Regarding Boredom, School Children, and being an Ambassador

Written on 9/12/06

So after our jaunt to the market, we settled into a nice little routine of sleeping off our jet lag and waiting for the long weekend to be over so that we could start our internships at {BRAC}. We have enjoyed eating delicious Bangladeshi meals featuring lots of rice, dal (lentils), rhooti (round, flat bread), chicken, fish, vegetables, and ridiculously hot little peppers that enjoy masquerading as green beans (I will not make that mistake twice!). We were also delighted to discover that our apartment has come with 80 channels of satellite tv. This was delightful not so much because we are slaves to the television, but rather due to the fact that at least 60 of these channels feature some form of singing and/or dancing Bengali or Indian people. Great fun. Especially since we had a few days with absolutely nothing to do, and no one to really show us the city yet.

I will not bore you with a description of our boredom, as I am sure it would be quite boring. But Monday morning, we found ourselves being driven to BRAC headquarters. We met with our intern supervisor, and watched some videos about the history of what BRAC has been doing, etc. Then we were sent to a field station to learn first-hand about BRAC's various programs in micro finance, primary education, women's advocacy, health work, social development, etc. etc.

The TARC (Training And Research Center) that we were sent to is about two hours by road outside of Dhaka. It is one of 16 facilities owned by BRAC, and used to train and support their myriads of rural field staff (teachers, health workers, librarians, micro finance managers, etc. BRAC has a national staff of about 60,000 people, mostly field workers). The TARC sort of reminds me of a South Asian version of Cedar Campus, or other similar training/retreat centers. Lots of people from lots of places are coming and going all the time, but the full time staff go out of their way to make it a peaceful and relaxing place where you can accomplish what you need to, and get some relaxation at the same time. The rooms are comfortable, the food is good, and the gardens are beautiful.

When we arrived in our private car, we found our luggage being carried to our rooms, and a pleasant afternoon tea being prepared for us. We have been getting such royal treatment that I am starting to think that maybe BRAC thinks that we are wealthy potential donors, as opposed to penniless interns! I am definitely not complaining, though.

Today we were touring primary schools run by BRAC in the villages in the vicinity of this

training center. We visited about four single room school houses, and one multi-room school. The day was both entertaining and enlightening. Entertaining, because everywhere we went we were entertained. Kids sang songs, performed dances, recited poems, and were generally very cute (see photos). The enlightenment came in seeing how much can be done with so little. At one school, there was an entire group of parents waiting to visit with us. By way of a translator we were able to hear from them how much of a difference the school has made in their village, and about the new hopes that they have for their children. Worlds are being opened up for their kids that they themselves could never have imagined entering. All this is happening with little more than a medium sized shack, a few tattered books, and a teacher with the training and support to do her job. These kids do not have television, computers, play-station, pokemon or pop-tarts. Despite this (or maybe BECAUSE of this), they sit more attentively in class and seem to have a genuine enthusiasm in the fact that they are being given a shot at something good. I think I could learn a lot from these kids.

The most lively part of the day came when we were visiting an after school type club for girls between age ten and nineteen. After they performed their music, etc. they started asking us questions about the good ol' USA. There were the fairly easy questions like “what kind of food do you eat?”, the slightly more surprising and difficult ones like “what kind of clothes do people in America wear?”, and then the utterly foreign ones like “what is the standard dowry rate in America?” or “who arranges the marriages?”. It was a lot of fun to answer the questions, but really stretching when it hit me that these girls really had no point of reference when it comes to America. Obviously they have never been there, but it was interesting to be reminded that even in this day and age of mass media, blogs and globalization, there are many parts of the world that have yet to be touched by most of it. So in conclusion, I hope that my communication of American culture was representative. I did not realize how quick or easy it is to slip into being an ambassador of ones entire culture and country.