"Home schooling" takes on new meaning

Currently, the Bangladesh government does not have a strategy to address the educational needs of children in the country's urban slums, which can be found in huge pockets throughout Dhaka and other metropolitan areas. While this presents major challenges, it also provides space for creativity and innovation: This woman, Shireen, is the aunt of a Bangladeshi friend of mine here. She inherited a huge home that sits in the midst of one of these slums. In 2002, on the first floor of her home she opened a school - pre-primary through fifth grade - for children living in this slum. Her daughter designed these uniforms, which are free for the 120 kids that go to this school six days a week.

By piecing together donations, the children receive a meal every day. They also go on field trips to places like the Liberation War Museum and the Dhaka Zoo. Shireen is in the process of applying for NGO certification here, so she can receive foreign contributions. She turns away all donations from political parties here; she's not willing to give them a say in these kids' education.

I have heard of a number of families here opening their homes to start schools - for wealthier children as a profit-making venture, and for poor children with no viable alternatives.

“When are you coming home?”

Photos (top to bottom, left to right): A day out for a group of 12 Americans in Dhaka proves very interesting for the locals. On a busy street, a crowd begins to gather to observe us; after a full day of being watched by the locals, some of the students decide to see what all of the fuss is about and join the crowd that's gathered in a semi-circle around us; I join the fun and take a photo of a Bangladeshi teen taking a photo of me.

Bangladeshis are curious. Especially about foreigners. I understand – in my three weeks here, I’ve maybe seen 10, and most of those were at Bella Italia, a pizza joint here popular among expats. So the Bangladeshis – young, old, male, female, barefoot, in bejeweled sandals – stare. A lot. For uncomfortably long periods of time. Sometimes they take pictures with their mobile phones. And they always ask questions.

Many I hear again and again: Where are you from? Why are you in Bangladesh? Do you like our country? What university do you attend? What do you study? Are you married? Omar…is he Muslim? Do you have children? Are you expecting? (At this, which I have only been asked once, mind you, I try not to take offense and instead remind myself that I indeed do not have “abs of steel.”)

When visiting BRAC schools, I’ve taken to asking children to guess the answer to their first question. Typically, they shout “America!” immediately. Yes terday, though, a very confident five-year-old girl at one of BRAC’s pre-primary schools said, in Bengali: “I think she lives by my grandmother’s house.” Where does your grandmother live, my translator asked this precocious little girl. “Next to my aunt’s house,” she said. And to her credit, this little one did not bat an eye when the other children giggled.

Last week, a colleague at BRAC – a member of the Education for Indigenous Children unit – had a new one for me: Are you here alone? He wondered aloud if I was in Dhaka without my husband, without my family. I had not thought of my status here in such stark terms, but it was true: I am here alone. That feeling in the pit of my stomach rose to the surface, and suddenly my eyes were wet. Clearly, he hit a nerve. Yes, I said quickly, and then deflected, surely inappropriately: Are you here alone?

Yes, I am alone too, he told me. This I was not expecting. He explained that he is an ethnic minority in Bangladesh – a Chakma from the Chittagong Hill Tracts – and his family still lives in the rural village in which he was raised. He lives in Dhaka, but his wife lives outside this sprawling city, where she works as a nurse. They were married last December, but she cannot find work here, and he cannot find work there. We see each other at least monthly, he tells me; she was recently in Dhaka for several days.

It’s hard, isn’t it? I asked him. He nodded. And then we moved on, him asking me how I pass my days here.

Back at the Kennedy School, I had lots of conversations with friends and classmates about how difficult it can be to coordinate two careers and be in the same place at the same time as your partner…and how difficult it is to be apart. We talked about this as an increasingly prevalent problem for our generation – a result of globalization, probably, and of the ability to learn about jobs and make connections to people throughout the country and across the world.

Are we the first to deal with this issue of long-distance families on such a massive scale? Maybe. Probably not. Today, a friend kindly reminded me of the travails of immigrants in centuries past, moving across an ocean never to see or even speak with family members again. In any case, I know living apart from my husband – which we will have done for a year as of this August – is a challenge for which I do not have a playbook. My parents have lived together for their entire marriage, first in a small apartment in Des Plaines, Illinois and for the last 30 years in a house on Smethwick Lane in Elk Grove Village. They haven’t been away from one another for more than a week’s time, when my Dad went to New York for work years back. I have a terrible memory, but I remember that week.

In any event, this experience of seeing my family every day in a photo on my nightstand rather than in conversation over the dinner table is a common ground I’ve discovered with many Bangladeshis. Some are making choices, as am I. The family I’m staying with speaks with great pride of their eldest daughter, who was educated in Toronto and now works in Canada. Many relatively wealthy Bangladeshis study and work abroad – in Europe, in Canada, in the U.S. It is a mark of distinction, a source of legitimacy, a sign of success.

But others, like my colleague at BRAC, have no other option. Well, that’s not completely true. They have no other good options.

The two maids in my home here don’t seem to remember when they last saw their families. I asked Nahar, my Bangladeshi host, about this, as I could easily have misinterpreted the maids’ responses to my questions, roughly articulated in halting Bangla and hand motions bordering on ridiculous. She tells me these young women see their families at least annually, on Eid (the Muslim holiday marking the end of Ramadan). For Parveen, it is particularly difficult: her family lives far away, and it’s very expensive to visit. Moreover, at 14 years old she is marrying age in her village. The average Bangladeshi woman marries at 18; in poor rural areas, girls wed earlier. Nahar tells me that Parveen – who is pretty, literate in Bangla, and now adept at keeping up a home – is afraid of going home, as her parents will marry her off. So she stays in Dhaka, away from her family, but sending home her salary.

Last week, Parveen asked to use my mobile phone to call home. I obliged. Over the next twenty minutes, I listened to her: she was nervous, and alternately shy, excited, sad, happy, and…angry. Ultimately, given the small amount left on my pay-as-you-go phone and my caution at setting a precedent I could not sustain, I nearly had to tear her away.

Rashida, the other maid, has a different story: Although she looks quite young, she is my age, around 30. And she has already been married, and had a baby – but when her husband divorced her, he took their baby with him. I’m not sure if she has a home to go to. When Rashida used my mobile phone to call family, she told me it would take two minutes and I don’t think she even took that long to check in with her brother, a rickshaw puller in Dhaka.

Maids and rickshaw pullers aren’t the only ones who depend on mobile phones (which have virtually replaced land lines in much of this country) to keep up with family. At the Abu Dhabi airport, en route to Dhaka, a smartly dressed Bangladeshi man befriended me while we waited to board. Mamun’s getting his MBA in Dublin, and he was on his way to Dhaka to spend the summer with his wife and children. He showed me pictures of his son on his way to school, and his daughter staring defiantly at his camera. He told me how much he struggles with his decision to study in Ireland, where he shares an apartment with strangers and works in a bar (an awkward occupation for a devout Muslim from a country devoid of alcohol) to make some cash. But mostly he struggles because his son and daughter don’t understand. I told him that one day they’ll be not only grateful but proud. Right now, he said, his little girl is mostly angry. She is five or six years old. And every time he calls, she has a single question for her father: “When are you coming home?”

My mother-in-law, who lived apart from her husband in the year before they married – he in Canada, she in Egypt – empathized when I expressed my hesitation at living in Dhaka this summer while her son lives in Boston. Next time you have an opportunity like this, she shared, you’ll think about it differently; you’ll remember how hard it was this time. She’s right; next time I’ll remember this feeling in the pit of my stomach. Next time, I’ll choose to live in the same city as my husband, even if it is “just two months.”

But sometimes people don’t have much of a choice. Even if we do, well, we’ve got to live through it. In any case, we’re alone. And so we depend on nice strangers to let us use their phones or look at our pictures, or coworkers who will engage in friendly conversation about family, about children, about home. And we think about our last phone call, or count down the days until our next visit.

“We didn’t even have bridges…”

Photos (top to bottom): BRAC Village Organization Meeting, for microfinance participants (all women); BRAC Primary School Children sit in a semi-circle in their one-room schoolhouse; BRAC students perform; me, BRAC USA staff Rachael, and BRAC intern coordinator Shana in front of what is arguably Dhaka's swankiest bridge.

During tonight’s blackout – these happen nearly every day – I think I’ve successfully persuaded myself that it’s romantic rather than trying to write my blog by the light of a battery-operated lamp, in my small, er, cozy room now without A/C or a fan. It’s not primitive, I tell myself. Quite the contrary: I have this laptop, this bed, this lamp.

Moments earlier, we – myself and the two young maids that work in my home here – were poring over my Bengali-English phrasebook. This little book is our tenuous bridge to understanding, and we’ve already spent several hours practicing a variety of questions and answers, in Bengali, English and sometimes Hindi (turns out ‘namaste’ is not only a word chanted at the end of a yoga session). It occurred to me tonight that my difficulty learning Bengali won’t stymie much except my ability to direct a rickshaw driver here. But without English, well, there are real consequences for these two women.

Anyhow, I digress…sort of. Yesterday, I spent a day “in the field” with BRAC for a baptism-by-fire orientation of sorts. I went to Savar, a suburb made up of a number of villages about an hour from Dhaka. After tea, biscuits and bananas at a BRAC training center, BRAC whisked about 15 interns away in two spotless white mini-vans through narrow streets crowded with people, rickshaws, animals, bicycles, and a car here and there. We walked the last short leg of this journey – shooing away mosquitoes and avoiding muddy puddles from yesterday’s rainfall along the way – and suddenly we were upon a group of about 20 women. And men, and children…it seemed the whole village came to this week’s Village Organization meeting, curious about the arrival of sweaty, wide-eyed Americans.

These women – all married, all wearing bright, colorful saris or salwar kameez (tunics worn over loose-fitting pants – my new favourite clothing ensemble), all eager to be heard – receive loans from BRAC. They participate in the first tier of BRAC’s microfinance program, which means they are very poor but eligible for a small loan to buy a cow, a sewing machine or some other means to earn income. And they’re held accountable as a group – which is in part responsible for BRAC’s 95% repayment rates despite their poverty.

At VO meetings, borrowers report to their Programme Organizer on progress and they make loan repayments. They also help one another out when cash –Taka – is short. Why do they work with BRAC? The interest rates are low, they say. It allows them to make money for their family. We ask: Do their husbands ultimately control the funds they earn? Suddenly all of the women are talking at once, while the men and children observe – their husbands are aware they receive loans, the women say, but they all insist they are the ones who decide how to use the profits.

Bangladesh is a tough place to live. It is unbearably hot (although you wouldn’t guess it by the lack of sweat on Bangladeshi brows), the poverty is deep and widespread, and decades of corruption have led to today’s state of emergency, instituted by the military government over a year ago.

But these women are also tough – I can see it in their tired eyes, their sun-scarred complexion, their strong and sure voices. So I am surprised to see that their Programme Organizer – in essence, their leader – is not another woman, but a young man dressed in a pressed, button-down shirt. Later in the day, I am again surprised to see legions of women working at an Aarong production facility (Aarong is an upscale shop started by BRAC that makes and sells handicrafts, while providing fair employment for Bangladeshis) under the supervision of… men. I asked the BRAC staffer with us about this power imbalance, which was especially striking given BRAC’s mission to empower women and girls. She assured me that women also take on leadership roles, and what we were seeing today was a small sample.

So, on we went – to a human rights and legal assistance meeting (today’s topic: constitutional law, specifically issues of divorce, inheritance, and polygamy), a BRAC nursery (where one of the interns fainted from the heat), a community library.

And then there was the BRAC Primary School. I’ve come to believe that you can tell immediately when a school, or a classroom, is good. This one-room schoolhouse was great. I could see the learning taking place – it was in the artwork that covered all four walls and hung from the ceiling, it was in the dances the children performed for us, it was in the way they answered our questions without hesitation but enthusiasm, and pride.

I’ve read so much about BRAC schools: they serve children who either dropped out or never enrolled in largely sub-par government schools, they enroll 65% girls, they serve 25 to 33 students, the teacher is a married woman from the community, and they have a child-centered approach to learning. And: On average, BRAC children – at more than 37,000 schools in every district in Bangladesh – outperform children in government schools on national exams.

Dr. Abed, the founder of BRAC and hands down the most charismatic individual I have ever met, joked when I saw him tonight that BRAC Schools are like McDonald’s: every one is the same. As promised, at this schoolhouse there were 33 children, exactly two-thirds were girls, and the teacher had a wedding ring. But more than that…these children are confident, they are smart, and they have so much potential. I asked them what they were learning that day. One of the girls jumped up and read to us, in English, a passage on food from today’s coursework. We had to ask the standard question: What do you want to be when you grow up? Boys overwhelmingly wanted careers in the police force or the military (although one wants to be a singer, and he performed for us on the spot), and girls aspired to be pilots, flight attendants, teachers, doctors, and, yes, police.

Though invigorated by this classroom, at the end of the day I was nagged by a question: What happens on a girl’s journey from the classroom to the workplace? Many of these young girls are leaders, they are confident, they have big dreams. Boys and girls in this school jump (literally) to share their ideas and dreams in equal measure. But in the workplace, men are the supervisors, the organizers… women are maids, line workers, recipients.

I raised this question today, this time to the strong, empathetic, smart woman leading BRAC’s innovative new program to reach the “Ultra Poor” in Bangladesh. She assured me BRAC is making strides in achieving gender equity in the workplace. BRAC full-time staff (not including teachers and other part-time employees) are 20 percent women overall, and even 30 percent at headquarters. My expression must have been nonplussed. Twenty percent? Thirty percent? That’s equity?

She went on. You must keep in mind, she told me: Our country is only 37 years old. For the first 10 to 15 years after independence, she said, we were focused almost exclusively on reconstruction and rehabilitation (Bangladesh’s independence immediately followed a cyclone in 1970 that killed 500,000, a Liberation War in 1971 with disputed Bangladeshi casualty figures ranging from 200,000 to 3 million as well as 8 to 10 million refugees, and a famine in 1973-74 that many claim killed over one million people (the government figure is 26,000)).

“I remember, in the mid-80s,” she said. “We didn’t even have bridges.” In a country where rivers and lakes criss-cross land as highways do in the U.S., no bridges is no small challenge. I can’t imagine gender equity was on anyone’s radar.

I’m still parsing out what it all means. But now it’s certainly difficult for me to argue that Bangladesh’s progress on social issues is inadequate, or too slow. All of those women I met yesterday were in the workplace, and were gaining access to loans and income. The maids I practice Bengali with are certainly farther along in their mastery of English than I’ll ever be in their language, and they do have a safe, comfortable place to live and a regular income in a country that’s wracked by poverty. Maybe the women are not the supervisors, maybe the maids are not fluent in English, but maybe they need some time, and resources…

I searched for context. Thirty-seven years after America’s inception, women were still 144 years from the right to vote. Bangladesh certainly has us beat on that count. This developing country has already had two female prime ministers. Admittedly, they are both in prison now, but that’s a story for another day.

"The switch has already been made."

My first photos! The view from BRAC headquarters, from L to R: urban slum dwellers take canoes to the city; the largest mosque in Dhaka; a rickshaw "parking lot."

At last! My eyes glazed over from travel, I boarded Etihad Airlines in Abu Dhabi on the third and final leg of my 26-hour journey from Boston to Dhaka. After finding my seat, I stowed away my carry-on and shot off to the back of the plane for a pre-flight bathroom break. But first I took note of my seatmate: An older Bangladeshi man with a bright white beard, in a full white robe and his head wrapped in white cloth. As my blue American eyes met several inquisitive brown Bangladeshi eyes on this walk through the plane, it struck me that I was on the verge of entering an entirely different world. I anticipated interactions with people whose clothing was merely an indicator of the vastly different worlds we occupied – culturally, economically, socially.

On my way back, I wondered if this seemingly wise elder spoke English. Probably a few words, I decided, and I could use my handy new Bengali-English dictionary when we hit an impasse. What advice could he pass on to me? Would he be able to tell me where to visit in the winding streets of Old Dhaka? What were his thoughts on BRAC, the NGO (non-governmental organization) I was about to spend the next two months with as an intern?

But by the time I returned to Seat 25A, he was no longer there. Instead, another man was helping a young mother with her infant daughter into the seat next to me. Confused, but thinking that maybe this game of musical chairs took place so that this young woman could sit near her husband, I offered up my sit to him so they could sit together. He assured me that “the switch has already been made” and I quickly realized the elderly man whom I had imagined would take me under his wing in these last hours before arriving in Bangladesh had requested the switch and found an appropriate individual – a woman – to sit next to me.

It had occurred to me in the waiting area that there were few women on this flight – which departed at nearly two in the morning – and now one of these women had been sought out to sit with me, a modern Western woman who may or may not be religious, respectful, married, or a number of other things. Maybe he felt uncomfortable, maybe he was concerned for my own comfort level, or maybe it was simply culturally inappropriate for us to sit next to one another. It was likely a combination of these factors, but I couldn’t be sure: His eyes wouldn’t meet mine, and her English was nearly as limited as my Bengali. All I was able to learn from her was her name (Mahmouda), and that she was married (I would come to learn that her nose ring gave that status away), she had two other children, her husband was working in Italy, and she preferred fish over chicken. With that, off we went to Dhaka.

Given that Harvard Kennedy School’s Women and Public Policy Program and its Cultural Bridge Fellowship are supporting my internship this summer, it seems fitting that my transport into Dhaka would be laden with gender and cultural issues I had yet to explore. The Bridge Fellowship supports the summer internships of a number of Kennedy School students, all of whom are working on issues related to gender and most of whom are working internationally.

I’m working with BRAC, an NGO founded in 1971 to aid Bangladesh’s rehabilitation following a bloody war of independence from Pakistan. BRAC began as a fledgling nonprofit humbly called the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, and today it is the world’s largest NGO and new BRACs have successfully launched in Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Uganda, Tanzania and Sudan with affiliates in the U.S. and UK. Their headquarters remain in Bangladesh’s capital city of Dhaka. BRAC works for poverty alleviation and the empowerment of the poor, and it focuses its education, health, microfinance, and other programs on women and girls.

As many of you know, I’m studying education policy at HKS. BRAC happens to have an incredibly innovative and largely effective education programme – running, for instance, more than 30,000 primary schools throughout the country, with BRAC schoolchildren outperforming government school students.

I caveat my appraisal of the BRAC Education Programme as “largely” effective because quality education is a major issue in Bangladesh. They have high enrollment and attendance rates, but completion rates are nothing to write home about and many children do not pass a test of government competencies. So the BEP is planning to start an advocacy unit, to influence government policies to improve education quality and equity (according to gender, ethnicity, and special needs) in this developing country. And their Education Programme Director, Dr. Safiqul Islam, seems to believe I’m just the person to help them move through this next phase of developing an advocacy strategy. This week I’ve begun working with Trishna, the manager of BEP’s Capacity Development Unit, to engage in this process with programme staff, and later with BRAC teachers, parents and students as well as other NGOs doing education advocacy work in BRAC.

I’ve been here for a total of five days, and already I’m fascinated by BRAC and by Bangladesh, which is the world’s most densely populated country, and one marked by poverty and progress, corruption and innovation, and, it must be said, intense heat and humidity. I look forward to sharing this experience with you via this blog!