The end of mango season

I was ready to leave Dhaka. But my emotions were – and remain – more than mixed. It’s like I kept them bottled up for two months, and in recent days I’ve allowed somebody to shake them up, down, around and, well, not quite back to where we started. And now I’m left trying to make sense of it all…

My eight weeks there represent double my longest stretch previously spent in a developing country, although I hesitate to compare Costa Rica to Bangladesh, not least because Costa Rica has no army while Bangladesh is run by a military caretaker government. Or because most people in Costa Rica can read while nearly half of Bangladeshis remain illiterate. Or because in Costa Rica I felt perfectly comfortable wearing a sundress on a hot day, yet in Bangladesh I wouldn’t dream of wearing anything Western unless it had sleeves and I paired it with a scarf.

No luck in comparing Costa Rica and Bangladesh. How about Egypt?

I visited Cairo immediately following Dhaka, thanks to my good fortune – for countless reasons – in marrying an Egyptian American with close family there. Usually when I visit Egypt I’m struck by the poverty, the increasing prevalence of veiled women and teenage girls, the pollution, the hectic traffic and the constant noise. Usually I’m struck by how different Egypt is from the States.

But this time Cairo was a welcome transition between Dhaka and Chicago (my hometown and my next destination). Cairo did not feel dirty, crowded or intimidating. Instead it somehow felt cosmopolitan, Western (they’ve even got a Starbucks now!), and – I never thought I would say this – organized. Sure, women were veiled, but many were out until midnight or later. The traffic was crazy, but cars did not have to navigate around animals, hundreds of pedestrians or jam-packed rickshaws. Even if they did, there were often three or four lanes. And there were a few children trying to sell cotton candy or Kleenex, but I was not followed by a half-naked, disabled children asking for spare change with their one good hand.

I hear that India would have provided a good comparison to Bangladesh, but my trip there was cancelled when Kolkata flooded earlier this summer. So it’s really difficult for me to contextualize Bangladesh.

But it’s not hard for me to admit that there are things I loved about living and working there. There are even things that I miss.

I miss being constantly surrounded by people, no matter where I am or what time of day or night it is.

I miss walking outside my home and having four rickshaw drivers anxiously awaiting my arrival and eager to take me wherever I need to go, even if they have no idea how to get there.

I miss anticipating Gloria! - if everybody wants you, why isn’t anybody calling?! – during aerobics class at Dazzle, the ladies-only gym I joined. I miss laughing when the Macarena inevitably made its second appearance during each one-hour class.

I miss talking with disadvantaged students and dedicated teachers about their problems, their dreams, and their idea of what a good school is.

I miss visiting villages where men, women and children are daily managing A Fine Balance between hope and despair, taking small steps to improve their own situation and the lives of those around them.

I miss struggling every day with my own response – or lack thereof – to extreme poverty.

I miss the mangos, especially the seasonal Choli variety, which became a mainstay in my diet and a sweet source of joy on even the most trying days. Okay, I really miss the mangos.

And I miss Parveen and Rashida, the two maids in my home there, who shed tears and called me their sister – in English – upon my departure.

Yet I do not miss sidestepping goat dung and hopping over chunks of missing sidewalk. And I don’t miss averting the eyes of curious men and constantly ensuring that I have my scarf properly covering my chest and shoulders while cursing myself for losing my sunglasses. I do not miss jumping out of the way of motorcycles whose drivers grew impatient with streets. I do not miss having to arrange safe transport to and from my destination hours in advance of meeting friends for dinner. And I will never miss stumbling upon grown men passing water with their backs turned to me.

Some experiences from this summer defy easy categorization, but they are ingrained in my memory. I cannot forget, for instance, riding in a rickshaw past the desperate woman in the slum begging – rather, crying – for money to bury her child, who was lying before her beneath a white sheet alongside a dirt path. Maybe I was stunned, especially as this happened the same day I learned my uncle succumbed to pancreatic cancer, but I deeply regret not asking the rickshaw driver to turn around so I could share with her what cash I had.

The volatility of my emotions in trying to sum up this experience is perhaps best expressed in my response to a question posed to me numerous times in the last month:

Would you come back to work in Dhaka?

It first arose at a socially awkward dinner composed mostly of Ivy League graduate and undergraduate students thrown together in Dhaka. After observing a humorous game of musical chairs focused on snagging a seat near the single Harvard professor in the room, I sat at the smaller table, sans professor, with three other women. Most of us were nearing the end of our time in Bangladesh; one was cutting her trip short by two weeks.

One intern gave a measured response to this query. I don’t think I’d come back, she said. There are so many other places to see in the world. Another student shared that she would consider coming back if she had someone to join her. It can be pretty lonely here, Destry said.

My answer was more visceral, and lacked the coat of diplomacy I’d typically apply.

No, absolutely not, I said.

My abrupt statement required some explanation, and so I provided one in a three-point fashion.

There’s no culture here, I proclaimed. There is very little culture by way of museums, theater, art and music; it’s displaced by a culture of shopping and eating out among those who can afford it. And I love to walk, but walking here is an act of defiance against streets mostly occupied by men and boys. More than anything, I said, I do not feel comfortable here being out and about, alone, especially after 7pm – at which time complete darkness overtakes this city wrought with insufficient street lighting and regular power outages.

My stance sparked conversation over dinner that evening, but the next morning I couldn’t help but wonder if my feelings were as clearly defined as I had portrayed.

In the days leading to my departure, Farzana, a Bangladeshi friend of mine, posed the same question. And I initially hid behind my honest but imperfect "intellectual” answer: I still haven’t figured out what role I – an American – could play here that an equally qualified Bangladeshi couldn’t do better.

Farzana challenged me. What if it was the perfect role for you, and you were the best person to play that role within BRAC or another organization here?

There are so many things to consider, I hedged. My husband, my family, our life back in the states…

But I realize that so much depends on what lens I use to consider this question. A few weeks back, I was struck by the motivations of Kelly, an expat I met in Dhaka. She graduated from the mid-career public policy program at Harvard a couple years ago, and has been living in Bangladesh for three years. Kelly, her husband and their children used to live in DC, a city they loved. But they decided they wanted to work in a place with real need, with tremendous need. Dhaka was their top choice.

When I use Kelly’s clear, practical and entirely unselfish criteria – need – my perspective on returning to Dhaka changes, quickly and almost entirely. Frankly, I like her criteria. I would love to be clear, practical, and entirely unselfish. I’m not quite there – my thought process is nuanced if nothing else – but I’m no longer responding with “absolutely not.”

Now, when friends and family ask if I will return to Dhaka, I envision not only polluted skies and heartbreaking inequities. I also see the girl who asked me how I could help her make it to college, and the woman at BRAC who told me that no matter her job title, she would work for women’s rights. And I picture the children that love going to school, even though their school is a single classroom in a hut made of bamboo and tin, and even though they are only there for three hours so they have time to help with household chores and farm work in the afternoons.

I wonder if I could help to make their lives better today, and their futures brighter. I think about what we could do if we worked together, and what resources we would need.

Would I go back?

We’ll see.

Thirty-six hens

Photos: A group of Ultra Poor women in rural Bangladesh; a community comes together to map out the Ultra Poor in their village. Courtesy of Md. Main Uddin/Drik.

In 2002, Rakeya was dependent on domestic work or begging for income. She owned less than 10 decimals of land. She had no productive assets in her household. She did not own a home. She was Ultra Poor.

That was then. Today, Rakeya is seated across from me on a large straw mat outside her home – yes, her home.

Farzana, Shakina and I were on the last leg of our visit to Rangpur, one of the poorest districts in this poor country. After showing our appreciation for the worn but sturdy wooden chairs that Rakeya and her neighbors had gathered and neatly lined up for us, we sat with them on the worn but sturdy straw mat.

Wearing dusty purple Bata flip-flops and a sari whose original color I couldn’t quite identify, Rakeya told her story. She patiently, and proudly, explained how she got from there to here.

My son used to beat me, she told us straightaway. Taken aback, I took a closer look at this woman, wrapped from head to toe in cloth. Her eyes are strong and bright, but she’s small, delicate, even frail. I can’t imagine she was able to put up much of a fight against a small animal, let alone a boy. I don’t want to imagine the toll the abuse took on her body.

And I don’t have to…because her story continued. In an auspicious twist of fate, six years ago the fact that Rakeya was one of the poorest women in one of the 15 poorest districts in this poor country worked not against her, but in her favor. It meant she could participate in the pilot project of BRAC’s Challenging the Frontiers of Poverty Reduction: Targeting the Ultra Poor (CFPR-TUP) programme.

Outreach to this forgotten segment of society, largely composed of women, “emerged out of three decades of learning from BRAC’s rural poverty alleviation programmes. The moderate poor benefited from the widely available microfinance programmes; the poorest did not in most of the cases, however, either because they lacked access, or because they were…too vulnerable to follow the repayment regime.”*

When BRAC begins working with a new village eligible for CFPR-TUP, staff members visit with the community and introduce them to the concept of Ultra Poor (a term recently coined by BRAC). They share data, they tell stories, and they answer questions.

Then they come back. This time, using a plot of dirt as their drawing board, the community creates a map outlining where the Ultra Poor of their village reside (homes are represented by pinned down, multi-colored post-it notes). Under BRAC’s guidance, the village elites – typically landowners and small business owners – come together to form a volunteer committee that assumes responsibility for supporting their Ultra Poor.

Six years ago, Rakeya’s community identified her as one of 11 Ultra Poor women among them. This meant she was eligible for an ‘asset transfer’ from BRAC: not a loan, as she had no resources to pay off any sort of loan, but a transfer of 36 hens from this NGO to this woman.

She was skeptical. Someone is going to just give me three dozen hens? And expect nothing in return? Rakeya had heard about scams like this. Lacking money or access to resources, she was not about to be indebted to someone, or some group. But leaders in her community knew and trusted BRAC, and they convinced Rakeya to join. If it is a scam, they said, we will take responsibility. That did it. Soon Rakeya was the owner of thirty-six hens.

And there was more. For the next two years, she received a subsistence allowance of 300 taka a month (USD 4.41), training on managing and protecting assets, essential health care services, and access to this committee of people invested in her success.

Rakeya soaked it all in – the training, the business advice from committee members. Her hens produced eggs, which she sold. She saved those profits, until she had enough to buy a cow. That cow produced milk, which she sold. Over time, she accumulated enough collateral to join BRAC’s microfinance program. Today, she has a number of animals. More importantly, Rakeya has customers.

And life is different now. Rakeya’s son doesn’t beat her anymore. Instead, he depends on her. See, Rakeya uses some of her income to take care of him. And his wife. And their two children.

While Rakeya continued her story in Bengali, my eyes drifted about the village. I came upon a young man who stood in the doorway of Rakeya’s home. His muscular arms framed the door. Instantly, I knew: this was her son. I wondered if he had heard his mother telling the story of their family, of his abuse and her perseverance.

Even if he heard, there’s nothing he can do now, I assured myself.

I wanted to meet his eyes, to show him my own anger and sadness at the abuse he inflicted on this woman. Eventually, he saw me, and he held my stare. I tried to express my disapproval, and at first I did, but eventually his angry, tired eyes only made me sad. He walked over to the cows in front of his mother's hut, and led them down a dirt path, walking past us with his head down.

The rain began. But we weren’t quite ready to leave. And our hosts weren’t ready to say goodbye. Rakeya invited us into her home. Farzana, Shakina, one of the committee members, and I sat on one bed. Directly across from us, two Ultra Poor women and Bablu, the committee president and local veterinarian, sat on the other bed. Rakeya sat on a chair we’d brought in from outside.

The hut – owned by Rakeya and home to her, her son, his wife and their two children – has these two beds, a calendar, two mosquito nets, a dresser of sorts and, well, that’s about it. There must be some sort of stove somewhere, I thought…maybe it was stowed away as they were expecting visitors.

We learned that Rakeya owns not one, but two huts. The second is not home to a family, but to 33 children. It’s a one-room BRAC Primary School. Rakeya’s eyes light up as she talks about the school. Bablu’s eyes were bright too; it’s clear that the Village Ultra Poor Committee president is terribly proud of this woman.

Only a few years ago, Rakeya was tired and without much in the way of hope. Bablu felt helpless; he didn’t know where to begin. Maybe he tried to insulate himself, as I do too often here when disabled, skinny men and half-naked children knock on my car window or reach their begging hands into my rickshaw – “Madam! Madam!” – when traffic stops. But…that was then. Now, Bablu and Rakeya are proud, they have hope, they develop solutions.

The three women across from me in that hut joined the Targeting Ultra Poor program in 2002. All three now earn income, and see their lives changing day by day, taka by taka, hen by hen.

Some of the changes are big: This hut, that school. Others are small. Their rubber flip-flops and those mosquito nets speak to the value they place on their lives. And their families’ lives.

We asked these women: Your stories – they are so impressive, are they also common? Surely every participant did not share the same success you have experienced? Not everyone, they said. But many of us. Eleven of them started. Only three did not improve their standard of living significantly. The ones that didn’t, they sold the hens right away for quick cash. They couldn't - or rather, didn't - wait.

Farzana and I have talked a lot in recent weeks about the unintended consequences of BRAC’s holistic and comprehensive approach to development. It can breed dependency, rather than foster empowerment.

Participants often wait for BRAC to do things – everything from bringing new books to their Adolescent Club to buying a fan for the Primary School. Farzana always asks villagers: Why don’t you raise some money and buy a few new books? Why don’t you see about getting a fan collectively, as a community, rather than see your children sweat in a hot schoolhouse every day?

The answer is usually the same: We didn’t think about it. Eventually, the new books will come; the BRAC Programme Organizer promises to see what he can do about a fan.

But we didn’t see this mindset in Rangpur. The poorest people in this poor country didn’t ask us for anything. We can figure it out, Rakeya and Bablu assured us. We've got problems, they said, but we can figure out solutions on our own.

The rain dissolved into drizzle. It was time for Farzana, Shakina and I to go. We had to make the eight hour drive back to Dhaka, and, well, these women had work to do. So we shook their hands and gave our thanks. We stepped out of Rakeya's hut, and put our own flip-flops back on. And we left their village, with a new appreciation for huts, hens...and humanity.

*BRAC, Challenging the Frontiers of Poverty Reduction: Targeting the Ultra Poor, Progress Report for July to December 2007.

An afternoon on the Buriganga River

Sara - who spent three months in Dhaka working on corruption issues for BRAC University's Institute of Governance - and I hired a rowboat, and a gregarious guide, for a tour of the river. We spent a couple of hours seeing the life that happens along the Buriganga on a Friday after prayers. Lots of boys taking advantage of the cold (albeit dirty) water as a break from the heat, a young couple seeking privacy by way of umbrella and distance from the shore, and young men chipping paint off the side of a ferry were among some of our sights. More photos to come from this river ride...my Internet connection is abysmally slow today, and my computer turns off every time the electricity goes out here (three times this afternoon alone)!

Little dreams

Left to right, top to bottom: One of the classroom leaders helps her classmate read aloud in English; children practice their writing; children that attend government school in the afternoon peer into this one-room school.

It was the second morning of a four-day “field trip” outside Dhaka and into two rural districts: Bogra and Rangpur. I quickly, and clumsily, learned that my mastery of Bangladeshi culinary customs – eating with my right hand, and ensuring the spicy lentils, ever-present rice, fresh vegetables and fried fish do not trickle past my knuckles – did not extend to mastery of Bogra’s muddy village paths.

Farzana, a BRAC staffer who happens to exemplify this country’s innovative, resilient spirit, and I rose from our cross-legged positions on the front porch of a village resident. This woman’s porch serves as the meeting place for a group of about 15 adolescent girls, only one of which is married and all of whom participate in BRAC’s Employment and Livelihood for Adolescents (ELA) program. They are slowly building up savings and taking out small loans to buy sewing machines, or maybe a cow, to contribute to their family income. One girl is using her profits from embroidery work to ensure her younger brother and sister can go to school.

Despite the incessant rain – Bangladesh is in the midst of its monsoon season, which means cooler temperatures and, in my case, two pairs of shoes ruined by mud – most of this village came out to see the American (!) woman here to visit their girls. After talking with the girls and many of their mothers, Farzana and I decided to make our exit during a respite from the downpour. The girls said ‘Thank you’ in English. Smiling, and wishing for the hundredth time that I knew more Bangla, I managed a wave and a “thank you.” And then, as I made my way down the single step: I slipped. Badly. A collective gasp consumed the village, followed by a sigh of relief and a few laughs as I grabbed hold of the nearest tree and laughed with them. I’m guessing the story of the American that nearly fell on her arse in their village was told over many cups of cha (tea) that afternoon.

While the villagers passed time mimicking the frantic swinging arms of an American Klutz, I spent midday in a hut in another Bogra village that serves as a BRAC Pre-Primary School in the mornings and an Adolescent Development Club in the afternoons. Farzana’s work at BRAC centers around integrating the ELA program we visited that morning with life skill-building and social centers for girls, called Kishori Kendros (Adolescent Clubs). After a day spent meeting with head teachers from secondary schools and local BRAC staff, I joined her at a Kendro, and she translated as I asked these girls for their thoughts on how to improve Bangladesh’s education system.

This summer, I’m learning from, bouncing ideas off of, and debating with teachers, students, parents, school management committees, BRAC headquarters staff (representing programmes ranging from Government Partnership Initiatives and Children with Special Needs to Targeting Ultra Poor and Research & Evaluation), local field staff, government officials and NGO leaders. These interviews, focus groups, meetings, and a workshop with BRAC Education leaders will inform my final product: recommendations for the BRAC Education Programme Director as he and his team develop a strategy to advocate for quality education in Bangladesh.

Inadequate schools are a major problem here. When I first arrived, I tried to explain that there is disparity in American schools, too. But I was patiently yet emphatically told that inequity in the States is nothing compared to the situation in Bangladesh. Here, I was told, it’s the difference between heaven and hell.

There’s broad consensus around why children aren’t learning as much as they should: a shortage of qualified teachers, insufficient teacher training, student/teacher ratios that average 70:1 despite the government’s stated goal of 45:1, a monitoring and evaluation system that’s never really been implemented.

And then there’s the country’s volatile political situation: When Awami League takes over, they replace everything the Bangladesh Nationalist Party started (and vice versa), from the benches to the curriculum to the monitoring system that never quite took off.

Of course, the real problem – if I can use this small word to describe a challenge that so completely boggles my mind and breaks my heart – is the tremendous poverty here, growing worse almost daily with rising fuel and food prices.

The scope of the “problem” is overwhelming, the contrasting vision of quality Education for All is grand…but the reality, and the hope, lies in conversations with children and youth held in huts and schools throughout this country. Resting my chin on my knees, as rain provided background music on the tin roof above us, I asked the five adolescent girls in front of me in that hut –the elected leaders of their club of 30 – to help me move beyond the problems. I asked them for solutions.

Taslima, the most passionate and the least apprehensive of the group (this 10th grader had just finished reciting a poem she wrote, and was a bit breathless after performing not one but two dances she choreographed), had a ready answer.

She had experience with just this kind of work. This past year Taslima single-handedly improved the quality of her school. See, her Bengali teacher spent more time talking about the weather, the news, or whatever interested him on any given day than he did teaching them their mother tongue. One day Taslima decided she wasn’t going to take it anymore. Starting tomorrow, she warned him, she was not coming to his class. And she wouldn’t return until he became a better teacher.

True to her word, the next day when her peers filed into his class, Taslima sat outside the room in silent protest. Soon the headmaster came across this defiant young woman as he strolled the halls with his ruler (although the Bangladeshi government has officially banned corporal punishment, it is unofficially present in many schools). Taslima explained that her Bengali teacher was not teaching effectively and as a result she refused to attend his course. To her surprise…the headmaster listened. That very day, he met with the teacher, who subsequently began teaching Bengali to his 10th graders. And he made sure that this young woman in particular was satisfied with his class: He stopped by Taslima’s home periodically to check in on her studies.

Inspired by this young woman whose grade point average of 4.55 on a 5.0 scale did not surprise me in the least, I was eager to know what she wanted out of life. So, I did it. I asked her and her friends the age-old question: What do you want to be when you grow up? But none of them were eager to offer their hopes and aspirations. The energy and laughter that had filled the hut over the last hour vanished. After a long pause, Taslima responded. Farzana’s crestfallen expression as she contemplated how to translate this young woman’s answer told me this visit would not end on the uplifting note I selfishly craved.

She’s a practical one, Farzana prefaced her translation to English. Taslima’s response? “I can afford little, so I dream little.”

When pressed, she said she might be interested in development work, “like you”, but the spark was gone. The cold reality of the possibilities, and the impossibilities, within her rural village had hit her. Almost on cue, the rain let up. Farzana and I, both unable to find the right words, bid farewell to these young women, thanked them for sharing with us, and said yes, we hoped to return to their club one day soon.

Travelling from one village to another over these four days, my emotions mirrored those I witnessed when Parveen called her family in her village: nervous, excited, sad, happy, even angry. I would add to this list invigorated…and helpless.

Upon visiting a government secondary school with bare walls but legions of eager students on Day 3, my translator – this time, a Dhaka University graduate named Shakina – asked the students if they had any questions for me. Their curiosity was palpable. Minutes earlier, while I met with nine members of their school’s management committee, at least 50 children set free for the midday break fought for space in the four surrounding windows to catch a glimpse of me and figure out what in the world I was talking with their teachers and elders about.

In the 9th Grade classroom, a girl in the front row, center, stood up cautiously. She looked me in the eye, and asked: “How can you help me go to university?” Tears in her eyes, she didn’t look away. She wanted a response, something real, something she could hold on to. The Bangladeshi adults in the room wanted an inspiring, hopeful promise. One of them asked me to say that I would see what I could do upon my return to the states. To this I responded anxiously, not wanting to make a promise I couldn’t keep: “I’m a student myself...” my excuse trailed off.

The most I could tell this girl, in this moment, was that her question was “the best and most difficult” I’d been asked since my arrival in her country. I encouraged her to keep asking these important questions of the adults – Bangladeshi and foreign – she meets. And I asked if she knew of a scholarship program recently started by BRAC; Medha Bikash (Promoting Talent) provides scholarship funds for a small number of extraordinary but poor students to attend university. But conversations with BRAC staff after our visit to this school confirmed what I already knew: for most children in rural Bangladesh, college is a dream too big for their family’s budget.

One of her classmates asked me if American schools are like those in Bangladesh. I explained that we also have teachers in the front of our classrooms, American children carry backpacks just like theirs to school, and we too have a lot of adults (like those in that classroom) that care deeply about students like him. Differences? Well…there are usually fewer students in a classroom, and there are often about the same number of girls and boys (at least two-thirds of the students in this room were boys). But I also explained that America’s public education system has been around for more than 100 years, whereas their country is only 37 years old. Bangladesh is doing tremendous work, I told him. I came here to learn from the important work that’s happening in your schools, I said. He beamed.

Another child asked me, in perfect English, if I have any brothers and sisters. Two younger sisters, I replied: Laura and Michelle. “No brothers?” he asked. No, three girls were enough to keep my parents busy, I said with a smile.

In the last classroom, Grade 10, a boy wanted to know how many children sit on school benches in America. He was crammed with four other boys on a bench built for three. His brown eyes opened wide as I shared that, in my country, children typically each have a desk. His teacher helped me explain what this would look like. I tried to soften the blow. In some schools, I told him, children sit around a table.

As I express these stories using only words, I regret not taking more photos. Those of the Primary School students posted with this blog are the only ones I’ve got from the four days. In the moments, asking these children and adolescents if I could take their pictures just didn’t seem right. I couldn’t bring myself to say, after they so openly shared their ideas, problems, questions, artwork and lives with me: I am here to learn from you, your ideas will be joined with others to shape BRAC’s work to improve your schools, only to follow that with a meager “And, before I leave, can you smile for my digital camera?” But today, as I write, I wish you – my friends, my family – could see their faces. More than that. I wish you could see their potential.

"Home schooling" takes on new meaning

Currently, the Bangladesh government does not have a strategy to address the educational needs of children in the country's urban slums, which can be found in huge pockets throughout Dhaka and other metropolitan areas. While this presents major challenges, it also provides space for creativity and innovation: This woman, Shireen, is the aunt of a Bangladeshi friend of mine here. She inherited a huge home that sits in the midst of one of these slums. In 2002, on the first floor of her home she opened a school - pre-primary through fifth grade - for children living in this slum. Her daughter designed these uniforms, which are free for the 120 kids that go to this school six days a week.

By piecing together donations, the children receive a meal every day. They also go on field trips to places like the Liberation War Museum and the Dhaka Zoo. Shireen is in the process of applying for NGO certification here, so she can receive foreign contributions. She turns away all donations from political parties here; she's not willing to give them a say in these kids' education.

I have heard of a number of families here opening their homes to start schools - for wealthier children as a profit-making venture, and for poor children with no viable alternatives.

“When are you coming home?”

Photos (top to bottom, left to right): A day out for a group of 12 Americans in Dhaka proves very interesting for the locals. On a busy street, a crowd begins to gather to observe us; after a full day of being watched by the locals, some of the students decide to see what all of the fuss is about and join the crowd that's gathered in a semi-circle around us; I join the fun and take a photo of a Bangladeshi teen taking a photo of me.

Bangladeshis are curious. Especially about foreigners. I understand – in my three weeks here, I’ve maybe seen 10, and most of those were at Bella Italia, a pizza joint here popular among expats. So the Bangladeshis – young, old, male, female, barefoot, in bejeweled sandals – stare. A lot. For uncomfortably long periods of time. Sometimes they take pictures with their mobile phones. And they always ask questions.

Many I hear again and again: Where are you from? Why are you in Bangladesh? Do you like our country? What university do you attend? What do you study? Are you married? Omar…is he Muslim? Do you have children? Are you expecting? (At this, which I have only been asked once, mind you, I try not to take offense and instead remind myself that I indeed do not have “abs of steel.”)

When visiting BRAC schools, I’ve taken to asking children to guess the answer to their first question. Typically, they shout “America!” immediately. Yes terday, though, a very confident five-year-old girl at one of BRAC’s pre-primary schools said, in Bengali: “I think she lives by my grandmother’s house.” Where does your grandmother live, my translator asked this precocious little girl. “Next to my aunt’s house,” she said. And to her credit, this little one did not bat an eye when the other children giggled.

Last week, a colleague at BRAC – a member of the Education for Indigenous Children unit – had a new one for me: Are you here alone? He wondered aloud if I was in Dhaka without my husband, without my family. I had not thought of my status here in such stark terms, but it was true: I am here alone. That feeling in the pit of my stomach rose to the surface, and suddenly my eyes were wet. Clearly, he hit a nerve. Yes, I said quickly, and then deflected, surely inappropriately: Are you here alone?

Yes, I am alone too, he told me. This I was not expecting. He explained that he is an ethnic minority in Bangladesh – a Chakma from the Chittagong Hill Tracts – and his family still lives in the rural village in which he was raised. He lives in Dhaka, but his wife lives outside this sprawling city, where she works as a nurse. They were married last December, but she cannot find work here, and he cannot find work there. We see each other at least monthly, he tells me; she was recently in Dhaka for several days.

It’s hard, isn’t it? I asked him. He nodded. And then we moved on, him asking me how I pass my days here.

Back at the Kennedy School, I had lots of conversations with friends and classmates about how difficult it can be to coordinate two careers and be in the same place at the same time as your partner…and how difficult it is to be apart. We talked about this as an increasingly prevalent problem for our generation – a result of globalization, probably, and of the ability to learn about jobs and make connections to people throughout the country and across the world.

Are we the first to deal with this issue of long-distance families on such a massive scale? Maybe. Probably not. Today, a friend kindly reminded me of the travails of immigrants in centuries past, moving across an ocean never to see or even speak with family members again. In any case, I know living apart from my husband – which we will have done for a year as of this August – is a challenge for which I do not have a playbook. My parents have lived together for their entire marriage, first in a small apartment in Des Plaines, Illinois and for the last 30 years in a house on Smethwick Lane in Elk Grove Village. They haven’t been away from one another for more than a week’s time, when my Dad went to New York for work years back. I have a terrible memory, but I remember that week.

In any event, this experience of seeing my family every day in a photo on my nightstand rather than in conversation over the dinner table is a common ground I’ve discovered with many Bangladeshis. Some are making choices, as am I. The family I’m staying with speaks with great pride of their eldest daughter, who was educated in Toronto and now works in Canada. Many relatively wealthy Bangladeshis study and work abroad – in Europe, in Canada, in the U.S. It is a mark of distinction, a source of legitimacy, a sign of success.

But others, like my colleague at BRAC, have no other option. Well, that’s not completely true. They have no other good options.

The two maids in my home here don’t seem to remember when they last saw their families. I asked Nahar, my Bangladeshi host, about this, as I could easily have misinterpreted the maids’ responses to my questions, roughly articulated in halting Bangla and hand motions bordering on ridiculous. She tells me these young women see their families at least annually, on Eid (the Muslim holiday marking the end of Ramadan). For Parveen, it is particularly difficult: her family lives far away, and it’s very expensive to visit. Moreover, at 14 years old she is marrying age in her village. The average Bangladeshi woman marries at 18; in poor rural areas, girls wed earlier. Nahar tells me that Parveen – who is pretty, literate in Bangla, and now adept at keeping up a home – is afraid of going home, as her parents will marry her off. So she stays in Dhaka, away from her family, but sending home her salary.

Last week, Parveen asked to use my mobile phone to call home. I obliged. Over the next twenty minutes, I listened to her: she was nervous, and alternately shy, excited, sad, happy, and…angry. Ultimately, given the small amount left on my pay-as-you-go phone and my caution at setting a precedent I could not sustain, I nearly had to tear her away.

Rashida, the other maid, has a different story: Although she looks quite young, she is my age, around 30. And she has already been married, and had a baby – but when her husband divorced her, he took their baby with him. I’m not sure if she has a home to go to. When Rashida used my mobile phone to call family, she told me it would take two minutes and I don’t think she even took that long to check in with her brother, a rickshaw puller in Dhaka.

Maids and rickshaw pullers aren’t the only ones who depend on mobile phones (which have virtually replaced land lines in much of this country) to keep up with family. At the Abu Dhabi airport, en route to Dhaka, a smartly dressed Bangladeshi man befriended me while we waited to board. Mamun’s getting his MBA in Dublin, and he was on his way to Dhaka to spend the summer with his wife and children. He showed me pictures of his son on his way to school, and his daughter staring defiantly at his camera. He told me how much he struggles with his decision to study in Ireland, where he shares an apartment with strangers and works in a bar (an awkward occupation for a devout Muslim from a country devoid of alcohol) to make some cash. But mostly he struggles because his son and daughter don’t understand. I told him that one day they’ll be not only grateful but proud. Right now, he said, his little girl is mostly angry. She is five or six years old. And every time he calls, she has a single question for her father: “When are you coming home?”

My mother-in-law, who lived apart from her husband in the year before they married – he in Canada, she in Egypt – empathized when I expressed my hesitation at living in Dhaka this summer while her son lives in Boston. Next time you have an opportunity like this, she shared, you’ll think about it differently; you’ll remember how hard it was this time. She’s right; next time I’ll remember this feeling in the pit of my stomach. Next time, I’ll choose to live in the same city as my husband, even if it is “just two months.”

But sometimes people don’t have much of a choice. Even if we do, well, we’ve got to live through it. In any case, we’re alone. And so we depend on nice strangers to let us use their phones or look at our pictures, or coworkers who will engage in friendly conversation about family, about children, about home. And we think about our last phone call, or count down the days until our next visit.

“We didn’t even have bridges…”

Photos (top to bottom): BRAC Village Organization Meeting, for microfinance participants (all women); BRAC Primary School Children sit in a semi-circle in their one-room schoolhouse; BRAC students perform; me, BRAC USA staff Rachael, and BRAC intern coordinator Shana in front of what is arguably Dhaka's swankiest bridge.

During tonight’s blackout – these happen nearly every day – I think I’ve successfully persuaded myself that it’s romantic rather than trying to write my blog by the light of a battery-operated lamp, in my small, er, cozy room now without A/C or a fan. It’s not primitive, I tell myself. Quite the contrary: I have this laptop, this bed, this lamp.

Moments earlier, we – myself and the two young maids that work in my home here – were poring over my Bengali-English phrasebook. This little book is our tenuous bridge to understanding, and we’ve already spent several hours practicing a variety of questions and answers, in Bengali, English and sometimes Hindi (turns out ‘namaste’ is not only a word chanted at the end of a yoga session). It occurred to me tonight that my difficulty learning Bengali won’t stymie much except my ability to direct a rickshaw driver here. But without English, well, there are real consequences for these two women.

Anyhow, I digress…sort of. Yesterday, I spent a day “in the field” with BRAC for a baptism-by-fire orientation of sorts. I went to Savar, a suburb made up of a number of villages about an hour from Dhaka. After tea, biscuits and bananas at a BRAC training center, BRAC whisked about 15 interns away in two spotless white mini-vans through narrow streets crowded with people, rickshaws, animals, bicycles, and a car here and there. We walked the last short leg of this journey – shooing away mosquitoes and avoiding muddy puddles from yesterday’s rainfall along the way – and suddenly we were upon a group of about 20 women. And men, and children…it seemed the whole village came to this week’s Village Organization meeting, curious about the arrival of sweaty, wide-eyed Americans.

These women – all married, all wearing bright, colorful saris or salwar kameez (tunics worn over loose-fitting pants – my new favourite clothing ensemble), all eager to be heard – receive loans from BRAC. They participate in the first tier of BRAC’s microfinance program, which means they are very poor but eligible for a small loan to buy a cow, a sewing machine or some other means to earn income. And they’re held accountable as a group – which is in part responsible for BRAC’s 95% repayment rates despite their poverty.

At VO meetings, borrowers report to their Programme Organizer on progress and they make loan repayments. They also help one another out when cash –Taka – is short. Why do they work with BRAC? The interest rates are low, they say. It allows them to make money for their family. We ask: Do their husbands ultimately control the funds they earn? Suddenly all of the women are talking at once, while the men and children observe – their husbands are aware they receive loans, the women say, but they all insist they are the ones who decide how to use the profits.

Bangladesh is a tough place to live. It is unbearably hot (although you wouldn’t guess it by the lack of sweat on Bangladeshi brows), the poverty is deep and widespread, and decades of corruption have led to today’s state of emergency, instituted by the military government over a year ago.

But these women are also tough – I can see it in their tired eyes, their sun-scarred complexion, their strong and sure voices. So I am surprised to see that their Programme Organizer – in essence, their leader – is not another woman, but a young man dressed in a pressed, button-down shirt. Later in the day, I am again surprised to see legions of women working at an Aarong production facility (Aarong is an upscale shop started by BRAC that makes and sells handicrafts, while providing fair employment for Bangladeshis) under the supervision of… men. I asked the BRAC staffer with us about this power imbalance, which was especially striking given BRAC’s mission to empower women and girls. She assured me that women also take on leadership roles, and what we were seeing today was a small sample.

So, on we went – to a human rights and legal assistance meeting (today’s topic: constitutional law, specifically issues of divorce, inheritance, and polygamy), a BRAC nursery (where one of the interns fainted from the heat), a community library.

And then there was the BRAC Primary School. I’ve come to believe that you can tell immediately when a school, or a classroom, is good. This one-room schoolhouse was great. I could see the learning taking place – it was in the artwork that covered all four walls and hung from the ceiling, it was in the dances the children performed for us, it was in the way they answered our questions without hesitation but enthusiasm, and pride.

I’ve read so much about BRAC schools: they serve children who either dropped out or never enrolled in largely sub-par government schools, they enroll 65% girls, they serve 25 to 33 students, the teacher is a married woman from the community, and they have a child-centered approach to learning. And: On average, BRAC children – at more than 37,000 schools in every district in Bangladesh – outperform children in government schools on national exams.

Dr. Abed, the founder of BRAC and hands down the most charismatic individual I have ever met, joked when I saw him tonight that BRAC Schools are like McDonald’s: every one is the same. As promised, at this schoolhouse there were 33 children, exactly two-thirds were girls, and the teacher had a wedding ring. But more than that…these children are confident, they are smart, and they have so much potential. I asked them what they were learning that day. One of the girls jumped up and read to us, in English, a passage on food from today’s coursework. We had to ask the standard question: What do you want to be when you grow up? Boys overwhelmingly wanted careers in the police force or the military (although one wants to be a singer, and he performed for us on the spot), and girls aspired to be pilots, flight attendants, teachers, doctors, and, yes, police.

Though invigorated by this classroom, at the end of the day I was nagged by a question: What happens on a girl’s journey from the classroom to the workplace? Many of these young girls are leaders, they are confident, they have big dreams. Boys and girls in this school jump (literally) to share their ideas and dreams in equal measure. But in the workplace, men are the supervisors, the organizers… women are maids, line workers, recipients.

I raised this question today, this time to the strong, empathetic, smart woman leading BRAC’s innovative new program to reach the “Ultra Poor” in Bangladesh. She assured me BRAC is making strides in achieving gender equity in the workplace. BRAC full-time staff (not including teachers and other part-time employees) are 20 percent women overall, and even 30 percent at headquarters. My expression must have been nonplussed. Twenty percent? Thirty percent? That’s equity?

She went on. You must keep in mind, she told me: Our country is only 37 years old. For the first 10 to 15 years after independence, she said, we were focused almost exclusively on reconstruction and rehabilitation (Bangladesh’s independence immediately followed a cyclone in 1970 that killed 500,000, a Liberation War in 1971 with disputed Bangladeshi casualty figures ranging from 200,000 to 3 million as well as 8 to 10 million refugees, and a famine in 1973-74 that many claim killed over one million people (the government figure is 26,000)).

“I remember, in the mid-80s,” she said. “We didn’t even have bridges.” In a country where rivers and lakes criss-cross land as highways do in the U.S., no bridges is no small challenge. I can’t imagine gender equity was on anyone’s radar.

I’m still parsing out what it all means. But now it’s certainly difficult for me to argue that Bangladesh’s progress on social issues is inadequate, or too slow. All of those women I met yesterday were in the workplace, and were gaining access to loans and income. The maids I practice Bengali with are certainly farther along in their mastery of English than I’ll ever be in their language, and they do have a safe, comfortable place to live and a regular income in a country that’s wracked by poverty. Maybe the women are not the supervisors, maybe the maids are not fluent in English, but maybe they need some time, and resources…

I searched for context. Thirty-seven years after America’s inception, women were still 144 years from the right to vote. Bangladesh certainly has us beat on that count. This developing country has already had two female prime ministers. Admittedly, they are both in prison now, but that’s a story for another day.