Travelling

This is my first blog in English language and I want to dedicate it especially to my non-German speaking friends who could so far only watch the pictures.
I have travelled a bit since my last blog. From October 21 to 24 I went to Rajshahi, a north-western district of Bangladesh famous for Mangoes and Papayas and for its silk industry. I was overwhelmed by the rich vegetation and the fertility of the land. I have also tried to catch with my camera the different grades of green. From October 26 to 28 I travelled with Melissa to Sylhet, a district in the very north of Bangladesh famous for its many tea gardens and for natural gas resources. There can be found also the one and only waterfall in Bangladesh of Madhabkunda. Bangladesh landscape is quite flat and hilly areas are thus something very special for Bangladeshis. The hilly areas are populated with tribal people who are either budhist or christian and use to have different life styles. On Friday, November 2, I made a one day trip to Malkhanagar, a village in Dhaka district, to visit my first branch manager and his wife, Harun and Shami. This region is famous for its garments industry. I had three of my Salwar and Kamize tailored there. And last Saturday I just came back from Chittagong district. A district in the coastal area- Cox’s Bazar is famous for its longest beach in the world with a length of approximately 170km. The coastal area is usually most affected by flooding or cyclones.
Just two days ago there was an alert for a cyclone coming up in the Bay of Bengal with winds of around 200 km per hour. The highest scale of warning was issued yesterday morning. Cyclone Sidr had actually hit with high tidal surge and strong winds the coastal areas of Sundarbarns, Khulna, Barisal, Chittagong and Cox’s Bazar. Hundreds of thousands of people living in those areas had been evacuated to Cyclone shelters. The Bengali government however has failed to build shelters for giving all of the people sufficient refuge rendering those places terribly overcrowded and inadequate.
Dhaka situated in the heart of Bangladesh is usually less affected. Even though I read in the newspaper today that Dhaka was hit by strong winds by 1 am last night I did not realise it personally. Sidr had damaged the grid lines in Chittagong and power supply was thus snapped all over the country. Before starting my blog in one of Dhaka’s Cyber Cafes I had to wait for one hour since they were still restoring the grid line. The country is quite vulnerable to breakdowns of electricity and even the Internet. Two days ago there was a breakdown of the Internet in all over the country from 1 am to 4 pm since somebody in an act of sabotage has snapped the one and only optical fibre line in Bangladesh. The economic damage of such a breakdown is hard to measure but the scale must be huge given that the entire Bangladeshi economy has been disconnected for almost one work day.

When I travel in Bangladesh I often feel set backwards to earlier times. The scenery of the villages and the life styles of the rural people have only very few in common with western modern world. Hair is cut on the streets, cattle and other live stock move around on the streets, and boats made of wood seem like requisites from the latest pirate movie - the only items not fitting in this picture are mobile phones that could not be prevented from arriving even to the most remote villages.
Travelling in Bangladesh though fascinating and exciting can also be a quite challenging experience bringing you near to your personal limits. As long as you find a native Bengali speaker with some English skills you will encounter no problems in finding your way. In the absence of such a person arriving to the point where you want to go can get some of a very energy consuming and extremely tiring undertaking.
Dhaka lies in the heart of Bangladesh and has four different bus stations. From there various bus companies offer their services to different local destinations. The varies bus companies differ in comfort (available space, air condition vs. Non AC,..), travel duration, safety (due to physical condition of the bus and the bus driver’s guiding style), and cost. Thus as soon as you chose your final destination, it is wise to decide about the bus company that should take you there. At the beginning I went for the budget alternative in order to save money. I am currently working as an Intern in Grameen Trust and am not paid. As I do really exciting work and since I am able to learn a lot about the requirements for replicating the Grameen Model in other countries it is however a fair deal. Given that I currently live on my savings I try to minimise my expenditures. Apart from that it is also really interesting to experience budget restrictions when you sit in a bus packed with people inside and on the top of the bus that should have been actually restricted from the road due to safety reasons. Bangladesh is usually the cemetery for all kinds of vehicles that come from all over the world. Before being finally scrapped these vehicles are however used in Bangladesh as long as possible.
After a three hours kind of horror trip on a very uncomfortable bus with a very rough bus driver guiding on very bad roads that cost me a lot of energy I however had to realise that it does not make much sense to save on bus tickets and that I would rather pay more for more safety and comfort.
Life gets much easier as soon as you learn from experience. The first journey in Bangladesh was however a very challenging experience given the fact that I did not have any travelling experience in Bangladesh at all and that the language barrier made it very difficult to get help.
Melissa and I have decided to make a trip to Sylhet to visit the tea gardens. We found out about the bus station where the buses for Sylhet would leave and made an appointment for 8am at Sayedabad bus station at the point where the buses to Sylhet leave. What I did not know at that time was that Sayedabad is a huge station and that many different companies offer their services. A fact that did not really help for meeting each other there on time. I got there already early since I had taken a CNG (=three wheel vehicle fuelled by natural gas) and had calculated enough time puffer for frequent traffic jams. So I bought two tickets for departure at 8.30 am and got on the bus. In order to get busses full, it is usual here that the bus driver starts moving around slowly before actual departure while the bus assistant shouts loudly the name of the destination thus collecting passengers. Since Melissa had not shown up by 8.10 am I called her up. I found her all crying- the CNG that she had taken has had an accident with a Rickshaw. She told me under tears that instead of stopping and helping the presumably hurt Rickshaw driver, the CNG driver had just continued his journey. Mel just had lost her nerves and I tried to calm her. All of the sudden I realised that the bus had taken off before schedule. I tried to explain to the bus driver and his assistant that my friend was still missing and that he should stop to wait for her. But he seemed not to understand me at all, just nodded saying Yes, Yes and continued driving. Having crying Melissa still on the phone I knew that it was impossible to leave her in this situation on her own to take the next bus. So I showed them my two tickets but they still did not react. So I decided to get out of the bus and return on my own what I finally did. Back at Sayedabad I found the man who had sold the tickets to me. He was so nice to return me the money and he helped me in finding Melissa. To arrange for a meeting place at Sayedabad gets very difficult as you do not know the place. So we co-ordinated via mobile phone and at the end really realised to meet each other. We bought new tickets and finally left Dhaka at 10am. That was the moment when I had to recharge my energy reserves by taking natural rescue drops brought from Austria for confronting various kinds of shocks.
We learnt our lessons from this experience and travelling gets smoother by every trip that we make. I realise now however the importance of language as the basis for moving forward. I was very lucky to be able to travel to many different countries in the past. Until now I hardly had any major problems to make myself understood. But in Bangladesh the language barrier is often a problem. Especially when the people make you believe that they understood you and that they bring you where you want to go. Only by finding yourself in places where you actually never wanted to go you realise that they actually did not have a clue. As Bengali people are very friendly and welcoming and as it is an honour for them to welcome you, they would hardly admit that they cannot help you but would rather send you three times from one direction to the other. This process continues as long as I really start loosing my patience, feeling my rage-o-meter climbing into red, and my frustration really gets evident. So far I however always could manage to reach my aim- it was only a question of time.

My frustration on various aspects of life in Bangladesh does however always become very relative when I pass the slums on the outskirts of Dhaka or when I travel through the country. Poverty is evident everywhere in Bangladesh, sometimes more and sometimes less. The country is highly dependent on imports and prices are actually quite high measured in terms of wage and inflation.
The miserable economic conditions of the country become especially evident on rainy days when the holes of the roads fill with rain water and the dust, the dirt and the waste on the roads amalgamate with each other. Walking then becomes a very particular experience. I try to walk quite a lot in Dhaka since that is the only physical exercise I practise at the moment. It takes me one hour to arrive from my home to Grameen Trust every morning. I walk for 30 minutes and then I get on the local bus where I am always a kind of attraction since it is not usual for woman of the upper class to take local buses. I however enjoy taking public transport since apart from being much cheaper it is always a small adventure and gives me the opportunity to understand poor people lives better. Once arrived to the office usually my first way is to the bathroom to free my feet from Dhaka’s dust and dirt.
The main difference between me and poor people is that I have the chance to move between the different layers of society and that is what I enjoy most at the moment. I can always seek refuge from wet and cold weather what poor people usually are prevented from. They live in their very basic shelters, often only tents made of plastic planes, without any protection for themselves or their belongings. Many of them have to wash themselves, their clothes and their crockery in rivers or ponds since they cannot afford water pumps. Often these rivers or ponds are however quite polluted making washing not really effective.
I had to take a break from writing my blog since the power supply has been snapped again for two hours. I have been waiting in the dark building in which the Cyber café is located together with other users. The shops in the first floor were run by candle light. People sit and waited patiently – nobody seemed to be very excited and frustrated, they are just used to these situations. If I imagine the reaction of people in Austria it certainly would have been much different.
The attitude of people towards their own life depends on their mind-set. From what I have seen so far my impression is that poor people have a more positive attitude towards life than many rich ones. It might be that they simply cannot afford to be negatively minded and to loose a lot of energy which they need in order to survive. So they just make the best out of their situation and struggle for improving their life-style by their own personal strengths. Supporting poor people in becoming self-reliant and creating their own future is the very basic idea of the Grameen Credit Model. “The best way to predict your future is to create it “
We can all do a lot for improving our life day by day. If we are not happy with it we have to do something about it rather than blaming others and waiting for others to do something.
I observe the people, their lifestyles, and their attitudes towards life day by day and it seems to me that most of them are following this philosophy and create their futures.
Apart from the overwhelming friendliness and hospitality of Bengali people, it might be their positive mind-set that attracts me most. I pretty much feel like being at home even though it is not more than 6 weeks that I have been staying here.