The directors of Green Village, Lata and Parvez. Two very awesome peeps.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Shaheed Day and Green Village, Mirpur
This weekend we had a 3 day weekend because of Shaheed Day. Shaheed Day is Martyr's Day in Bangladesh and commemorates when the Bangladeshis fought to keep Bangla as the official language of the region when they were under control by Pakistan, who wanted the official language to be Urdu. Many students at universities demonstrated and several died for this cause. We wore black and white at school to honor the day and people were celebrating the day on Sunday all over the city. It was also International Language Day, which is celebrated all over the world.
On my day off, I took a CNG ride out to Mirpur, which with good traffic is a half hour away and with bad anywhere from an hour to an hour and 45. I visited a local school called the Green Village, which is run by two impassioned people; Lata, a teacher and film maker and Parvez, an international environmental lawyer.
The school was tucked back away from the street and just had a small tin sign outside of it and a tin fence, painted green all the way around it. Mirpur is a poor, noisy, congested area of Dhaka but the street that the school was located on was pretty tranquil and low-key. Stepping through the gate of the small school I got the best earthy feeling. The school is in a U-shape with a simple open court yard in the middle with trees and terra cotta pots and bells everywhere. It seemed like a very tranquil place in this crazy city.
We took a tour of the classroom and it was filled with all kinds of native artifacts like drums and flutes and masks. The children that attend the school are all from around the area and most have other jobs and go to school when they are able to. The school is very resourceful and it was evident that they were inventive in their materials and teaching methods. The school also had another location that was a short rickshaw ride and about an hour boat ride away, which we went to. The school also has another segment in southern Bangladesh in the Hilltracks. Parvez has set up a school for a native tribe there called the Murong. His focus is educating these people in their native language, which has its own alphabet because these people will most likely remain in their own culture for their entire lives and this will be more beneficial to them. He is currently working on putting together a book that will help the children learn the alphabet with colorful pictures they've drawn themselves.
Lata lived in an apartment behind the school and invited us in for a delicious meal before we left for the other location. The meal consisted of homemade roti, which is like a flat flour cake and some kind of vegetables and shrimp that I have never had in Bangladesh before, a fried egg and fresh ginger tea. It was delicious, spicy, and made my nose run! Lata's mother had died just a week earlier and so she was showing us pictures of her as a young girl. She was so honest and upfront with her feelings about this personal loss to complete strangers.
We took a rickshaw ride down to the river and then waited for a long flat boat. When I got on, the man motioned to me "do you know how to swim because this shit might sink" by making swimming motions with his arms. Umm, not a great start. The boat was full and there was a small boy bailing water out of the small hull the entire time. Now I understood why I might be required to swim. It was a beautiful day though and I tried to enjoy the day and scenery and not think about our half-submerged boat.
We made several stops along the way-just like making metro stops or bus stops, we picked people up along the shore like it was no big deal and our full boat got even more full. The whole boat ride cost 10 Taka a person, about 15 cents for one hour. It makes you wonder how they could afford a boat to begin with when they charge that little. It may explain the over-crowding to turn a profit.
We got off when we reached a small village an hour later, only accessible by boat. There was a tiny market going on with fresh veggie and fruit. We walked to the village that Green Village helps run. The first thing that I noticed was a ginormous Banyan tree with a massive root system. Parvez said that there are about 200 people in the community and they are predominantly Hindu. We could see this from the small Hindu temples scattered about. Along with a school where they can learn to read and write, Parvez is trying to bring these people legal services, health care, and solve the community's shared problems like providing clean drinking water. Again, the village had such a nice feel to it; simple, earthy mud huts with outdoor "kitchens" (a mound of earth where you light a fire and set a pot on top of). Some had jute sides and some had tin sides and tin roofs. This was such a nice change from the cold cement apartment buildings of Dhaka. There was even a rose garden with beautiful red roses-something I haven't seen in a while!
We saw a well that was being dug with a filter that is supposed to filter out the arsenic, which is a big problem in Bangladesh. I got such an overwhelming sense of community and shared interest in finding solutions to these problems.
After touring around the village we had another huge meal of rice, spinach, and curried vegetables. I wasn't hungry at all from our first meal with Lata but Bangladeshis take such pride in being hospitable and the food again was delicious so I managed to eat!
Of course everyone that we met was very nice and smiled at us strange people. One girl was so happy to see us and gave us a gift of roses because her Uncle owned the rose garden and tried to use her English to talk to us, which was pretty good. She said she was very eager to get better at her English and that she hopes we'd come again.
The ride back was pleasant and a little less tense with less water in the bottom of our boat and less people, landing us safely back on shore! I was so impressed by the dedication of Parvez and Lata to their school and to this community. Lata has made several movies about the community, which I hope to see soon. Both highly educated and with the potential to make a lot more money, they have dedicated their lives to the cause of providing these disadvantaged people with more opportunities in their own lives.
On my day off, I took a CNG ride out to Mirpur, which with good traffic is a half hour away and with bad anywhere from an hour to an hour and 45. I visited a local school called the Green Village, which is run by two impassioned people; Lata, a teacher and film maker and Parvez, an international environmental lawyer.
The school was tucked back away from the street and just had a small tin sign outside of it and a tin fence, painted green all the way around it. Mirpur is a poor, noisy, congested area of Dhaka but the street that the school was located on was pretty tranquil and low-key. Stepping through the gate of the small school I got the best earthy feeling. The school is in a U-shape with a simple open court yard in the middle with trees and terra cotta pots and bells everywhere. It seemed like a very tranquil place in this crazy city.
We took a tour of the classroom and it was filled with all kinds of native artifacts like drums and flutes and masks. The children that attend the school are all from around the area and most have other jobs and go to school when they are able to. The school is very resourceful and it was evident that they were inventive in their materials and teaching methods. The school also had another location that was a short rickshaw ride and about an hour boat ride away, which we went to. The school also has another segment in southern Bangladesh in the Hilltracks. Parvez has set up a school for a native tribe there called the Murong. His focus is educating these people in their native language, which has its own alphabet because these people will most likely remain in their own culture for their entire lives and this will be more beneficial to them. He is currently working on putting together a book that will help the children learn the alphabet with colorful pictures they've drawn themselves.
Lata lived in an apartment behind the school and invited us in for a delicious meal before we left for the other location. The meal consisted of homemade roti, which is like a flat flour cake and some kind of vegetables and shrimp that I have never had in Bangladesh before, a fried egg and fresh ginger tea. It was delicious, spicy, and made my nose run! Lata's mother had died just a week earlier and so she was showing us pictures of her as a young girl. She was so honest and upfront with her feelings about this personal loss to complete strangers.
We took a rickshaw ride down to the river and then waited for a long flat boat. When I got on, the man motioned to me "do you know how to swim because this shit might sink" by making swimming motions with his arms. Umm, not a great start. The boat was full and there was a small boy bailing water out of the small hull the entire time. Now I understood why I might be required to swim. It was a beautiful day though and I tried to enjoy the day and scenery and not think about our half-submerged boat.
We made several stops along the way-just like making metro stops or bus stops, we picked people up along the shore like it was no big deal and our full boat got even more full. The whole boat ride cost 10 Taka a person, about 15 cents for one hour. It makes you wonder how they could afford a boat to begin with when they charge that little. It may explain the over-crowding to turn a profit.
We got off when we reached a small village an hour later, only accessible by boat. There was a tiny market going on with fresh veggie and fruit. We walked to the village that Green Village helps run. The first thing that I noticed was a ginormous Banyan tree with a massive root system. Parvez said that there are about 200 people in the community and they are predominantly Hindu. We could see this from the small Hindu temples scattered about. Along with a school where they can learn to read and write, Parvez is trying to bring these people legal services, health care, and solve the community's shared problems like providing clean drinking water. Again, the village had such a nice feel to it; simple, earthy mud huts with outdoor "kitchens" (a mound of earth where you light a fire and set a pot on top of). Some had jute sides and some had tin sides and tin roofs. This was such a nice change from the cold cement apartment buildings of Dhaka. There was even a rose garden with beautiful red roses-something I haven't seen in a while!
We saw a well that was being dug with a filter that is supposed to filter out the arsenic, which is a big problem in Bangladesh. I got such an overwhelming sense of community and shared interest in finding solutions to these problems.
After touring around the village we had another huge meal of rice, spinach, and curried vegetables. I wasn't hungry at all from our first meal with Lata but Bangladeshis take such pride in being hospitable and the food again was delicious so I managed to eat!
Of course everyone that we met was very nice and smiled at us strange people. One girl was so happy to see us and gave us a gift of roses because her Uncle owned the rose garden and tried to use her English to talk to us, which was pretty good. She said she was very eager to get better at her English and that she hopes we'd come again.
The ride back was pleasant and a little less tense with less water in the bottom of our boat and less people, landing us safely back on shore! I was so impressed by the dedication of Parvez and Lata to their school and to this community. Lata has made several movies about the community, which I hope to see soon. Both highly educated and with the potential to make a lot more money, they have dedicated their lives to the cause of providing these disadvantaged people with more opportunities in their own lives.
Monday, February 1, 2010
A Small but Impactful Gesture
This weekend we witnessed something pretty amazing. My friend Kristen lives right next to a mosque and on Fridays (the Muslim holy day) there are a lot of beggars who wait outside of the mosque hoping to get food and/or money from recent mosque-goers when it lets out. The beggars are mostly all old, very frail looking old women, hunched over in their beautifully colored but dusty cotton saris. Their skin is brown and tough like leather and their faces are lined with wrinkles from a tough life. It is all men who attend the mosque. We watched as a passing man handed a couple of scrunched 100 Taka bills to a few of the ladies. Instead of these few lucky individuals pocketing the money, they distributed it evenly amongst the group of women. Other women brought out smaller bills to make change and everyone got a piece of the pie. This is obviously a tight-knit group who takes care of their own. The women who were handed the money in the first place would not have felt right taking it for themselves while others went without. This simple gesture of giving and putting the group before the individual was beautiful and made us all think hard.
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