Alright, sorry this took so long. It was a bit hard to decide what to put in the first post about the trip...
I should start with saying that the rural areas are the defining part of Bangladesh in my opinion. Most of their population is rural. It is a lot cleaner there, and everyone is very curious about foreigners there but they are extremely kind and friendly. Every one you meet wants to talk to you and get to know you. Much different from Dhaka where you are surrounded constantly honking horns, beggars, heat and humidity, and the stench of garbage. In the villages you even get the light breeze which makes the heat a little more bearable.
From left to right: Sabbid, Mona, Sangna (in the background), Me, Mome and Goma (pronounced Juma)
Sabbid and Sangna lived in the house next door, Mona and Goma were the cook's daughters, and Mome's mom was a borrower and ran the tailor shop across the street. They were helping me learn to count, althought it usually seemed like they were just laughing at me when I had trouble pronouncing words!
During our four days in Dubail, we went to three Centre meetings in different villages and also visited some other villages in the evenings. The day we arrived, we literally dropped our bags in our room and headed to a centre meeting.
Sabri and Ross. You can see how here the house is raised up even above the road, and the road is raised up as well from the jute field on the left
The villages here are all raised up from the lower rice paddies. All the roads and villages are built up by digging big holes in the ground and using the dirt to build up the land. It took me a while to realise that every one of the ponds I was seeing was square shaped and clearly mad made. They build up the land so that it will not flood during the rainy season.
Washing in a pond, and ducks in the background.
One other thing I noticed was that no inch of space was wasted in the villages. Those holes were then used to raise ducks or farm fish. Every tree you saw would be producing Mangos or Jack Fruit (Bangladesh’s national fruit), Lychees. Every field was full of rice paddy or jute. They would have a little raised piece of land between each field for people to walk across. Every open space, be it the village courtyards or the quiet roads, was being used to dry the rice paddy or the grains of rice (see the first picture). I was actually surprised to see the occasional soccer field, but even those were used to let cattle graze.
Walking through the fields
In the first village we arrived just as the centre meeting was finishing up. Then we visited a couple of the borrowers and talked to them. The centre leader, a borrower elected by the village, was the first. She was harvesting rice paddy and had a couple cows which produced a dozen litres of milk a day or so. So made 480 profit every day off just the milk. Her son was also a naval officer! Another lady was running four different things with her husband. She bought and sold rice, had a cow and some chickens and her husband ran the village grocery store!
Village Centre Meeting! I am handing one of groups' loan books to the centre leader (The lady between us never smiled the whole meeting...)
On the second day we visited Dubail South, centre number 28. Below is a chart showing what each borrowers last loan had been for – keep in mind that many of them would be doing multiple things not just the purpose listed.
Loan Purpose | # |
Land Lease | 2 |
Cultivation | 11 |
Cow | 6 |
Ducks | 1 |
Grocery | 2 |
Molasses | 4 |
Tailor | 3 |
Fertilizer | 1 |
House | 3 |
Mango | 1 |
Paper Recycling | 1 |
Rice Mill | 2 |
The most popular industry was the rice business, all told at least 16 people were involved in it. That includes the women who lease farm land to others, those harvesting the rice and those processing and selling the finished product to wholesalers. We were very curious about the paper business though...
The Antu-Prantu Paper House!
The business was called the Antu-Prantu Paper House, named after the borrower's two grandchildren (another kid sneaked into the picture I guess!). The lady who ran it had been a long time borrower, and she had quite the operation going on. She had a separate building just for the business. She had a 50,000 taka loan, and her business was to buy shredded paper from pulp factories, sort it into pink, white and newprint, and then sell it to paper recycling firms. She employed 10-15 people usually depending on the amount of work she needed done. She would buy the scrap paper for 14-20 taka/kg and sell it for 25-30 taka. Each batch was around 110-120kg - I think. Some things seemed to get lost in translation, because apparently she sorted 110-120kg every day which would be a little ridiculous.
It was very interesting to see what the business models of the borrowers were like – their expenses and revenues, and how much profit they made. It was hard to ask too complicated questions though since often the women would not know how much they had spent, but also I think some things were lost in translation. The women were all definitely proud to be borrowers and excited to show off what they were doing with their loans. They always wanted to offer us food or drinks!
Getting my hands a little dirty! This machine takes the rice off the rice paddy.
It was incredible how well off some of the borrowers were now, considering that borrowers primarily start as asset less and landless. There was one lady who had acquired 2.5 million taka worth of farm land! Others had nice spacious houses made from cement or clay with a couple rooms and electricity.
I am off to bed now, I could keep talking for a while on the villages (and I will), but it is close to 2 am here now, and I need to go into the office tomorrow at 11, so I should probably get some sleep. I will post more stories about individual borrowers and about what I thought of the Grameen Bank system after the village trip, as well as a new Social Business idea that I have been thinking about!
Plus I will update more about the book I am reading – The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid and Ross is going to do the same for his – Portfolios of the Poor.
Cheers,
Mike
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