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The journey to Sayedpur went without a hitch. It was an 8 and a half hour drive and it took us through the country side of Bangladesh. It is all green and looks wet. You can’t get behind the fact that how featureless the geography was it was miles and miles of paddy field in absolutely flat ground. The poverty is also in your face all the time. The good thing was that I saw the people doing what they can to get ahead. The more rural it got the less begging I saw on the streets. The rural folk are a really hardworking lot; you got to come to Bangladesh to see “human power” at work. It was amazing to see it. I stayed the night in Sayedpur and went to visit the partners and other stakeholder in the Dinajpur District and returned to Sayedpur for the night. The pattern was repeated in the next 2 days visiting Nilphamari and Lalmonirhat districts.
On the way I encountered a road sign that I have not come across before; which is a sign for a “local market”. I thought this was brilliant as we all know how the supermarkets can get their branding across with the power of money. Guess the rural folk got the local authorities to go one better, good for them.
As mentioned earlier the geography in the Northern area of Bangladesh was indeed featureless. However the locals in the Lalmonirhat assured me that they can see the Himalayan Mountains on a clear day and told me to look for it at the Teesta River Dam / Bridge. For my bad luck it was cloudy and rained for the best part of the day. Anyway, this is the view from the Teesta River Dam / Bridge in the direction of the Himalayan Mountains.
On my way back to Dhaka I visited the archeological site “Mahasthangarh” an ancient Buddhist city which was later inhabited / colonized by Muslims and Vasu Bihar a Buddhist university during the period.
Mahasthangarh
Vasu Bihar
I also visited the museum and saw what was left over after the customary destruction of all effigies and other objects in the face of islamization that took place. The Buddhist and Hindu statues with the head chopped off or the face chopped off as well as some with tool marks but still intact. It is great to see the Bangladesh archeology department taking an effort to preserve the history of this nation and do it in a professional manner with the little resources they have, for the future generations of Bangladeshi’s. Being a part of good old India in the past, Bangladesh is quite rich in archeology with at least a dozen major archeology sites that can be turned into major tourist destinations. I saw quite a few Hindu landmarks / tombs surviving to this day in the North outside of major archeological sites. However I did not see many Buddhist landmarks except a few Bo-trees which looked really old with some sort of earth / stone / brick arrangement around them. I did not see any churches.
As mentioned in my earlier blogs, one of the strikes that took place was because the current government amended the constitution to reflect Bangladesh as a secular society. The “religio-politicos were not happy about it. Most of my Bangladeshi friends are embarrassed when faced with stories of persecution of Buddhist, Hindus and Christians in Bangladesh. In their mind Bangladesh is and should remain a secular country with religious freedom. The assignment continues and I look forward to the next few days as the data collection period is coming to an end.
The assignment is proceeding well, the evaluation questions have been designed and the questionnaire and show cards are prepared and translated in to Bangla. I will be using an “In Depth” interviewing technique. The evaluation itself has 2 aspects to it. Firstly; to looking at the internal mechanisms which either makes them effective or not as the case may be (As an internal service provider) and; secondly, getting conformation from outside the Unit (As an external service provider) to establish if they were effective. The main internal interviews have been conducted and now I have to conduct the external interviews. The external interviews are going to be held in the districts of Dinajpur, Nilphamari and Lalmonirhat. I will have to undertake an 8 hour journey over road to get to Sayedpur where I will be based. Hope to get back to Dhaka on the 15th.
The assignment in Bangladesh is to evaluate the performance of a department within an organization. The interesting aspect is that the objective / mission of the department is, Organization Development of its other departments as well as partners of the organization. It’s going to be an interesting assignment. This will be a long assignment where I will be staying for 4 weeks in Bangladesh and travel to the north of the country.
The journey here was uneventful and arrived at my hotel tired but happy to be here. I am staying at the Asia Pacific Blossom Hotel; http://www.blossomhotel.net/ this will be my second stay at this hotel. I stayed at this hotel in 2006 during my first assignment in Bangladesh.
The assignment itself got off to a tuff start as the day of the launch of the assignment was a “Strike Day” in Bangladesh and apparently there are more strike days planned in the coming weeks. I am no stranger to Strikes / Harthal in Bangladesh and was in the thick of them when I was here on assignments in 2006 and 2008. At least this time it’s in support of oil and gas committee on the ConocoPhillips deal. The once planed during the week is for political issues; these tend to get violent and can be dangerous.
