In preparing for this trip to Dhaka, our professor Nadia White told us all to “tell it like it is.” We would not be sugarcoating anything, or glazing over the important details. Our reporting would be focused on climate change, specifically related to loss and damages. We were asked to research and prepare to report on a related issue in Bangladesh, where we would “tell it like it is.”

Undoubtedly the team’s rookie writer, I discussed what I would be reporting on with Nadia. I had big ambitions, and she helped me knock those down to a reasonable peg; we settled on heat. I quickly found green spaces and heat waves in Dhaka to be primary points of interest.I found myself surfing weather reports and green space studies, but I honestly didn’t have a clue what the numbers I was reading felt like. 

Yesterday after breakfast we hopped in our vans and drove to the Buriganga River. I don’t think any of us realized we would be taking a boat ride, or how long it would be. But we were all excited, so we scurried our happy asses over the water hyacinth into the small wooden boats, unaware of the sauna we were about to feel. 

Our three boat drivers, captains if you would, set us off crossing the river. The river was small by Bangladeshi standards, maybe 400 hundred yards wide. As we then turned and traveled upstream, we passed a ship breaking yard with a handful of larger boats pushed up onto the banks. 

At our turnaround point near a bridge, Nadia asked me to look at the temperature gauge on her backpack. 

Now, I’m naturally a warm person. As soon as it’s over 70 degrees Fahrenheit, I’m sweating. So when Nadia’s thermometer read roughly 49 degree celsius — roughly 120 degrees Fahrenheit — I was, needless to say, hot. We both knew that it wasn’t quite that hot, but the fact we were anywhere close to that number was unsettling to say the least. Nadia and Najifa Farhat, our trusted guide and teaching assistant, had decided we were going to go and interview some of the people working at the ship breaking yard. Now, Nadia was yelling over to Najifa’s boat that we probably shouldn’t spend too much longer on the water or we might start getting too hot. 

The river was noisy, and Najifa couldn’t hear Nadia. She yelled back, “I’m not listening to you.” She probably meant, “I can’t hear you.”

We passed trash burning on the bank and a woman washing clothes in the river.  We also saw many boys jumping off their boats into the water. They were eager to show off for the Americans, some even flipping us off and smiling. We yelled back a Bangla insult our fixers taught us, roughly translating to, “I know your mother.” The boys laughed and flipped us off again.

We turned into the ship breaking yard and hopped out to talk to people. Renna Al-Haj, Nadia and I interviewed a man who had worked at the yard for some 25 years. But it was hard to focus on interviewing about heat when I was so miserably hot myself. I could feel my heartbeat quickening to pump more blood and cool me down. 

We left the ship breaking yard about 20 minutes later. A good thing too. I was thirsty. We quickly made it back to where we started, except there seemed to be a traffic jam of boats trying to land and depart. The density of the water hyacinths on the surface meant our boat driver couldn’t easily maneuver through those patches, so we were left to small channels. 

The five minutes it took us to get into the area were perhaps the most agonizing of all. I could see the small stand selling water, yet I could not reach it. 

After our rush off the boats and toward the water, we dashed for our air conditioned vans, desperate for some cooler air.  As we threw ourselves into the seats, Adnan, our fixer, translator, guide, and local political commentator, explained: “I feel shitbad,” an expression I cannot say I have heard before, but felt very accurate to my current state. We recovered, but I can’t say we weren’t all a bit perturbed by how severe this heat was. But now I think I’m more equipped to report on heat, now that I’ve felt the reality here in Dhaka. 

Nadia told us to tell it like it is. Right now, I am feeling it like it is.