What this is all about?

Grameen means "rural" or "village" in Bangla, so literally this translates to 'Stories from the Village.' I travelled to Bangladesh in 2010 and did an Internship with the Grameen Bank and was amazed by the people there especially in its rural villages. The 'desh' and its people are an inspiration and will always have a special place in my heart.

Since then, I continually see how important villages are, be it in rural Bangladesh, or in urban core neighbourhoods in Canada. A strong village is what brings people together and welcomes newcomers and supports those in need. Villages are what I fight for and this blog is how I do it.

Friday, May 14, 2010

The Dubail Delduar Branch

Where to begin... We went to the Dubail Delduar branch of the Grameen Bank in the Mirzapur Area and the Tangail Zone, which is about two and a half hours north-west of Dhaka. We hired a mini bus for me and Ross as well as Alfonso, an intern from Spain, a intern coordinator from the head office and our translator, Sabri.

The Dubail Delduar Branch Office

The Branch was in a building just off the highway, there is a little bazaar kind of right next to the highway and then we were a two minute walk down the road from there. The bank branch was in a two story building, we had a room with three single beds on the second floor (on the left in the above picture). There were a couple other rooms for the branch manager and the second officer on the second floor as well. The main floor was where the branch manager, second officer and all the centre managers worked. They also had a patio on the roof where you could hang up clothes and relax and take advantage of any breezes when the power was out.

The View from My Bed

They had a cook who cooked all our meals for us, and there was a shop right across the street where we bought water everyday – usually twice a day actually. 1.5 Litres of water only costs 20 taka, or about 30 cents! Our cook was very nice and made very good meals, which we usually got to pick out. The meals were generally Rice, Daal (lentil soup), and a combination of curry eggs, curry chicken or curry fish, and curry vegetables. My favourite was the eggs, they were hardboiled and then cooked in some sort of curry sauce. Breakfast changed, but we always had eggs with loaf bread one day, and roti (flat bread) another day and a rice dish the final day.  

Cheers,
Mike

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