Thirty-six hens

Photos: A group of Ultra Poor women in rural Bangladesh; a community comes together to map out the Ultra Poor in their village. Courtesy of Md. Main Uddin/Drik.

In 2002, Rakeya was dependent on domestic work or begging for income. She owned less than 10 decimals of land. She had no productive assets in her household. She did not own a home. She was Ultra Poor.

That was then. Today, Rakeya is seated across from me on a large straw mat outside her home – yes, her home.

Farzana, Shakina and I were on the last leg of our visit to Rangpur, one of the poorest districts in this poor country. After showing our appreciation for the worn but sturdy wooden chairs that Rakeya and her neighbors had gathered and neatly lined up for us, we sat with them on the worn but sturdy straw mat.

Wearing dusty purple Bata flip-flops and a sari whose original color I couldn’t quite identify, Rakeya told her story. She patiently, and proudly, explained how she got from there to here.

My son used to beat me, she told us straightaway. Taken aback, I took a closer look at this woman, wrapped from head to toe in cloth. Her eyes are strong and bright, but she’s small, delicate, even frail. I can’t imagine she was able to put up much of a fight against a small animal, let alone a boy. I don’t want to imagine the toll the abuse took on her body.

And I don’t have to…because her story continued. In an auspicious twist of fate, six years ago the fact that Rakeya was one of the poorest women in one of the 15 poorest districts in this poor country worked not against her, but in her favor. It meant she could participate in the pilot project of BRAC’s Challenging the Frontiers of Poverty Reduction: Targeting the Ultra Poor (CFPR-TUP) programme.

Outreach to this forgotten segment of society, largely composed of women, “emerged out of three decades of learning from BRAC’s rural poverty alleviation programmes. The moderate poor benefited from the widely available microfinance programmes; the poorest did not in most of the cases, however, either because they lacked access, or because they were…too vulnerable to follow the repayment regime.”*

When BRAC begins working with a new village eligible for CFPR-TUP, staff members visit with the community and introduce them to the concept of Ultra Poor (a term recently coined by BRAC). They share data, they tell stories, and they answer questions.

Then they come back. This time, using a plot of dirt as their drawing board, the community creates a map outlining where the Ultra Poor of their village reside (homes are represented by pinned down, multi-colored post-it notes). Under BRAC’s guidance, the village elites – typically landowners and small business owners – come together to form a volunteer committee that assumes responsibility for supporting their Ultra Poor.

Six years ago, Rakeya’s community identified her as one of 11 Ultra Poor women among them. This meant she was eligible for an ‘asset transfer’ from BRAC: not a loan, as she had no resources to pay off any sort of loan, but a transfer of 36 hens from this NGO to this woman.

She was skeptical. Someone is going to just give me three dozen hens? And expect nothing in return? Rakeya had heard about scams like this. Lacking money or access to resources, she was not about to be indebted to someone, or some group. But leaders in her community knew and trusted BRAC, and they convinced Rakeya to join. If it is a scam, they said, we will take responsibility. That did it. Soon Rakeya was the owner of thirty-six hens.

And there was more. For the next two years, she received a subsistence allowance of 300 taka a month (USD 4.41), training on managing and protecting assets, essential health care services, and access to this committee of people invested in her success.

Rakeya soaked it all in – the training, the business advice from committee members. Her hens produced eggs, which she sold. She saved those profits, until she had enough to buy a cow. That cow produced milk, which she sold. Over time, she accumulated enough collateral to join BRAC’s microfinance program. Today, she has a number of animals. More importantly, Rakeya has customers.

And life is different now. Rakeya’s son doesn’t beat her anymore. Instead, he depends on her. See, Rakeya uses some of her income to take care of him. And his wife. And their two children.

While Rakeya continued her story in Bengali, my eyes drifted about the village. I came upon a young man who stood in the doorway of Rakeya’s home. His muscular arms framed the door. Instantly, I knew: this was her son. I wondered if he had heard his mother telling the story of their family, of his abuse and her perseverance.

Even if he heard, there’s nothing he can do now, I assured myself.

I wanted to meet his eyes, to show him my own anger and sadness at the abuse he inflicted on this woman. Eventually, he saw me, and he held my stare. I tried to express my disapproval, and at first I did, but eventually his angry, tired eyes only made me sad. He walked over to the cows in front of his mother's hut, and led them down a dirt path, walking past us with his head down.

The rain began. But we weren’t quite ready to leave. And our hosts weren’t ready to say goodbye. Rakeya invited us into her home. Farzana, Shakina, one of the committee members, and I sat on one bed. Directly across from us, two Ultra Poor women and Bablu, the committee president and local veterinarian, sat on the other bed. Rakeya sat on a chair we’d brought in from outside.

The hut – owned by Rakeya and home to her, her son, his wife and their two children – has these two beds, a calendar, two mosquito nets, a dresser of sorts and, well, that’s about it. There must be some sort of stove somewhere, I thought…maybe it was stowed away as they were expecting visitors.

We learned that Rakeya owns not one, but two huts. The second is not home to a family, but to 33 children. It’s a one-room BRAC Primary School. Rakeya’s eyes light up as she talks about the school. Bablu’s eyes were bright too; it’s clear that the Village Ultra Poor Committee president is terribly proud of this woman.

Only a few years ago, Rakeya was tired and without much in the way of hope. Bablu felt helpless; he didn’t know where to begin. Maybe he tried to insulate himself, as I do too often here when disabled, skinny men and half-naked children knock on my car window or reach their begging hands into my rickshaw – “Madam! Madam!” – when traffic stops. But…that was then. Now, Bablu and Rakeya are proud, they have hope, they develop solutions.

The three women across from me in that hut joined the Targeting Ultra Poor program in 2002. All three now earn income, and see their lives changing day by day, taka by taka, hen by hen.

Some of the changes are big: This hut, that school. Others are small. Their rubber flip-flops and those mosquito nets speak to the value they place on their lives. And their families’ lives.

We asked these women: Your stories – they are so impressive, are they also common? Surely every participant did not share the same success you have experienced? Not everyone, they said. But many of us. Eleven of them started. Only three did not improve their standard of living significantly. The ones that didn’t, they sold the hens right away for quick cash. They couldn't - or rather, didn't - wait.

Farzana and I have talked a lot in recent weeks about the unintended consequences of BRAC’s holistic and comprehensive approach to development. It can breed dependency, rather than foster empowerment.

Participants often wait for BRAC to do things – everything from bringing new books to their Adolescent Club to buying a fan for the Primary School. Farzana always asks villagers: Why don’t you raise some money and buy a few new books? Why don’t you see about getting a fan collectively, as a community, rather than see your children sweat in a hot schoolhouse every day?

The answer is usually the same: We didn’t think about it. Eventually, the new books will come; the BRAC Programme Organizer promises to see what he can do about a fan.

But we didn’t see this mindset in Rangpur. The poorest people in this poor country didn’t ask us for anything. We can figure it out, Rakeya and Bablu assured us. We've got problems, they said, but we can figure out solutions on our own.

The rain dissolved into drizzle. It was time for Farzana, Shakina and I to go. We had to make the eight hour drive back to Dhaka, and, well, these women had work to do. So we shook their hands and gave our thanks. We stepped out of Rakeya's hut, and put our own flip-flops back on. And we left their village, with a new appreciation for huts, hens...and humanity.

*BRAC, Challenging the Frontiers of Poverty Reduction: Targeting the Ultra Poor, Progress Report for July to December 2007.

An afternoon on the Buriganga River

Sara - who spent three months in Dhaka working on corruption issues for BRAC University's Institute of Governance - and I hired a rowboat, and a gregarious guide, for a tour of the river. We spent a couple of hours seeing the life that happens along the Buriganga on a Friday after prayers. Lots of boys taking advantage of the cold (albeit dirty) water as a break from the heat, a young couple seeking privacy by way of umbrella and distance from the shore, and young men chipping paint off the side of a ferry were among some of our sights. More photos to come from this river ride...my Internet connection is abysmally slow today, and my computer turns off every time the electricity goes out here (three times this afternoon alone)!

Little dreams

Left to right, top to bottom: One of the classroom leaders helps her classmate read aloud in English; children practice their writing; children that attend government school in the afternoon peer into this one-room school.

It was the second morning of a four-day “field trip” outside Dhaka and into two rural districts: Bogra and Rangpur. I quickly, and clumsily, learned that my mastery of Bangladeshi culinary customs – eating with my right hand, and ensuring the spicy lentils, ever-present rice, fresh vegetables and fried fish do not trickle past my knuckles – did not extend to mastery of Bogra’s muddy village paths.

Farzana, a BRAC staffer who happens to exemplify this country’s innovative, resilient spirit, and I rose from our cross-legged positions on the front porch of a village resident. This woman’s porch serves as the meeting place for a group of about 15 adolescent girls, only one of which is married and all of whom participate in BRAC’s Employment and Livelihood for Adolescents (ELA) program. They are slowly building up savings and taking out small loans to buy sewing machines, or maybe a cow, to contribute to their family income. One girl is using her profits from embroidery work to ensure her younger brother and sister can go to school.

Despite the incessant rain – Bangladesh is in the midst of its monsoon season, which means cooler temperatures and, in my case, two pairs of shoes ruined by mud – most of this village came out to see the American (!) woman here to visit their girls. After talking with the girls and many of their mothers, Farzana and I decided to make our exit during a respite from the downpour. The girls said ‘Thank you’ in English. Smiling, and wishing for the hundredth time that I knew more Bangla, I managed a wave and a “thank you.” And then, as I made my way down the single step: I slipped. Badly. A collective gasp consumed the village, followed by a sigh of relief and a few laughs as I grabbed hold of the nearest tree and laughed with them. I’m guessing the story of the American that nearly fell on her arse in their village was told over many cups of cha (tea) that afternoon.

While the villagers passed time mimicking the frantic swinging arms of an American Klutz, I spent midday in a hut in another Bogra village that serves as a BRAC Pre-Primary School in the mornings and an Adolescent Development Club in the afternoons. Farzana’s work at BRAC centers around integrating the ELA program we visited that morning with life skill-building and social centers for girls, called Kishori Kendros (Adolescent Clubs). After a day spent meeting with head teachers from secondary schools and local BRAC staff, I joined her at a Kendro, and she translated as I asked these girls for their thoughts on how to improve Bangladesh’s education system.

This summer, I’m learning from, bouncing ideas off of, and debating with teachers, students, parents, school management committees, BRAC headquarters staff (representing programmes ranging from Government Partnership Initiatives and Children with Special Needs to Targeting Ultra Poor and Research & Evaluation), local field staff, government officials and NGO leaders. These interviews, focus groups, meetings, and a workshop with BRAC Education leaders will inform my final product: recommendations for the BRAC Education Programme Director as he and his team develop a strategy to advocate for quality education in Bangladesh.

Inadequate schools are a major problem here. When I first arrived, I tried to explain that there is disparity in American schools, too. But I was patiently yet emphatically told that inequity in the States is nothing compared to the situation in Bangladesh. Here, I was told, it’s the difference between heaven and hell.

There’s broad consensus around why children aren’t learning as much as they should: a shortage of qualified teachers, insufficient teacher training, student/teacher ratios that average 70:1 despite the government’s stated goal of 45:1, a monitoring and evaluation system that’s never really been implemented.

And then there’s the country’s volatile political situation: When Awami League takes over, they replace everything the Bangladesh Nationalist Party started (and vice versa), from the benches to the curriculum to the monitoring system that never quite took off.

Of course, the real problem – if I can use this small word to describe a challenge that so completely boggles my mind and breaks my heart – is the tremendous poverty here, growing worse almost daily with rising fuel and food prices.

The scope of the “problem” is overwhelming, the contrasting vision of quality Education for All is grand…but the reality, and the hope, lies in conversations with children and youth held in huts and schools throughout this country. Resting my chin on my knees, as rain provided background music on the tin roof above us, I asked the five adolescent girls in front of me in that hut –the elected leaders of their club of 30 – to help me move beyond the problems. I asked them for solutions.

Taslima, the most passionate and the least apprehensive of the group (this 10th grader had just finished reciting a poem she wrote, and was a bit breathless after performing not one but two dances she choreographed), had a ready answer.

She had experience with just this kind of work. This past year Taslima single-handedly improved the quality of her school. See, her Bengali teacher spent more time talking about the weather, the news, or whatever interested him on any given day than he did teaching them their mother tongue. One day Taslima decided she wasn’t going to take it anymore. Starting tomorrow, she warned him, she was not coming to his class. And she wouldn’t return until he became a better teacher.

True to her word, the next day when her peers filed into his class, Taslima sat outside the room in silent protest. Soon the headmaster came across this defiant young woman as he strolled the halls with his ruler (although the Bangladeshi government has officially banned corporal punishment, it is unofficially present in many schools). Taslima explained that her Bengali teacher was not teaching effectively and as a result she refused to attend his course. To her surprise…the headmaster listened. That very day, he met with the teacher, who subsequently began teaching Bengali to his 10th graders. And he made sure that this young woman in particular was satisfied with his class: He stopped by Taslima’s home periodically to check in on her studies.

Inspired by this young woman whose grade point average of 4.55 on a 5.0 scale did not surprise me in the least, I was eager to know what she wanted out of life. So, I did it. I asked her and her friends the age-old question: What do you want to be when you grow up? But none of them were eager to offer their hopes and aspirations. The energy and laughter that had filled the hut over the last hour vanished. After a long pause, Taslima responded. Farzana’s crestfallen expression as she contemplated how to translate this young woman’s answer told me this visit would not end on the uplifting note I selfishly craved.

She’s a practical one, Farzana prefaced her translation to English. Taslima’s response? “I can afford little, so I dream little.”

When pressed, she said she might be interested in development work, “like you”, but the spark was gone. The cold reality of the possibilities, and the impossibilities, within her rural village had hit her. Almost on cue, the rain let up. Farzana and I, both unable to find the right words, bid farewell to these young women, thanked them for sharing with us, and said yes, we hoped to return to their club one day soon.

Travelling from one village to another over these four days, my emotions mirrored those I witnessed when Parveen called her family in her village: nervous, excited, sad, happy, even angry. I would add to this list invigorated…and helpless.

Upon visiting a government secondary school with bare walls but legions of eager students on Day 3, my translator – this time, a Dhaka University graduate named Shakina – asked the students if they had any questions for me. Their curiosity was palpable. Minutes earlier, while I met with nine members of their school’s management committee, at least 50 children set free for the midday break fought for space in the four surrounding windows to catch a glimpse of me and figure out what in the world I was talking with their teachers and elders about.

In the 9th Grade classroom, a girl in the front row, center, stood up cautiously. She looked me in the eye, and asked: “How can you help me go to university?” Tears in her eyes, she didn’t look away. She wanted a response, something real, something she could hold on to. The Bangladeshi adults in the room wanted an inspiring, hopeful promise. One of them asked me to say that I would see what I could do upon my return to the states. To this I responded anxiously, not wanting to make a promise I couldn’t keep: “I’m a student myself...” my excuse trailed off.

The most I could tell this girl, in this moment, was that her question was “the best and most difficult” I’d been asked since my arrival in her country. I encouraged her to keep asking these important questions of the adults – Bangladeshi and foreign – she meets. And I asked if she knew of a scholarship program recently started by BRAC; Medha Bikash (Promoting Talent) provides scholarship funds for a small number of extraordinary but poor students to attend university. But conversations with BRAC staff after our visit to this school confirmed what I already knew: for most children in rural Bangladesh, college is a dream too big for their family’s budget.

One of her classmates asked me if American schools are like those in Bangladesh. I explained that we also have teachers in the front of our classrooms, American children carry backpacks just like theirs to school, and we too have a lot of adults (like those in that classroom) that care deeply about students like him. Differences? Well…there are usually fewer students in a classroom, and there are often about the same number of girls and boys (at least two-thirds of the students in this room were boys). But I also explained that America’s public education system has been around for more than 100 years, whereas their country is only 37 years old. Bangladesh is doing tremendous work, I told him. I came here to learn from the important work that’s happening in your schools, I said. He beamed.

Another child asked me, in perfect English, if I have any brothers and sisters. Two younger sisters, I replied: Laura and Michelle. “No brothers?” he asked. No, three girls were enough to keep my parents busy, I said with a smile.

In the last classroom, Grade 10, a boy wanted to know how many children sit on school benches in America. He was crammed with four other boys on a bench built for three. His brown eyes opened wide as I shared that, in my country, children typically each have a desk. His teacher helped me explain what this would look like. I tried to soften the blow. In some schools, I told him, children sit around a table.

As I express these stories using only words, I regret not taking more photos. Those of the Primary School students posted with this blog are the only ones I’ve got from the four days. In the moments, asking these children and adolescents if I could take their pictures just didn’t seem right. I couldn’t bring myself to say, after they so openly shared their ideas, problems, questions, artwork and lives with me: I am here to learn from you, your ideas will be joined with others to shape BRAC’s work to improve your schools, only to follow that with a meager “And, before I leave, can you smile for my digital camera?” But today, as I write, I wish you – my friends, my family – could see their faces. More than that. I wish you could see their potential.