Dinajpur

Hello all,
I just returned this morning from Dinajpur, where I have been for the past week. Dinajpur is in the northwest part of the country, near the Indian border. We left Friday morning; I was still slightly sick but stopped myself up for the 9-hour train ride. We crossed the Jumuna River, the biggest river I have ever seen. It took about half an hour to cross, and we could barely see the other side. You can check out my pictures. It was so interesting to think that this water is coming from the Himalayas. There were people riding on top of the train the entire time. I liked to get as much of my body out of the window as I could to cool off and to see as much as possible. I went with Adnan, Kate, and Kate’s translator Rejwan.

We stayed at one of BRAC’s training centers, called a TARC. Immediately upon moving into our room, Kate and I got a knock at the door of about 20 women who wanted to come in and chat. Also at the TARC was a teacher’s training session that all of these women were doing, and they brought their children and some of their mothers to look after the children. So they were our friends the entire week. I taught some of the kids to throw a Frisbee. One eight-year-old girl Sidi was so good, she got the forehand on the first try, something I haven’t seen anyone do! On our last night, there was a cultural show, and people sang and danced and played music. I was forced to sing in front of about 80 people- I sang Country Roads and You Are My Sunshine. Those of you that know me know that nobody should ever have to listen to me sing, but they seemed to love it. The women then dressed me up in a sari and did my makeup- look at the pictures, it is extremely frightening what they did to my eyebrows. They then dragged me around the TARC and took pictures with me and every single person. They also made their own henna from a bush on the grounds and then did Kate’s and my hands. Here it is popular to do the first knuckle of all the fingers and then something on the palm. On my palm the women decided to do an A and a K, a for Alyssa and K for Kate. This is supposed to last for three months. I am going to have a lot of explaining to do as to why I have an A and a K on my hand. I made Kate get the same on hers.

It was unbelievably wonderful to get out of Dhaka and into the country. Adnan and I spent our days wandering among quaint villages. Most people were just sitting in front of their homes, and we just started talking. I’ll attach a copy of our questionnaire. One thing I was really impressed with was that every single household we visited had a tubewell, even those that were very poor. We haven’t done any statistical analysis on our results yet, but I’d say around 60-70% of respondents had some kind of latrine, which I think is a great improvement in the past few years. Knowledge about sanitation and diseases varied greatly by household. There were some other issues that came up in conversations with people that made me feel more disillusioned with BRAC. I can share these personally or at a later time. Many people actually seemed to prefer other NGOs such as Grameen or ASA or small local NGOs.

People in the villages were incredibly friendly and hospitable. People who had so little would often offer us tea or fruit, one family even made us eggs and climbed up a coconut tree to give us the juice. People loved looking at pictures from my family- many of them wanted to keep the pictures, and I finally gave them up to the women who put henna on my hand. They would also love to have their pictures taken and then to look at them on the screen. Many people told us that they wanted to come to America someday, although the cost of a plane ticket is more than most of them will ever save.

We met one incredible family of a mother and two teenage girls, husband deceased. Girls here are often quiet, especially in the presence of men. But these girls were outspoken, got all the answers right, and seemed very intelligent. We returned a few days later to go with them to BRAC’s adolescent development center, where girls can go to play, sing, and dance and learn about issues like child marriage and acid throwing. Once again I had to sing for them. We met a lot of women in their mid twenties who had teenage children, married at age 12 or 13. Some people told us they had nothing to eat but rice and salt, could rarely afford even vegetables, never meat, but everyone seemed happy. Often our interviews were outside, and crowds of 30 or more would gather, with all the adults shouting different answers to the questions and telling personal, generally off-topic stories. Thus our records are not very exact and our method was not the most sound. However, we learned so much about these people and got some interesting stories. Besides doing interviews, we walked around local markets, swam in ponds, walked through the rice paddies under our umbrellas, sat at tea stalls, and went to Hindu temples.