Here's a run-down of one of our busiest days so far.
| 7:00AM | I wake up! |
| 7:05AM | Wash with cold water. Brrr. |
| 7:30AM | Dan is up by now, too. We have breakfast: Kellog's Corn Flakes and one banana each. |
| 8:15AM | Alomgi unlocks the gate and we head out into a dusty Bangladeshi day. The weather is beautiful. |
| 8:30AM | We get a taxi and plunge into traffic! |
| 9:15AM | The taxi arrives at Grameen Star Education's Panthapath center, where both Dan and I are teaching today.
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| 9:20AM | We each begin our first English class of the day. We find out that, because there are so many students at Panthapath, we will only be meeting with these particular groups twice. We're not sure what we can accomplish in just two class sessions! |
| 11:00AM | Break for lunch. We are served exquisite slices of pound cake. Mmm, absence makes the stomach grow fonder, too! |
| 12:00PM | We teach our second round of classes, which go until 2:00. In mine, I devote several minutes to an "ask the American" session. Questions range from "Do you like poetry?" to "How can we eliminate war?" (Though tempted to dodge the latter question, I manage to outline a basic plan based on increasing freedom and fairness. Ay-yi-yi!) |
| 2:15PM | The Panthapath manager calls for a cab. When it arrives, we hop in... |
| 2:30PM | ...and soon step out at the Grameen Bank Bhaban in Mirpur. |
| 3:00PM | We walk to the Grameen Trust Library, located in the old Grameen Bank headquarters, which is right next to the Bank's fancy new tower. The old building looks nice-- its brick walls are covered with a thick layer of ivy. |
| 4:00PM | We meet K. Shakhawat Ali, a researcher with the Grameen Trust's Program for Research on Poverty Alleviation. He, like Dr. Yunus (the Bank's founder), is very interested in the potential of information technology to help the poor. We're interested in this, too-- it's the subject of our research project with UNICEF. |
| 4:30PM | Shakhawat agrees to advise our field research. This is a major coup-- he has experience doing data-collection in the villages, and will be able to help us figure out what is and is not feasible. |
| 5:00PM | Back to the 11th floor of the tower. We are slated to teach English classes for Grameen Software employees at 6:00, and we have to figure out what we're doing! |
| 6:00PM | Classes commence with hastily-made photocopies of "Sophie's Choice," an English communication exercise. Dan and I each teach a group of employees, and the classes are a lot of fun. They periodically become even more fun when the power fails and we are plunged into pitch-darkness! |
| 7:00PM | We sit around for a while, and then prepare to leave. Sohel Sharif, the CEO, offers us a ride home, but then has to retract his offer-- he has a meeting with Dr. Yunus. |
| 8:00PM | We leave with Mike Ranthrup, a Danish developer who is setting up a web business in the Grameen IT Park, and Major Manzural Haque, the Chief Operating Officer of Grameen Software and our Bangladeshi "big brother." |
| 8:20PM | We all pile into a cab and drive towards Gulshan, where Mike is staying in a room at the Nordic Club. Major Manzur has invited us all over to his house for snacks, so we are going to pick up Mike's wife and then head for Uttara. |
| 9:30PM | After a bit of waiting at the Nordic Club, some crazy multi-cab manipulations, and brief stops at two bookstores for Major Manzur's daughter, we arrive at his house in Uttata. It is huge-- he lives with his wife, two children, father-in-law, and uncle. |
| 10:00PM | We are treated to a table full of Bengali "snacks," which all together would qualify as a full-blown meal anywhere else. The nan, a simple kind of bread, is warm and so good. |
| 10:30PM | We retreat to the living room for tea. Major Manzur's youngest daughter, probably 3 or 4, comes to hang out with us; I play one of those random made-up-on-the-spot children's "hand games" with her. |
| 11:00PM | Major Manzur drives us to our house, just a few minutes away in a different part of Uttara. |
| 11:30PM | We unpack our backpacks, settle in, and head to the living room to begin our attempts to connect to the Internet. |
| 12:30AM | We finally establish a reliable connection. Phew! It's not usually this difficult; it must be a bad night for telecommunications in Bangladesh. |
| 1:00AM | I set up my mosquito net and slide into bed. Tomorrow is a hartal, a political strike, so we can be fairly certain it won't be as busy as today. Too bad! |
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