Hi Everybody,

Writing from our hotel in Chittagong, Bangladesh. Just finished the last day of field visits.

I hit a wall today, physically. I was just too exhausted to really be present while being paraded around various villages. I'm ready to be home.

But I've been picking up some basic Bengali (Bangla), which has been fun. If I stayed here for another week I might be able to hold a really simple conversation. So far I can say: Hello, Goodbye, Thanks, How are you?, I'm doing fine, Everything is alright, Friend, Beautiful, Breakfast, Water, 1-2-3, My name is, I'm from America, I work at IDEX, I speak a little Bangla, What?, and Where is the toilet? Of course I'll forget it all by next week.... sigh.

My motivation? Part of the challenge in Bangladesh has been that the translation capacity of the NGO staff from Bangla to English hasn't been as good as I would have hoped. And Bengali village women are a gregarious bunch... they all talk at once, shouting and laughing and interrupting each other. So I'll be sitting in these meetings and they are all going on for a while at me, arguing and cajoling and telling stories, but I get the three sentence simplified version of something that just went on for ten minutes.

And Bengali society is anything but simple. It's the most densely populated country in the world (137 million people in an area that I would hazard to guess is smaller than Texas), but the majority of the population is rural. There are so many different dynamics going on. It's a predominantly Muslim society, but there are various different kinds of Muslim identity. Most folks seem to follow a relatively liberal kind of Islam, which I believe has Sufi roots. But there is also a fundamentalist movement, which has a political base in some rural areas. I get the sense that there are some parallels here with the U.S. in that the majority of Americans are Christian in the "I celebrate Christmas and occasionally go to church" way, and then there's this small but powerful movement of evangelicals.

Also similar to the U.S., there are major swaths of people who are not in the dominant religion. In this case, the major minority is Hindu, but there are also small Christian, Buddhist and animist groups. So there is a lot of variety here. A few people have sworn to me that everyone gets along just fine, "Really, we're all friends! No problems at all." they say rather insistently. But the founder of one women's rights organization, who is Hindu, tells me that anyone who insists that there is no discrimination against Hindus is lying or in denial (maybe sort of like the people who insist that there's no racism in the U.S.?). Amongst other problems, the military-backed government, who has accused her of being a spy for the Indian secret service, has harassed her.

So, a bit about the orgs I've visited in the last week or so. It's in some ways very similar to the stuff that IDEX is supporting in Nepal. Everyone is working to form women's self-help groups in rural villages. Through this process women go through skills development training, leadership training etc. and in most cases can apply to get small loans for income-generating activities. An interesting variation here is a major focus on a rights-based approach, where women learn about their legal rights and are encouraged to speak out against domestic violence, early marriage, trafficking and child abuse.

Two of the organizations we've visited here, ACD and OWDEB, are working at many levels of village life, not only directly organizing the poorest women in the villages, but also helping start Community Forums made up of village leaders, including the local schoolteacher, doctor, journalist, politicians, etc. These folks come together once a month to talk about whatever problems the village is facing, particularly (but not exclusively) as relates to women's issues and child rights. They intervene when there is domestic violence, or child marriage (marrying anyone under 18 years of age is illegal, and people are beginning to take it very seriously). They act as mediators in situations of family conflict that threaten to turn (or have turned) violent. They help women file court cases and get legal and health services when they've been sexually abused or trafficked. They encourage parents to keep their kids in school, and help families get their children registered. They encourage women to register to vote. In some cases they also take on infrastructure issues, like how to get potable drinking water, toilets or decent roads.

By getting respected village leaders involved and interested in the issues affecting the poorest women, the NGOs are building bridges within the community such that there are resourceful people there to support the women long after the NGO workers are gone. As an outsider, it's been fascinating for me to talk with these powerbrokers, doctors, lawyers and teachers, and hear them speak passionately about their commitment to women's empowerment. And the gender dynamics of the room speak of their sincerity: of the ten to twenty folks involved, usually close to half are women, and they speak with the same confidence as the men. Definitely not my stereotype of a predominantly Muslim society.

Well, I have much more to tell you but I've run out of time...

We start the journey home tomorrow night and I'll be back home by Mon afternoon, Inshallah.

There will be lots of great photos to share and hopefully some multimedia slideshows to upload to the web in a few weeks’ time.

See you soon!

Yael

Blog Archive