So much of our years in Bangladesh involved my dad going out and coming back, I remember the day that he invited me on a smallpox trip.
The trip involved taking a ferry to a bus. I thought it would be a grand idea if we rode on top of the bus. I didn’t see the cyclone clouds gathering in the distance. By the time we started to have doubts about our rooftop view the bus was full to capacity. And there with no room down below for us. An hour or two later the bus took off into the cyclone and we got pelted by wind and rain. It was quite miserable. Somehow my dad got a seat in the driver’s compartment but this is when the trouble really started. We soon realized that they were starting the diesel bus with a bic lighter every half mile or so. We had a choice of being left in the cyclone or being blown up by this makeshift diesel engine.