To moo or not to moo, that is the question...

Well, for the more observant amongst you, you will have noticed that it's been over a week since our last posting - apologies for this but we have been off on our hols, taking advantage of the Eid break.

Since our last posting the second Eid (Eid-ul-Fitr) has occurred and it took place on Tuesday 9th December.

This Eid is a much more sombre affair than the last Eid and basically involves the sacrifice of either a cow or goat (depending on your wealth) by each family. So, during the lead up to Eid, Dhaka became one big cattle market with massive temporary markets being set up around the city for people to buy and sell their choice sacrifice. Many trucks were entering the city stocked with cattle and it was a common site to see people walking their newly-purchased animal down the road to take back home.

The animals were all dressed very nicely with garlands of flowers round their necks blissfully ignorant of their fate.

Once purchased the animals were stored in the car port of apartment buildings, or attached to fences by the side of the road in front of buildings, or in peoples' apartments (if it's a goat that is - bit tricky to get a whole cow in the lift!)

Our building was no exception - we had a couple of cows and goats in the car port waiting to greet us one morning and some token pieces of hay for them to sleep in. During the lead up to Eid the guards would take the cattle for a little wander in the field opposite our building, so I'm pretty sure they enjoyed their last few days.

Along our road there were loads and loads of goats tied to railings and gates etc - our area is not as wealthy as other areas, hence the goats rather than cows - which was an interesting site to behold.

On Eid day the animals would be sacrificed either in the car ports, in peoples' apartments, or in one of the 12 designated sacrifice areas distributed across the city. There has been a recent ban on sacrificing on the road, due to the amount of mess is creates and hygiene implications and there are strict rules on cleaning up after the sacrifice. In the villages most people would sacrifice inside, or just outside their homes.

Once the sacrifice has occurred the meat is then divided into 3 - 1 portion is for the family, 1 portion is for the poor and 1 portion is for friends and other relatives. As you can imagine beef is on the menu for quite a while after that.

As we were on holiday at the time of Eid we missed the actual sacrificing but we understand it was quite eventful.

The Eid break was 3 days from the 8th - 10th Dec. The 8th is used to prepare for Eid. All the shopping should have been done the day before and then the 8th is simply used for preparation and then the day after Eid is for spending time with the family. Many people leave the city and return to their home village to spend time with their families, so Dhaka was pretty empty (well relatively).

On our last day in the office before Eid we had a pretty eventful day. One of our colleagues managed to drop the large fish bowl on his wrist (ouch). He severed an artery and a few tendons but thankfully he got to hospital in time to ensure that the damage wasn't too serious.

The whole hospital system is wierd here in that you kind of choose your hospital and go to that - it's not really a case of going to the nearest one and each hospital has it's own ambulance service.

We managed to get our colleague into a really nice private hospital and having been to visit him the following day I can confidently say that it puts our English hospitals to shame - the wards were very clean and quiet, plenty of staff on hand and the beds were nicely spread apart from adjacent beds. I suppose that's what you get when you pay privately.

Our colleague is now making a good recovery and should get full movement back in his fingers within the next few weeks.

Oh, in case you were wondering, Mr Bean and Mr Bond (the 2 fish) survived the initial breakage but sadly we arrived at the office this morning to find that Mr Bean had snuffed it - must have been a case of delayed shock!