From Banks:
Please forgive me for my absence from the cyber world. Life in Bangladesh has been clipping along at a blistering pace and I have found it hard to pause and blog. Today’s less-than-busy schedule afforded me such an opportunity - so here I am. Our blog so far has featured Chris, mostly, eloquently accounting our journeys and transforming our life in Bangladesh into beautiful prose. I wish to briefly depart from this update format and address something I have been learning here in Bangladesh.
Muhammad Yunus, the founder of Grameen Bank, has the talent of articulating something so accurately that one cannot help but smile at the simple truths he extends to his listeners and readers. As I read through his book, Banker to the Poor, I found myself smiling for this exact reason. He said: “It is only our arrogance which forces us to seek complicated solutions to simple problems.” The second I read it, I knew it was true. How often had I overcomplicated something, bending and twisting it, wrestling with a problem in a futile effort to solve it? But I was curious to see how this statement had rung true in Yunus’ life. I wanted to see if I could uncover the reason for such a statement in the Grameen Bank model.
I stored this percolating thought in the back of my mind as I trekked out to distant villages to interview Grameen Bank borrowers and relieve myself from the smoggy, pollution-filled city air with some bright stars and deep breaths. The villages we visited featured both clean air and loquacious borrowers. Over three village visits, we interviewed nearly 30 borrowers of Grameen bank and received some interesting answers.
As I began to process their interviews and copy them down into my notebook, I found myself confused. Some of their responses to questions were perplexing – even disturbing. I will give two examples that I witnessed over and over again.
1) I would ask the borrowers if there was anything that they disliked about Grameen Bank. They were very quick to say no and instead exuded a fierce loyalty to the bank. In responses to questions regarding what brings them peace and happiness, what brings them comfort, and what brings them security, many women mentioned the bank before they mentioned their family, their religion, or their community. Through these surprising responses, it became clear to me that many women borrowers are idolizing Grameen Bank and elevating it to the status of a god.
2) Questions regarding money and how important it was in village culture also elicited some concerning responses. When we asked the women how important money was in their culture, many women said “money is everything”. When we asked what one would do to achieve respect, many mentioned the acquiring of money as one of the central factors. To be fair, others mentioned good behavior and education as means to achieve respect, but money vacillated for first, second, and third place with these other two reasons.
Now I am not sure what your response is as you read these observations. Maybe you are surprised that these women could come up with such answers – I was. But maybe you are not – contending that once these women are given a chance through microfinance, they turn to materialism and idolatry like much of the western world has done, worshipping things and money.
However, as I dug my heels into this issue, I found myself returning to Yunus’ maxim about our arrogance and solving the world’s problems. Let me explain.
My visceral reaction to these answers by the borrowers was to be surprised and a bit concerned – was Grameen inculcating these women with materialistic tendencies and crowding out their religious convictions with the presence of a steady fountain of capital? It certainly seemed possible. We discussed this topic in our group, the three of us sipping strong tea and disagreeing with each other as the night turned into morning. I asked around, seeking out one of the head women at Grameen Bank. Her response was a curt no; Grameen was doing no such thing and these women were poor after all. How could I think that, she seemed to say as she peered at me from the edge of her sari.
I did more research, more thinking, and sometimes I invited Yunus’ maxim into my mind, imagining what he would contribute if he could weigh in on the issue. I thought about it quite a bit, and the three of us talked about it, refining each other’s viewpoints and challenging the rough parts of our arguments. After more discussions with experts, passerbys, and a roster of borrowers, we found our answer.
The women were not materialistic, nor were they idolizing Grameen in an unhealthy way. What had brought so much friction into this issue were our pre-conceived ideas, our assumptions and our expectations. We had failed to consider the context in which these answers were given. We had failed to address how culture and Bangladesh life might play into the crafting of these women’s answers. This was a mistake indeed – but it was ours, not the women’s.
I was frustrated when the women would not admit that Grameen had any faults. Surely there were imperfections and problems within the organization. How could these women, the borrowers of Grameen and the ones who interacted with it the most frequently, be oblivious to its problems? Furthermore, why was there such fierce loyalty and adoration of Grameen? Wasn’t that unhealthy? These were my initial thoughts. But as I scrutinized and searched, each answer was delivered with clarity.
I had neglected the fact that these women had nothing – literally nothing. Before Grameen, they were in the throes of poverty, mired in the thick mud of being a woman in a poverty-stricken Muslim country. Grameen comes along, proselytizing its gospel of money without collateral and the opportunity to escape the quicksand of poverty, and these women jumped at the opportunity, signing up in legions. These were the women I interviewed, now 15-20 year borrowers of the bank. They were the first generation and had seen their lives change in only a matter of years. They could eat three square meals now, send their kids to school, afford a tin roof for their home and pay for life-saving medication. Grameen was the source of all of this – it was the one that had given them this opportunity. Many women also took the time to acknowledge their own achievement. After all, Grameen didn’t tell them what to do, it just provided the capital. These women had uncovered latent entrepreneurialism that they didn’t know they had. They were able to manage a business, take care of the finances and pay back on time, all the while being entirely illiterate. Best of all, Grameen didn’t view them as victims of poverty, but as customers, as people they trusted with their money. How revolutionary.
With this history firmly planted in my mind, I could see why these women were so loyal to Grameen Bank. I could see that Grameen had brought peace and happiness, security, comfort and stability to these women. From a very basic, pragmatic perspective, it had provided those things. I was on a completely different level, trying to tease out sophisticated answers about intangible things like security and happiness. On the borrowers’ level, it was simple: what brought security, happiness, peace? Grameen. Moreover, I could imagine how these women did not dare talk badly about an organization or mention some of its flaws when it had done so many good things - life-changing things - in their lives. How disrespectful.
This new perspective also shed different light on the concerns about money. When these women said that money is everything, they were not saying it in the context of the philosophical purpose of life or the aim of all people. They were saying that money is everything because when you are so poor, money is the means by which you can escape poverty. It is the means by which one can survive. We asked one woman how she defined peace and she said, “Peace is having enough money not to be hungry”. She clarified, “It is hard to have peace when you are starving.” This began to make sense, people weren’t obsessed with money, they weren’t obsessed with consumption. My confusion arose because I couldn’t wrap my mind around such extreme poverty. I eventually began to understand that in a culture so different from ours, where poverty dominates in despotic fashion and the desire to survive trumps all other human desires, money is everything. Money separates life from death, suffering from comfort, and hope from despair. That is why Grameen is so effective and so wildly popular with its borrowers.
Yunus’ quote danced around in my mind. It was my arrogance which had layered the women’s answers with judgments and incorrect assumptions. It was my arrogance which had led me to diagnose the situation as something else than it actually was. The women and I were on entirely different levels. I think that is what Yunus is trying to say. With Grameen’s mission entirely focused around the uneducated, illiterate women in rural Bangladesh, there was no room for complicated solutions. Solutions that were above the understanding of the women would fester in pools of futility and failure. Only the simplest of solutions would do.
All this is to say, I have been challenged. I have been challenged to look at what assumptions I take into a situation, what pre-conceived notions and judgments I have. They can be dangerous . On the contrary, one can be tempted to fall into the dark pit of relativism – each person having their own truth. But his is not what I am suggesting. I think we all can learn to take things and people at face value – not try to mold them into something they are not. Arrogance will lead us down the wrong, more complicated path. I suppose it is a relief, then, to know that in many situations, the simple answers are the best ones.
Monday, June 1, 2009
Friday, May 22, 2009
Reality Check
5/21/2009
From Chris:
Dear blog-readers,
It’s lobby time again here at the G.P. I’m sitting in darkness waiting for the power to come back on, and collecting all the memories that we’ve made since the village visit so that I can pick up where Ronald Singleton Brown the Third left off. Where to begin…
To tell you about the village visit chronologically would take way too much time. So instead, I’ll talk about some of the highlights of our four days there.
The branch was rustic (Trey has already covered that), but there were many things to enjoy about it. The branch manager was a jolly fellow, and his two subordinates were goofs. We really enjoyed getting to know Matin (our translator) and hear about his Bengali upbringing (in an English that we didn’t have to squint and contort our faces to understand). The bugs were bothersome, but I must admit, pointing at Trey’s shoulder and screaming “COCKROACH” elicited some of the funniest responses I’ve seen from him. We would tie on our “lungi’s” (the traditional Bengali man-skirts) and eat our rice and dal (we ate it every day, almost exclusively, 3 times a day, for 89 cents per day). It was during one of those lunches that Matin taught me the Bengali art of eating with your hand (only the right one). It makes eating the sloppy Bengali cuisine just that much more enjoyable (call me uncouth; I call it cultural immersion). Early afternoons were spent reading on our wooden-plank beds, and at night we would sit around the table for a while after dinner. The power would usually go out 3-4 times a night, and when it did, we would bring out candles and set them on the table. We’d scrape a match along the sandpaper side and bring the hissing flame to the wick. And as the candlelight wobbled across our faces, carved from shadows, we would talk about our passions, ideas, reflections on the trip, and whatever perspective on life we could offer. I loved those times.
There was a train track that ran through the village and beside the branch. Several times throughout the day, we could hear the train coming. We would watch it pass by—the cars were so full that people would stand right at the doors, hang off the sides, and whole families would even take a seat on top of the cars, and ride Slumdog Millionaire style (I once counted a family of nine on one car).
We would follow the tracks into the town on our way to visit some of the borrowers. Like anywhere else in Bangladesh, we attracted huge crowds, and groups of kids would follow us on the train tracks on the way back to the branch, laughing at our inability to balance on the rails like they could. In the mornings, we would wake up early and eat a quick breakfast before taking a rickshaw to the next community of borrowers we would interview. In the early mornings, and in the evenings, the rice fields all around the villages were beautiful. The sun would cast a golden reflection on the still water in the fields, and the faint outlines of clouds and the sun could be seen through the small stalks of rice sprouts that peppered the landscape. We would see men with their “lungis” in the fields, harvesting the rice and carrying big bundles of it on their heads to the rice threshers, where the women would feed the severed stalks in, tossing the chaff away as the grains of rice spewed out of the threshers, creating piles of golden grains that women would spread across big tarps with their feet.
We saw the fisheries, the “fuel” sticks the villagers laid out to dry (ask Trey about those), the men and women washing and playing in the ponds, and the mosques. When dark started to set in, the tremolo of the prayer calls amplified by the mosque speakers would sound through the village, calling all the white-clad Bengalis to end their day in piety. The calls ushered us back to the branch before night set in, and with the coming of darkness and potential dangers, the calls had an ominous feel to them. It made the villages feel that much more different from the typical American evening.
But by far, the most interesting thing about our village visit was our interaction with the people themselves. They were so welcoming, and so excited to have us there. Wherever we walked, an entourage of anywhere from 3-12 kids would follow us around, mimicking us, muttering the few English phrases they knew, cheering (lots of cheering. Lots), and screaming “B’deshi!” (the word for foreigner in Bengali) as we walked along the road. It was so much fun. The borrowers would welcome us into their humble homes, pulling out chairs, turning on fans (or having somebody else fan us with these interesting spinning-fan contraptions they have. We would tell them that they didn’t have to do that, but they would get so excited), and offering us coconut milk and other refreshments. The homes would fill up with other on-looking villages of all ages, watching us with curiosity until the host would shoo them out, only to have them crowd back in within seconds.
We interviewed so many borrowers, from all different socioeconomic statuses within the village. I’ll let Banks cover most of our investigative work, as he was our head journalist during our interviews, but I’ll give you one interesting observation I made, that has since sparked several heated discussions. Trey and Banks would disagree with me on this, but I’ve found reason to believe that some of the older, more successful borrowers that have been in the Grameen system for 15-20+ years showed signs of materialism. Grameen’s purpose is to empower it’s borrowers to pull themselves out of poverty, but I believe there comes a point where, after a borrower rises above the poverty line, after the borrower restores their human dignity, after they secure their basic comforts, and after they pursue their noble hopes of sending their children abroad, educating them, marrying off their daughters, etc., the borrowers can become addicted to the accumulation of wealth, their pursuit of dignity degenerates into pride, and they develop a materialistic mindset. It’s still very much a hypothesis, but it’s something I’m very interested to explore on our next village visit.
(blog posting continued the night of 5/22)
So, Banks will tell you more about the village visit. On the last full day we got to visit a private kindergarten. The little boys and girls we met there were so cute—dressed in their ridiculous military style uniforms, endearingly shy. We loved getting to see them. We interviewed the struggling members (the beggars), which was very interesting, and then headed back to the house for the night. The next morning we packed up and drove back to Dhaka. The Grand Prince had never seemed so luxurious as it did when we returned from our four day visit, and we spent the rest of the day enjoying the simple comforts of a hot shower, flavorful food, and a bed not made of wood planks.
The next day, Banks and I rickshawed to Grameen where we met up with everyone else and waited around till 3:30, where we had a very interesting meeting with a Grameen official. We talked to her for a while, asking her questions about Grameen, voicing our insights, until it was time to meet big daddy Dr. Yunnus. It was very exciting. We waited around for a while before he came into the room and started introducing himself to all the interns, shaking hands with them, and posing for pictures. He took many, many pictures. He was happy to know that 4 of the interns were from Vanderbilt, and we got to take a picture with him doing the VU sign (he still knows who he’s with). N.B.D.
That night, Tommy Trey and I went to a party at the Raddison hotel that Samir had invited all the interns to. It was the strangest experience that we weren’t expecting. Imagine this: you let the strange man stamp your wrist and another opens the door to the party. You hear loud techno dance music and step in. You’re met with the jarring flash of strobe lights, and a deep, punching bass. You ask yourself, “where are the girls?” You step onto the dance floor, and decide to make the night as ridiculous as possible. You start to mimic the awkward dance moves of the sweaty Bengali men that surround you, and begin to encroach on your personal bubble. You feel like Indiana Jones, as the temple walls are closing in. You think fast, and decide to turn the dance-floor into a dance circle. You do a silly dance move as the Bengalis shake their hands in syncopated rhythm around you. And then, you retreat back to the couches, just like middle school. Success.
The next day, Tommy and I met up with our friend Shapon (Tommy’s connection from home) and took another micro to a village about 2 hours south of Dhaka. Trey and Banks decided to stay back for the weekend and decompress from our Grameen village visit, but Tommy and I would spent the weekend with H.A.R.D, a smaller NGO that set up community development programs in two rural communities. We were warmly welcomed when we arrived at the H.A.R.D house by people handing us bouquets and throwing flower petals at us. It was maybe just a little bit ridiculous. We settled into the house, and ate a delicious meal. The food we at that weekend was so good. It was sloppy delicious Bengali cuisine, the real kind, and we loved it. Tommy is obsessed with Virgin cola (I know, I hadn’t heard of it either. It tastes like Coke + Mr. Pibb), so we bought about 20ish cans of it and drank every single one of them. After our meal, we explored the village some, helped distribute eyeglasses to the villagers, watched the villagers catch a fish for us (by dragging a big net across a pond, and then picking the biggest flopping fish to eat later that night), and later that night, we ate the fish and then had a Bengali band play at the H.A.R.D. house. They were playing all Bengali instruments, which consisted of drums, finger symbols, a lute, an accordion/mini-piano, and lots of clapping and shouting. A strange man started dancing to the music, so of course Tommy and I decided to each challenge the man to a dance off. I think we lost, but I can’t be sure. There was lots of hip-shaking involved.
The next day was spent exploring the village, seeing all the H.A.R.D development programs in action, and getting caught in a rainstorm. Tommy claims that he sounded the alarm when he saw those rainclouds. I just think he was a grumpus (hah). The long, sweeping rice fields looked beautiful after the rain. We walked back to the house, which required us crossing over a bamboo bridge (3-4 poles of bamboo tied together at the base, and then two bamboo rails coming together in a V shape), and ate another delicious meal. We relaxed for a while, explored the next village, and saw some of the local sights (ruins and such. It was good). And then on Sunday, we visited two of the H.A.R.D. schools and got to see the kids there. They were 6 year olds this time, just as cute as the other school kids, but without the cool uniforms. We gave them jolly ranchers and starbursts, and they introduced themselves and recited jumbled English poems to us. The schools were like hotboxes, and we were sweating buckets, but we loved spending time with them. There’s just something about the kids in this part of the world—they are so joyful in the most mundane of situations. It’s an infectious joy.
After visiting the schools we were off again, back to Dhaka to be reunited with Trey and Banks (who had some great adventures in Dhaka while we were gone). On Monday, we said a sad goodbye to Tommy. If you’re reading this, buddy, we miss you. And your travel pouch. He is currently keeping it fresh in China, so still in the neighborhood I guess. I just killed a large, unidentified bug in my room with a Chaco. Point. We had dinner with Samir that night at a tasty Italian place, and then went for ice cream later (in the ritzy part of town).
Monday and Tuesday during lunch, we volunteered at an orphanage nearby teaching English classes. The orphanage felt a little Matilda-esque, but the kids were great. We really enjoyed getting to know them, and while our teaching wasn’t all that structured, we had lots of fun befriending the kids. We even sang them Taylor Swift’s “Love Story” (but not very well. We unfortunately may have ruined the song for them. Sorry Tay, we tried). Wednesday was a very productive day at the Bank, and we met with four different executives from all the sister companies of the bank. We learned so much, and it was such a stimulating day for us. The rest of that day was very relaxed, mostly spending time with the new interns that have come. There seems to be a new intern every other day. It keeps things interesting around here.
Yesterday, most of the day was again spent with the new interns (and for me, spent writing up this blog and doing associated things), but later that night, Trey and I had tickets to another party that Samir had invited us to. This party even had a name to it, it was called “The Rainmaker”. Pretty similar to the other party, except that this one had an upper level, the exclusive “wet-zone” where one could go and dance on the rooftop of the hotel, request songs by Lady Gaga, escape the eye-stinging smoke and sweaty Bengali males of the first level, and jump/ get pushed into the pool. I was the designated wallet/phone holder, and Trey was the kid that got pushed into the pool with the other silly Bengalis. We splashed around for a while, laughed at Trey’s slip on the dancefloor, laughed harder when it happened again, and felt the rhythm of the night. It was less skeezy than the last party, still questionable, very interesting, and very entertaining.
And then today, it felt like summer. We didn’t have any responsibilities, only loose plans and our fellow interns. We showed up at Samir’s house for a potluck lunch, where we ate some delicious food and had some great discussions with the other interns at the bank. We stayed there for a long time, and when it was time to leave, Sebastian, our tall, crazy German friend came with us to Gulshan. We had some great discussions with him today, and we like him a lot. It’s such a strange feeling to be here, halfway around the world, and be making international friends who have completely different perspectives, and who are so much fun to spend time with. We tromped around Gulshan a bit, explored that part of the city, dared Trey to put his arm around the CNG driver (and he did), and came back to Mirpur for a dinner of roasted Chicken and Knaan (the pita-ish bread they eat here) at a delightfully tacky restaurant near the G.P. Banks and I went out later for some late-night picture taking around the Mirpur streets, and now I’m here.
It’s currently 3:44 A.M. in Dhaka, but I felt compelled to catch up our blog, because it’s been long enough. I hope that you’ve enjoyed reading about our adventures here in Dhaka, and be sure that there is plenty more to come. Friends and family, we are thinking about you. Thank you for all the wonderful messages you’ve sent our way, we appreciate them so much. This has been our life for the past 12 days. Bangladesh is our reality. We hope that through reading, it’s become a little more real to you. Stay tuned
Keeping it fresh in the Dirty ‘Desh,
Chris
p.s. –I can hear the morning prayer calls right now. This feels like some strange dream.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Trey's Inaugural Entry!
5/19/2008
From Trey:
Hello, dear blog-readers! Time for my inaugural entry! I know you’ve all been awaiting this day with bated breath. I’ll be regaling you with some of the tales of our adventure to rural Bangladesh.
We started the day at 7:30 a.m. and met Babor, our program coordinator, the driver, and our translator, Matin, who would quickly become a friend as well. We hopped into the micro (a.k.a. van) with our luggage and a whole lot of water and Clif bars in tow and hit the road. Most of the drive was fairly uneventful, with only the usual careening buses and unbelievably reckless drivers to distract us from our reading and resting. However, as we neared the village, something happened that most definitely grabbed our attention.
As we got closer and closer to the village, the roads got narrower and narrower, and bumpier and bumpier. It became increasingly difficult to swerve around the people, cows, and rickshaws while maintaining our uncomfortably rapid speed. Soon, the inevitable (or, at least, what I thought was the inevitable) happened; we nearly swerved completely off the road to avoid hitting something. We weren’t sure whether it was an animal or person or what, but we had either hit something or come very close to it. Chris did the “mom arm”…thanks for that, buddy.
Aaaaanyways, so the driver then comes to a screeching halt and runs back to the scene of the accident. We’re in the middle of the road, cars/rickshaws/carts with donkeys/motorcycles are piling up behind us, they are HONKING AND WILL NOT STOP, and we are getting a little concerned. What we saw next did not make us feel any better. A big crew of Bangladeshis comes running toward our van, several of them pile in––we are very confused at this point––and in the front seat, we see a little girl in the arms of a fairly young boy/man. She is bleeding from the head and the wound seems to be wrapped in rags. I thought we’d hit the poor child! It turns out we didn’t hit her and she actually just ran out in the road and fell trying to avoid the car. Nonetheless, it made for a very interesting start to our village visit…
So, after dropping the poor girl off at the “doctor’s office”, which was nothing more than a little stall at the market, we drove on to what would serve as our home for the next four days. I must admit, I was somewhat concerned at what we saw.
During this particular village visit, we’d be staying in a Grameen branch, rather than a guesthouse or small hotel. The branch was a dingy, white, 2-story concrete structure with the familiar Grameen logo on a small sign out front and bars on the windows. Not exactly what I was expecting. The inside was equally dingy, with little light and a whole lot of bugs. We were taken straight to our rooms upstairs, where I was, again, somewhat shocked by what I found. The beds were very, very hard. Like a plank-of-wood-hard. Like metal-slats-with-a-blanket-on-them-hard. In fact, that’s exactly what the beds were! The bathroom was complete with a rain shower, one naked bulb, a “sink”, and the requisite squatty potty, without any sort of divider between it all. We were most definitely roughing it. (Those of you who know me well know that that’s not typically my style.)
However, I soon came to realize this village visit was not about my personal comfort. Really, this whole trip has helped to show me that my life is not about my personal comfort. It’s about relationships and showing God’s love to people through my day-to-day interactions with them. Even though Bangladesh is frequently HOT, humid, filthy, dusty, loud, exhausting, and confusing, the warmth and friendliness of the people consistently overshadows––and, in a way, seems to smooth out––the flaws of this very unfamiliar and very uncomfortable country. Speaking of which, Matin, like I mentioned earlier, quickly became more than just our translator. He was our Bengali teacher, our etiquette instructor (look for Chris’s description of eating with his hands…gross), our cultural liaison, and our friend. He was interested in us and we were interested in him, which made for lots of fascinating and engaging conversations. He, along with all of the lovely villagers we interacted with, further solidified in my mind the beauty of the Bangladeshi people. Their resilience, hospitality, and pride in the face of hardship and poverty is quite inspiring.
OK––this was a long village visit, so I’m going to let the other guys take it away to describe the remainder of our days in the boonies. Banks and Chris are a hard act to follow as far as blog-writing is concerned, but I hope I didn’t bore you too much. Be looking out for my next post!...later. Probably much later.
All the best from Bangladesh,
Trey
From Trey:
Hello, dear blog-readers! Time for my inaugural entry! I know you’ve all been awaiting this day with bated breath. I’ll be regaling you with some of the tales of our adventure to rural Bangladesh.
We started the day at 7:30 a.m. and met Babor, our program coordinator, the driver, and our translator, Matin, who would quickly become a friend as well. We hopped into the micro (a.k.a. van) with our luggage and a whole lot of water and Clif bars in tow and hit the road. Most of the drive was fairly uneventful, with only the usual careening buses and unbelievably reckless drivers to distract us from our reading and resting. However, as we neared the village, something happened that most definitely grabbed our attention.
As we got closer and closer to the village, the roads got narrower and narrower, and bumpier and bumpier. It became increasingly difficult to swerve around the people, cows, and rickshaws while maintaining our uncomfortably rapid speed. Soon, the inevitable (or, at least, what I thought was the inevitable) happened; we nearly swerved completely off the road to avoid hitting something. We weren’t sure whether it was an animal or person or what, but we had either hit something or come very close to it. Chris did the “mom arm”…thanks for that, buddy.
Aaaaanyways, so the driver then comes to a screeching halt and runs back to the scene of the accident. We’re in the middle of the road, cars/rickshaws/carts with donkeys/motorcycles are piling up behind us, they are HONKING AND WILL NOT STOP, and we are getting a little concerned. What we saw next did not make us feel any better. A big crew of Bangladeshis comes running toward our van, several of them pile in––we are very confused at this point––and in the front seat, we see a little girl in the arms of a fairly young boy/man. She is bleeding from the head and the wound seems to be wrapped in rags. I thought we’d hit the poor child! It turns out we didn’t hit her and she actually just ran out in the road and fell trying to avoid the car. Nonetheless, it made for a very interesting start to our village visit…
So, after dropping the poor girl off at the “doctor’s office”, which was nothing more than a little stall at the market, we drove on to what would serve as our home for the next four days. I must admit, I was somewhat concerned at what we saw.
During this particular village visit, we’d be staying in a Grameen branch, rather than a guesthouse or small hotel. The branch was a dingy, white, 2-story concrete structure with the familiar Grameen logo on a small sign out front and bars on the windows. Not exactly what I was expecting. The inside was equally dingy, with little light and a whole lot of bugs. We were taken straight to our rooms upstairs, where I was, again, somewhat shocked by what I found. The beds were very, very hard. Like a plank-of-wood-hard. Like metal-slats-with-a-blanket-on-them-hard. In fact, that’s exactly what the beds were! The bathroom was complete with a rain shower, one naked bulb, a “sink”, and the requisite squatty potty, without any sort of divider between it all. We were most definitely roughing it. (Those of you who know me well know that that’s not typically my style.)
However, I soon came to realize this village visit was not about my personal comfort. Really, this whole trip has helped to show me that my life is not about my personal comfort. It’s about relationships and showing God’s love to people through my day-to-day interactions with them. Even though Bangladesh is frequently HOT, humid, filthy, dusty, loud, exhausting, and confusing, the warmth and friendliness of the people consistently overshadows––and, in a way, seems to smooth out––the flaws of this very unfamiliar and very uncomfortable country. Speaking of which, Matin, like I mentioned earlier, quickly became more than just our translator. He was our Bengali teacher, our etiquette instructor (look for Chris’s description of eating with his hands…gross), our cultural liaison, and our friend. He was interested in us and we were interested in him, which made for lots of fascinating and engaging conversations. He, along with all of the lovely villagers we interacted with, further solidified in my mind the beauty of the Bangladeshi people. Their resilience, hospitality, and pride in the face of hardship and poverty is quite inspiring.
OK––this was a long village visit, so I’m going to let the other guys take it away to describe the remainder of our days in the boonies. Banks and Chris are a hard act to follow as far as blog-writing is concerned, but I hope I didn’t bore you too much. Be looking out for my next post!...later. Probably much later.
All the best from Bangladesh,
Trey
It's a Big Blue Watery Road
5/19/2009
From Chris:
Dear Blog-readers,
It’s been a while since our last update. Our time here in Bangladesh has been busier than I anticipated, but maybe that’s just the nature of our group. Some of us (primarily Banks and I) aren’t really good at sitting still, so we’re always looking for something new. The next adventure.
We have a lot to tell you about the village visit, and other adventures since then, but before I must tell you about the adventure we had on the river in Old Dhaka.
So. It was 5/9/2009, on a sunny day in Dhaka. The first half of the day we really hadn’t done much—slept in after the exhausting day before, ate some “kub moja” food at the G.P., and relaxed (it’s summer, right?). But we had an adventure planned for that afternoon, and right around 3pm, we took two tuk-tuks (which will now be referred to as CNGs) with the Canadians over to the river on Old Dhaka. We had heard from a guide book that the river was an interesting “panorama” of human life, and we wanted to see for ourselves. We came to the place and pulled into what looked like a rickshaw station. They were everywhere. Fruit stands lined the road, with grapes and stranger fruits hanging and showing off their vibrant colors in the sun.
We found a ticket counter and paid a small fee to go onto the dock. People were carrying big bundles of goods on their heads across the wooden bridge from where we were over to the dock, and we followed them, looking out over the sides of the bridge at the ground littered with grass, trash, shanties, and broken boats.
The dock was another one of those sensory-overload places. There was so much movement everywhere. People shuffling past you. Vendors shouting at you to take pictures, their fruit and other foodstuffs on display in large baskets along the main walkway of the dock. And the children. They always went crazy when they saw us. They noticed us quickly and formed a mob around us, following us wherever we went, pushing each other out of the way to be in the center of the pictures we were taking. The captains of the tiny wooden boats were offering us rides on the river, people would approach us and introduce themselves randomly (how are you, what is your name, what is your country?). Chaos.
We felt like we were attracting too much attention (but I mean, six goofy white people traveling in a pack?) so we tried to move around to other ends of the dock to escape the big crowds of people that would congregate around us if we stopped for anything.
Trey informed us that he needed to use the restroom. Dangit Trey, so we searched around the dock for one but there weren’t any. We started asking on the boats. The big ferry boats agreed to let Trey use a restroom, and so Trey and Tommy (for moral support, of course) hopped on.
The rest of us continued exploring the dock, taking pictures, trying to escape the large crowds, and looking out at the big river before us. Ferries, wooden boats, barges, and so many other old, rickety, floating vessels were making their way down the waters that, while dirty, looked beautiful as they rippled and shimmered in the sun.
Too much time had gone by and I didn’t see Trey and Tommy. I started to look for them, all along the dock but I couldn’t find them. Banks and the Canadians were at the other end of the dock, and I told the Canadians that I couldn’t find Trey and Tommy and needed to look for them. A man came out of the crowd and asked me if I was looking for my two tall, white friends. I told him I was and he started motioning toward the other end of the dock frantically, and pulled me along as he started to walk to the other side of the dock. Were they in trouble? “Where are they, where did they go?” I asked the man, but he didn’t say answer, he just pointed and kept walking. Faster and faster. I didn’t see them anywhere. I hopped on little objects on the dock to get a better perspective, but I couldn’t see them. All the boats looked the same. I knew we had passed where we left them, but the man kept going. “Where did they go?” but he didn’t answer. I looked back and the rest of the group looked confused. I tried to motion to them, but the man wouldn’t stop, hustling to the other side of the dock as if something terrible had happened. We cut through the crowd and kept moving down the dock and still, Tommy and Trey were nowhere to be found. “Where are you taking me?” He wouldn’t respond, and wouldn’t stop. I wasn’t sure I trusted him. I told him I had to turn back, shook him off my arm and went back to meet up with the group.
After explaining to them the strange incident with the man, Banks told me that he had received a call from Trey and Tommy. Actually, Trey just walked into my room, and he would like to write about this part himself.
(Trey): I had to go to the bathroom so badly. The boat dock, however, was not exactly the type of place with nice public restrooms. So, I was forced to improvise, and figured those big ferry-looking boats would have a toilet (squatty-style, of course) that I could use. I walked up to one with my boy Tommy and started gesticulating wildly and trying to communicate that I needed to use their facilities. I thought they finally understood me and I marched myself up to the bathroom on the upper deck. I did what I needed to do, came out, and what did I find? The boat had taken off down the river. Dangit. I was only in there for about a minute––give me a break! I yelled at Tommy that he needed to get out of the freaking bathroom and come help me deal with this situation. Our predicament was particularly alarming as many of these big ferries were bound for Chittagong…20 HOURS away from Dhaka. And this boat was a far cry from any type of river cruiser back in the U.S. Not what we were going for. So, Tommy (with his hilarious quasi-Chinese voice) and I forced the boat back to the shore through sheer force of will and just ended up about a kilometer from where we started. Turned out to be no big deal, but before I figured that out, I told Tommy that he sure as heck better conserve the water because we might be headed to Chittagong…
(Chris again) Good job Trey. So after that whole fiasco, we re-grouped at the end of the dock and negotiated with the owner of a tiny wooden boat to have him paddle all six of us around the river and show us around. He was a little man with a sleek black beard, long curls hanging off his chin, and he was very excited to have us all come on his boat. We climbed from the dock to the side of a ferry, and then onto the boat, carefully balancing ourselves for fear of the tiny boat capsizing and sending us all into the Giardia-infested waters.
We paddled to the other side of the river where we crawled out of our tiny wooden boat into a slightly larger, much more stable wooden boat, which made the journey much more enjoyable. We saw the slums built along the side of the river, the idle rickshaws, the lean-to’s, the children playing on the shore, and the people bathing in the dirty water. On the river, other wooden boats would float by, crammed with locals, all manner of goods packed between them. And on the big boats men would hang off the side on hanging platforms—slopping paint on the sides, scrubbing them down, and banging on the hulls with hammers relentlessly, with no avail. The Bengali sailors would peer over the sides of the big rusty tankers and wave at us, screaming at us in their broken English, and taking out their camera phones.
Our boat captain told us he wanted to take a smoke break, and he started paddling toward a little place in the shore nestled between the docked tankers. He pulled the boat onto shore disappeared into the little slum community there, leaving us in the boat without so much as a goodbye. It was awe-inspiring, being right there at the edge of the river slums, witnessing the people living in on and between those massive tankers, in the muck of the shore and the filth of the river.
Our boat captain came back, cigarette in hand, and continued paddling the little boat around the river. The sun was setting and the light was perfect to highlight the patches of mismatched color on the hulls of the big tankers. We turned the boat around and started back towards the dock, soaking in the last bits of the river before paying our kind boat driver and leaving the dock as everything was settling down. We took two CNG’s back to the G.P. and called it a day.
The sights to see here in Dhaka aren’t the old, majestic ruins you can find in other parts of South East Asia. They aren’t the sleek, modern structures that you can find in some of the other mega-cities. They are the chaotic, gritty masses of humanity that you can find in places like the river. That’s where you can hear the heartbeat of Dhaka.
It was my favorite place we’ve been so far, and I look forward to going back to Old Dhaka, and seeing more of the same.
Well my friends, it’s getting late here in Dhaka, and I have an early morning tomorrow at Grameen, so that’s all for now. Stay tuned for more details on the village visit (I’ll post what Trey has written about it so far too). Thanks for reading!
Keeping it fresh in the dirty Desh,
Chris
From Chris:
Dear Blog-readers,
It’s been a while since our last update. Our time here in Bangladesh has been busier than I anticipated, but maybe that’s just the nature of our group. Some of us (primarily Banks and I) aren’t really good at sitting still, so we’re always looking for something new. The next adventure.
We have a lot to tell you about the village visit, and other adventures since then, but before I must tell you about the adventure we had on the river in Old Dhaka.
So. It was 5/9/2009, on a sunny day in Dhaka. The first half of the day we really hadn’t done much—slept in after the exhausting day before, ate some “kub moja” food at the G.P., and relaxed (it’s summer, right?). But we had an adventure planned for that afternoon, and right around 3pm, we took two tuk-tuks (which will now be referred to as CNGs) with the Canadians over to the river on Old Dhaka. We had heard from a guide book that the river was an interesting “panorama” of human life, and we wanted to see for ourselves. We came to the place and pulled into what looked like a rickshaw station. They were everywhere. Fruit stands lined the road, with grapes and stranger fruits hanging and showing off their vibrant colors in the sun.
We found a ticket counter and paid a small fee to go onto the dock. People were carrying big bundles of goods on their heads across the wooden bridge from where we were over to the dock, and we followed them, looking out over the sides of the bridge at the ground littered with grass, trash, shanties, and broken boats.
The dock was another one of those sensory-overload places. There was so much movement everywhere. People shuffling past you. Vendors shouting at you to take pictures, their fruit and other foodstuffs on display in large baskets along the main walkway of the dock. And the children. They always went crazy when they saw us. They noticed us quickly and formed a mob around us, following us wherever we went, pushing each other out of the way to be in the center of the pictures we were taking. The captains of the tiny wooden boats were offering us rides on the river, people would approach us and introduce themselves randomly (how are you, what is your name, what is your country?). Chaos.
We felt like we were attracting too much attention (but I mean, six goofy white people traveling in a pack?) so we tried to move around to other ends of the dock to escape the big crowds of people that would congregate around us if we stopped for anything.
Trey informed us that he needed to use the restroom. Dangit Trey, so we searched around the dock for one but there weren’t any. We started asking on the boats. The big ferry boats agreed to let Trey use a restroom, and so Trey and Tommy (for moral support, of course) hopped on.
The rest of us continued exploring the dock, taking pictures, trying to escape the large crowds, and looking out at the big river before us. Ferries, wooden boats, barges, and so many other old, rickety, floating vessels were making their way down the waters that, while dirty, looked beautiful as they rippled and shimmered in the sun.
Too much time had gone by and I didn’t see Trey and Tommy. I started to look for them, all along the dock but I couldn’t find them. Banks and the Canadians were at the other end of the dock, and I told the Canadians that I couldn’t find Trey and Tommy and needed to look for them. A man came out of the crowd and asked me if I was looking for my two tall, white friends. I told him I was and he started motioning toward the other end of the dock frantically, and pulled me along as he started to walk to the other side of the dock. Were they in trouble? “Where are they, where did they go?” I asked the man, but he didn’t say answer, he just pointed and kept walking. Faster and faster. I didn’t see them anywhere. I hopped on little objects on the dock to get a better perspective, but I couldn’t see them. All the boats looked the same. I knew we had passed where we left them, but the man kept going. “Where did they go?” but he didn’t answer. I looked back and the rest of the group looked confused. I tried to motion to them, but the man wouldn’t stop, hustling to the other side of the dock as if something terrible had happened. We cut through the crowd and kept moving down the dock and still, Tommy and Trey were nowhere to be found. “Where are you taking me?” He wouldn’t respond, and wouldn’t stop. I wasn’t sure I trusted him. I told him I had to turn back, shook him off my arm and went back to meet up with the group.
After explaining to them the strange incident with the man, Banks told me that he had received a call from Trey and Tommy. Actually, Trey just walked into my room, and he would like to write about this part himself.
(Trey): I had to go to the bathroom so badly. The boat dock, however, was not exactly the type of place with nice public restrooms. So, I was forced to improvise, and figured those big ferry-looking boats would have a toilet (squatty-style, of course) that I could use. I walked up to one with my boy Tommy and started gesticulating wildly and trying to communicate that I needed to use their facilities. I thought they finally understood me and I marched myself up to the bathroom on the upper deck. I did what I needed to do, came out, and what did I find? The boat had taken off down the river. Dangit. I was only in there for about a minute––give me a break! I yelled at Tommy that he needed to get out of the freaking bathroom and come help me deal with this situation. Our predicament was particularly alarming as many of these big ferries were bound for Chittagong…20 HOURS away from Dhaka. And this boat was a far cry from any type of river cruiser back in the U.S. Not what we were going for. So, Tommy (with his hilarious quasi-Chinese voice) and I forced the boat back to the shore through sheer force of will and just ended up about a kilometer from where we started. Turned out to be no big deal, but before I figured that out, I told Tommy that he sure as heck better conserve the water because we might be headed to Chittagong…
(Chris again) Good job Trey. So after that whole fiasco, we re-grouped at the end of the dock and negotiated with the owner of a tiny wooden boat to have him paddle all six of us around the river and show us around. He was a little man with a sleek black beard, long curls hanging off his chin, and he was very excited to have us all come on his boat. We climbed from the dock to the side of a ferry, and then onto the boat, carefully balancing ourselves for fear of the tiny boat capsizing and sending us all into the Giardia-infested waters.
We paddled to the other side of the river where we crawled out of our tiny wooden boat into a slightly larger, much more stable wooden boat, which made the journey much more enjoyable. We saw the slums built along the side of the river, the idle rickshaws, the lean-to’s, the children playing on the shore, and the people bathing in the dirty water. On the river, other wooden boats would float by, crammed with locals, all manner of goods packed between them. And on the big boats men would hang off the side on hanging platforms—slopping paint on the sides, scrubbing them down, and banging on the hulls with hammers relentlessly, with no avail. The Bengali sailors would peer over the sides of the big rusty tankers and wave at us, screaming at us in their broken English, and taking out their camera phones.
Our boat captain told us he wanted to take a smoke break, and he started paddling toward a little place in the shore nestled between the docked tankers. He pulled the boat onto shore disappeared into the little slum community there, leaving us in the boat without so much as a goodbye. It was awe-inspiring, being right there at the edge of the river slums, witnessing the people living in on and between those massive tankers, in the muck of the shore and the filth of the river.
Our boat captain came back, cigarette in hand, and continued paddling the little boat around the river. The sun was setting and the light was perfect to highlight the patches of mismatched color on the hulls of the big tankers. We turned the boat around and started back towards the dock, soaking in the last bits of the river before paying our kind boat driver and leaving the dock as everything was settling down. We took two CNG’s back to the G.P. and called it a day.
The sights to see here in Dhaka aren’t the old, majestic ruins you can find in other parts of South East Asia. They aren’t the sleek, modern structures that you can find in some of the other mega-cities. They are the chaotic, gritty masses of humanity that you can find in places like the river. That’s where you can hear the heartbeat of Dhaka.
It was my favorite place we’ve been so far, and I look forward to going back to Old Dhaka, and seeing more of the same.
Well my friends, it’s getting late here in Dhaka, and I have an early morning tomorrow at Grameen, so that’s all for now. Stay tuned for more details on the village visit (I’ll post what Trey has written about it so far too). Thanks for reading!
Keeping it fresh in the dirty Desh,
Chris
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Adventure around Every Corner
5/10/2009
From Chris:
Dear Blog-readers,
I typed this post up over a period of two days, fell asleep last night before fnishing it all, and am now leaving in 30 minutes for our 4-day village visit with Grameen, so I must be brief with thus introduction. Life here is exiting, exotic, and pretty unpredictable. You never know what you might find here, in the palces where many people might not care to look. I think if you're really going to see Bangladesh, you have to see it in the details. So, for our friends and families back home, here are some details that might spark your imagination.
Three days ago, (5/7), we had a tasty breakfast at the Grand Prince before rickshawing over to Grameen. Banks won, again. I resent him for it.
BANGLAKART standings:
Banks—1st place with 12 pts.
Tommy—2nd place with 8 pts.
Trey—3rd place with 7 pts.
Chris (still) last place with 6 pts. Dangit.
Don’t ask me about my Banglakart performance, I don’t want to talk about it. I keep thinking that the driver’s teeth will be a good indicator of his pedaling-ability, instead of his calves, or what color sandals/ Lungi (the man skirts) combo he is wearing. Rookie mistake.
Once at Grameen, we met with Babor to nail down some logistics for our 4-day village visit. We covered it all pretty quickly, so after our discussion we had some down time at the bank. We noticed that there were several other people on the 8th (the intern floor) floor who didn’t look like they were from Bangladesh, and when we introduced ourselves to them, we found out they were fellow interns. Yippee! We met the French group (Adele, Astrid, Abel, Alex, and Marine), Simon the red-head German, Alessandro (whose mother is from Colombia,from the same city as my mom (saludos mama)), Benjamin from Chile, Tomas (the other goofy French guy), Harrison and Shannon from Pepperdine (the grad. Students), Fariha, the strange German girls, and Sarah and Simon (from Canada). We also got to meet Matt (the American who works for Pfizer), and Samir (a Bengali employee of Grameen who is speaks and acts like a Westerner). More on them later.
We headed back to Grand Prince for "lunssz" (as Babor says), but we decided to walk rather than take a rickshaw. On the way back to the hotel, we witnessed something incredible. A street snake-charmer was putting on a show right outside of the bank as we were walking by. We whipped out our cameras, camcorders, and 50TK (about 70 cents) as we watched him and his assistant pull 4 wooden boxes, about the side of two Lunchables stacked on top of each other, and set them on the ground. He slid the top of the first box open and reached in quickly, grabbing the king cobra inside and tossing it onto the ground. It hissed and turned to face him, bobbing it’s head up and down as the snake charmer grabbed his flute and started to play. His snake charmer apprentice opened up the next two boxes, which had a cobra in one, and a strange yellow snake in the other. The three snakes slithered in the center of the crowd that had gathered around the sidewalk to watch the snake charmer perform. He put down his flute and started taunting the snakes, keeping his hand steady as the snakes struck him over and over on his hand and wrist (their fangs had been removed, of course). He picked one of the cobras up while his apprentice stuffed the other two snakes into their respective boxes, and took out the final box that hadn’t been opened yet. He slid the lid off and a mongoose squirmed out of the box, growling at the snake and tugging against it’s leash as it barred it’s tiny teeth. The snake charmer set the cobra down, and all the sudden the snake serenade had become a battle royale between the cobra and the mongoose. They circled each other, hissing and growling, lunging at each other until the mongoose landed a solid bite on the snake’s neck (or whatever you would call the upper part of its body. The fight was over and the snake charmer packed away all his animals, collected his tips, and we were on our way. It was certainly one of the more entertaining life experiences we’ve had in Dhaka so far.
After lunch, we went back to Grameen where we got to spend some time with our fellow interns, until I got assigned to data entry (data entry is the worst. I hate it). We got to talk to Samir some more, and realized that he is a very interesting fellow. He was born in Bangladesh, but he grew up all over the world, speaks perfect English, has a western mentality, is very intelligent, young, social, and had saved us many times from being lost in Dhaka with his Bengali-speaking abilities.
The language barrier here is so intense. Most of the places that I’ve traveled to, the people either speak English or Spanish or both, which is mighty convenient. But in Dhaka, English speakers are rare, especially with the older, poorer Bengalis (who are usually the ones driving the taxis and the rickshaws). Gestures are really the only form of communication (at least for me, but I gesture a lot anyway. I should take up miming). It’s very strange not being able to communicate with most of the Bengalis that we find on the street, and aside from the fact that it makes moving around Dhaka and adventure (and a logistical nightmare), it really limits how much you can know about the people you meet. I’m not used to it at all.
We stayed at Grameen for a while, and afterwards we were invited to a farewell party for one of the interns who was leaving the next day. It was an interesting experience getting to the place by rickshaw, but we got to see a lot of Dhaka that was new to us. The party was on the patio of this apartment building, and all of the interns showed up. Things started out slowly at first, but we started talking with the other interns and it wasn’t long before we were laughing with them, sharing stories about our home countries, learning about each other’s lives, and taking one small step for US foreign relations (one giant leap for us facebook friend count. Yeah!) It was so much fun. We especially took a liking to Samir and to the group of le French interns. The French interns were very good-natured, funny, and sassy to boot. The night went on and we talked, laughed, ate a little, awkward-danced to strange selections of music, and squashed cockroaches.
After the party, we bid farewell to Simon, the intern who was leaving, and Samir took our mighty four to Golshan, the ritzier (but it’s still Dhaka, mind you) ex-pat area of Dhaka. The tuk-tuk ride there was about the most intense one we’ve had, complete with a rickshaw accident that sent the poor passenger tumbling out into traffic (thankfully, she managed to scramble back into the rickshaw before any more cars came, and she was fine). Samir took us to a Mexican restaurant (bizarre, I know) there, where we ate our tasty Mexican food (that isn’t readily available in Nashville, but certainly is in Dhaka. Who would have thought) and talked to Samir about his perspective on Grameen. It was very interesting. We toured the very fancy"Westin" hotel after dinner, and then hopped back in a tuk-tuk to the hotel (it was getting pretty late.)
And that was the end of that day. Although we didn’t do more than we usually do in a day, it seemed like a very long day because we met and befriended so many new people. It was all very exciting.
And then two days ago, (5/8), it was the first day of the weekend, and we were ready to go exploring, but little did we know tha our adventure was going to be 8 hours of sensory overload. It started out simple, with the usual routine of breakfast and lunch at the Grand Prince (steamed rice, chicken fried rice, plain knaan, buttered knaan, chicken butter masala, and 4 large bottles of water, and a Pepsi for Tommy, but only if it’s in a glass bottle), but after lunch we got two tuk-tuks (the three-wheeled motorized super-scooters, to clarify) and headed south from Mirpur, the area of Dhaka where we’re staying/ where the bank is located. We drove south to New Market for the day, an area of Dhaka that supposebly had a gargantuan bazaar. Southern Dhaka is the old Dhaka, where many of city’s historical sites are located. But, although it’s more touristy than Mirpur, Old Dhaka is just as gritty as anything we had seen so far, sometimes even more so.
We didn’t know what to expect from New Market. We knew it was worth seeing, we knew they sold knock-offs cheap there, and we had heard rumors of monkeys being sold for 2000 Taka (about 30 dollars). Unfortunately, we did not see any monkeys-for-sale, and we didn’t buy any cheap knock-offs, but New Market was so much more than just a market. It was it’s own organism; bustling with life.
The taxi pulled off to the side of the road and the driver started pointing to a long line of tarps set up on a long sidewalk to the left. “New market, new market” he said and pointed at the tarps. We got out of the car and walked along the edge of the market. The stands were packed so close together that they made a wall between the inside of the market and the street. We walked until we found an opening, and when we stepped in, the feeling was like that of a child crawling through a blanket-fort. There were all different colored tarps hung above the stands for shade. Each one was tied to another, and with the sun shining on them, they lit up like bright squares of red, orange, white, brown, blue, green and many more, making the sky seem like a patchwork quilt of vibrant color. The merchants would yell at us as we walked through, asking us to buy something of theirs, or take a picture of them. There was color everywhere—in the tarps, in the garments the merchants were selling, and in the little trinkets hung from racks (or put behind glass to give the appearance of being genuine).
We came out of the tunnel of tarps and stepped out onto the main street of New Market. It was so interesting; everywhere you looked, there was something worth noticing. The street was full of people who were very interested in our group. Some were after money, holding their hands out and tapping us on our arms relentlessly, bringing their hands from their stomach to their lips and making a pouty face. The dilemma of whether or not to hand out money on the streets has always been a tough. We want to be like Jesus, because he always had time for the poor, and he always had compassion for them, but we also don’t want to encourage a dependency on hand-outs. Instead of handing out cash, we bought some crackers beforehand so that we could hand out in place of cash-money. During our walk down the street, we handed our a fair amount of crackers. Some of the people on the street just wanted to meet us, and we were approached many times by random people who would always ask us our name, and “what is your country?” And then some, it seemed, just wanted attention. Especially the kids. They would go crazy when the cameras came out, cheering, dancing, and jumping up and down. They would all ask for pictures, and when you were lining up the shot, they would push each other out of the way to make sure they were the ones in the middle.
We were attracting too much attention in the street. If we stopped for more than a minute, people would start gathering around us, looking at us like we were animals in a zoo. They would take out their camera phones and take pictures of us as we walked by. It was so strange. We walked back down the way we came, and then further into the market where the tunnel of tarps turned into rows of shops, then open spaces, strip malls, bridges, restaurants, stands, traffic, kiosks, and whatever else was in those 2-3 blocks that made up New Market. It was all connected, all together—you could never tell where one part started and the other stopped.
It was so hot in that market, we were sweating buckets and our heads were throbbing, maybe because we felt dehydrated, maybe because of the adrenaline of always watching your back, and maybe because of the intensity of some of the things we saw there. We saw blind beggars with no eyes, their hands stretched out as a thousand people passed them on the stairs. We saw maimed people, dragging themselves around, and deformed people being put on display to encourage the shopper’s charity. There was so much humanity, and so much of it just seemed broken. It was really a sobering experience. But that's why we're here for, the destitute. I hope that as this trip goes on, we take advantage of thos opportunities to love those people, even if its uncomfortable. It's so easy to overlook them, and think that the next person might pick up the slack, but that's not who we've been called to be. Pray that we're able to live that out, and not just write about it in a blog.
We were so hot, so sweaty, and so overwhelmed after an hour in the market. We got two tuk-tuks (which was a long and difficult process that involved Samir translating for us over the phone, again) and headed over to our next stop in Old Dhaka, the pink palace. The palace was large and, well, pink. We met four Bengali college students there and befriended them at the palace, touring the inside with them, and then afterwards, we went and sat in the lawn in front of the palace to talk for a while. Again, a large crowd of people began to form around us while we were sitting, and before we knew it, there were 30 Bengalis surrounding us, just having a field day with their little camera phones. Our Bengali friends seemed very excited to be making American friends, and after sitting for a while and exploring the palace, they offered to rickshaw to the nearest taxi-hub with us and help us get a taxi back to Mirpur. The rickshaw ride was so fascinating, there were so many interesting people to see, but it was also very tense, because we got separated multiple times (due to faulty rickshaw drivers). We got to the taxi-hub, but saw that right there was an old Fort that we were also told to go visit. So, we decided to explore that as well, and we went with our Bengali friends and explored the fort. It was certainly a worthwhile stop.
After all was said and done, our Bengali friends helped us get a taxi back to the hotel. We exchanged emails and then were on our way, riding back through the streets of Dhaka until arriving at the G.P., were we spent the rest of the day decompressing. Nighttime pool talk with the Frenchies was fun, and then we spent the rest of the night talking about the day, the trip, and our thoughts/ feelings thus far, what we wanted out of the trip, etc. This is something that I’d certainly like to share, but at the moment, we’re about to leave for our trip. We’re so excited! I’m sure we’ll have plenty of stories when we get back, as well as details on our adventure yesterday. But until then, dear readers, say a prayer for us, and enjoy life in whatever corner of the world you might find yourself.
There's so much adventure here, around every corner. I love Bangladesh.
Keeping it fresh in the dirty Desh,
Chris
From Chris:
Dear Blog-readers,
I typed this post up over a period of two days, fell asleep last night before fnishing it all, and am now leaving in 30 minutes for our 4-day village visit with Grameen, so I must be brief with thus introduction. Life here is exiting, exotic, and pretty unpredictable. You never know what you might find here, in the palces where many people might not care to look. I think if you're really going to see Bangladesh, you have to see it in the details. So, for our friends and families back home, here are some details that might spark your imagination.
Three days ago, (5/7), we had a tasty breakfast at the Grand Prince before rickshawing over to Grameen. Banks won, again. I resent him for it.
BANGLAKART standings:
Banks—1st place with 12 pts.
Tommy—2nd place with 8 pts.
Trey—3rd place with 7 pts.
Chris (still) last place with 6 pts. Dangit.
Don’t ask me about my Banglakart performance, I don’t want to talk about it. I keep thinking that the driver’s teeth will be a good indicator of his pedaling-ability, instead of his calves, or what color sandals/ Lungi (the man skirts) combo he is wearing. Rookie mistake.
Once at Grameen, we met with Babor to nail down some logistics for our 4-day village visit. We covered it all pretty quickly, so after our discussion we had some down time at the bank. We noticed that there were several other people on the 8th (the intern floor) floor who didn’t look like they were from Bangladesh, and when we introduced ourselves to them, we found out they were fellow interns. Yippee! We met the French group (Adele, Astrid, Abel, Alex, and Marine), Simon the red-head German, Alessandro (whose mother is from Colombia,from the same city as my mom (saludos mama)), Benjamin from Chile, Tomas (the other goofy French guy), Harrison and Shannon from Pepperdine (the grad. Students), Fariha, the strange German girls, and Sarah and Simon (from Canada). We also got to meet Matt (the American who works for Pfizer), and Samir (a Bengali employee of Grameen who is speaks and acts like a Westerner). More on them later.
We headed back to Grand Prince for "lunssz" (as Babor says), but we decided to walk rather than take a rickshaw. On the way back to the hotel, we witnessed something incredible. A street snake-charmer was putting on a show right outside of the bank as we were walking by. We whipped out our cameras, camcorders, and 50TK (about 70 cents) as we watched him and his assistant pull 4 wooden boxes, about the side of two Lunchables stacked on top of each other, and set them on the ground. He slid the top of the first box open and reached in quickly, grabbing the king cobra inside and tossing it onto the ground. It hissed and turned to face him, bobbing it’s head up and down as the snake charmer grabbed his flute and started to play. His snake charmer apprentice opened up the next two boxes, which had a cobra in one, and a strange yellow snake in the other. The three snakes slithered in the center of the crowd that had gathered around the sidewalk to watch the snake charmer perform. He put down his flute and started taunting the snakes, keeping his hand steady as the snakes struck him over and over on his hand and wrist (their fangs had been removed, of course). He picked one of the cobras up while his apprentice stuffed the other two snakes into their respective boxes, and took out the final box that hadn’t been opened yet. He slid the lid off and a mongoose squirmed out of the box, growling at the snake and tugging against it’s leash as it barred it’s tiny teeth. The snake charmer set the cobra down, and all the sudden the snake serenade had become a battle royale between the cobra and the mongoose. They circled each other, hissing and growling, lunging at each other until the mongoose landed a solid bite on the snake’s neck (or whatever you would call the upper part of its body. The fight was over and the snake charmer packed away all his animals, collected his tips, and we were on our way. It was certainly one of the more entertaining life experiences we’ve had in Dhaka so far.
After lunch, we went back to Grameen where we got to spend some time with our fellow interns, until I got assigned to data entry (data entry is the worst. I hate it). We got to talk to Samir some more, and realized that he is a very interesting fellow. He was born in Bangladesh, but he grew up all over the world, speaks perfect English, has a western mentality, is very intelligent, young, social, and had saved us many times from being lost in Dhaka with his Bengali-speaking abilities.
The language barrier here is so intense. Most of the places that I’ve traveled to, the people either speak English or Spanish or both, which is mighty convenient. But in Dhaka, English speakers are rare, especially with the older, poorer Bengalis (who are usually the ones driving the taxis and the rickshaws). Gestures are really the only form of communication (at least for me, but I gesture a lot anyway. I should take up miming). It’s very strange not being able to communicate with most of the Bengalis that we find on the street, and aside from the fact that it makes moving around Dhaka and adventure (and a logistical nightmare), it really limits how much you can know about the people you meet. I’m not used to it at all.
We stayed at Grameen for a while, and afterwards we were invited to a farewell party for one of the interns who was leaving the next day. It was an interesting experience getting to the place by rickshaw, but we got to see a lot of Dhaka that was new to us. The party was on the patio of this apartment building, and all of the interns showed up. Things started out slowly at first, but we started talking with the other interns and it wasn’t long before we were laughing with them, sharing stories about our home countries, learning about each other’s lives, and taking one small step for US foreign relations (one giant leap for us facebook friend count. Yeah!) It was so much fun. We especially took a liking to Samir and to the group of le French interns. The French interns were very good-natured, funny, and sassy to boot. The night went on and we talked, laughed, ate a little, awkward-danced to strange selections of music, and squashed cockroaches.
After the party, we bid farewell to Simon, the intern who was leaving, and Samir took our mighty four to Golshan, the ritzier (but it’s still Dhaka, mind you) ex-pat area of Dhaka. The tuk-tuk ride there was about the most intense one we’ve had, complete with a rickshaw accident that sent the poor passenger tumbling out into traffic (thankfully, she managed to scramble back into the rickshaw before any more cars came, and she was fine). Samir took us to a Mexican restaurant (bizarre, I know) there, where we ate our tasty Mexican food (that isn’t readily available in Nashville, but certainly is in Dhaka. Who would have thought) and talked to Samir about his perspective on Grameen. It was very interesting. We toured the very fancy"Westin" hotel after dinner, and then hopped back in a tuk-tuk to the hotel (it was getting pretty late.)
And that was the end of that day. Although we didn’t do more than we usually do in a day, it seemed like a very long day because we met and befriended so many new people. It was all very exciting.
And then two days ago, (5/8), it was the first day of the weekend, and we were ready to go exploring, but little did we know tha our adventure was going to be 8 hours of sensory overload. It started out simple, with the usual routine of breakfast and lunch at the Grand Prince (steamed rice, chicken fried rice, plain knaan, buttered knaan, chicken butter masala, and 4 large bottles of water, and a Pepsi for Tommy, but only if it’s in a glass bottle), but after lunch we got two tuk-tuks (the three-wheeled motorized super-scooters, to clarify) and headed south from Mirpur, the area of Dhaka where we’re staying/ where the bank is located. We drove south to New Market for the day, an area of Dhaka that supposebly had a gargantuan bazaar. Southern Dhaka is the old Dhaka, where many of city’s historical sites are located. But, although it’s more touristy than Mirpur, Old Dhaka is just as gritty as anything we had seen so far, sometimes even more so.
We didn’t know what to expect from New Market. We knew it was worth seeing, we knew they sold knock-offs cheap there, and we had heard rumors of monkeys being sold for 2000 Taka (about 30 dollars). Unfortunately, we did not see any monkeys-for-sale, and we didn’t buy any cheap knock-offs, but New Market was so much more than just a market. It was it’s own organism; bustling with life.
The taxi pulled off to the side of the road and the driver started pointing to a long line of tarps set up on a long sidewalk to the left. “New market, new market” he said and pointed at the tarps. We got out of the car and walked along the edge of the market. The stands were packed so close together that they made a wall between the inside of the market and the street. We walked until we found an opening, and when we stepped in, the feeling was like that of a child crawling through a blanket-fort. There were all different colored tarps hung above the stands for shade. Each one was tied to another, and with the sun shining on them, they lit up like bright squares of red, orange, white, brown, blue, green and many more, making the sky seem like a patchwork quilt of vibrant color. The merchants would yell at us as we walked through, asking us to buy something of theirs, or take a picture of them. There was color everywhere—in the tarps, in the garments the merchants were selling, and in the little trinkets hung from racks (or put behind glass to give the appearance of being genuine).
We came out of the tunnel of tarps and stepped out onto the main street of New Market. It was so interesting; everywhere you looked, there was something worth noticing. The street was full of people who were very interested in our group. Some were after money, holding their hands out and tapping us on our arms relentlessly, bringing their hands from their stomach to their lips and making a pouty face. The dilemma of whether or not to hand out money on the streets has always been a tough. We want to be like Jesus, because he always had time for the poor, and he always had compassion for them, but we also don’t want to encourage a dependency on hand-outs. Instead of handing out cash, we bought some crackers beforehand so that we could hand out in place of cash-money. During our walk down the street, we handed our a fair amount of crackers. Some of the people on the street just wanted to meet us, and we were approached many times by random people who would always ask us our name, and “what is your country?” And then some, it seemed, just wanted attention. Especially the kids. They would go crazy when the cameras came out, cheering, dancing, and jumping up and down. They would all ask for pictures, and when you were lining up the shot, they would push each other out of the way to make sure they were the ones in the middle.
We were attracting too much attention in the street. If we stopped for more than a minute, people would start gathering around us, looking at us like we were animals in a zoo. They would take out their camera phones and take pictures of us as we walked by. It was so strange. We walked back down the way we came, and then further into the market where the tunnel of tarps turned into rows of shops, then open spaces, strip malls, bridges, restaurants, stands, traffic, kiosks, and whatever else was in those 2-3 blocks that made up New Market. It was all connected, all together—you could never tell where one part started and the other stopped.
It was so hot in that market, we were sweating buckets and our heads were throbbing, maybe because we felt dehydrated, maybe because of the adrenaline of always watching your back, and maybe because of the intensity of some of the things we saw there. We saw blind beggars with no eyes, their hands stretched out as a thousand people passed them on the stairs. We saw maimed people, dragging themselves around, and deformed people being put on display to encourage the shopper’s charity. There was so much humanity, and so much of it just seemed broken. It was really a sobering experience. But that's why we're here for, the destitute. I hope that as this trip goes on, we take advantage of thos opportunities to love those people, even if its uncomfortable. It's so easy to overlook them, and think that the next person might pick up the slack, but that's not who we've been called to be. Pray that we're able to live that out, and not just write about it in a blog.
We were so hot, so sweaty, and so overwhelmed after an hour in the market. We got two tuk-tuks (which was a long and difficult process that involved Samir translating for us over the phone, again) and headed over to our next stop in Old Dhaka, the pink palace. The palace was large and, well, pink. We met four Bengali college students there and befriended them at the palace, touring the inside with them, and then afterwards, we went and sat in the lawn in front of the palace to talk for a while. Again, a large crowd of people began to form around us while we were sitting, and before we knew it, there were 30 Bengalis surrounding us, just having a field day with their little camera phones. Our Bengali friends seemed very excited to be making American friends, and after sitting for a while and exploring the palace, they offered to rickshaw to the nearest taxi-hub with us and help us get a taxi back to Mirpur. The rickshaw ride was so fascinating, there were so many interesting people to see, but it was also very tense, because we got separated multiple times (due to faulty rickshaw drivers). We got to the taxi-hub, but saw that right there was an old Fort that we were also told to go visit. So, we decided to explore that as well, and we went with our Bengali friends and explored the fort. It was certainly a worthwhile stop.
After all was said and done, our Bengali friends helped us get a taxi back to the hotel. We exchanged emails and then were on our way, riding back through the streets of Dhaka until arriving at the G.P., were we spent the rest of the day decompressing. Nighttime pool talk with the Frenchies was fun, and then we spent the rest of the night talking about the day, the trip, and our thoughts/ feelings thus far, what we wanted out of the trip, etc. This is something that I’d certainly like to share, but at the moment, we’re about to leave for our trip. We’re so excited! I’m sure we’ll have plenty of stories when we get back, as well as details on our adventure yesterday. But until then, dear readers, say a prayer for us, and enjoy life in whatever corner of the world you might find yourself.
There's so much adventure here, around every corner. I love Bangladesh.
Keeping it fresh in the dirty Desh,
Chris
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Village Trek
Today started earlier than yesterday. We woke up at 6am to venture out to a village 60 kilometers outside of Dhaka where we would experience Grameen Bank at the village level. The weather was cool and dry at that time in the morning, a short-lived respite from the 100 degree heat that Dhaka marinates in during the rest of the day. We piled into a small van, a “micro”, and began navigating our way out of Dhaka, staggering through traffic with halting progress, speeding forward to exploit openings between rickshaws and large buses and braking hart to avoid hitting pedestrians who boldly crossed multiple lanes of honking traffic with surprising nonchalance.
Honking seems to be a national pastime here in Bangladesh. Many drivers will engage in inconsequential and arbitrary honking just to announce their presence to the world or to contribute their small part to the symphony of Dhaka traffic. Sometimes though, the honking is necessary. For example, our driver, who apparently had either more temerity or less common sense than a normal person, had decided to overtake a car in our lane by jutting out into oncoming traffic around a blind curve. Our time in on-coming traffic was short-lived as a large bus, partially hidden by the curve of the road, blared a menacing horn only a few hundred meters in front of us. The driver reluctantly capitulated, slowing down to merge behind the slower vehicle. The moral of this story is that, although annoying, honking can save lives. Let this be a lesson to all you kids out there.
At any rate, the road snaked out of Dhaka and into the country side. First, tall smokestacks littered the landscape, brick kilns, emitting dark clouds of smoke into the hazy, polluted sky. Later, the scenery improved as it resembled large green quilts that blanketed the ground. They were rice patties, all different shades of green, dividing the landscape into neat rectangles. Women in red and yellow saris scattered the patties, hunched over in knee-deep water, working the land.
Our micro finally came to a stop along a small side road and we followed Babor, our faithful Grameen Coordinator, into the woods. We have spent the last two days with Babor, coming to realize that he slurs his broken English with such frustrating regularity that we ask him to say everything twice. As tedious and exasperating as this is for him, he seems to like us. He even told me that I have a “fresh heart”. I think this is a compliment.
We followed him into the woods along a small dirt path with rice paddies on each side. A primary school materialized beyond a series of palm trees and the sounds of kids arrested our attention. Within minutes, young boys poured out the doors of the school, running after us with shrieks of excitement that only third-world kids seem to have. The girls, too shy to run after us, giggled from the doorframes of the school. Chris Cole and I soon formed a thick tail of children, following us down the narrow path in single file, peering curiously at us and laughing at their good fortune to see “Bdeshi” (“foreigners” in Bengali). As we moved further and further into the woods, we passed mud and sheet-metal huts where women stared at us as they carried bowls and conducted household chores. Little children ran around their moms until the sight of us paralyzed them, forcing them to stand still, the morning sun revealing their creamy brown skin and the entirety of their nakedness. Apparently, village children under five have been given the shameless liberty to live their lives entirely naked.
We finally arrived at the Grameen Bank “center meeting”. The meeting was composed of 26 women huddled along the perimeter of a dark, unlit room. A “center meeting” is the weekly meeting where these Grameen women make their weekly loan payments on their year-long loans they have taken out to pursue their small business goals. A man from Grameen Bank conducted the meeting and collected these small sums of money, recording them in thick-paged ledgers. The women weren’t too happy to see us. They looked more surprised and shy than anything else. At the beginning of the meeting they reluctantly carried out their business, avoiding eye contact. Later, we were able to ask questions to them about their business and a few more articulate women stood up. They explained to us what they were using their loans for (cultivating rice, owning a small electronics shop, running a medicine shop, making lunches to sell to factory workers, etc.) and talked about how their lives have changed. One woman was so garrulous that Trey deemed her the “sassy one”.
More than the small businesses or the sizes of the loans, these women were regaining the dignity and status that all humans deserve. The culture and tradition of this part of the world have incarcerated these women in a rigid system that regards them as a liability to society. I was curious about the implications of culture and its relation to the work that Grameen is doing. Critics of Grameen say that by empowering women in Bangladesh, the male-dominant Muslim culture is being compromised and these women are receiving inappropriate empowerment. I was interested to better understand this confluence of culture, religion and empowerment through microfinance. Admittedly, I know very little about Islam. I asked some Grameen Bank personnel to help unpack this confusing web of economics, society and religion. Arguably biased, they said that it is not Islam that has relegated women to second-class status but simply generation-to-generation tradition that holds no weight in the Koran or Muslim teaching. The endemic marginalization of women throughout the Muslim world is simply, according to these Muslim Grameen Bank employees, a product of unfounded Muslim traditions that have been passed on and on. Why is this degrading tradition continued with such systematic execution? Illiteracy. In a country and a region where education holds little weight and a large percentage of the population is illiterate, adherence to the foundational Islamic teaching is at a minimum. It is far easier to employ the traditions that have been passed from illiterate generation to illiterate generation than to truly understand that women deserve equal place in society as men. All this is to say that Grameen is not undermining religious traditions, but simply rectifying a system of illiteracy and discrimination that has inculcated a region and a people for centuries.
I look forward to wrestling with these and other issues as we continue on this trip. On Sunday we embark on a four day village visit. It should continue to keep this blog full of rich and awkward experiences.
Banks
Honking seems to be a national pastime here in Bangladesh. Many drivers will engage in inconsequential and arbitrary honking just to announce their presence to the world or to contribute their small part to the symphony of Dhaka traffic. Sometimes though, the honking is necessary. For example, our driver, who apparently had either more temerity or less common sense than a normal person, had decided to overtake a car in our lane by jutting out into oncoming traffic around a blind curve. Our time in on-coming traffic was short-lived as a large bus, partially hidden by the curve of the road, blared a menacing horn only a few hundred meters in front of us. The driver reluctantly capitulated, slowing down to merge behind the slower vehicle. The moral of this story is that, although annoying, honking can save lives. Let this be a lesson to all you kids out there.
At any rate, the road snaked out of Dhaka and into the country side. First, tall smokestacks littered the landscape, brick kilns, emitting dark clouds of smoke into the hazy, polluted sky. Later, the scenery improved as it resembled large green quilts that blanketed the ground. They were rice patties, all different shades of green, dividing the landscape into neat rectangles. Women in red and yellow saris scattered the patties, hunched over in knee-deep water, working the land.
Our micro finally came to a stop along a small side road and we followed Babor, our faithful Grameen Coordinator, into the woods. We have spent the last two days with Babor, coming to realize that he slurs his broken English with such frustrating regularity that we ask him to say everything twice. As tedious and exasperating as this is for him, he seems to like us. He even told me that I have a “fresh heart”. I think this is a compliment.
We followed him into the woods along a small dirt path with rice paddies on each side. A primary school materialized beyond a series of palm trees and the sounds of kids arrested our attention. Within minutes, young boys poured out the doors of the school, running after us with shrieks of excitement that only third-world kids seem to have. The girls, too shy to run after us, giggled from the doorframes of the school. Chris Cole and I soon formed a thick tail of children, following us down the narrow path in single file, peering curiously at us and laughing at their good fortune to see “Bdeshi” (“foreigners” in Bengali). As we moved further and further into the woods, we passed mud and sheet-metal huts where women stared at us as they carried bowls and conducted household chores. Little children ran around their moms until the sight of us paralyzed them, forcing them to stand still, the morning sun revealing their creamy brown skin and the entirety of their nakedness. Apparently, village children under five have been given the shameless liberty to live their lives entirely naked.
We finally arrived at the Grameen Bank “center meeting”. The meeting was composed of 26 women huddled along the perimeter of a dark, unlit room. A “center meeting” is the weekly meeting where these Grameen women make their weekly loan payments on their year-long loans they have taken out to pursue their small business goals. A man from Grameen Bank conducted the meeting and collected these small sums of money, recording them in thick-paged ledgers. The women weren’t too happy to see us. They looked more surprised and shy than anything else. At the beginning of the meeting they reluctantly carried out their business, avoiding eye contact. Later, we were able to ask questions to them about their business and a few more articulate women stood up. They explained to us what they were using their loans for (cultivating rice, owning a small electronics shop, running a medicine shop, making lunches to sell to factory workers, etc.) and talked about how their lives have changed. One woman was so garrulous that Trey deemed her the “sassy one”.
More than the small businesses or the sizes of the loans, these women were regaining the dignity and status that all humans deserve. The culture and tradition of this part of the world have incarcerated these women in a rigid system that regards them as a liability to society. I was curious about the implications of culture and its relation to the work that Grameen is doing. Critics of Grameen say that by empowering women in Bangladesh, the male-dominant Muslim culture is being compromised and these women are receiving inappropriate empowerment. I was interested to better understand this confluence of culture, religion and empowerment through microfinance. Admittedly, I know very little about Islam. I asked some Grameen Bank personnel to help unpack this confusing web of economics, society and religion. Arguably biased, they said that it is not Islam that has relegated women to second-class status but simply generation-to-generation tradition that holds no weight in the Koran or Muslim teaching. The endemic marginalization of women throughout the Muslim world is simply, according to these Muslim Grameen Bank employees, a product of unfounded Muslim traditions that have been passed on and on. Why is this degrading tradition continued with such systematic execution? Illiteracy. In a country and a region where education holds little weight and a large percentage of the population is illiterate, adherence to the foundational Islamic teaching is at a minimum. It is far easier to employ the traditions that have been passed from illiterate generation to illiterate generation than to truly understand that women deserve equal place in society as men. All this is to say that Grameen is not undermining religious traditions, but simply rectifying a system of illiteracy and discrimination that has inculcated a region and a people for centuries.
I look forward to wrestling with these and other issues as we continue on this trip. On Sunday we embark on a four day village visit. It should continue to keep this blog full of rich and awkward experiences.
Banks
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Beauty in the Blemish
From: Chris
(written night of 5/5, published at 6:30 P.M. 5/6)
Dear Blog-readers,
Good morning/ evening/ I don’t even know what time zone you’re in anymore. We’ve been in Dhaka for two days now, but it feels like it’s been a week. I’m typing up this post from the hotel lobby, and I can hear the sounds of traffic from outside. I can look through the window and see the crowded streets of Dhaka, the billboards written in Arabic script, and the swarm of rickshaws. It’s so surreal—this is our reality now. I’ve been charged with the task of describing our (Trey, Tommy, Banks, and I’s) initial observations about Dhaka for our second blog post. It’s quite a daunting task, because Dhaka is so unfamiliar from everything I’ve ever known. I’ll try to sum it up in a sentence, then go from there.
Dhaka is: a sweaty, chaotic, third-world metropolis, blemished by poverty and teeming with life. It’s fascinating. I love it here, but in a strange, “I can’t believe this is really happening” sort of way.
It’s interesting that Dubai was the city we visited immediately before Dhaka, because the two are polar opposites. Dubai is the ideal western city, set in an exotic environment, and infused with diversity. Dhaka is gritty, poverty-stricken, and dirty, where our group of 4 Americans sticks out like hardboiled eggs in a sea of baked beans. The first time we saw it from the window of our airplane, we were astonished. The city stretches as far as you can see (literally), fading into the pollution and dipping below the horizon. Even in the airport, we felt more foreign that we ever had in our lives. The eyes of the Bengalis (as opposed to Deshies, or Banglacans) followed us everywhere; in the airport, on the plane, through baggage claim, and as we stepped out of the airport and into hot, thick Dhaka air. We’re talking 100 degrees Fahrenheit hot, enough to fry an egg on the cemente` hot. A van from the hotel had come to pick us up, and we hopped in and began our journey through Dhaka. Dhaka traffic is just insane. The roads are more like rivers, with pedestrians, buses, cars, motorcycles, tuk-tuks, and rickshaws all flowing down the street, weaving through one another, moving in chaos but somehow making it work. We would see pedestrians casually making their way across the road, narrowly missing the vehicles before climbing over the median to the other side of the highway. It was like third world human Frogger. Several times, we thought our van was about to nail some poor Bengali hard enough to knock the shoes off ‘em. This, along with the constant fear of colliding with the cars going the opposite way on the road, made for an extremely tense first 5-10 minutes of Dhaka driving. We tried to distract ourselves by talking to our van driver, but it was an epic failure. This was the extent of our conversation:
Banks: “So how many live in Dhaka?”
Driver: “Yes.”
And that was that. We looked out the windows and took pictures, recorded video, and tried to savor our first tastes of the Dhaka landscape. It was fascinating. The Dhaka we saw from the van was rough and very dirty. The streets were insane. Rickshaws were everywhere, their canopies plastered with foil and other shiny things. They shimmered in the blistering Dhaka sun, pulling people, boxes, bundles, sewing machines, and even a dead cow. Little hovels of wooden planks and corrugated metal were clumped together in small neighborhoods off the side of the road. As we drove further away from the airport, we started seeing water everywhere. Even thought it isn’t monsoon season yet, there was still water everywhere. Small ponds and rivers peppered the landscape. Barges floated down the rivers, and in the ponds, small restaurants were suspended above the water on long wooden risers. In the distance, there were large smokestacks (kilns for brick-making) standing alone in large flattened circles of red dirt, spewing pollution into the atmosphere. Long pipes, suspended by sticks tied together in the form of an X stretched far into the fields, spewing water out of the sides, and sometimes spewing sludge. They looked like long pieces of barbed wire stretching across the ground. People washed themselves in the ponds, some carried baskets on their heads, and men were wearing skirts (called saris. Yes, we do intend to purchase some very soon.) It was a whole new world.
As we got closer to the hotel, the streets became more crowded and more buildings lined the road. The streets were packed with bazaars, cobblers, fruit markets, beggars, rickshaws, and trash. Our hotel is called the Grand Prince. It’s very basic, but nice for Dhaka standards, and it suits our needs well. The rooms are reminiscent of Vandy-Barnard doubles (some Vanderbilt dorm rooms, for the non-Vanderbilt readers). The shower is not separated from the rest of the restroom (no curtain, no nothing. We have problems keeping the toilet paper dry), so what we have is a toilet, sink, and shower head all stuffed into a little room. The ceilings were made for the Bengalis, so they’re very low, and the mirror reflects onto your upper torso. It’s basic, but it has air conditioning, which makes it a sanctuary from the oppressive heat, and that is more than enough. It has 9 floors, and on the roof is a “fitness center” with pictures of disgustingly veiny, disproportionate muscle men in speedos, for motivation. There’s a small pool on the roof, and from up there, you can see the whole city. It’s really something. There’s a lobby with Wi-Fi (from which I’m writing right now) and Air Conditioning, and restaurants on the third and seventh floors where we’ve eaten every single meal so far. It’s convenient, trustworthy, occasionally delicious, and cheap. Super cheap. 2 Dollars a meal (with a big water bottle and more than enough to eat) cheap. Everything here is cheap. There’s a ridiculous “mall” at the bottom of the hotel, where we can buy our water, groceries, bootlegged Dvd’s, and Bengali clothing. Today, I was told by 3 people that my t-shirt was “eh…maybe you wear something different” so I got something more acceptable there. The hotel is guarded, so it’s very safe, and it’s close to Grameen Bank (a 10 minute walk away). The hotel staff is very friendly, endearingly shy, and more than willing to help us out with our adjustment into this new city and new life. We hope to become friends with them over time.
The hotel staff, along with all the other Bengalis we’ve met here, treat us like such a novelty. We’ve never felt so foreign before. The language barrier is one thing, which has certainly been an obstacle in our interaction with the people here. There’s a lot of gesturing on our part (mainly my part, and the others have already given me grief about it), a lot of mumbling and awkward pauses on theirs, but it’s been a fun process. The illiteracy rate in Bangladesh is high, so on the plane, I was asked by 3 other passengers if I could fill out their customs forms. It was a struggle, and it involved my taking out a spiral and a pen and making the motion for “draw.” It wasn’t very helpful, in trying to describe his luggage, one of the poor men just drew a square and then looked at me, but little by little you figure it out. And whenever you finally understand each other, it’s such a triumph. Body language is big here, and it’s been fun to see how something small, like a thumbs-up or a wave, can communicate so much to these Bengali on-lookers; how it can elicit such a beautiful response of laugher and excitement. From time to time, you’ll catch a death stare or two, but the smiles and visible excitement of the people far outweigh the suspiciousness of the older Bengalis. Especially with the students and the children, we’ll be walking down the street and feel like rockstars. Today, Banks took out his camera right outside of the hotel and started taking pictures of people, and he just got swarmed by all these Bengalis (mainly kids) who wanted their picture taken. It was a special moment. “No matter where you go” he said, “people love to have their picture taken” (yes Banks, I did just quote you.) It was so good to see how he was able to communicate love to these people by the simple act of taking their picture. Banks and I went out again, into the street, and started making friends with the kids and taking pictures of them too, teaching them how to pound-explode, applauding their English, and eventually we had a little train of kids following us as we ran our errands, saying “hello, how are ju, hello, how are ju, hello…” and laughing. It’s such a joy to see how even though there are so many obstacles keeping us from connecting with these Bengalis, it’s still so easy to show love. That’s why we’re here.
The Bank is down the street from the hotel. Banks, Trey, and I checked in yesterday and met out internship coordinators. We got a brief history of the bank, watched some intro videos, explored the bank, and got to talk to our coordinator for a while. After the bank orientation, we ran some errands around the hotel (getting water, buying cheap phones), explored the hotel, took some pictures of Dhaka, and got situated in our rooms. We were super jet-lagged, so we accidentally fell asleep for 5 hours and woke up right before we were supposed to pick up Tommy (that was all Banks right there). We speed-walked (?) outside the terminal to keep the ‘skeeters off while we waited for Tommy at the airport. The Obenwave was easily recognizable from the distance, and that night, our group grew to 4 with the addition of Tommy. We were all exhausted, so we went to bed shortly after that, and woke up this morning to go back to the bank.
Today, our time at the bank was much more substantial, and while some of us felt nervous yesterday about how legitimate our internship really was (or if we would just be “hanging out” around the bank for 4 weeks), today we really understood why we had come all the way to Dhaka to learn from this Grameen Bank. We took the role of students and listened to our coordinator and one of the office managers tell us about the inner-workings of Grameen Bank. While it was hard to understand them at times (especially for Trey), it was so interesting. It really got us excited for these next four weeks. We learned so much in one day. The philosophy that Grameen operates on is so simple when you break it down, but it’s been so effective. I’m excited to keep learning about it, especially about plausibility of following in Grameen model in other cultures.
After Bankrolling for a couple of hours, it was dinner and then some hotel lobby-time (emails, journaling). After dinner the other guys were pretty sleepy, so they’ve been asleep for about an hour now, but I’m still chugging along on this blog. I’ve described a lot to you, but for a nice re-cap, here are my favorite things about today, and my feelings about This grand Southeast Asian Adventures so far:
Favorite things about today:
-Breakfast at the hotel. It was delicious and free.
-The fact that our shower has a power sprayer (that can also be used as a baby-roach destroyer and a Laundromat.)
-Talking to our coordinators at the Bank. So far, we’ve spent the most time with a man named Babor. He is hard to understand, but very amiable.
-Babor’s quotes for today: “Cookies, no problem.” And “Take this sheet.”
-Leaning about the Grameen system, being genuinely interested in it.
-Getting to hang out with the kids.
-Finding a secret passageway on the roof of the hotel.
And, my number one favorite thing about today has been the establishment of our new game. You see, the 10 minute walk to the Bank can get annoying, so we’ve taken to riding rickshaws to and from the bank. It makes the trip a lot shorter, easier, it costs about 15 cents, and it’s extremely fun. To spice things up a bit, we decided to make each rickshaw ride a race. You earn points according to what place you get (1st-5 pts, 2nd-3 pts, 3rd-2 pts, 4th-1 pt.), and we’ll keep track of each person’s standings. We’ve decided to name this new phenomenon (drum roll please…)
BANGLAKART
These are the kinds of things that make this adventure so wonderful. We’ll use the blog to keep you posted on each member’s stats. After two races, the current stats are.
Current Stats:
1st place—Banks Benitez, (7 pts.)
tie
2nd place—Trey Brown (6 pts.)
2nd place—Tommy Obenchain (6 pts.)
3rd place—Chris Cole (3 pts.)
This adventure has gotten off to a great start. For those of you at home, keep praying for us, specifically for safety, group unity, the ability to appreciate Dhaka, opportunities for ministry and service to continue opening up, and that this trip would change our hearts and make us fall more deeply in love with Christ. Although the impression of Dhaka was a little jarring for some of us, the more time we spend here, the more we’re able to find the beauty in the blemish. Friends and family, we appreciate you. Thanks for reading, we’ll keep you posted on what happens next.
Keeping it fresh in the dirty Desh,
Chris
(p.s. It's currently 5/6, and after taking a dose of Benadryl, Trey has completely passed out on the couch in the hotel lobby. He's been twitching in his sleep for the last five minutes, and the hotel staff are highly amused, as am I. This is absolutely hilarious, I felt compelled to share. Be well, dear readers.)
(written night of 5/5, published at 6:30 P.M. 5/6)
Dear Blog-readers,
Good morning/ evening/ I don’t even know what time zone you’re in anymore. We’ve been in Dhaka for two days now, but it feels like it’s been a week. I’m typing up this post from the hotel lobby, and I can hear the sounds of traffic from outside. I can look through the window and see the crowded streets of Dhaka, the billboards written in Arabic script, and the swarm of rickshaws. It’s so surreal—this is our reality now. I’ve been charged with the task of describing our (Trey, Tommy, Banks, and I’s) initial observations about Dhaka for our second blog post. It’s quite a daunting task, because Dhaka is so unfamiliar from everything I’ve ever known. I’ll try to sum it up in a sentence, then go from there.
Dhaka is: a sweaty, chaotic, third-world metropolis, blemished by poverty and teeming with life. It’s fascinating. I love it here, but in a strange, “I can’t believe this is really happening” sort of way.
It’s interesting that Dubai was the city we visited immediately before Dhaka, because the two are polar opposites. Dubai is the ideal western city, set in an exotic environment, and infused with diversity. Dhaka is gritty, poverty-stricken, and dirty, where our group of 4 Americans sticks out like hardboiled eggs in a sea of baked beans. The first time we saw it from the window of our airplane, we were astonished. The city stretches as far as you can see (literally), fading into the pollution and dipping below the horizon. Even in the airport, we felt more foreign that we ever had in our lives. The eyes of the Bengalis (as opposed to Deshies, or Banglacans) followed us everywhere; in the airport, on the plane, through baggage claim, and as we stepped out of the airport and into hot, thick Dhaka air. We’re talking 100 degrees Fahrenheit hot, enough to fry an egg on the cemente` hot. A van from the hotel had come to pick us up, and we hopped in and began our journey through Dhaka. Dhaka traffic is just insane. The roads are more like rivers, with pedestrians, buses, cars, motorcycles, tuk-tuks, and rickshaws all flowing down the street, weaving through one another, moving in chaos but somehow making it work. We would see pedestrians casually making their way across the road, narrowly missing the vehicles before climbing over the median to the other side of the highway. It was like third world human Frogger. Several times, we thought our van was about to nail some poor Bengali hard enough to knock the shoes off ‘em. This, along with the constant fear of colliding with the cars going the opposite way on the road, made for an extremely tense first 5-10 minutes of Dhaka driving. We tried to distract ourselves by talking to our van driver, but it was an epic failure. This was the extent of our conversation:
Banks: “So how many live in Dhaka?”
Driver: “Yes.”
And that was that. We looked out the windows and took pictures, recorded video, and tried to savor our first tastes of the Dhaka landscape. It was fascinating. The Dhaka we saw from the van was rough and very dirty. The streets were insane. Rickshaws were everywhere, their canopies plastered with foil and other shiny things. They shimmered in the blistering Dhaka sun, pulling people, boxes, bundles, sewing machines, and even a dead cow. Little hovels of wooden planks and corrugated metal were clumped together in small neighborhoods off the side of the road. As we drove further away from the airport, we started seeing water everywhere. Even thought it isn’t monsoon season yet, there was still water everywhere. Small ponds and rivers peppered the landscape. Barges floated down the rivers, and in the ponds, small restaurants were suspended above the water on long wooden risers. In the distance, there were large smokestacks (kilns for brick-making) standing alone in large flattened circles of red dirt, spewing pollution into the atmosphere. Long pipes, suspended by sticks tied together in the form of an X stretched far into the fields, spewing water out of the sides, and sometimes spewing sludge. They looked like long pieces of barbed wire stretching across the ground. People washed themselves in the ponds, some carried baskets on their heads, and men were wearing skirts (called saris. Yes, we do intend to purchase some very soon.) It was a whole new world.
As we got closer to the hotel, the streets became more crowded and more buildings lined the road. The streets were packed with bazaars, cobblers, fruit markets, beggars, rickshaws, and trash. Our hotel is called the Grand Prince. It’s very basic, but nice for Dhaka standards, and it suits our needs well. The rooms are reminiscent of Vandy-Barnard doubles (some Vanderbilt dorm rooms, for the non-Vanderbilt readers). The shower is not separated from the rest of the restroom (no curtain, no nothing. We have problems keeping the toilet paper dry), so what we have is a toilet, sink, and shower head all stuffed into a little room. The ceilings were made for the Bengalis, so they’re very low, and the mirror reflects onto your upper torso. It’s basic, but it has air conditioning, which makes it a sanctuary from the oppressive heat, and that is more than enough. It has 9 floors, and on the roof is a “fitness center” with pictures of disgustingly veiny, disproportionate muscle men in speedos, for motivation. There’s a small pool on the roof, and from up there, you can see the whole city. It’s really something. There’s a lobby with Wi-Fi (from which I’m writing right now) and Air Conditioning, and restaurants on the third and seventh floors where we’ve eaten every single meal so far. It’s convenient, trustworthy, occasionally delicious, and cheap. Super cheap. 2 Dollars a meal (with a big water bottle and more than enough to eat) cheap. Everything here is cheap. There’s a ridiculous “mall” at the bottom of the hotel, where we can buy our water, groceries, bootlegged Dvd’s, and Bengali clothing. Today, I was told by 3 people that my t-shirt was “eh…maybe you wear something different” so I got something more acceptable there. The hotel is guarded, so it’s very safe, and it’s close to Grameen Bank (a 10 minute walk away). The hotel staff is very friendly, endearingly shy, and more than willing to help us out with our adjustment into this new city and new life. We hope to become friends with them over time.
The hotel staff, along with all the other Bengalis we’ve met here, treat us like such a novelty. We’ve never felt so foreign before. The language barrier is one thing, which has certainly been an obstacle in our interaction with the people here. There’s a lot of gesturing on our part (mainly my part, and the others have already given me grief about it), a lot of mumbling and awkward pauses on theirs, but it’s been a fun process. The illiteracy rate in Bangladesh is high, so on the plane, I was asked by 3 other passengers if I could fill out their customs forms. It was a struggle, and it involved my taking out a spiral and a pen and making the motion for “draw.” It wasn’t very helpful, in trying to describe his luggage, one of the poor men just drew a square and then looked at me, but little by little you figure it out. And whenever you finally understand each other, it’s such a triumph. Body language is big here, and it’s been fun to see how something small, like a thumbs-up or a wave, can communicate so much to these Bengali on-lookers; how it can elicit such a beautiful response of laugher and excitement. From time to time, you’ll catch a death stare or two, but the smiles and visible excitement of the people far outweigh the suspiciousness of the older Bengalis. Especially with the students and the children, we’ll be walking down the street and feel like rockstars. Today, Banks took out his camera right outside of the hotel and started taking pictures of people, and he just got swarmed by all these Bengalis (mainly kids) who wanted their picture taken. It was a special moment. “No matter where you go” he said, “people love to have their picture taken” (yes Banks, I did just quote you.) It was so good to see how he was able to communicate love to these people by the simple act of taking their picture. Banks and I went out again, into the street, and started making friends with the kids and taking pictures of them too, teaching them how to pound-explode, applauding their English, and eventually we had a little train of kids following us as we ran our errands, saying “hello, how are ju, hello, how are ju, hello…” and laughing. It’s such a joy to see how even though there are so many obstacles keeping us from connecting with these Bengalis, it’s still so easy to show love. That’s why we’re here.
The Bank is down the street from the hotel. Banks, Trey, and I checked in yesterday and met out internship coordinators. We got a brief history of the bank, watched some intro videos, explored the bank, and got to talk to our coordinator for a while. After the bank orientation, we ran some errands around the hotel (getting water, buying cheap phones), explored the hotel, took some pictures of Dhaka, and got situated in our rooms. We were super jet-lagged, so we accidentally fell asleep for 5 hours and woke up right before we were supposed to pick up Tommy (that was all Banks right there). We speed-walked (?) outside the terminal to keep the ‘skeeters off while we waited for Tommy at the airport. The Obenwave was easily recognizable from the distance, and that night, our group grew to 4 with the addition of Tommy. We were all exhausted, so we went to bed shortly after that, and woke up this morning to go back to the bank.
Today, our time at the bank was much more substantial, and while some of us felt nervous yesterday about how legitimate our internship really was (or if we would just be “hanging out” around the bank for 4 weeks), today we really understood why we had come all the way to Dhaka to learn from this Grameen Bank. We took the role of students and listened to our coordinator and one of the office managers tell us about the inner-workings of Grameen Bank. While it was hard to understand them at times (especially for Trey), it was so interesting. It really got us excited for these next four weeks. We learned so much in one day. The philosophy that Grameen operates on is so simple when you break it down, but it’s been so effective. I’m excited to keep learning about it, especially about plausibility of following in Grameen model in other cultures.
After Bankrolling for a couple of hours, it was dinner and then some hotel lobby-time (emails, journaling). After dinner the other guys were pretty sleepy, so they’ve been asleep for about an hour now, but I’m still chugging along on this blog. I’ve described a lot to you, but for a nice re-cap, here are my favorite things about today, and my feelings about This grand Southeast Asian Adventures so far:
Favorite things about today:
-Breakfast at the hotel. It was delicious and free.
-The fact that our shower has a power sprayer (that can also be used as a baby-roach destroyer and a Laundromat.)
-Talking to our coordinators at the Bank. So far, we’ve spent the most time with a man named Babor. He is hard to understand, but very amiable.
-Babor’s quotes for today: “Cookies, no problem.” And “Take this sheet.”
-Leaning about the Grameen system, being genuinely interested in it.
-Getting to hang out with the kids.
-Finding a secret passageway on the roof of the hotel.
And, my number one favorite thing about today has been the establishment of our new game. You see, the 10 minute walk to the Bank can get annoying, so we’ve taken to riding rickshaws to and from the bank. It makes the trip a lot shorter, easier, it costs about 15 cents, and it’s extremely fun. To spice things up a bit, we decided to make each rickshaw ride a race. You earn points according to what place you get (1st-5 pts, 2nd-3 pts, 3rd-2 pts, 4th-1 pt.), and we’ll keep track of each person’s standings. We’ve decided to name this new phenomenon (drum roll please…)
BANGLAKART
These are the kinds of things that make this adventure so wonderful. We’ll use the blog to keep you posted on each member’s stats. After two races, the current stats are.
Current Stats:
1st place—Banks Benitez, (7 pts.)
tie
2nd place—Trey Brown (6 pts.)
2nd place—Tommy Obenchain (6 pts.)
3rd place—Chris Cole (3 pts.)
This adventure has gotten off to a great start. For those of you at home, keep praying for us, specifically for safety, group unity, the ability to appreciate Dhaka, opportunities for ministry and service to continue opening up, and that this trip would change our hearts and make us fall more deeply in love with Christ. Although the impression of Dhaka was a little jarring for some of us, the more time we spend here, the more we’re able to find the beauty in the blemish. Friends and family, we appreciate you. Thanks for reading, we’ll keep you posted on what happens next.
Keeping it fresh in the dirty Desh,
Chris
(p.s. It's currently 5/6, and after taking a dose of Benadryl, Trey has completely passed out on the couch in the hotel lobby. He's been twitching in his sleep for the last five minutes, and the hotel staff are highly amused, as am I. This is absolutely hilarious, I felt compelled to share. Be well, dear readers.)
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