Empowerment as Development

Finally, I see the sun.  A plane carried me away from the pollution and chaotic overpopulation of Dhaka to the south, to Bandarban, a city in the famous Chittagong Hill Tracts where life is a just a bit slower and density is a bit thinner.  A home to many indigenous ethnic minorities, several Burmese refugees (some 300,000) have migrated their way across the border into the CHT area.  Beyond providing endless textiles of hand-woven blankets and vibrant saris of brilliance, this migration brings individual tales of toil and collective voices of need – a problem for the UN, Bangladesh and the locals who call the land their own.

A Denver-based NGO, International Development Enterprises (IDE), has taken the challenge of advancing progress in this disparate area, and they’re doing development in an innovative way.  Paul Polak, founder and author of one of my now favorite book Out of Poverty, believes in the innate entrepreneurial spirit of individuals all over the world and its ability to empower the world’s poor to helpthemselves out of poverty.

IDE’s treadle pump irrigation product

Uchuno, a man with an insatiable smile and a quiet humility, shared his life.  He was elected as an IDE Demonstrator Farmer to show off the effects of their new product, the Pressure Treadle Pump.  The pump draws water from a nearby pond to a mechanical pump generated by the strength of Uchunu’s own legs, and pressurizes the water through a hose which can be sprayed over the entirety of his 3 acre plot of Papayas.  After the initial investment of 5,000 Taka, Uchunu made 70,000 Taka from just the first harvest of papayas which take about 8 months to maturity.  He makes 25 Taka per kilo of produce, which is picked up by a buyer from the city and taken to the market.  He receives no microcredit (although IDE has payment plan options for their products) and is now paid in advance of the harvest because of his proven prudent farming practices.

Standing at the center of an overwhelming crowd of curious graduate students who most likely know very little about cultivating papayas in the degraded soils of rural Bangladesh, Uchunu’s infectious smile is bursting with gratification as we gaze over his flourishing farmland.  IDE staff boast of his commendable work ethic and positive attitude to learn, patting him on the back as they translate “good man, good man”.  His sheepish smile is the most genuine humility I have seen in a while.  When I ask the name of his child, half-damp eyes accompany a gasp for air as he attempts to conveys his dreams for Maroma to be an English Teacher some day, maybe even a reporter for the newspaper to help tell the story of the Chittagong Hill Tract People.

I tread back across the fields of green, ogling the spontaneous growth of bananas and teek, and the perfection of  symmetry in Uchunu’s Papaya grove.  I’m inspired by his work ethic and abashed at my lack of connection to the food I eat everyday.  I’m confounded at the possibilities of partnership with so many good humans living all over the world. Uchunu’s prospering produce is quickly navigating the seas of  archaic yet swift word-of-mouth rural communication,  inspiring the likes of six neighboring farmers to cultivate Papaya with IDE irrigation products, while more than 200 farmers in the region are on a waiting list for the new products. IDE has achieved its goal of community-based, client-driven, market-based improvements in agricultural productivity for small-acreage farmers in rural Bangladesh.  I eagerly await the next installment of IDE’s projects empowering the poor.

General Wanderings

Colors.  Its the colors here that distinguish.  Rubbish springles the dusty roads, curious eyes glistin the periphery, burning trash, dirty rickshaws and immaculate smells (some putrid, some alluring) entertain my senses along the streets – these are commonalities among many impoverished landscapes.  Its the colors I will remember.  Among the billowing grays and browns of camoflauging poverty in the city bursts a multitude of oranges and reds, sea greens and sky blues, golden sparkles and silver twinkles.  Its all the Christmas i could ever have.

I looked out a window for 4 hours today.  I keep getting booted to the back of the van for lack of ability to speak my mind that we should all take turns in the rollercoaster ride along this terrible infrastructure.  The potholes and chutes too narrow don’t allow for anything but looking out the window.  To be honest, the rural landscape is a bit too enthralling to pass up for mindless crocheting or wordy Foreign Affairs magazines anyway.

Have you ever wondered what people think when they gaze out the window during a long road trip?  I wondered about all the grains of sand scattering the roadsides, and where does it come from?  I wondered what it felt like to work in the rice paddies, spreading seeds and praying for water.  I wondered when exactly the transformation in the West happened that defined prosperity and well-being with austere, colorless concrete shapes like rectangles and circles;  what happened to obnoxious pinks and greens and diamonds and sparkles that decorate the rickshaws and billboards here?  I wondered about my future.  I wondered about how much money could be made building more efficient bicycles with local materials for the rickshaw drivers here.  I wondered about this old man Rick I met in Denver and if he slept well last night.

I finally made it out of of Dhaka.  In the city, an incomparable pollution lingers; so heavy I can taste it, so thick I hadn’t yet seen the sun.  Now, gratefully, I enter the beauty of the rural landscapes of Bangladesh.  The shades of green blanketing the landscape in the squares and squares of rice patties.  The bursting brightness of saris draped over bushes and trees edging the cucumber plots.  The browns that bustle in and out of shops.  The neon green color that inhabits all the freshwater sources, intoxicated by pesticides and fertilizers and human waste.  The colors of roses red and violets blue painted all over the rickshaws and taxis.

Ethics of Research

ICDDRB, the International Center for Diarrheal Disease Research Bangladesh, is one of our key partners in this trip, and probably one of the best known International NGOs from Bangladesh exhibiting excellence in research.  What began as a study on the effects of Cholera (which originated in the Bay of Bengal 6,000 years ago) in 1960, ICDDRB has grown into a multi-faceted organization of both research and service, particularly noted for the longest standing ongoing health study in the world.  We traversed the winding, one-lane roads of the peri-urban ‘countryside’ for four hours, finally reaching Matlab, a city only 50 km outside of Dhaka, where ICDDRB has focused its Maternal Child Health – Fertility Program since 1977.

With partners like the UNDP and Johns Hopkins School of Public Health providing millions, the funding available is anything but inconspicuous.  Yet, as a humanist and perhaps naive student of sustainable development in a program that lauds the importance of bottom-up, community-based approaches to development, the use of ICDDRB’s funding presents ethical dilemmas of which I haven’t deciphered yet.  Of the 250,000 people in the Matlab surveillance area, half are provided free services in the health and fertility program (including birth control, hospital services, checkups, physicals), while the other half are left as the “control” group as for comparison purposes.  Although the other inhabitants of the Matlab area can receive some emergency healthcare from the government, literally 125,000 people have been ostracized from a donated service for purposes of research.

The demographic and health research that has come out of the Matlab study is breaking barriers.   30 years of ongoing observations afford the analysis of the effects of a particular health program and fertility promotion: Life expectancy has raised to 69 from 55 in 1966; the infant mortality rate has decreased to 41 from 120 in 1966; total fertility rate in women is down to 2.6 in the variable group while the control group still lingers around 4; and keratosis, diarrhea and other communicable diseases are significantly lower in the variable group than the control group.   With valuable statistical information like this, ICDDRB has powerful policy-changing ability, like no other NGO we have seen in this country yet.

But at what cost?  Utilitarian arguments of sacrifice of one for the better of the whole orbit my mind.  Faces, hands, wrinkles, and smiles dance in my memory as I drive away from beneficiary villages, through the villages of exception.

There are many forms to development, and ICDDRB is one that is receiving accolades the world over for their work; how do I categorize this experience in my education?

Primary Healthcare: For all, for free

I’m being graciously hosted at a socialist compound called Gonoshasthaya Kendra, the People’s Public Health.  Amidst the chaos of the liberation war from Pakistan and the catastrophe of deadly cyclones in the early 70s, six ambitious men set up some tents on the side of the road about an hour North of Dhaka and began providing basic health services to anyone who needed it, for free.  Today, that intractable faith in humanity and equality has flourished into a 140-acre social compound which houses its own water-treatment center, a university training community health workers, and several vegetable cultivations among many others.  GK is taking local villagers, mainly women, and training them, certifiably, to return back to their local villages to serve their people.  GK believes Comprehensive Primary Health Care is a human right, and in that, they provide free services to almost 1 million people.

An afternoon of freedom was announced and I took the rare opportunity to invigorate my body with some exercise.  Jogging along a brick path built by some of the members alongside the compound’s natural lake in a dusky blue light at 5 AM gave me just what I needed.  The tropical trees towered over the path while colorful saris and tunics scurried their way home for tea time, always making sure to basfully giggle and say hello to the strange white girl.  One woman waited until after I passed to yell, “running… WHY?”  I couldn’t think of an appropriate response.

GK has its own pharmacy, producing several antibiotics and essential drugs.  Although free for most poor members, its about 15 Taka ($0.20US) for most prescriptions for outsiders.  An x-ray will run you 100 Taka, about $1.40US.  Everyone on the coupound participates in the gardening and cultivation of vegetables.  And most all of the paramedics in training and the teaching professors livin on the compound as well.  Roaming the halls of the university you find this quite similar to any institution in the US – the library is filled with procrastinators on facebook, the hallway is a social nightmare of flirting and fashion, the walls are plastered with lectures and events – although grades are posted too!  The difference is seen in the visual effects: these stained walls and noisy recylced fans represent moer of an idea of sustainable development to me than the perfectly manicured lawns and ostentatious Smart Boards of the University of Denver.

Microfinance in Action

They meet once a week, although in a community like this, meeting is commonplace.  This meeting has intention, beginning each time with a declaration of 17 oaths each of the women vow to keep in order for retention of their membership in this microfinance group.  Simple recitation of the oaths, let alone its individual connotations may scream ‘socialism!’ to bank members in the West; however, these women rise in confidence, in unison, “We will send our children to school.  We will adopt family planning practices and keep our family size small.  We will construct sanitary latrines in our households and only use them for defecation….”  I begin to realize, this is much more than a loan.

Leelee, a bright young woman no more than 30 shares her story: 23,000 Taka (~$300US) is her current loan; she pays back 600 Taka per week from the rice cultivation she is doing on the land she was able to lease with the loan.  Others use their loans to buy rickshaws for their husbands to drive or livestock to raise and sell off in Dhaka.  A sea of smiles and saris surrounds me with valiant tales to tell and progress to expose.  I watch with alacrity as the committee leader gathers the weekly payments in the center of the cirlce, counting bills into a pan.  School has just let out; all the children and husbands are there to observe the strange fair-skinned strangers.  Globalization has made this confluence of culture particularly interesting as many of the local men have cell phones – equipped of course with cameras – technology flashes both ways now.

As I sit, barefoot, cross-legged on this meager tweed mat in the beating sun amid 25 entrepreneurial, rural Bengali women, a pair of wrinkled, shy eyes lit up next to me.  Beginning with a universally-understood smile, glances and giggles were exchanged with the woman whom I came to know as Shulie.  Shulie had been in the BRAC microfinance group for 20 years now.  “Now, men and women, everything is equal.  Everything is better.”  I wonder if she would tell us otherwise – the BRAC supervisor sat five feet from me and administered all the translating.  Nonetheless, here she sat, on her own, representing her family as the receiver of loans and distributor of funds to her husband; a position highly unliklely 30 years ago.  When prompted to return any questions to the foreign audience sharing the meeting this morning, the women only responded, “There are so many more people to help.  Please help all the poor people in all the villages.”

At home in my Wanderlust

In all my travels, I have cheated my way, inching across the globe in short flights or overland bus rides; this adventure has afforded my my first jetlag experience, after a 16 hour flight with a 4 hour leg on each end and long layovers between, accounting for almost 2 full days of travel.  After chasing light for days, the sun finally rose over a blanket of clouds at 30,000 feet, Himalayan peaks giving their morning salutations in the distance as we flew into Dhaka.

Day 1 in the most densely-populated city in the world: not all that bad.  We’re in the diplomatic/university neighborhood so its not as crowded and the poverty hides itself.  Although, we did wander away from our hotel yesterday and found ourselves lost in the market amidst Sari’s and tunics, tuk-tuks and textiles… and lots of staring eyes.  The women here are strikingly beautiful, so I mostly stare back.  We happened upon a group of young men playing Cricket in a field of trash heaps and goats.  Arie and Eric made friends quite quickly after impressing the Bengali boys with their batting skills (although the bowling attempts weren’t quite so good), as us women sat alongside cheering, the Bengali boys agape beside us.  Our sunny, sporty afternoon with the locals was cut short by some overly cautious US EMbassy security guards worried we were taking pictures of the embassy building and demanding to see our cameras…

Our afternoon was a surprise visit with Chairperson Abed, the founder and director of the largest NGO in the world – BRAC.  An indigenously-led aid organization which started as an emergency relief organization in 1970 after the cyclones, flourishing into today’s  largest bank in the country, its own primary education center, a poultry-rearing business, and so much more.  The name BRAC adorns buildings and billboards all over the city; Abed adorns the room with his humble spirit and fervent belief that poor people have the innovation and the will to make their own good choices – resources just need to be made available.

An Indian dinner I couldn’t even appreciate amidst the onsetting jetlag and a cool ride home on the back of a bicylce rickshaw (threatening my life with every peddle in the middle of traffic even crazier than Cairo) led me to a dramatic collapse on my bed, here at the Asian Pacific Hotel at 7:30.  I awoke to the Muezzin’s call to prayer at 5 AM and find myself here, with a meager cup of Bengali coffee in a city waiting to be explored.

Smiles and saris, tunics and tuk-tuks, I am at home again in my wanderlust.

A new nook to cozy up in

My wanderlust for cultures has carried me to many corners of the world, only to continually fill an insatiable thirst for further adventures.  I get to do just that in nineteen days when the cohort will travel to Bangladesh, a particular corner I have yet to explore.  Its rapidly approaching.   And I have become all too aware of how quickly time flies as a busy graduate student (and how quickly you learn to appreciate weekends).

With local departments like International Development Enterprises out of Denver and global NGOs like BRAC and Grameen Bank, we get the opportunity to explore various strategies and approaches to development in a young nation, with one of the most dense populations, experiencing interesting advancements out of extreme poverty and inequality.  I’m curious…

In preparation, we’re reading the stories of the two most famous NGOs in Bangladesh, Grameen Bank, which started the largely replicated microfinance fad through the innovations of Mohammed Yunus, and BRAC, one of the largest NGOs in the world, winning the fight against poverty in all sectors and several countries.  I’m learning about Bangladesh’s  independence, the restless soul of its people, the failures of its government and outside forces to expel inequality, and its ongoing progression to prosperity in the future.  I’m curious…