More Pictures and Update

As I tried to think about what to write about this week I realized that I have not really discussed the project that I am here to work on with Habitat for Humanity Bangladesh.  My project is to develop an advocacy program for habitat. Advocacy is such a big and often vague term that it can mean many different ideas. For the project we are taking advocacy to mean both collaborating with the communities and the government, if necessary, to work for change or greater awareness. That definition is still very vague but by trying to explain it I hope its a bit easier to see that there can be many facets to the project. Habitat has been in Bangladesh for 15 years and although they have not have a advocacy program, at least in recent years, community based advocacy in the form of education for water, sanitation, and hygiene has been a small part of different projects. For this project my supervisor and I have gone on interviews to different non-profits in Dhaka, the site visit to speak with habitat staff in different communities, and started a questionnaire concerning advocacy with the staff throughout the country. I'm at the point in the project where it is time to take all the information that has been collected and bring it together into the program. This is quite the task because there are so many directions that are possible to go in, but with the help of the staff and best practices from other habitat offices throughout the world its working out. Hopefully in the next 5 or so weeks a sustainable plan can be developed for the program. 

Now that I have gone into my project I wanted to share a couple more pictures that I received from the tour company from my tour last weekend. :-) I'm going on another tour this coming weekend so I will hopefully have lots of pictures to share! Thanks for all the support and keep making memories! 

Traci on a boat! Thank goodness they had those umbrellas because the sun was intense!

In front of the parliament building. 

Traci on a rickshaw!

Traci on a rickshaw!

I don't know what face I'm make here, but this is a tea stand on the side of the street. They are really common and this is me awaiting some red tea with ginger, I promise I'm happy in this picture. :-)

New Sites

It's been a while since my last post but I wanted to wait until I could share some fun pictures! This past week was spent developing and sending out a questionnaire to the Habitat for Humanity staff both in Dhaka and around the country concerning their thoughts on topics that could be used for an advocacy program. The feedback we have already received has been really helpful and interesting and I'm hoping that this week will get us some more.  This past weekend i went on a tour of the old part of Dhaka, is was quite the memory making experience ;-D. I was picked up around 9 am and the first place we went was the Bangladesh Parliament building. We weren't able to go in because it was the weekend and if you want to get access you have to go through this process of approvals. By parliament there is also this big park where a former president is buried. Here are some pics, included in this is my first picture featuring myself in Bangladesh. The blog isn't working with me right now so all the pictures are going to be below all of the text, there are a lot but incase we aren't facebook friends I wanted to share :-). The next stop was a Hindu temple, we were actually able to go in which was neat. The next stop was a tea stand, they are found all along the city and are places for gathering and a quick drink of tea. The rest of the day was interesting because unbeknownst to me the previous evening was a Muslim holiday and most of the sites we were supposed to be visiting were actually closed. The guide tried to find other places to visit, such as Dhaka University, and we went on a longer boat ride than originally scheduled. The heat index for yesterday was 113 degrees Fahrenheit, on the boat it was very hot and many of you know I get a bit motion sick. I was not feeling the best but it was really interesting seeing the traffic on the water, the guide said at the end of the day when many people are getting off of work there will be actual traffic on the river because so many people are going back and forth and there are only two bridges. Following the boat ride and a little Traci needs to cool off now moment, we went to a yummy lunch. The last part of the tour was a rickshaw ride through the old part of Dhaka, some of the streets were so narrow that cars are not able to go through them. This was really neat and I am happy to say that I have grown to enjoy rickshaws quite a bit!

Although we didn't get to see all that was expected, the tour was still a great time to see a part of the city I had not been in yet and to learn a bit more about the history. I'm supposed to be sent some other pictures from the day and when I get those I will make another post!

Thank you all for continuing to keep up with this blog and for all your kind words, I really appreciate them! Make those memories and see you soon!

The stairs on this side of the building are only for the President to use.  

Seeing a man on a boat with a bike made me smile. 

5 Days and 3 Cities!

I wish I could make more creative titles for these different posts but for some reason all my creativity is currently hiding. However, as the title suggests I am back in Dhaka after a week away with my supervisor to different cities in the north were the third phase of a WaSH, water, sanitation, and hygiene program is about to begin. My job during the ceremonies was to take a lot of different pictures during the ceremonies, after the ceremonies if there was time we then spoke to the staff of the local habitat offices concerning advocacy. We first went to the city of Mymensingh, this was the largest of the 3 cities we visited, and was out base for all but the last night. The first ceremony was on Monday morning and it was held at a large conference hall. Although the each ceremony was entirely in Bengali I was able to get a sense of what was going on thanks to my supervisor, the other staff, and different English phrases they would use. The staff at this Habitat Resource Center, HRC, were very welcoming and had a lot of ideas about advocacy and made for a great start of the week. The next day we went to Modhupur, this was a smaller city but on the way we saw monkeys! We drove through an area that used to be a very big forested area but with time a lot of it has been taken down. Our last ceremony was the furthest north, very close to India! We could actually see India in the distance when we went on a walk around the village. Our last night was really nice, we stayed at the YWCA in the city, it was the most secluded place we have stayed and the most calm night in terms of the amount of honking, etc, it was great but also very eerie not hearing what has become usual background noises. 

 Before leaving on this trip I got my keys to the apartment I will be staying in for June and July, it is directly beside the habitat office! The location is definitely ideal and it is so nice! A lot more space than I need but being so close and having the easiest possible commute is wonderful. Last night was my first night here and it was a great night! This morning I had my first grocery shopping experience and my first rickshaw experience, the rickshaw was actually a very easy process, I was worried about it but the driver understood English and once I realized he thought I meant a different area of the city and made it clear, we were on the right track. 

During this past week I was able to see so much more of the country than I had expected, it was so interesting and although I was in a van for most of the time, it was still really eye-opening. As I shared in my previous post, Bangladesh has a very large population. One thing I kept wondering was where are all the people, well I can partially answer this now, they are everywhere! Back at home there are a lot of places where you will see no one, but the areas that we saw always had some people within view. It was really interesting to see the similarities and differences between Dhaka, a city with millions of people, and compare them to some of the small villages we drove through. Rickshaws and these small vehicles called CNGs were the primary vehicles we saw, a long with some construction trucks that have very pretty paint jobs. There were also a lot of different animals from cows, chickens, goats, and sheep, it was really fun to keep a look out for what would be coming on the next part of the road. Again, I have to give a lot of thanks and credit to the drivers here, especially the driver for habitat. It is amazing all that the drivers here can handle, at times very bumpy roads, with a plethora of people and vehicles, even animals, and still they are able to successfully meander the roads safely!

Again, this was a great week and I still have a lot of reflecting to do on the experience and see how it can help in the advocacy program development. Below are some pictures that I took over the past week, I will be adding more later but here are some of the highlights! 

 Above is a quick pic of one of the construction trucks.

Left, my bedroom at the apartment.