A Visit Up North
I'm back in Dhaka after a week in Dinajpur, northwestern Bangladesh. The lychees are sweeter up there, and I saw a lot of encouraging things. I also had the joy of flying on Bangladesh's national airline, Biman, currently near-bankruptcy, but still running delayed and rickety flights around the country. Walking across the windy tarmac to a small plane, carrying my laptop and hiker backpack, I had one of those vain "aha, an NGO worker" moments.
Here's something I wrote a few days ago:
May 8, 2006 6:35 pm
A Little Bit of Denmark in Dinajpur
Dinajpur is a beautiful part of Bangladesh. We have been out in its scenery all day, driving along raised roads flanked by mid-sized rain trees, and beyond this, bright green rice paddies. The green is electric, when the sun sets, the stalks are shot through with gold.
I’m staying at another missions compound, which has its own tone and busyness. Not only is there the SUPOTH (CRWRC partner) office and the Bangladesh Lutheran Mission head office, but there is also a primary school for sponsor children. Tonight I’ve been watching the photographer set up the familiar “sponsor child” photos of the new students. He takes flowers out of girls’ hair, makes them stand in front of a green hedge, and places their arms at their side, all to ensure accurate documentation. The children are so stunned—by the camera, the big buildings and the important people at the compound—that very few of them smile. Once they’re released from the registration exercises, they scamper off to play with their friends.
I am staying in the compound’s guesthouse, built and occupied by Danish missionaries and their families. Once again I am surrounded by the post-liberation-war décor which reminds me of grandparents’ cottages. Mix-matched 1970s simplicity. Except this time it’s Danish. I find landscape posters on the walls with blond children and Danish Bible verses. On the couches are carefully embroidered cushions, clearly a month’s evening activity for a missionary wife.
These days the guest house is run by a Malaysian missionary, Moses, who is ethnically south Indian. This means, he says with a smile, that he can pass as a local. Moses is a pleasant, soft-spoken man, who joins me for meals every day. He tells me about Asian history (I am so uninformed) and about local food. Yogurt is his current interest, or rather, he is interested in acquiring some for me because I mentioned that I like it. Really, I should know better, because here in Bangladesh any statement of my needs prompts provision in excess. This morning Moses presented me with yogurt that he made from a powdered milk base. It was pretty good. Tomorrow he has a new plan, to get one of the local children to bring milk from their cow so that I will have fresher yogurt. No protest of mine will stop this mission.
I Can’t Solve Your Problems
So I am officially here in Dinajpur to help out with grants and collect more stories. But today I was out in the field just doing a lot of looking. This is a very poor area of Bangladesh. There are many low-caste Hindus here, many of whom work as day-labourers in the rice paddies. Seasonal unemployment, or “monga,” is their biggest problem. Between the months of September to November there is no labour, which means no money, which means no food.
Personally, I cannot process this information, even though I’m here. What is it like to be this desperate?
One of the grants I’m working on is one that would provide these people with food-for-work support. During this Monga period they would help build roads or run small businesses and in turn, they would receive enough food to feed their family through the tough months. To understand the situation better, I was sent to meet a few of these communities. Based on my previous interviews, I expected this to happen in a very controlled environment, in a small tin house with maybe four or five people. But these communities do not have a SUPOTH structure yet, so we arrived to meet an excited crowd.
This was exactly the kind of situation I had long feared. I got out of the air-conditioned van to greet a crowd of desperate people. You could count the children’s ribs. The men were dark and bent from years in the fields. The women’s sharis were torn and dirty. When they saw me, the foreigner, their eyes lit up. They offered me snacks, brought me a chair and crowded around expectantly. “What will you do?” they asked “How will you help us during Monga?” I wanted to disappear. First of all, I didn’t want them to think that a foreigner was going to give them solution to their problems. Secondly, how could I explain to them the “action” that I was going to take? The truth is that I will be sitting at my desk writing a proposal to a Canadian donor, in the hopes that CRWRC will get the money and, through SUPOTH, set up the program for next year’s Monga. I didn’t have the Bangla skills for this. And how do you explain to illiterate people the process of NGO funding?
Everyone was looking to me for direction, including the SUPOTH staff who had brought me there. I decided that the best thing to do was to emphasize that I was a short-term visitor, and that SUPOTH was going to be helping them long-term. Then I told them I would record their comments and share them with people in Dhaka and Canada. They did speak up, with fiery eyes and pointing fingers.
“During Monga, we want to work,” said one man. “We want to know how to run poultry farms. Or start tree nurseries. Don’t just give us money. We want work too.”
Another woman jumped in “I only have one piece of cloth to wear. And my husband only brings home 50 taka [$1] a day, when he actually does work. How can I live?”
This was too much for me. I slumped in the back seat as we made our bumpy way home. I was upset that I had been put in that uncomfortable situation.
But then again, why shouldn’t I experience this? This was inequality at its rawest form: you have, we need. What will you do?
Here's something I wrote a few days ago:
May 8, 2006 6:35 pm
A Little Bit of Denmark in Dinajpur
Dinajpur is a beautiful part of Bangladesh. We have been out in its scenery all day, driving along raised roads flanked by mid-sized rain trees, and beyond this, bright green rice paddies. The green is electric, when the sun sets, the stalks are shot through with gold.
I’m staying at another missions compound, which has its own tone and busyness. Not only is there the SUPOTH (CRWRC partner) office and the Bangladesh Lutheran Mission head office, but there is also a primary school for sponsor children. Tonight I’ve been watching the photographer set up the familiar “sponsor child” photos of the new students. He takes flowers out of girls’ hair, makes them stand in front of a green hedge, and places their arms at their side, all to ensure accurate documentation. The children are so stunned—by the camera, the big buildings and the important people at the compound—that very few of them smile. Once they’re released from the registration exercises, they scamper off to play with their friends.
I am staying in the compound’s guesthouse, built and occupied by Danish missionaries and their families. Once again I am surrounded by the post-liberation-war décor which reminds me of grandparents’ cottages. Mix-matched 1970s simplicity. Except this time it’s Danish. I find landscape posters on the walls with blond children and Danish Bible verses. On the couches are carefully embroidered cushions, clearly a month’s evening activity for a missionary wife.
These days the guest house is run by a Malaysian missionary, Moses, who is ethnically south Indian. This means, he says with a smile, that he can pass as a local. Moses is a pleasant, soft-spoken man, who joins me for meals every day. He tells me about Asian history (I am so uninformed) and about local food. Yogurt is his current interest, or rather, he is interested in acquiring some for me because I mentioned that I like it. Really, I should know better, because here in Bangladesh any statement of my needs prompts provision in excess. This morning Moses presented me with yogurt that he made from a powdered milk base. It was pretty good. Tomorrow he has a new plan, to get one of the local children to bring milk from their cow so that I will have fresher yogurt. No protest of mine will stop this mission.
I Can’t Solve Your Problems
So I am officially here in Dinajpur to help out with grants and collect more stories. But today I was out in the field just doing a lot of looking. This is a very poor area of Bangladesh. There are many low-caste Hindus here, many of whom work as day-labourers in the rice paddies. Seasonal unemployment, or “monga,” is their biggest problem. Between the months of September to November there is no labour, which means no money, which means no food.
Personally, I cannot process this information, even though I’m here. What is it like to be this desperate?
One of the grants I’m working on is one that would provide these people with food-for-work support. During this Monga period they would help build roads or run small businesses and in turn, they would receive enough food to feed their family through the tough months. To understand the situation better, I was sent to meet a few of these communities. Based on my previous interviews, I expected this to happen in a very controlled environment, in a small tin house with maybe four or five people. But these communities do not have a SUPOTH structure yet, so we arrived to meet an excited crowd.
This was exactly the kind of situation I had long feared. I got out of the air-conditioned van to greet a crowd of desperate people. You could count the children’s ribs. The men were dark and bent from years in the fields. The women’s sharis were torn and dirty. When they saw me, the foreigner, their eyes lit up. They offered me snacks, brought me a chair and crowded around expectantly. “What will you do?” they asked “How will you help us during Monga?” I wanted to disappear. First of all, I didn’t want them to think that a foreigner was going to give them solution to their problems. Secondly, how could I explain to them the “action” that I was going to take? The truth is that I will be sitting at my desk writing a proposal to a Canadian donor, in the hopes that CRWRC will get the money and, through SUPOTH, set up the program for next year’s Monga. I didn’t have the Bangla skills for this. And how do you explain to illiterate people the process of NGO funding?
Everyone was looking to me for direction, including the SUPOTH staff who had brought me there. I decided that the best thing to do was to emphasize that I was a short-term visitor, and that SUPOTH was going to be helping them long-term. Then I told them I would record their comments and share them with people in Dhaka and Canada. They did speak up, with fiery eyes and pointing fingers.
“During Monga, we want to work,” said one man. “We want to know how to run poultry farms. Or start tree nurseries. Don’t just give us money. We want work too.”
Another woman jumped in “I only have one piece of cloth to wear. And my husband only brings home 50 taka [$1] a day, when he actually does work. How can I live?”
This was too much for me. I slumped in the back seat as we made our bumpy way home. I was upset that I had been put in that uncomfortable situation.
But then again, why shouldn’t I experience this? This was inequality at its rawest form: you have, we need. What will you do?
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