7/6: Greetings from Bangladesh

We jumped into our work at Nari Jibon right away, as a shortage of English teachers meant that we started teaching literally the moment we walked in the door. It feels like things have been moving non-stop ever since. We have now taken over two English classes full time, and have been helping out here and there with a few of the other classes as well. It already feels like we have become part of daily life here. The women have been so unbelievably welcoming to us, and they are eager to learn about us and our life in America. (see some pictures of our students here)

We’re already getting started on talking to people about the microcredit project and things are getting really exciting. We have met with a number of groups of women to talk about the project and get their ideas. Last week we brought in a group of female migrant workers (in Bangladesh, that means that they are people who leave the country for 6 or 7 years at a time, to places like Malaysia and Dubai to work in factories or do domestic work there). If the cooperative business project could provide them with options that are better than leaving Bangladesh for years at a time (many of them are married and have families here), then that would be really great. We have been working with Sheikh Rumana who is the head of BOMSA, an organization which serves migrant workers, and she is really excited to get returning migrant workers involved in the project. She had the great idea for the cooperative business to be a small department store, with a number of different services like tailoring, fabric sales, and other things. The exciting thing about this is that it gives women the opportunity to pursue different things they might be really excited about, or have a particular talent in. For example, one woman we met with didn’t speak any English, except she kept saying “beauty parlor” because that was something that she really wanted to do. When we said that we could have a beauty parlor inside the department store, she was so excited! It was really cool to see her enthusiasm about the project and how it could incorporate her plans and goals.

The overall impression seems to be excitement and curiosity, and we’ve been surprised to see how innovative people seem to think the idea is. We will update again soon on our progress.

Getting adjusted to life in Dhaka has been a huge project in itself – the pace of life here is different than the pace of life at home. Yesterday there was a “hartal” which is basically a general strike, and we were forced to stay inside all day. We have had less access to the internet than we might have expected, not only because of unreliable internet connections, but also because of what they call “load shedding,” which is where the power goes off for hours at a time at any time of the day or night. So that’s been interesting to get used to, but we think we’re adjusting to it all pretty well.