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