Tell Me About Bangladesh
Christey West, co-founder of Just Peoples
Jo and I took four of our key supporters to Dhaka to visit the projects their funding helped make happen. While there, we dived in to discover more about this captivating country - and it was a wild ride!
Christey and Jo, welcomed with a warm hug and a coconut.
If you’d asked me what I knew about Bangladesh a few years ago I might’ve told you that it’s close to India, they have a cricket team, and they host the almost 1,000,000 Rohingya refugees that crossed the border from Myanmar. And maybe that they make a fair amount of my clothes in the garment factories there. That was about the extent of my knowledge.
In 2019 the Just Peoples team went to Bangladesh for the first time to meet with local leaders who solve poverty-related issues, and to see their work. After that we learned that Bangladeshis are hugely innovative and are utilising traditional and modern technology and ideas to create tangible improvements in the lives of their people. Very cool.
At Sharmin’s home with her extended family, watching the Cricket World Cup final.
In November, Jo and I returned to Dhaka, delving a little deeper this time.
The local leaders we met in 2019 - Sharmin, Shah and Eve - are now our cherished colleagues and friends. We were invited into their homes, got to know their families, laughed about everything and did some work.
Every step of the way they took care of us, and they genuinely did care about us! Yes we had a group of four of their top donors and fundraisers with us so it was in everyone’s interest to have a great time, but the warmth and generosity of our hosts was phenomenal.
And Then there’s their work!
Sharmin took us into Shah Paran slum community where over the past two years she’s been renovating public toilet blocks and showers. There was torrential rain the day we went so we asked the group if they were still happy to visit the slum in this weather. “If the community is up for it, we’re up for it!”
The community was up for it alright. They had been waiting for months to show their gratitude to the people who funded the transformation of their environment and increased its status in the process. Sharmin explained that two of her team had earned the trust of the local community by renting a room in the slum for the duration of the construction period, sharing meals, answering questions and getting people’s buy-in at every stage. Their efforts paid off.
Previously, their toilets had been holes in the ground with thin walls between the holes. As there were no doors with locks or electricity, most women avoided them altogether at night as they were at high risk of being sexually assaulted. The lack of privacy and inadequate hygiene was particularly extreme during their periods - to the extent that some girls chose to leave their families and move to the countryside to stay with relatives.
That was the Before. Now we were seeing the After.
We walked through narrow alleyways where our umbrellas barely fit, dodged puddles that became floods, and arrived at the first freshly painted bright pink and black toilet block. It had a door with a lock, running water, soap and electricity. In this context it really seemed like a significant landmark or a beautiful sculpture.
Running water, electricity, privacy, safety, dignity.
Happy tears were contagious within our group as we each began to grasp the significance of these toilets.
As we visited many of the 29 blocks renovated so far, community members who use and look after them came up to us to say thanks. We felt their gratitude, and the connection between us all was real. They spoke in Bangla, we spoke in English, but the communication came from the Heart. Yes that’s cheesy, but it’s how it was!
Community members telling us how their lives have improved.
They told us about the girls who were returning to the slum from the countryside because they had good toilets now, and about how they were proud to invite friends from other areas into their neighbourhood because they’re no longer ashamed of where they live. They’re no longer ashamed of how they live.
They told us about the next structural improvements they need, starting with the establishment of proper paths between homes. This future planning in itself is significant progress from the previously held belief that tangible, positive change is simply not for them in this lifetime.
As we reached the final toilet block on the tour, the community gathered in a circle around three young women who had been practising a local dance performance for us for two hours in the rain. After the main project sponsor cut the ceremonial ribbon, the rain came down even harder. The three girls started their dance, bare foot and drenched, splashing in the mud with every dance move. Their smiles were huge and we were collectively exhilarated!
Celebrating Sharmin’s life-changing toilet blocks in Shah Paran slum community.
Girls dancing in the rain and expressing their gratitude.
We took a deep breath after the visit to Shah Paran to let it all sink in...
And we made a point to go sightseeing. Transformational development work is epic but it’s only part of what’s going on in this vibrant land. What else is there?
A lot of chaotic traffic. Delicious street food (some that includes fire being put in your mouth). Colourful, stunning sarees. Construction dust. Laughter between crashing rickshaw drivers. Almost no tourists. An upcoming election causing some people to burn public buses in protest, because it matters to them how their leaders run the country. Fruit stalls in busy markets. Colonial buildings from the time Bangladesh was under British rule, when it was still part of India, before it was East Pakistan, before it became Bangladesh.
Jo tries local digestive ‘fire-pan’ - flaming candy in a betel leaf.
Rickshaw drivers skillfully navigate the traffic.
Friendly locals taking a picture with Jo outside the tranquil Pink Palace.
Food is a whole thing that needs its own blog. In Shah, Eve and Sharmin’s homes we were treated to countless dishes (we literally couldn’t count them all) with varieties of proteins, spices and vegetables. Everything delicious. And everything so generous.
When we ate in the city between project site visits, any leftovers were packaged up and handed out to people begging. Why waste good food, or the opportunity to feed someone who’s hungry.
Table chit chat included pros and cons of arranged marriages, childhood memories of playing cricket (from everyone), gender roles in the home for empowered women with supportive husbands in deeply patriarchal societies, how cool Pakistan fashion is, views on the current government and what Bangladesh needs to do to raise the living standards up another level. Also whether Shah’s mum could accept any potential wife he introduces to her - but he’s in no hurry to find out.
Eve and her team are advocating against child marriage which is common in rural areas.
Sharmin’s husband told us about all the wonderful things Sharmin’s five sisters are doing. Eve told us about how she married late at age 33 but her years of freedom allowed her to establish her organisation and practice what she advocates for in preventing child marriage and empowering girls to choose their own life paths. Her conservative in-laws are gradually coming around to her pioneering ways.
We were given beautiful gifts on top of the banquets, and long hugs with gentle shoulder squeezes. We felt truly welcomed and appreciated.
Now, Bangladesh has a lot of water - particularly now that climate change is causing devastating floods each monsoon season - but most of the water is dangerous to drink. Shah took us to several schools he has installed bespoke water filtration systems in so the kids and their families can have clean drinking water.
Shah showed us a water filtration system he set up in a school with 2,400 students.
Shah comes from a well connected family that has been very influential in global political and environmental movements. Coming from this level of prestige Shah could’ve worked in any field and enjoyed status and money. Instead, he embarked on the unpredictable journey of being a humanitarian and started a nonprofit to meet the needs of Bangladeshis all over the country, so that everyone can enjoy reasonable living standards.
One of Shah’s trustees is working in cyber security in the UK. He told us there’s nowhere for him to grow his skills in Bangladesh right now so he’s learning everything he can from abroad and plans to bring that knowledge back to his country and create something here. This “reverse colonialism” as he put it illustrates the mindset of the leaders we work with. Leverage the resources available - including status and connections - then take the best technology that already exists in the world, adapt and improve on it to fit with the local context and tackle widespread issues with effective, sustainable solutions.
Shah’s water systems are one of those solutions. In areas where public water is contaminated, his team provides a permanent clean water source. One of Shah’s engineers recently spent four months figuring out how to make the filters more effective. He managed to double the amount of water they can filter each day, so twice as many people are healthier with every new filter installed.
Defunct filtration system that can’t be repaired as parts are unavailable in Bangladesh.
Clean and permanent water source.
On site visits we saw filtration systems that had been set up by bigger international charities years before. Spare parts for foreign machines couldn’t be found in Bangladesh so the systems couldn’t be maintained or fixed. Once they broke down they just sat there, disused, rusting and taking up space.
Wasted resources leave an icky feeling. But we felt as fresh as the clean water from Shah’s systems when we understood how each community is trained to maintain it themselves so their new public water source is there for the long term.
Shah is starting to establish libraries in the schools too. We got to stock the shelves of the first one!
The schools we visited were decorated with bright murals, often depicting the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971.
On the last day before we flew out, us Aussies and Kiwis went to have a beer and debrief. Bangladesh being mostly muslim doesn’t have alcohol accessible everywhere, so we went to a dark smoky bar and had a local brew that came with fried chicken. We weren’t hungry so we got the chicken take away and handed it out on the street as we’d been shown. Then we headed off in tuk tuk-style vehicles (called CNGs) and got stuck in a traffic jam.
We left feeling like we’d just scratched the surface of Bangladesh. We always felt safe, people were always respectful and friendly to us, and we were blown away by what they’re achieving in real time.
This pulsing butterfly of a country seems to be emerging out of its cocoon and is about to start flapping! What a joy to get to witness a small part of that.
