The Deconstruction of Dhaka

The building next door is coming down and OSHA would not be happy about it. I don’t think these guys have a clever little sign declaring how many accident free days they have enjoyed.

Dhaka has been around for a thousand years. Everywhere, the city is in flux, old buildings coming down to be replaced by new ones. 

These guys are working about 8 stories up

Since moving into our permanent housing last Wednesday, I have watched in both horror and fascination as workers bring the existing structure down. They aren't using explosives and they aren't using wrecking balls. They're using men; lots of men!

Picture an American construction site; burley men in jeans and T-shirts sporting yellow hard hats, leathery work gloves and steel toed boots. Now picture…not that…at all. Instead picture slightly built, wiry, yet freakishly strong men in all manner of clothing, often button down dress shirts, trousers and flip flops.

Each morning they begin again…tearing down a several story, concrete, brick and rebar structure with their bare hands and a few sledgehammers, one floor at a time. It is terrifying. I have watched as a man stood, without restraints of any kind on the top of a wall and repeatedly swung a sledgehammer at the very wall he was standing on. Over and over the monstrous steel hammer slams into the wall, sometimes inches from the man’s toes. If it were to connect, it would not injure his foot; it would mutilate it. If the wall were to collapse too soon he would be thrown two floors down with a ton of concrete.

From the street, a crazy, elaborate stairway built from lengths of bamboo stretches across the entrance to the job site. Every few lengths of bamboo, another piece is laid on top, forming a step. The bamboo is lashed together. It is a testament to brilliant engineering that the whole things doesn’t simply collapse.

As I watch from my fourth floor perch, the men swarm the worksite like an army of ants doing jobs that seem impossible for their size. Each day more of the building disappears as these men work tirelessly in blistering heat and humidity. Once the floors are knocked out, they walk across nothing more than the left over rebar, woven like an insane basket across the emptiness between walls. I watch in horror expecting someone to fall through at any moment.

One man spent the other day standing on the edge of a demolished stairwell, three floors of nothingness behind him and jagged rebar in front of him. There were no safety harnesses. Only a man in trousers and flip flops.

The property on the other side of that building is under construction as well. The demolition is finished and reconstruction has begun. They recently poured a concrete floor. Again, no machines were involved. Instead a steady stream of men, some a couple of decades older than myself, carted the wet concrete all the way from the front of the site. 

Each had a large, wide, rounded basket covered in a layer of fabric. The wet cement was poured into each basket and they would walk with the baskets atop their heads from the front of the building, up the stairs, and onto the third floor.

The crew lives on site. They work 10-12 hour days and often work in the dark. As work slows each evening, they settle down to eat and socialize. When I take Chumleigh out for his walk we can hear Bangladeshi music coming from someone’s radio. Men cluster together to relax and visit. If it’s raining some scramble to find dry spots and others just sit in the rain. 

Bedtime comes and the men hang mosquito netting from a tree to cover the piece of maybe 6x8 corrugated metal that they sleep on. The men huddle together under the netting, trying to avoid the mosquitos. Some forgo the netting and sleep wherever they can find a bit of shelter. Night and sleep close in on them and the whole process begins again in the morning.

This is the mosquito netting that they sleep under

on the construction site.

It’s like having a television in my kitchen and I found a show I can't stop watching. I return to the window overlooking the site several times a day, fascinated by the hardiness of these men. I imagine that there are no unions to protect them; no OSHA regulations to keep them from being injured and though I don’t know what their wages are, I can tell you that a driver makes around $200-250 a month and it’s far more than a construction worker gets.

So when you go to bed tonight, say a little prayer for the safety of these hard working men who will do what they must to provide for their loved ones.