Ways to See the World

--> --> Our training finally finished and we’re now on our placements. The final week of training was run by CDVS (Centre for Disaster and Vulnerability Studies) from Dhaka University. It focused on development and particularly on participatory tools we could use in the community. It also made clear how important the issue of sustainability is. This isn’t just some project where the Westerners go dig a well and that’s that. We work with the community to ensure they are part of the decision-making process and are empowered to advocate for change in their own community once we’re gone. If something is installed, such as a water filtration system, at least one community member will be trained in how to maintain it properly and fix it if it is broken so they can show others and won’t have to rely on external sources for maintenance. It’s been great working with the local volunteers so far. Not just be...

--> --> Having had several days of joint training now it’s evident that there’s a massive difference in the sense of national pride felt by each group of volunteers. The Bangladeshi volunteers are much prouder of their history and culture than we are. We drew maps of our respective countries and they knew every indent of land and tiny island in the river deltas. Ours looked a bit like the UK but with an enlarged south of England, squashed north of England, massive Wales and Isle of Wight, tiny Scotland and not enough room for Northern Ireland! (If I attempted to analyse that there’s probably a lot I could say, except for the Wales and Isle of Wight bits anyway) They did look pretty covered in flower petals though. We also sang our national anthems. Theirs was sung with gusto and pride; ours was mumbled and we just about managed the words to a verse and the chor...

1. Eating with your hands - learning to eat one-handed is still a challenge but I'm definitely getting better at it and I'm pretty good at peeling meat off a chicken thigh with my right hand now. The food is also great even if I'm going to have permanent yellow staining on my tongue and fingernails for three months due to all this turmeric! 2. Cold showers - Dhaka's pretty dusty so that and the sun cream can really clog up your skin. There's no hot water so we have to brace ourselves every time we get under the shower head. I'm savouring having a shower head at the moment since I reckon it'll be a bucket job once we're in the villages although as it gets hotter I imagine I'll appreciate the cold water more. 3. Mosquitoes - evil little buggers get everywhere but at least they don't carry malaria in Dhaka. 4. Morning prayers - I've actually taken to sleeping with ear plugs since Dhaka is truly a city that never sleeps! Half of the city t...

The Bangladeshi volunteers arrived last night so today was our first day of joint training. Most of them were really tired last night since the shortest journey is six hours long but one guy came to play cards with us. We also played the post-it note game and had a good laugh about our struggle to work out John Lennon and James Bond (which took me about 40 minutes!) We had a quick getting to know you ice breaker first thing where we gave our names, where we were from and drew a picture of something we liked. It turns out lots of people like flowers (or can draw them at least) although one of the Bangladeshi girls likes rain and tea. The later training could have been better facilitated. It was all interesting and useful information and it's great to find out more about the practical application of development theory but I'm going to have to get used to a different style of delivery. The Anglo-Saxon method, for want of a better term, is a more inclusive facilitation style ...

The other day we wandered around the market near our hostel and gathered a large crowd as we made some small purchases. Gradually the adults lost interest but one of the children must have gone to find her friends to come and look at us and we ended up being followed by a large gaggle of children. They were quite shy but did respond to a salaam alaikum. They were quite excited by our cameras and posed for photos. (We did ask permission unlike one teenage Bangladeshi lad who later kept shoving a cameraphone in our faces!) The area is very poor and people sleep thirty to a house here so we didn't mind the fact that we probably massively overpaid for everything we bought. I heard one man boast that he'd made 100 taka (about 83p) for a pair of flip flops. It did make me feel quite daunted by the prospect of designing and implementing our own community action projects. After all, what do I know about this stuff? As a group of British and Bangladeshi volunteers we should generat...

After a morning of training in child protection and security we visited the Museum of Independence. It was a moving exhibition following the history of Bangladesh from British Raj to independence from Pakistan in 1971. Once again I was reminded why we should cover the history of British colonialism in school. As a nation we have such an over inflated sense of ourselves that we forget the horrors of what was done in our name in the past. It is quite shocking to be reminded of things that your country has done that are simply glossed over a lot of the time. Things that are still in living memory for many people. The list of political prisoners hanged after having been tortured is only one of many examples on display at the museum. Other countries across the world have lists equally as long I'm sure. As another volunteer put it "it's a wonder anyone still talks to us" The majority of the museum covers the period following partition to independence. A quick recap: Ba...

After a few months of preparation and a long flight of fourteen hours we're finally here. Our first introduction to Bangladesh came whilst we were waiting for our connection in Dubai. We walked through our gate and immediately felt distinctly Western and female amongst the crowd of men in their long shirts. We later learnt that this was because it's Bishwa Istjema this week, the second largest gathering of Muslims in the world after the Hajj. Our second was waiting two hours to get through passport control which then meant we were in rush hour traffic to get to our hostel. Driving in Dhaka is much like driving in Georgia was (ie. no rules!) but there's so much traffic that is was often at a standstill, leaving plenty of time to buy things off the many sellers walking in and out of the vehicles. I've no idea how long the drive took as almost all of us fell asleep after our rush to ensure we weren't eaten alive by mozzies first! Then it was on to dinner and c...

There's less than one week to go until I head to Bangladesh with VSO on the Global Xchange programme and I have to admit that it hasn't really hit me yet that I'm going.  I've got my train tickets to London sorted and a few toiletries ready but that's about it so far; so this week will be a mad dash round getting everything packed into the rucksack that I may or may not have yet.  Next Tuesday we'll all meet for the first time in London as we do our pre-departure training. Then it's a long plane journey to Dhaka with plenty of time to get to know each other and practise our Bengali (let's just say that mine could be a lot better!) We'll have a few days to acclimatise and then our team will divide into three and we're off to different areas of Bangladesh. I'll be based in the Chittagong Hill Tracts which looks like a beautiful part of the world. Here's a map of where I'm heading next week.