Day 3 – Happy
October 3, 2010
So I was wrong. Today we spent time at BRAC, not at ASA. BRAC was established right after Bangladesh itself was, in 1972, and it’s the biggest social business in the world. When we were visiting a small branch office in the countryside, we drank tea using saucers with the ‘BRAC’ logo on them, a nice touch. Big business in Bangladesh.
Today I was very happy. For whatever reason I woke up at 1 a.m and couldn’t fall back asleep, so I figured I’d crash in the middle of the day, but truly I think that sweating so insanely when walking around in the countryside is such a good workout that endorphins are moving around all day, and I wasn’t at all sleepy until we were back in the car heading to Dhaka after we had finished.
I met several borrowers today who had taken out their first loan 17 or more years ago (one claimed she first borrowed 30 years ago), and some of them are now pillars in the community, supplying healthcare for free to their friends and neighbors.
The people are amazing. They make me feel great just being around them. They’re so excited to have a foreign visitor, and they’re really generous.
Najm is great as well; he quickly picked up the short list of questions we’re asking each woman when interviewing, and he does a great job getting people out of the frame if we need to, keeping people on point, getting them to respond to a question with a restatement of the question for editing purposes – fundamental stuff that makes a documentary better, he immediately grasped and implemented.
Anyway, not to sound overly flowery, but in the car on the way back from the village, I just felt good, in a way I haven’t in I can’t remember how long. It’s an intuitive thing, but something about being around really happy, excited people is extremely contagious.
