Welcome to Bangladesh

After spending a week inside conference rooms in meetings in Bangkok, it was a nice change to get outside and spend time exploring Bangladesh as part of a 'learning visit' - i.e. I had the opportunity to visit Dhaka, as well as the districts of Gazipur, Hathibanda and Dinajpur (the last 2 of which are in northern Bangladesh, an 8-hour drive through crazy traffic from Dhaka) to learn about Plan's programs and operations, to give me ideas for Plan Timor-Leste.

It was an amazing experience, starting with the very warm welcome I received at all of the places that I visited. Now some of you have complained that there are not many photos of me on my blog, so I thought I would share a few to amuse you :-) At almost every place and program I visited, I was showered with flower petals or given a bouquet of local flowers - so beautiful!

In this first photo, I have a bit of an odd look on my face as we had just visited a program on 'Community Led Total Sanitation' and I had just seen (and smelled!) a sewage pond that the community was using to raise catfish which they use as feed for their chicken farm....

If you look carefully at this next photo, you can see me in the middle of the crowd of kids - it was an incredibly bright and sunny day and the light seemed to reflect off of my lily white skin :-)

The Plan Bangladesh staff were incredibly friendly and helpful - and even offered to all come visit Timor-Leste (I am not sure if their boss would be so agreeable to them ALL coming to TL but I would love their support!)

In this one, you can see children showering me with flower petals...there were about 50 kids doing the same thing as I entered their village and went to meet with their community development planning committee....

This last one is from a much 'calmer' event, when I visited a Safe Delivery Unit, which is a sort of a 'regional clinic' that pregnant ladies can go to when they are about to deliver, instead of delivering at home on their own - since this SDU has been in operation, the incidence of maternal death in childbirth has decreased significantly in the area....