Back from the village!

I’ve just returned from the village - what an amazing experience, and throughly a relief to get out of Dhaka (after only two days here!).

We stayed at a Grameen Bank Branch in the village of Norshindhi, about two hours north of Dhaka. The Branch boasted 5,302 current loanees, and a phenomenal recovery rate of 99.12%. The Branch houses the operating bank downstairs, photos below, and upstairs bedrooms, a kitchen and a living area. The bedrooms were very simple (see photos), electricity constantly went out, and there were mosquitos everywhere, but despite all of that the fact that almost all of the branch staff lived upstairs, along with one’s wife and two children, gave the place a real homely and fun feel. We were even invited to break the fast with the staff and their families, a photo is below of us eating Iftar. 

We spent the three days in the village with our translator Younus (pictured below with the branch manager) visiting numerous borrowers and also centre meetings. Many borrowers stories followed a familiar pattern. We first visited a young man who was running his mother’s phone shop with his brother. His mother was a loanee and also the first Grameen telephone lady in her village, a project ran by Grameenphone a number of years ago. She has since expanded the business to sell sim cards, some handsets and provide internet use on one computer. Next step, I presume, is to turn her shop into a cybercafe to give the village access to the internet. Another similar story was that of the most successful borrower at the second centre meeting. She had started with a 500tk loan (roughly £4) to buy a calf. Through successful repayments, her current loan is for 100,000tk, and she has used her recent successes to send her son to Saudi Arabia to work and send back money whilst she has grown her clothes-making business in the village.

We also met a fantastically well educated Higher Education Loanee, who was studying English Literature at a university in Dhaka. His vocabulary was much more diverse than mine, and I’m not surprised given that he claimed to read Shakespeare outside of his course (which included Thomas Hardy and John Milton). He claimed to have finished school and been stumped as to how he could pay for a university education, before the ‘guardian’ that was the Grameen Bank stepped in. His university education has enabled him to offer private tuition to pay his younger brother’s way through the ‘best university in Bangladesh’, and he plans to seek a job as a professor or in the civil service when he graduates, given the honour and wages bestowed upon both. Interestingly, we also spoke about the state of women’s education in Bangladesh. He stated that they have equal, even occasionally preferential, treatment within the educational system, and that as this new generation graduate from university and take important jobs, society will be much changed. 

We also met a lovely old lady called Ruisa, who was benefitting from the Struggling Members Loan, a small amount offered to those who survive by begging. Ruisa said she got to an age where she was too old to work, her husband had died and her two sons were unable to support her, so she started begging. She was recommended the Grameen Bank by a friend, and initially took a 500tk loan. She used her loan to buy saris at a local market, and sell them in the village, and has been so successful that she is now on her sixth loan of 3000tk. The Struggling Members Loan, however, means that there is no deadline for repayment nor a fixed repayment schedule, one can simply repay it when they are able to. She would love to take a Basic Loan, she claimed, but would struggle to make the fixed repayment schedule. It seems there needs to be some form of institutional bridge between the Struggling Members Loan and Basic Loan, otherwise, as Ruisa admitted herself, many will need to continue begging to survive. I was touched by the story of Ruisa and how hard she was working at her age to raise herself out of destitution and poverty, and decided I would support her by buying a beautiful sari from her. 

The most striking thing about the trip was simply seeing in the flesh a process and institution that I had read so much about. Sitting in the Branch Office as borrowers came in to take out new loans, or in a Centre Meeting (collection of 10 or so groups of borrowers) where women came to repay their weekly installments or pay into their savings or pension schemes with the Bank. Previously the system was just a story in a book, written about a faraway land, yet this week has made it so apparent the amazing work the Bank is doing. Driving through the village it was incredibly apparent that it was a hub of activity and enterprise. 

There were, however, some elements of the trip that proved a disappointment since reading Banker to the Poor and arriving with such high and in reality unrealistic expectations. The position of women, for example, seemed not to have shifted as much as I thought it may have. It seemed to be the case that the wife would take the loan, and simply give it to the husband for the family business, that generally the husband would lead. Maybe this is an exaggeration, but observations definitely showed a village centre of 90% men, whilst the only women we really saw were near or in their houses. Of course they were often working, making clothes or bags for example, but these activities were very much house-bound. 

Most members seemed to suggest an inadequate provision of healthcare and education also. We were told when we visited the Area Office (looks after 10 or so Branches) that only one Branch benefits from Grameen Healthcare, and whilst other NGOs such as BRAC are doing a lot to provide healthcare, there is still some way to go. We were also told there that in the past Grameen provided and supported schools much more than it does now. The most pressing concern seemed to be with high schools, though the primary school we visited (below) had around 700 pupils to 11 teachers.

We were told that the village visit will be the highlight of our trip, and I’m sure that will turn out to be true. As lovely as it was to get out of Dhaka, seeing real lives changed by such a simple process of support that I’d read so much about was both rewarding and inspiring. Whilst the Bank has done an amazing service to Bangladesh thus far, however, there is still more that can be done to help the lives of those who are willing to work so hard on their own initiative.