Visit to Rajshahi

Last week I was very privileged to travel to Rajshahi, which is a University town on the West of the country. My colleague and I left on Sunday 25th January by coach from Dhaka in the afternoon. We travelled on a lovely AC coach, which totally reformed my impression of coach travel in Bangladesh - lots of room, not too many people, a film on route, complimentary bottled water and even a nice service station on the way; can't be bad.

The trip was supposed to take 5 hours but in the end it took about 6.5 hours because the fog was so bad; I've never seen such thick fog as here - something to do with the humidity during the day and then the cold at night.

Anyway, we arrived late at about 10.30pm and then took a rickshaw to our friends' flat, which is in a hospital compound.

The following day we went to visit a shelter home, which was mostly for trafficking survivors (but not exclusively). We also visited two drop in centres for street children (mostly children of sex workers) and a social community centre for an excluded Hindu community. These projects were great. The kids at all the centres were amazing. At the shelter they performed a cultural song and dance for us and we in turn taught them "Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" as well as "If you're happy and you know it clap your hands", which seemed to go down pretty well. As always I was very struck with how content the kids seemed on the surface but knowing that if you scratched away even a little bit there would be a how world of hurt, abuse and pain.

One of the girls there, who can't have been more than 8 years old had been ganged raped, another young lady had had acid thrown at her by her husband when she was 7 mths pregnant and another girl of about 13 arrived at the shelter whilst we were there having been trafficked from her village and then drugged to a state of unconsciousness so that she could be married and then trafficked on. I don't write these stories to cause alarm but I suppose to try and capture some of the awful injustices going on in the world and maybe to give you a deeper insight if you are praying for these issues. With issues like trafficking it can be easy to take an academic view of it, especially in the West when we're not so directly staring the issue in the face, so sometimes it's helpful to hear the reality of the problem.

I know before I came out here I felt one step removed from the problem and I guess it didn't play on my heart and mind as much as it should have done but now that I'm beginning to hear and understand the stories my heart is moved to respond. In fact sometimes it gets so underneath my skin that I feel desparate to go and get all those precious survivors and bring them back to their homes but unfortunately it's not that easy. Fortunately we have a God who is bigger than any trafficker, so I continue to pray that God would intervene in what seems like an impossible situation.

When we went to the drop in centres I played a few games of Carom (very big here) with the kids and chatted to some of them. Whilst the facilities were very basic it is wonderful that there are places like that for kids to go and play, learn, rest and get fed. The alternative is that they would be on the street, probably having to find some kind of work like shoe shining, begging or street cleaning.

The social centre was really fun. It was in the slum area of town, down one of the narrow passageways. It's basically a small concrete unit with a steel roof - about the size of a single garage and it was jam-packed with kids and became even more jam-packed as word got out that the foreigners were around.

We chatted to the kids, heard some Hindi songs and taught them the same English songs we'd done in the shelter. That went down really well- they thought it was hilarious! After that we went for a tour of the slum, which was really interesting. The slum wasn't the worse one I've seen; the houses were fairly spacious and clean and the walls were made of concrete. Having said that the sanitation was still significantly lacking and the houses really were crammed on top of each other.

It's always a bit of an event when foreigners visit - the kids were all running ahead of us to tell their families and they were hanging of us, shaking our hands, blowing kisses and all sorts - I felt like the Pide Piper of Hamlin! It was a truly amazing experience; just great spending time with such happy, welcoming people.

The following morning we travelled back by train to Dhaka. Ironically the train's are slower than the buses but the timings are a bit more reliable. The journey took us just over 6 hours, rather than the 5 the bus takes. Unfortunately our carriage was right at the end next to the kitchen. It was kind of interesting because you could see them cooking away on the floor on the stove - the way they would in a normal kitchen and then there was a steady stream of men coming in and out trying to sell tea and curry-based snacks.

Anyway, all in all a very positive and enlightening trip.

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A boat trip from Old Dhaka

Last weekend we fully intended to write this blog and then with one thing and another we never got round to it.

Actually, it was getting to the end of the week and we thought we wouldn't have much to report on the weekly blog but then no sooner had we encountered those thought and we had a rather interesting weekend....

Let me start from the beginning. This blog covers the period 18th Jan to 25th Jan.

During that week our boss from the UK arrived (I think technically he's the commercial director, or business advisor or something anyway, he basically oversees the business side of what Oasis do). So, it was another hectic time in the office as we were preparing for meetings, attending meetings and getting products ready to discuss with the boss. Andy and his team were desparately trying to get the products ready so our boss would have some positive comments to take back to our customers in the UK. Our ultimate deadline for this phase of the design work has been 1st Feburary because that's when the country director here returns to the UK for more meetings with potential investors and customers and will be taking products with him.

So, despite it being hectic for us there's not a lot to report on the blog on that front.

However, when we got to the weekend it was shaping up to be a normal weekend; we went to church on Friday as usual for the morning study class, lunch and then the main afternoon service. On Saturday we were invited to lunch by a friend over who was soon to be leaving, so a few of us went for a bite to eat. We had planned nothing more other than maybe a swim and a bit of a relax before the evening study class. However whilst at lunch our manager and the UK boss decided to take a trip to Old Dhaka for a boat ride and invited us along.

Old Dhaka is one of those amazing places where it's a hive of small streets, lots of rickshaws and some interesting old buildings intermingled with them all. We drove down in the Oasis car, which was interesting trying to get through this sea of rickshaws.

Nevertheless we eventually made it through to the port. We parked the car up in what was supposed to be a car park but which was a long way from NCP standards and entered the port area. There were loads of big cargo ships moored up. We boarded one to get to a smaller rowing boat.

As we walked through this cargo boat it really was like something from 150 years ago. There were people sitting on the floor in the boat maybe selling fruit, or clutching a rolled up blanket, or selling some nuts or something. There were other folk using it as a passageway onto other boats. There were others loading and unloading cargo on their heads (it's the Banlgadeshi way). The one consistent thing amongst all this was that the majority of heads turned in our direction as we trundled through the boat to sounds of "Boss", "Bideshi", "your country?".

Anyway, when we reached the back of the boat we then saw our vessel. It was kind of like a gondala in shape - very close the water with a man standing at the back rowing using a long padel which went deep into the water. We clambered over the big boat's chains to get onto this little boat.

As we got on we couldn't help but notice the awful condition of the water - it was extremely dark, there was all kinds of rubbish floating in it and other less desirable things. In fact, right next to our boat was a large floating poo (not sure whether I can get away with writing that on a blog but I guess it's done now). You can imagine my concern as I set anxiously on the floor of the boat waiting for the other 3 in our party to get in, who all happened to be 6'3" men!

Anyway, despite some small rocking we made it out into Dhaka harbour and spent the next hour floating between all the big cruise and cargo ships. It was wonderful! So exciting to see such a large working port and there were so many contrasts. One minute we'd be passing the shore lined with rubbish with people looking for any useful remains in amongst it and then we'd see all this beautiful fresh fruit and veg being unloaded, or sorted through. We'd pass these water side slum houses and then see the large red setting sun shimmering over the water. We would pass these large, impersonal, grubby cargo ships and then see a bunch of kids playing around and having fun on one of the fishing boats. So much beauty in amongst so much yuk!

I guess that's the glories of God's creation shining through in spite of all man's rubbish around.

It was a real privilege to be able to see this part of Dhaka and to see it in this very authentic way. Everything about that part of Dhaka really seemed so antiquated it made me wonder how much it had changed since the Brits left and how much it would have changed if we came back in 50 yrs time.

After our tour round the harbour we hopped back on board the big ship again. Unfortunately in the process I dropped my flip flop into one of the engine holes, which was extremely embarrassing, since it is very difficult to do anything discretely around here and I of course caused a lot of fuss and attention. Anyway, the good news is I got my flip flop back and I made sure I gave my foot a good old scrub down afterwards.

After our eventful afternoon out we then went to a quiz at the Bagha club. I am ashamed to say we did extremely badly - clearly need to play trivial pursuit a bit more often to get into Quiz shape.

Think that's about all to bring that part of the blog up to date.

We'll write about this week's experiences in another posting.

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Just another week in Bangladesh.

Seems like another week has flown by. It's been another busy week for us and a particularly important week for the business.

This week we did further detailed planning to our business plan for this year and due to certain circumstances arising we now have quite a significant amount of goods to produce and not a lot of time to do it, so we had to adjust our business plan to see how we could most effectively get the goods to market by the deadline as well as considering long term recruitment, investment and the like - so a pretty important and busy week.

As you can imagine it's been all systems go on the workshop as the prototypes are finalised and the materials are being chosen, which meant a few late nights in the office for us (more particularly for Andy).

Whilst this has been going on I have been doing further research and policy-writing on how our business model fits with Fairtrade and what we have to do to comply with the many many requirements. I had a good meeting with the local Fairtrade forum director, who gave me some useful insights into what we could do to ensure we are complying with the relevant standards.

I have also been contintuing my research into potential shelter homes for our trafficking survivors to come back to from India (they are currently in a half way house waiting to return). I went to a great centre in a village about 1.5 hours outside Dhaka, which is a purpose-built village for vulnerable women and their children. They have a school, farmland, fishing lakes, vocational training, a psycho-social building and income generating activities - the whole package. What was so good about it was the holistic feel to the centre. For example, most of the food consumed by the beneficiaries is grown on site and some of the waste is used in their income-generating activities. For example, the onion shells are used to make dyes for the paper and woven fabrics they produce - how wonderful!

I have also visited a shelter home specifically for trafficking survivors but also for children who have been victims of sexual exploitation. Whilst the centre was great I found it really upsetting and deeply challenging. As I walked round and spent time with the young people they were just like any other normal child - playing with toys, studying, running around and then my mind kept coming back to the fact that these children may have been raped, trafficked or sexually exploited. Such happy innocent faces masking a whole world of horrific injustice - it grieves me to think that children can be treated in such a way and worse stilll to know that most of their families won't want to or won't be able to take them back.

Some of the children performed a song and dance that nearly reduced me to tears because there were these beautiful young children perfoming songs about the kind of lives they should have had but will never be able to experience. One of the folk songs they did talked about flying like a bird in the garden free from cares. This particular song / dance was performed by one girl, who can't have been more than 12 years old who had been raped only a few months earlier! Thinking about it now as I write is really stirring my emotions.

Anyway, besides these visits we've both enjoyed the new challenges we're facing at work, especially now the projects are both really taking off.

Outside of work we've also had a great week. We spent a lot of time on Saturday around our local Bazaar (market), lapping up the atmosphere and playing the haggling game with the shopkeepers. They love to haggle here and I think they feel a bit cheated if we haven't haggled. I must admit Andy's much better at it than I am and much more enters into the spirit of it. It's not long before I get bored of haggling and just agree to the price but Andy drives a much harder bargain!

So, after an exhausting bazaar trip and then we rewarded ourselves with lunch at an art cafe near us and a much-needed lassi YUMMM!

In the evening we went to the bible study group that we attend every week, which was really good. I think the locals appreciate having us around and we certainly love their company. They are so hospitable and every time we go we learn what it means to have a servant-heart.

I think that about sums up our week. We have of course done the usual church-going on Friday and study group on Monday and Tuesday, so we're keeping ourselves busy. This week we even managed to squeeze in a game of pool and some toffee and apple crumble at the Bagha club, which was a lovely way to relax.

So, all in all a great week and we looking forward to the new challenges that this week will bring.

Much love

Nic and Andy x

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