Villages and Beaches

 Its been a while since I was last able to post, due to an action-packed week full of travel. Last Sunday 3 of us arrived at the village of Baneswar, about 400km from Dhaka, braced with an arsenal of weapons-grade insect repellents and various forms of pills, creams and bracelets designed to obliterate anything that crawled within 10 feet of us. My group was all-male since Bangladesh is a conservative, Muslim country where mixed gender sleeping arrangements are not acceptable. 

 The point of us being in the village was to experience the real workings of Grameen Bank. As I mentioned before, Grameen means "village" and so all its borrowers are to be found in rural areas like Baneswar. We were to stay at a branch office, the lowest level (ie closest to the action), of all the administrative sections. It is at the branch office that villagers will come to collect their loans (however they will actually pay the loans back in weekly installments at "center-meetings" in their own village). A branch will cover 15 or so centers, where there are on average 50 women. Branches are overseen by area offices, areas by zonal offices, and the zonal offices by the HQ in Dhaka. 

 But don't picture the branch office to look anything like a branch of NatWest off Kensington High Street. I would have been comfortable walking into that. It was simply a 2-floor house with 4 main rooms on the first floor (we never saw the second floor but from what I can discern it housed a family with small children that enjoyed screaming at 3 in the morning - either that or something more sinister was going on....). The 2 front rooms were used as office space, and then behind was our dining room (which looked just like the other rooms but without the paper work, ie bare floor and walls and just an old wood table and chairs), and our bedroom. It contained 3 single beds, each with a thin metal frame, and wooden planks in place of a mattress. A sheet was placed over the planks, and two lumpy, colorful pillows lay at the top of the bed. A fan intermittently whirled overhead. While this entire scene brought on a wave of adoration and longing for my $12 a night hotel in Dhaka, it wasn't until I saw the bathroom that I came close to throwing in the towel. There in front of me was the infamous squatty-potty, something I had heard so much about, but in a 3 week sheltered tour of the Oberois of India last year, had the great fortune of thus far avoiding. In the same small room was also to be found my open shower, with cockroaches climbing up its walls. I strongly contemplated an overdose of Immodium, but I worried the affects may wear off too soon, resulting in potentially disastrous consequences. I let nature be my guide. 

 Our branch was located in what can only be described as a giant fruit and veg garden. We were surrounded by a cornucopia of mango, guava and banana trees, lentils, aubergines, various types of spinach, and a host of legumes I had no name for. I was suddenly excited for food, and with good reason. We ate like kings. At every meal we had a mountain of white rice, a plate of fresh vegetables with some mild spices and a main dish (usually either a chicken or fish curry). Knives and forks do not exist on a rural Bengali table. To eat, you cover your plate with rice, top it with the vegetables and the meat curry, pour over some thin dal (lentil) sauce, and then using all five fingers, mix up your food creating a bite-size ball, place the ball at the end of your fingers and finally use god's gift of an opposable thumb to shovel this into your mouth. You must only ever use your right hand to touch food. It is the greatest faux-pas to get your left hand dirty. Needless to say I relished in this experience, and from this point on find no further use for cutlery. 

 Attending the center meetings and looking around various houses of Grameen borrowers was simultaneously humbling and fulfilling. While these women clearly had very little, living in mud huts in stifling heat, they showed great pride in what they had been able to achieve with their loans (some had bought TVs, other's had managed to send all their children to university) and were extremely welcoming to us. It seems that the most common investment is to buy a cow, which will be milked for several years, and then sold a few years later (hopefully around a festival time) for a decent profit - often double what they bought it for. This supplements the income their husbands bring in. We did find some instances when the women used their loans to invest in their husbands' companies so that an already established business (perhaps a small electronics shop in the local town) could grow. How this effects divorce rates is as yet unknown. 

 Returning from the villages on Wednesday, I played a quick afternoon round of golf and then took an 11.30pm overnight bus, with 12 other interns, to Cox's Bazar - reportedly the world's largest single stretch of beach, and thus a source of great pride for a country with a rather empty trophy cabinet. Admittedly heading to the beach during monsoon season made little sense for many reasons, but all the cool kids were doing it. And we were in fact blessed with beautiful weather for our entire stay. But the beaches in Bangladesh are a bizarre experience. Women must be covered from head to toe, and men must wear long shorts and T-shirts. As we sat on our sunbeds, two things frequently happened: 1) Merchants, young and old, would try and lure us into buying an enormous variety of different goods, including shells, soft drinks, roasted peanuts, sarongs, hard boiled eggs, and horse rides. 2) A small group of Bengali young men would pluck up the courage to come and talk to one of us, and as this conversation was taking place, more and more people gathered, until, I kid you not, there were around 60 people cramming over one bed, all craving a hand shake and the opportunity to say hi to the white man. To say my ego was subject to inflation this weekend would be an understatement. 

 Unfortunately the food on the beach was something of a let down, as they felt the need to over cook every piece of fresh fish, and deep fry plenty of other good stuff. Due to the strict prohibition laws, it was impossible to enjoy a glass of rose at lunch, but we did manage to smuggle a few bottles of rum (worryingly bottled in Myanmar) to dinner. 

 I am now safely back in Dhaka, exhausted, but excited for more adventures. This week I will hopefully visit some of Grameen's sister companies, particularly focusing on renewable energy and capital management, so until then...

Richard