WRITERS ABROAD MAGAZINE
joining a cycling group with Moroccan immigrants… and in Bangladesh... well,
Bangladesh has all sorts of social problems… which you can read about in my book!
Q. Did you learn the language of your host country and what benefits did it
bring?
I learnt some Bangla. This was immensely rewarding, as people took it as a sign of
respect for, and interest in, their culture.
Q. Who was the audience for your writing and how much of it was local?
Include other writers and writers groups.
I did not target local readers. We had a small writing group in Dhaka, called DEW
(Dhaka Expat Writers) and we met once a month. We formed after the five of us
were published in the last Writers Abroad Anthology, and we became good friends.
I have written many articles for The Oldie, and have won or been placed in several
travel writing competitions. So I suppose, besides friends and family who read my
blog, my audience is mostly made up of Oldie readers, travellers, armchair travellers,
and expats. And of course, my friends at Writers Abroad.
Q. Describe a typical day in your life in Bangladesh including your writing
I got up very early in the morning and wrote for a couple of hours. After breakfast I
did some sort of sport, generally swimming, water aerobics or yoga. After that
anything might happen!
Q. What was your degree of ‘comfort' with Bangladesh? Did it change over
time? If so, did you notice changes in your writing which reflected this?
Although I have travelled extensively (I have never not been an expat and have lived
in over a dozen countries in four continents), Bangladesh was my first experience of
Asia. I think my degree of comfort is reflected in my book: I started out lost, out of my
depth, knowing very little about the country, but always enthusiastic to learn. I ended
up enjoying wearing saris, sporting a nose stud, speaking some Bangla, and even
acting in a Bangladeshi TV satire.
Paola is between posts, moving from Bangladesh to Ghana over the summer.
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