Friday, May 29, 2009

various cultural experiences that deserve a blog

After debating (with myself) long and hard about whether or not the following experience is blog-appropriate, I’ve decided that it deserves a shout out, because it was one of the top five weirdest experiences of my life..... I went to a Bangladeshi rave.

There is a guy who works at Grameen who has taken it upon himself to become the unofficial “social coordinator” of the Grameen interns, and so he frequently invites large groups of foreigners to interesting events in Dhaka. anyway, a ticket was required to enter the party, and there were some very explicit rules on the ticket. For example, no one was allowed to “misuse” cameras, whatever that means. Also the party was supposedly “couples-only,” because they didn’t want it to turn into a huge bro-fest, which is what most parties in Bangladesh are, because women generally don’t leave their houses. As an interesting side note, it is illegal for Bangladeshis to consume alcohol. Foreigners may, however, drink alcohol in Bangladesh, although it is definitely not readily available- I’m glad I’m going to be celebrating my birthday here. When we got there, we walked into a room with a dance floor and a bar (there were also large pillows on the floor… sketchy). This room was called the “dry zone.” Then, we went upstairs to the roof of the hotel, and there was another dance floor and a pool. This was called the “wet zone.” Despite the best attempts of hotel authorities, the party did indeed turn into a lot of guys dancing with each other. Although homosexuality is not really recognized in Bangladesh, male affection, interestingly, is not taboo, so it’s common to see men holding hands, and in this situation, dancing with each other. Most of the women there were prostitutes (which was clear because they were wearing skanky pseudo-western clothing- a huge contrast from the salweer kameez, saris, and birkas that ALL Bangladeshi women wear during the day). By the end of the evening, almost everyone had jumped into the pool with his clothing on (I didn't). Regardless, I thoroughly enjoyed watching the Bangladeshi men rave with each other and the occasional prostitute.


On a significantly less creepy note, I’ve had some other interesting cultural experiences, including a concert a few nights ago. The first band that played was traditional Bengali music, and they were amazing. there was a guy singing, one beat boxing, and others playing various musical instruments. The music was amazing- it was Bangladeshi folk music. The next band was a cove band of American music. It always surprises me what western influences have made it over here and what hasn’t. For example, I was expecting them to play “classic” American music (billy joel, the eagles, etc.), and I was sorely mistaken. They led off with coldplay and also played some kings of leon (which is a band that I haven’t really heard of, but the song was called “your sex is on fire,” which I found pretty racy considering how conservative Bangladeshi culture is). Again, there were no women at this “party” except for the other interns. It was definitely amusing to hear “indie” music being sung in a heavy Bengali accent.

Today, I went to Sonargaon, the first capital of Bangladesh. The scenery was beautiful, although it felt like it was 120 degrees with 100% humidity, so it was hard to appreciate our surroundings. There was a sweet fort/museum, and they were celebrating an arts festival, so there were lots of locals there. They were a typical Bangladeshi crowd, and as such, we were treated like celebrities. One man came up to me and said, “one picture please?” and then I heard him take approximately 12 pictures. Other people don’t ask to take a picture, they just whip out their camera phones and catch you off guard. Also, there were lots of school children who came up to us and presented us with flowers, after spouting off the only English sentence that they knew (“Hello, how are you, fine thank you, goodbye”… all in one breath). I met a very nice professor and his family, and he requested my e-mail address, so I am looking forward to receiving special e-mails from them. One of the girls that I was with got asked for her autograph. Also, today was the first time that I have seen another group of tourists out and about in Bangladesh. After Sonargaon, we went to see a famous fort in old Dhaka. It was built in the 1600’s, and it is supposedly haunted because the daughter of the Kahn died before the fort was finished. It started raining, so we unfortunately did not get to take a rickshaw tour through old Dhaka, or the much anticipated boat ride through parts of Dhaka. Next time…




In closing, yesterday I was on a rickshaw and the driver suddenly pulled over to the side of the road, stopped the rickshaw, and got off. He then proceeded to relieve himself in the ditch on the side of the road. I guess when you gotta go, you gotta go.

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

mosquito nets, squat toilets, and bucket showers...



I've been hanging out in a small village in Tangail district for the past five days, and lots of special things happened. Two other interns- Tiffany and Lisa, our translator Russell, and I left by bus on Saturday morning. We got to the branch office, chatted with the branch manager, and met all of the people that worked at the branch office/branch managers apartment, which was above the branch office. It's really common here for there to be lots of staff working at people's houses, we had a cook and another guy working at the branch managers apartment, where we were staying. The bugs were ridiculous- we saw a ton of huge cockroaches and a bunch of other weird bugs that definitely don't exist in the U.S. I was so glad that we had mosquito nets, especially when we woke up in the morning and saw approx a million bugs hanging out on the outside of the net. It was my first experience using a squat toilet- which would have been completely fine except for the fact that I saw a huge roach crawling across the toilet "seat" when I went in to pee for the first time. 


We ate the same thing for EVERY SINGLE MEAL. Except for breakfast, which was basically white bread. Every single day, lunch and dinner was rice, some sketchy meat, dal (lentil "soup"), and some way overcooked mixed vegetables. Since I'm not trying to get sick, I avoided the meat, and thus, the only things I have eaten for the past 5 days are rice, veggies, bread, and mangos. I literally never want to eat rice again (good thing I'm living in China for 4 months). 

We spent most of our time chatting with borrowers, going to center meetings, and interviewing other people who worked for Grameen. I felt like we got most of our questions answered after being there for a few days, so we got pretty bored towards the end of our trip. Everything moves a little slower here, and since it's so hot in the middle of the day, everyone literally does nothing from about 11 to 3, so we spent a lot of time doing a lot of nothing. All of the people that we talked to were really successful, which made me feel like this trip was a long commercial for Grameen, but I probably should have been expecting that. Our interpreter didn't work for Grameen (he had just graduated from university), but he does LOVE grameen bank so it was hard to get a straight answer out of him too. 



So the electricity is pretty spare in most of rural Bangladesh, apparently the infrastructure just can't handle all of the people that want power, so the power in some villages just gets shut off for hours at a time so another village can have power. We lost power for a few hours every day, mostly at night, because that's when the demand for electricity is the highest. We struggled to entertain ourselves at night sans power, so some of our night time activities included teaching Russell, our interpreter, the electric slide, and trying to get the branch manager and Russell to do the robot while we used our flash lights as strobe lights. They loved us.

Some of our other special activities included playing cricket with some children, husking rice (which basically involved banging a bundle of rice against this barrel thing, I don't know exactly what we were accomplishing though), and singing American songs to a couple of middle-school aged girls who were skipping school to buy make up. They tried to put black lip liner on me- not a fan. Also, we went to see a woman who has a hand loom business (making sharis), and I asked her and her sister to tie one on me. It took about 20 minutes for her to tie it on- I didn't realize how difficult they were to wear! 



We tried to go to the market/bazar and walk around, but the villagers literally formed a swarm around us and made it impossible to go anywhere. Most of them had never seen foreigners- at one point, our translator told us that he heard a kid yelling "COME LOOK, FOREIGNERS!!" to another group of kids. It's really creepy to look up and realize that everyone is staring at you. When we had attracted a crowd at the train station this morning, I asked our interpreter to translate "take a picture, it will last longer," but for some reason he thought that would be inappropriate, I don't know why.

The national fruit of Bangladesh is called a jackfruit, and they grow on trees all over the place in the villages. They are unlike any other fruit that I have ever seen- they're huge and heavy but they have little spikes on them. The inside is a bunch of huge seats with this pulpy fruit stuff on the outside- we bought one at the market, and eating it was one of the strangest experienced of my life. The "fruit" is the consistency of bread dough but it sort of tastes like a banana. Lisa got really sick while we were there, and we're pretty confident that it had something to do with the jackfruit. 


Dhaka is SO overwhelming after being in the middle of nowhere for almost a week. I definitely did not miss the rank smell and pollution. We're going to the bank tomorrow to meet with our coordinators and figure out what we'll be doing with our lives for the next few weeks.

P.S. I heard that there was a cyclone here? We were completely shut off from the world. Didn't know what was up.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

First village visit

Today we went to visit a village where there is a Grameen branch office. The village was about an hour from the neighborhood in Dhaka where we are staying, so we took a taxi (which was terrifying, as usual. we almost got hit by approximately 10 buses). When we got there, we met the branch coordinator, who is a Grameen staff member. We chatted with him and our internship coordinator about the logistics of the Grameen model and then went to a Centre meeting. A branch covers about 5 sq km, and within the branch there are Centres, and within the Centres there are groups. There were about 30 people at the centre meeting, so about 5 or 6 groups were represented. During the meeting, they paid back the weekly installment of their loans, and we had the chance to ask the borrowers questions. None of the women in the Centre had defaulted or had trouble paying back their loans, and most of them had been with Grameen for about eight years. 




Everyone we talk to is so biased towards Grameen, which is very clear because their English isn't very good. Today I tried to ask the branch manager and coordinator questions about the Grameen model and what modifications it needs to work in the cities and they told me that the current model that is geared toward rural villages will also work in the cities, which I find hard to believe. Grameen is limited to the rural areas of Bangladesh because they are backed by the government, so they face regulations that other NGOs don't have to deal with. 


Bangladesh is an interesting place. There is very limited and sporadic Western influence, which creates a really interesting concept of "modernity." When we were in the village this morning, there were men carrying baskets of mud on their heads to build houses, but then we went into a woman's house who had a color, flat screen tv. It's a very weird contrast.

Monday, May 18, 2009

I made it

I'm in Dhaka! All is well now, although yesterday i was seriously struggling with jet lag. At 4 in the afternoon my body though it was approximately 3 a.m., but then I went to sleep at 5 pm yesterday and woke up at 6 this morning, so I think I'm good to go. Two nights of "sleeping" on a plane sucked, even though Emirates planes are amazing.

I got to the Dhaka airport at 9 am yesterday and was picked up by an employee of the hotel. It took like 20 minutes to get from the airport to the hotel... one of the scarier experiences of my life. Apparently lanes are just suggestions for drivers here, and rickshaws are on the road with the cars. Chaos.

So I got to the hotel around 10, spent some time unpacking, and walked over to the bank at noon. It took about 10 minutes to walk there... people on the streets would stop whatever they were doing and stare at me. When I got to the bank, I met Mr. Sabul, my coordinator. I did some other orientation type stuff, ate lunch at the Grameen Cafeteria (cost tk 40, which is a little bit more than 50 cents), and came back to the hotel and crashed. My coordinator said that we'll be going to a village tomorrow for the day, and then next week we'll be spending 4 or 5 nights at a village. Today we're going to figure out exactly what I'm doing for my whole time here. The internet here is really sketchy and I can't figure out how to post pictures because the website is messed up, so more to come later...

Sunday, May 17, 2009

From Dubai...


After 15 hours in a middle seat, I am now in the Dubai airport. It kind of looks like a casino.

It's 9:15pm here so I have about 3 hours until I board my flight to Dhaka....

Friday, May 15, 2009

Journey to the Third World begins

So I'm leaving for Bangladesh tomorrow. I leave NOLA at 12, fly to Houston, then fly to Dubai, and then to Dhaka. Total travel time = 38 hours (plus 10 hour time difference, so 48 hours clock time). I think I'm pretty much as ready as I can be- I have a few interesting books, 1st season of Scrubs, ear plugs, an eye mask, and Ambien (thank you Dr. Hart...). I'm hoping the combination of Lariam and Ambien will cause some sweet side effects.

Here's what I know about what I'll be doing for the next month: I have an internship at the Grameen Bank. I have little to no idea what that entails, but I'm under the impression that I'll be spending most of my time working at the bank's main office in Dhaka, and I'll have the chance to go on a few trips to the branch offices in rural villages. I'm staying at the Grand Prince Hotel (the "premer" hotel in Bangladesh, according to their website), and they are picking me up at the airport with a placard with my name on it. From the hotel, I'm planning on tacking a taxi (or a rickshaw????) to the Bank. They think I'm getting to the Bank at 12:00am instead of 12:00 pm on Monday, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.