Today we had our first trip to a village. It was amazing to see how proud all the women were of their business and their children, many of whom were in school or had jobs now.
Our day started at 7:15am, I shovelled down breakfast and then we left for the village. Our coordinator accompanied me and Ross to the village. I think we took a shortcut through some side roads to the highway. This meant we were driving out of the city while masses of people were walking in to their jobs in the city. Our driver was constantly on the horn telling people to get out of the way.
Once we were on the highway we were driving through the shanty towns that surround Dhaka. The buildings here are all made from bamboo and corrugated metal and are very close to the water level.
Shanty Town with Dhaka in the Background
After that the highway crossed the flood plain and river bed. Pretty much the highway was a levee and they were filling in the river bed on one side of the river with silt to make new land. I did not quite understand, but i think they were using pipes to put silt on boats and then they would take the silt on boats and dump it where they wanted. On other parts of the flood plain they had brick factories. Each factory was basically one smokestack kinda, where they would bake the bricks. The town on the other side of the river was full of stacks of bricks which people were selling.
These Pipes Were used to carry silt to the boats
Brick Factories
Our car then popped a tire, our driver fixed it, and then popped a second 15 minutes later. We sat and ate bananas at a hut at the side of the road while our driver went to find spare tires.
Eventually we made it to the village, Latif Pur, and in time for the Centre meeting. We were ushered into a little room probably the size of most people’s bedroom in Canada. Inside were about 40-50 women all wearing head scarves and sitting in groups on rows of benches. It was incredibly hot in the room, by the end of the meeting I was dripping with sweat. But the women went round and introduced themselves, our coordinator translated, telling us their names, their loan sizes and their business. In this village the most common businesses were rental houses (the village was close to the garment factories, so factory workers would rent the houses), and there were a lot of people with vegetable plots.
The Path to the Village
Some Large Crop Fields (most were smaller)
The women were very proud of their businesses, their homes and their children. We were able to talk in English to one borrowers daughter-in-law. She had finished her undergraduate accounting degree, and could speak some English, she was looking for a job in merchandising. She was also attempting to get her graduate degree, at which point she would be qualified to become a Branch Manager with the Grameen Bank. In the picture below she is the woman farthest to the right, and my coordinator, Babor, is in the foreground on the right. Ross is on the left, and the Branch Manager, Mizanur, is the man in the middle.
A Grameen House (From a Housing Loan)
This lady had a rental house and 5 cows, she was able to produce 9 litres of milk each day. Her family drank 1L and she sold 8L for 40 taka each. Combined with the income from her house she made 480 taka per day, and had a loan of 40,000 taka. When I go to the next village I want to find out more about how much they spend and how much they make per day.
The Milk Lady!
After that we went to the home of the Branch Manager, he was paying about 10,000 taka ($150 Canadian) per month for his place, gas and electricity included. And it was a nice place with a kitchen, 2 bedroom, living room and a washroom. At his house we ate this delicious sweet rice soup – I forget the name: it was a mixture of rice, sugar and milk (my stomach did not like the milk, but it was worth it!). There was a school right next door to his house, where each classroom had probably 20 children who were all reciting what the teacher was saying.
Next stop was the Branch Office. Latif Pur was a centre of this branch. The Branch was called Kalaikair (You can google map “Kalaikair, Bangladesh”) and it was responsible for 80 centres or about 4,600 borrowers. We saw a couple borrowers come in and ask for bigger loans.
The Kalaikair Branch Office
After that it was a drive back to the city, some lunch at the hotel and then back to the bank office to plan tomorrows trip. Tomorrow I am leaving on a 3 night trip to a village. We will get to stay and sleep in the branch office, go to the centre meetings and interview some of the borrowers. I am going to check out of the hotel and put my bags in storage for a couple nights. So I won’t be able to get internet or post anything until I am back on Thursday.
Thanks for reading! I will post probably a couple posts about the trip when I get back, and I also still want to talk more about what the Grameen II system is all about.
Cheers,
Mike
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