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