Simplicity

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.