Village people

Here are a few pictures of my Village trip:

This is a "rich" person's house. It has tin walls and a tin roof, and a solid wood door.

Kids and Moms hanging out outside a we come for the center meeting.

The scenery in the village.

Nice road view from the village. Palm trees and greenery everywhere.

At a center meeting with the ladies.

Everywhere we went, crowds of people, especially little kids, followed us around.

The shacks in the village. Not so rich villagers have houses made of hay.

One of the borrowers and ALL of her neighbors who came to see and hear the strange- looking foreigners talk.

My five- day village trip was quite a contrast from Dhaka.

The villages are quiet, serene, and the air is fresh and the space vast. The people out in the villages never see foreigners,so we always had quite the gathering around us at all times. It was like we were rock stars. Now I know what Hollywood people feel like. It's flattering, except for the fact that I generally hate being the center of attention. Especially when I was sick. The whole village knew I was having er... traveler's problems... and the little kids would come by my window and stare at me through the window while I was looking and feeling like crap. It got to the point where I had to go to the bathroom to hide for 20 minutes until they gave up and ran away.

Meeting the borrowers was the best part, to hear and listen to them talk about how their loan from Grameen has helped them prosper. These women are grateful and loyal to Grameen because Grameen provided them with capital to better care for their family. Even though by Western terms, the borrowers of Grameen are still living in "shacks", the successful ones had shacks with concrete floors, a Western toilet, a tv and a fridge. While they are still poor and still mostly illiterate, the economic stability that Grameen's loans provided proved to be the catalyst necessary for the borrowers' continual effort to try to improve their lives.

The sad thing about it all is that, at least in my village, the people are at the mercy of Mother Nature. Flooding devastates crops, causes river erosion, and destroys homes that the people painstakingly built EVERY YEAR. And the government has not made any efforts to try to mitigate the effects of flooding in the poor areas. Bangladesh is so corrupt that even if there was money earmarked for that type of a project, it most likely wouldn't get there anyways. When you're already poor, and then have to deal with Mother Nature kicking you in the butt all the time, life REALLY sucks.