Field Visit to Rangpur

After weeks of working in a cubicle, we finally got our first chance at a real field visit, six hours outside of Dhaka. Rosie and I headed out to Rangpur last week and got to see implementation of the projects we've been working on - Strengthening the Dairy Value Chain* (Rosie) and Rural Sales Project (me).

I took a small notebook with me. With no access to e-mail, gchat or facebook, this flimsy, unassuming, no-tech instrument became my vehicle to the outside world. I barely recall what I wrote. Flipping through it now I see pages of the illegible scrawl of a hand used to typing and the unstructured, stream-of-conscious rambling of a mind trained for e-mail. Surface level, it's all bulleted notes, circled questions and sections starred for further research. Looking closer, amid the interviews are disjointed speculations on life, poverty and happiness.

If someone found this notebook, they'd have to assume I had schizophrenia. (Maybe I do! In high school I watched A Beautiful Mind at 2 a.m. in the dark by myself, and couldn't sleep for two hours, convinced my family was not aging, and were therefore a figment of my psychosis)

One page in the book starts with a list of the quantity of milk a cow is producing for a family we visited (according to the farmer - an older man, about 65, it went from 6 to 10 liters, thanks to SDVC), followed by notes on a woman's role in cow rearing, social empowerment, thoughts on mangoes (hari banga!) and then randomly in the middle of the page "lovely wife - beautiful smile." Why did I write all that? How is it relevant to anything? No idea.

Being in Rangpur was a moving experience. The people we met were the poorest of the rural poor. Most owned no land themselves and instead worked as farmers on other people's land. Oddly enough, I didn't register their poverty at all. The whole experience was in stark contrast to Dhaka, where you can't help but be perpetually aware of poverty and malnutrition. In Rangpur people were poor, but they were incredibly vibrant and strong. They glowed. It was like they knew something, like they had a secret - not a secret to happiness, but to completeness. I forgot to feel sorry for them.

And I wrote this:

Looking at them you do not see what they don't have, you see what you are missing. You feel your own gluttony... the tragedy of your own over-consumption, your unfair, unbalanced taking. You think that maybe some wanting is good, that complete satiation can be lazy and destructive - to the world, certainly, but also to yourself. Seeing them you realize maybe living without means gaining quite a bit.

Ok, enough of that. Here are some photos!



Father's Day Note: To the man who bought me this camera (and gave me a way to share my experience), and without whom I would not exist (or know how to build furniture, install ceiling fans and buy groceries at the lowest per unit price), Happy Fathers' Day, Dad!

*SDVC, or Strengthening the Dairy Value Chain, is a project CARE BD's Economic Development Unit is working on to help farmers make the most of their milk. The project has an educational component that shows farmers how to increase their cows' milk production (safely and organically), and it connects them in a sort of cooperative that gives them greater bargaining power with milk processors (resulting in more income), while providing the processors with easier access to more sources of properly produced and handled milk.

For info on the Rural Sales Program, check out my first field visit.