I love Bangladesh!

"Your country?!"

Literally, this is how every local in the street will approach you. No "hello!" Just straight up "your country!?" And when you answer them, they say thank you and then they go away satisfied, or for the most adventurous ones, they start small talk.

It is now 10:14pm, February 15th. I am sitting on a bench at the bus station, waiting for my 10:35pm night bus to Khulna, south Bangladesh.

We arrived in Bangladesh on Feb 1st, after 40 hours of train in india to go from Kerala to Kolkata, one quick nap at Sumita's house, and a quick flight from Kolkata to Dhaka. It has now been two weeks since we got here.

Most of our time has thus far been spent in Dhaka, the capital. But the first impression is of a country of extremes. Indeed, even more so than its neighbor India, Bangladesh is to me the most chaotic place, the dustiest and most polluted place, yet also the most welcoming place (perhaps a close tie with Indonesia Sulawesi and Sumatra) I have seen in my trip. Oh, and boy was I wrong when I thought that bus drivers I. Indonesia or India were the absolute craziest ones on the planet. Ufff! Bangladeshi bus drivers are by far, the craziest, and yet at the same time the most talented drivers ever. Give them a formula 1 car and these guys will crush any world records...

Curious detail about Bangladesh or at least the central region to date is the fact that is hasn't rained in months, and so leading to all of the suffocating pollution to cover pretty much every inch of surface in the landscape. From building facades, to plant and tree leaves, to windows, and vehicles. Basically, wherever you look other than along the river shores, it feels like an atomic bomb landed a while ago and nothing, dusty surface wise had ever been cleaned since then. A bit of a gloomy feeling...

Thanks to Mouli, we connected with her uncle, Dr Khan, an active low key and small scale philanthropic man who welcomed us with wide open arms and incredible hospitality...him and his whole family.

After spending a few days north of the city in the more recent suburbs, slowly lethargically adapting to the culture and chaos, and eating more food than our stomach could fit, Dr Khan hosted us for a few days further north, in the country side, in a small village (40,000 people!) Where he has been working on integrated social project to alleviate the poverty since the early 90's.

Oh, I forgot to mention, both Angelina and I really wanted to see Bangladesh, not from a tourism perspective, but purely from a social development work perspective.  So this has been the only focus of our stay here thus far. (Angelina actually flew back from Brazil tonight, after being on the road for 20 months! :'(  

So we spent 4 days in the village of Kanchanpur learning about the village culture and the work of Dr. Khan, as well as to some degrees, the work of BRAC and Grameen. Very interesting to see how when these three stakeholders are press and active in a same place, things do change. We even got to sit down for the whole duration of a Grameen collecting agent collecting the dues from all the Grameen borrowing women of the village; 78 of them! Quite an experience, especially when chatting with the collection agent afterwards...where we were told that Grameen bank is basically Apure for profit bank and that aside from making cash, they didn't actually really cares about the livelihoods of the villagers. And indeed, the whole season was solely focused on collecting cash. Not a second spent on checking in with the women about the health of their businesses, or even any kind of business or financial coaching. We also learnt that basically, Grameen's focus was to lock its borrowers into borrowing more and more and the minute they stop borrowing, Grameen drops them from their chart, wow! Am still trying to ask around about this as it seems to unreal and contrary to Grameem's mission to be true.

This village, or the Union of Kanchanpur to be more precise, is probably by very far, the most developed, organized, clean and beautiful rural farming village I have ever seen or imagined. And the people were just so unbelievably kind to us, and respectfully curious about us and our origins. We are now actually working on putting a crowd raise online fundraising initiative for Dr Khan to raise funds to put together a video documentary to showcase the social business mode! He has been working on for the past 20 years.

Did I mention that in two weeks here, walking around the streets of the center of the capital city, we have only see one foreigner!?

This country is not a tourism destination...and for obvious reasons...but travelers don't know what they are missing.

One thing I have learnt about traveling to Bangladesh is that being a fair-skin Brazilian woman is definitely a huge advantage to make friends all over. As strange as it might sound for a cricket worshipping culture as the Bangladeshi culture, apparently about 75% of the population are addicted fans of the Brazilian soccer team (the remaining 25% are addicted to the Argentina soccer team). Furthermore, being a highly conservative religious country, a white woman walking the streets attracts a lot of attention from the men for obvious reasons, but also from the women by pure admiration and fascination. So just a tip for the travelers out there...

The only disturbing and frustrating factor of our stay so far, and this I believe only applies to Dhaka, is the traffic. Dhaka is not a big city. From northern suburb to southern river shore, probably 20 km maximum. Yet, on good day, it will take between 1.5 to 2 hours by bus. And on a bad day, up to 3 hours!!!!!! One way! So yeah, upon returning from the village, we decided to set up camp downtown, in the more industrial yet super cultural area of Gulistan. Only 20 min walk from the river shores. And trust me, the shores are just an unbelievable spectacle of culture, colors, kindness, smiles, generations, etc...
Every morning, starting before dawn, and up to perhaps noon, there is a gigantic fruits and veggie market, on one side, and the transiting of all the produce from one side of the river to the other, by old wooden boat. We went two days in a raw and could never get enough.

And at night, the narrow river bed turns into the Venice of darkness. Hundreds of small wooden boats, ferry over back and forth passengers, by groups of about 6 to 8, from one bank of the river to the other, and for sole source of light, the moon and the stars, and sometimes, a cell phone here and there. Magical! And to top it all, these hundreds of tiny boats have to navigate back and forth zigzagging between the hundreds of gigantic long distance passenger ferry steamers, who also navigate for the most part, without light.

So obviously we had to do it...take a small boat and cross the river, and return. :-)

Since around the world Bangladesh is synonym with micro credit and Grameen bank, and since both Angelina and I had come here to see the Grameen phenomenon from closer, off course we made it to the center...first to pay our fees for the social business lab to come, and then to chat a bit with some people around the place about the work of Grameen in the social business area. A few hours later we were visiting s tiny company of 7 people working out of the basement/parking garage of this car dealership...and all 4 of them blind, getting a second chance on life by being employed for the first time and not having to beg anymore. Oh, and these 7 people are basically manually binding note books...500 notebooks per day!

(Gosh! Am now sitting in the bus en route to Khulna. It's 11:30pm. I thought I was going to be able to sleep through the 10 hours journey. Ha! Yeah right! My seat is right behind the driver, on the aisle side, for more leg room. But the front row seats are separated from the driver area by a width wide solid thick metal fence, like the ones you see on TV on the buses used to carry prisoners to the jails. I guess given the way the drivers drives, it is jus a way to protect us from any violent crash and to fly through the wind shield. Really!?)

Valentines day yesterday was quite a cute and funny occurring to watch throughout the city. Both conservative Hindus and Muslims both bought quite much into this now commercial pseudo lovers day. People walking around flowers in hand, and with some red tough on their outfit, and for once, looking like actual coupes and not total strangers whose behaviors are daily ruled by the conservatism of religions.

Today was quite a special day. Not only was it Angelina's last day on her long world journey, and we both attended Yunus Center social business design lab all day, learning more about small pseudo social business ideas, about the way Grameen actually goes about social businesses, and also meeting inspiring and interesting people from different parts of the world. What a fantastic way for Angelina to end her trip, and for me to perhaps transition into the second part of my journey, and where social business will most definitely play a bigger role and give me a lot to think about for my post journey plans and ambitions. So let's see...

Anyhow...it is now late, my tablet battery level is almost empty, and the bus driver is going crazier and crazier, so time to closer the tablet, and try to focus on not focusing on the road and the unbelievable speed at which the driver is zigzagging through the road at night and after the rain.

Just one last fun fact about Dhaka thus far: the technique to get on a bus here is the same as the technique to surf a wave...when you see the bus getting close, start running...and then jump on.

Oh, and if you want to make a nice gift to a random local in the street, just shake his hand in public. :-)