also important)

TOUCH (because you cannot believe in microcredit if you do not touch with hands "the" microcredit)

20TH FLOOR DHAKA: because you should not see what happens in the gutter