First Grameen (village) visit

So I had said at the end of my last post that I would be adding pictures, but the internet connection here makes it difficult to upload pictures and I will be putting them on Facebook instead. Mom, make sure you show them to Grandma and Grandpa!

The first two weeks of the internship are common amongst all incoming Interns, so I have been enjoying time with my colleagues from around the world.  On Tuesday the 18th we traveled about 50 km out of Dhaka, to the Dhankora branch of Grameen Bank in Saturia district.  Before I get into the details of my day in the village, I think it might be helpful to briefly outline how Grameen Bank works.

In 1976, Prof. Muhammad Yunus started the Grameen Bank Project in the village of Jobra, near Chittagong where he was a professor of economics.  In 1983, the Grameen Bank was established as an independent, specialized bank in Bangladesh.  Because it was established by a law, the government hold 5% of the shares of the Bank.  The other 95% is owned by the borrowers themselves, the poor people of Bangladesh. About 97% of the Bank's borrowers are women, meaning the Bank is largely owned by the most historically disenfranchised people of the country.  The basic differences between the Grameen Bank and other commercial banks are that, instead of lending money to those who are already wealthy and have assets which can be offered as collateral against the loans, this Bank offers loans free from collateral to the poorest people, who cannot access the financial services of traditional banks. 

There are several levels which comprise the Grameen Bank organigram. There is one head office, located in Dhaka, 40 zonal offices each with a zonal manager, 268 area offices each with an area manager, and 2,565 branch offices with a branch manager, a second officer/accountant, six to seven centre managers, and a messenger.  Each branch office is responsible for about 60-70 centres, each one of which is made up of about eight to ten groups.  Groups are always of a common gender, similar age and social status, and typically have 5-7 borrowers.  Each group has a group chairman and secretary, who are elected for a one-year term.  Each centre has a centre leader elected from among the group chairmen, also for one year.  In total, the Bank services 144,619 centres, 1,284,606 groups, and over 8.3 million borrowers.

We visited one branch, Dhankora branch, which has a serial number of 260-0986.  This means that it was the 260th branch established by the bank, in September 1986.  The branch was recently divided into two, so Dhankora branch currently serves 54 centres, 560 groups, and 3,895 borrowers.  The current total outstanding loans are 34.2 million BDT (Bangladesh Taka) or approx. 488,571 USD, while the borrowers of the branch have saved 107.8 million BDT, or 1,540,000 USD.  The net profit of the Branch is 2.5 million BDT. 16 of the borrowers' children are currently attending post-secondary institutions on higher education loans.
 
Many of the borrowers we met at the Dhankora centre, centre 94,  joined at the beginning of the centre about 15 years ago.  Their current loan sizes vary from 4,000 BDT (57 USD) to 70,000 BDT (1,000 USD).  Most are involved in agricultural activities, some bought cows, one is involved in carpentry and another owns a wash shop.  One borrower rents land with her loan, and if the owner of the land cannot pay her back at the end of the year she gets to keep growing crops.  Most grow one crop at a time, throughout the whole year.  All are able to repay their loans, and on the day we visited one woman had submitted a new loan proposal, while another had paid her final loan installment and will soon be able to apply for another.  All the women were shy when we got there, but all were eager to share their stories. 

After the meeting, the centre leader took us to a few of the borrowers' houses.  In one house, the lender happily shared puffed rice and biscuits, which were very sweet.  Another was very proud of her two clocks and the electricity servicing the fan on the roof.  The final house we visited actually had a tv! Of course my camera died on the way to the village so I don't have pictures of the houses, but I will borrow them from the other interns and add them to my album.  My Indian friend took a few pictures of me petting one of the borrowers' cows, and we got pictures at the centre meeting with the women and another joined us for a picture in front of her house.  By this time we had to start the drive back to Dhaka, and the face of the woman who wanted to show off her home as well was actually quite devastating! She was very sad not to be able to show off how far she had come in the last 15 years.  On Sunday we leave for a five-day trip, so I hope to be able to see all of their houses and we will actually get to attend the repayment of loans instead of arriving at the end of the meeting as we did this trip.

In Savar district right outside of Dhaka district there is the Bangladesh Independence Monument and memorial, an 84 acre property with a huge monument, a mosque, an artificial pool, and acres upon acres of bright green trees. It is by far the most beautiful (and clean!) part of Bangladesh that I have seen so far. Apparently about 4 million people died in the struggle for independence from India, and they are very patriotic about their independence and the preceding movements.  The monument actually commemorates the seven phases of independence dating back about 20 years, if I remember correctly.  That is about all I have to say about the day trip!

Today we visited the Nobel Prize exhibition at Grameen Bank head office, a few pictures of which I posted on Facebook.  Across from the exhibition is the Nobel archive, which is a GIANT room FILLED with accolades and prizes and honorariums for the Bank, but mostly for Muhammad Yunus.  I did take a few pictures of my favorites, but I wasn't able to find the honorary law degree he received from Carleton on September 1st, 2010, the day I met him.  It is either in his office, at the Yunus Centre, or at one of the other sites housing some of his honors.  I tried to get a picture of the room itself but it is hard to tell its size; just know it is quite incredible. 

I finally unpacked this afternoon! I feel much better to not be living out of my suitcases and to be a bit more organized.  Although I did get pretty sick when I arrived, I was much less stuffy and coughy today so I am also happy about that. I have a don't ask, don't tell policy with the sizeable bugs in my bathroom; if they don't get too close to me they don't get squished.  It appears that there are two of them, and I imagine them as this little old bug couple so I would really rather not kill them. Aside from those in the bathroom, there are mostly just several mosquitos who try to harass me.  Since the Bank is providing us with bed nets on our longer trip next week, I set mine up in my room to prevent most bites.  The sneaky little creatures did get me during my afternoon nap the other day when I didn't have it around my bed, so I have a perfect triangle of bites on my hand and on my forehead. 

We were planning to go to Cox's Bazaar this weekend, which is the longest beach in the world.  We needed seven bus tickets and could only get six, so we have had to postpone that trip.  We chose this weekend since there is nothing for us to do tomorrow so we have a three-day weekend. Although it would have been great to lie on the beach, it is about 8-10 hours away and we would get back Saturday night, in time to turn around for another 8-10 hour journey to the branches where, in groups of three, we will be staying for five days.  I am going with the Italian couple Daniela and Marco, who were very thankful that I volunteered to come with them. Their English is not very good and they don't really socialize with many of the other interns, since very few of them speak good English either. They are a lot of fun and I am looking forward to spending more time with them! Marco is actually writing his Master's thesis on microfinance so he is very interested in everything, and Daniela is fascinated by the whole experience. 

As I mentioned in my first post, we are mostly here to learn. I confirmed today that we will not actually be contributing anything, so I am going to try to spend 4 weeks at the Bank and be of use to the Trust for two months instead of six weeks.  My coordinator, Zakaria (pronounced JaKAria), is going to arrange for me to visit Grameen Kalyan (health), Grameen Shikkha (education), Grameen Shakti (energy) and Grameen Danone, but that really won't take more than a few days.  I'll keep you posted!  Much love for now.

I'M HERE!

I got through security pretty quickly and enjoyed a pint of Canadian with a salad, waiting for my plane to board.  Of course, boarding didn’t happen… we were informed that the flight was delayed, and then when it did finally arrive from Washington there were maintenance issues etc… when we did finally get on and get in the air, the captain said that had we been on the ground another 1.5 minutes we would have been cancelled! Got to Washington way late, and of course missed my flight. By this time I had befriended a great couple named Eleanor and Jamie, who are moving to Australia for three years while Eleanor does her Law degree in Melbourne! We also ended up befriending a nice older Sri Lankan man whom Jamie affectionately referred to as Uncle Sam (USA joke intended), and a guy named Tahir from Montreal (now in Ottawa) who was going to visit family in Pakistan.  We were all supposed to catch Qatar flight 52 on the 12^th, and thankfully were all able to get on the same flight the next day. We were all at the same hotel in Washington, and all of us except for Uncle Sam went out to do a bit of sightseeing in DC before catching our night flight on the 13^th.  We took a bus into town from the airport (to which we shuttled from the hotel), which unfortunately took almost an hour so we didn’t have as much time as we were hoping.  We walked around and saw the outside of the Smithsonian museums on our way to the Washington memorial.  We were looking for the Lincoln thinger but ended up at an identical-looking one for Jefferson instead… but it looks the same in my pictures!  After a certain amount of trouble at the airport, we all got through with boarding passes and I enjoyed a stuffed broccoli and spinach pizza-type thing and a Ben and Jerry’s before boarding.  Of course none of us were sitting together, but I was able to find Eleanor and Jamie once we’d gone through security in Doha which in itself was an epic adventure! They hadn’t been confirmed from Doha to Melbourne, but as far as I know they did get on the flight.  We paid  to get access to this fancy lounge in the Doha airport, where I took a much needed shower after the 12 hour flight.  I also wandered into duty-free and found a "learn to speak Bengali" DVD which ended up being a waste of money since they speak Bangla here. Oops!

My arrival in Dhaka was chaotic, to say the least.  It's one thing to talk about population density and completely another to experience it.  I was to meet up with a contact named Sana, but I couldn't find her and, idiot, didn't write down her phone number from Facebook! As awful as this sounds, to me most of the people here look the same and I was very overwhelmed.  So of course I couldn't access it to call her and figure out where she was, and I was uncertain what to do as my flight was over 2 hours late. I met a great Muslim man from Jordan travelling to Dhaka for a conference on the afterlife on my flight from Doha, and I have made plans to meet up with him again in the next weeks before he returns to Doha on his way home.  Anyways, this man (whose name is on a piece of paper in my piles somewhere) knew I was worried about not being able to find Sana, so the people meeting him arranged my travel to the hotel.  Thankfully I didn't need to take advantage of their hospitality because another intern was arriving around the same time, and the hotel at which I am staying was there with a car to pick her up so I just drove with them.  About the same time I started digging frantically through my bags for my converters to plug in my computer and call her, I got a call from the front desk that she was on the line.  Although I could tell she was (quite reasonably having waited 4 hours at the airport) frustrated, I know she was glad I was safe.  I plan to take her out for lunch or dinner as soon as possible to make up for it!

My hotel room is relatively small, but comfortable. I have a door that locks and a bed to sleep in, so I'm happy! I also have a bathroom with a shower nozzle in the wall, so  the floor in the bathroom is always wet but the hotel provides bathroom sandals, which I try not to take too far from the doorway. I also have a small fridge and plan to wander down into the Bazaar tonight in search of milk and water to store in it.  I had some trouble with the room service guy communication-wise and ended up paying him 16 USD for two bottles of water... which should have been about 2 USD in total... another oops! The other interns with whom I started training today thought that was pretty hilarious, and I don't think I will live it down until they leave =P

Twelve of us started today, most for six weeks and a few for four, three or two weeks.  It did make me feel quite good because most of the information we were given about the basic structure of the Bank and the Grameen Family of organizations I already knew. The Bank hosts about 11,000 interns in a year, and right now (including us) there are about 80-85 interns at different stages in the program. We arrived by rickshaw (I was too scared to pull out my camera, but I will overcome that and get you some footage of the wild ride!) at 8:40, prepared for a 9 am start... and discovered that the work day is 10-6! At this point it was Tatiana and I, the intern I had come with from the airport. We waited until about 9:40 and were pointed up to the eighth floor, and in the course of the next hour the other ten interns arrived.  Tomorrow we don't start until 10:30 or 11! It seems silly to not take advantage of the full days, but it has quickly become clear that they are going to facilitate whatever efforts we make.  It is up to me to do however much work I will, and beyond the day and 5-7 day village trips it is up to me to say which other Grameen organizations I would like to visit.  Right away I can say that I will be pushing to visit the Grameen Danone factory to learn all I can about Shokti Doi, the yogurt they have developed for the poor children of Bangladesh.  Grameen Danone is also the first social business, so I am very interested to meet with the office and factory to learn more about their operations as such.  I will also try to visit one of the places that produces Grameen Check, the line of textiles exported by Grameen Knitwear.  Grameen Kalyan, or Grameen Health, is also an area of interest for me, as is Grameen Shikkha (Education).  Grameen Shakti (Energy) is really involved in sustainable energy production for the poor, so I will also look at that. I was originally interested in the application of microcredit to refugees, but I think I will wait to see what develops over the next few weeks before I finalize looking at the role of citizenship in access to credit.

I know everyone who knows of my picky eating habits wants to know if I'm starving yet- surprisingly, no! I forced myself to eat what was offered on the airplanes, and it was all spicier than I am used to but I managed.  I didn't do much other than sleep the first day at the hotel, so I had a few of the snacks I brought for a midnight dinner.  I'm told breakfast is the same every morning, and I will have to get back to you on what it is called! They have toast and eggs (which I can't eat) as well as a delicious Naan-type thing and a potato-based dish. I will probably end up getting some cereal, although I did bring Carnation instant breakfasts to last me an eternity so maybe not.  We have been told of three lunch options, there is the Western Grill, which has Bangla versions of burgers and chicken etc and is where we ate today.  Next door is a place called Treat, and other than that we have been told to stick to the hotel for lunch. 

Most of our day today was basics about the Bank, and much of it was repeated by different people and the videos we watched after lunch.  Tomorrow I believe the only things we will do are some discussions and more details about the Grameen loan and savings products.  It doesn't appear that there is all that much work for us to do, it is mostly a learning opportunity.  So, learn I will =)

I'm going to do a separate post with pictures as this one is getting quite long.  And then I'm going to join the interns for dinner, and head pretty quickly to bed!