We are sitting in the plane and talking about out trip to Dhaka. We are trying to summarize the experiences and to somehow put them into a few words, for this blog.

But it’s very difficult to do that. There were so many different small things and small surprises that caused so many different feelings.

• There was a guy who picked us up at the airport and who took us through without any passport and custom controls.
• We met a girl who was very sad, because here mother wanted to cut her beautiful hair, as they don’t have the money to buy shampoos.
• Then there was a 9-year-old boy who paints hennas like a professional painter and who loves to paint, but he had no paint or paper to do it.
• There was 6-year-old boy who works in a samosa shop, who cleans the shop in his free time and it seamed that he forgot how to smile.
• There was rickshaw rider who didn’t even know how old he is, he is only off from work if he is eating or sleeping,
• There were 8 young men aged between 17 and 18 who were keen to learn about career, life and boys stuff.
• There were 6 dog puppies under an old broken rickshaw, crying loud, one of them was dead. Another one had died the next day when we passed by.
• There was pharmacy shop. The owner is also working as a doctor in the community. He is even stitching wounds if somebody is injured.
• There were rich men who wanted to take photos with us.
• There was a 9-year-old boy who never ate cornflakes his life before we met.
• There was a police guy at Kaskura Nodi who wanted to check the foreigners.
• There were bats big like eagles.
• There was a small girl holding Mara’s arm with two hands just like she would like to show that nobody else should even try to get her arm.
• There was a small girl who got the scarf directly from Mara’s shoulder as a present because she didn’t have any and who couldn’t believe that she got it.
• There were hundreds of people who invited us to have lunch together with them in their homes.
• There were hundreds of buses horning and millions of rickshaws ringing their bells.
• There are streets like nowhere in the world and driving them is like riding a rollercoaster.
• There were BBC journalists making reports about human rights with 360° camera.
• There were 20 to 30 children following each of our steps, smiling, calling “Bidashi, Bidashi” and touching us.
• There are 3 families whose children we are supporting and whose thankfulness you can feel with every breath.
• There are hundreds of water pipes bringing water to the houses in the slums; they are unprotected, between tones of rubbish and leaking all the way to the houses.
• There are girls who are too shy to talk about their need of sanitary pads.
• The temperature was around 37°C and the humidity made us feel that you could drink the air instead of breathing it – and your body so much sweating like you were taking a shower.
• There were so many happy faces of the children receiving the mobile phones for their school achievements.
• There was such heavy rain and so much mud that you couldn’t imagine and that made walking around to become a real challenge.

So if somebody might ask us how our trip to Dhaka really was – what to tell?