July 3rd

Today I was sick in bed. It isn’t too bad; I have my appetite mostly back now. Hopefully it will be gone by tomorrow, because we are going to the field for a week. We (Me, Adnan, Kate, and Kate’s translator) will be going to Dinajpur, in the northwest part of the country. We’ll go by train; I think it is about 12 hours.

Yesterday Adnan, Kate and I went to BRAC’s limb and brace center. We spent a long time talking to the doctor there about the place, and we saw all the prosthetic limbs and braces being custom made on site, with very little technology, and then saw people learning to use them. The doctor said that 10% of Bangladeshis are crippled, which seems like an astounding amount. I think a lot of these accidents are from highway incidents, and the second cause is uncontrolled diabetes. A lot of the beggars on the streets are missing legs, and many have no idea that the place exists, because they are already at capacity and don’t advertise. Later that afternoon, Adnan and I met a man missing a leg on the street, and we decided to tell him about the place that we just visited. It turned out he is a rickshaw puller, I’m not sure how that is possible! Anyways, he had never heard of this place, and he said something like, “Well I am illiterate and I don’t think I would be able to navigate the system there, but if you’ll have mercy on me and take me there I’d be much obliged.” So we got his name and address and plan on taking him there next weekend when we return from the field. This is what I wanted to do- really have a direct effect on someone’s life.
Recently I have taken to buying street kids food when they beg, maybe this is making a small difference in their lives. They say that they are hungry, I’m still not sure if this is just something that their parents send them to do to get money or a sort of game for them or if they really are starving, but some fruit and some potato chips can’t hurt.

It has been raining a lot here, I saw in the newspaper that a lot of streets in Dhaka are flooded, but I haven’t seen anything too bad yet. Some of the houses in the slum that we visited originally, that I can see from BRAC, are dangerously close to the rising lake levels. I’m not sure how it will be in Dinajpur, but I hope that we are able to get around.

I heard an interesting fact, I can't be sure how true it is, but that the population density of Bangladesh is as if the entire world's population lived in the US. That is a lot of people!

Happy 4th everyone, I'll be on a train. I'm thinking about all of you and your rodeos, BBQs, picnics, watermelon, swimming, and fireworks!