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Following four days in a village, and a day of rest to recover from Bangla belly, our mission team spent two days in a flat in the capital of Bangladesh, Dhaka. The city itself is highly crowded and, despite the on-and-off monsoon rains, never quite manages to look clean.

Our flat was in Banani, which is one of the high-class areas of the city. The block we stayed in was owned by a big pharmaceutical company – it had air conditioning, clean tile floors, elevators, balconies, and comfortable furniture. It was absolute luxury. But, as we climbed the stairs from the carpark, we could look out the window between storeys and see into the block of flats next door. We don’t know whether these were finished or unfinished. It was like looking back into the living conditions in the village. Thinking that people lived like this all the time made the rest of my time in Banani feel a little less comfortable.

Photo taken by friends Q & M, 13th July, 2005.

A Bangladeshi we encountered in a village Somewhere in the country. Lorien took this picture of him at a baptism. He was reluctant to share his story with us, but, with some gentle probing, told us that he used to be a wealthy landowner. He lost almost all of his land one year when the floods were particularly bad – I can’t remember if this was around the time when he was introduced to Jesus, but I remember him saying that the loss of his land was a small one, compared to his life in Christ. He also told us that he was the father of ten or eleven children.