The children at the shelter wanted to visit the zoo. Since another service group was going there on Friday, I decided to tag along and do some reconnaissance. It was an interesting experience. Having visited other zoos in Asia, I was afraid it would be full of small cages and abused animals, and would be very depressing. They do have a lot of problems, but it was much better than expected.
The zoo is very cheap (about 15 cents) and very crowded on a weekend. It was great seeing all of the families dressed in their best clothing – little boys in suits and young girls and women in beautiful dresses. Some of you may have noticed that many of my other photos have consisted primarily of men. That’s because most people you meet on the street are men. This was one of the few places I have been in Dhaka where there were many women and girls out in public.
Our students were there to clean up the zoo, so they started picking up trash. This soon drew crowds of observers, some of whom helped and some of whom were more interested in our students than the caged animals.
The zoo needed some photos of the animals for their website, so I took one of the students and went out to get pictures. This was somewhat difficult since many of the cages, even the open enclosures, have bars or fencing between the animals and the visitors. We did get some good shots though. As we were finishing up, we reached the lion cage. It just has bars, and there’s only a railing a few feet away to keep people from reaching in. As we stood there, a big male turned his back to us, raised his tail and backed up to the bars. I’ve owned cats long enough to know what was coming next. I turned and started to run right before he sprayed all over us. I was mostly hit on the hair and backpack. The student next to me didn’t move quite as quickly and was sprayed all over his back. Score one point for experience over youth. I was laughing so hard that the Bangladeshi were staring at me as if I were a lunatic. I told someone else this story that night, and he said the same thing happened to him as a boy – only he had been resting his head on the railing and got sprayed in the face. Life is rarely dull here.
You know he's looking at me and thinking - "I've marked you, you're mine bitch."
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