grameen

At one point during our visit to Jobra, I had a quick premonition (luckily unfulfilled) of headlines reading, "american teacher comes to bangladesh and ruins grameen bank"...like everything i've encountered thus far in Bangladesh, nothing is written in stone, except those things that are, unless you're with the right people - so they're not, unless the 'right people' you're with aren't the right people after all - and so they aren't not...and the cycle continues.  thus was my monday last week when i went with my class to Jobra to interview borrowers.  we didn't go through Dhaka, the head office, because we had some personal connections and we didn't necessarily need to get to interview the bank officers. 

apparently grameen wasn't down with that. after about two hours of calling people, who called on our behalf to grameen, we were given official permission to speak with officers, see the main branch office, see transactions taking place, the whole gamut.  and it was fantastic.  more info to come, plus examples of my students work.  first, though, here are a few photos i took while we were there.   i don't have many of the borrowers themselves because it's Ramadan and most of the women didn't want to have their picture taken as a result.  but i did get a few pictures during the day.  

one of the greatest quotes from the day was from one of my students who turned to me, after speaking with a few borrowers and with a bank loan collector, "if it's THIS HARD talking to villagers about personal issues like this now, how hard must it have been for Muhammad Yunus 30 years ago?"

oh teaching. 

i'm off to nepal tomorrow, but i'll be back October 5th, so expect more updates then!