Don’t come to expect this, but I’m actually posting this blog on the day it occurred. After spending the morning at the Buddhist school teaching English, a friend and I headed out to take pictures. As I mentioned earlier, Eid al-Hada is the festival of sacrifice. Muslims buy an animal (goat, cow, camel), sacrifice it and split the meat three ways – retaining one-third, giving one-third to friends and giving one-third to the poor. This will all happen next Wednesday. I wanted to go to the cow market this weekend to see the animals for sale.
We started at a smaller market near the school. It was all cows, and primarily the same breed. This is the first time in Dhaka that I have been concerned that I might be injured. My friend and I quickly attracted a huge crowd of cow herder children who followed us in a large crowd. Although they were totally friendly, they were a little too excited to see us and we started getting pushed ahead of the mob. When we were pushed into bulls, they would try to swing their horns at us. I also kept slipping in the cow piles, and was afraid I’d fall down and get trampled. I finally convinced all of them to climb a sand pile for a photo, which gave me a short break to breathe and relax. At this point I realized it was not a good idea to be here and we headed out.
Here they are bringing the cows to market.
The entire market.
The mob of boys.
Force feeding a bull.
Another breed.
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