Day 4/5 – Sexism at ASA (even the toilets are sexist); Hard Sick Day

Today it rained, and it was a relief.  The morning was unbearably hot and I felt nauseous for much of it, but come afternoon (thankfully after we’d met with the borrowers intended) the rain hit and the heat broke and it was a reprieve.  I’m actually looking up malaria symptoms as we speak (so to speak) but am hoping that it’s hypochondria that I have to blame for my illness (“illness”?).

I’m also growing out my armpit hair (and all other body hair, inadvertently), which is a fun and interesting experience.  I am waiting to see if having long armpit hair means one needs deodorant (or at least antiperspirant) less.  As such, I have begun my transition into Frenchdom.

Hole-in-the-ground toilets were designed for guys.  I never devoted thought to this before.  But if a culture forces you to always wear long pants (even if they’re comfortable and pajama-like (forgive me if I’m being insensitive)), it’s certainly much easier for men than women to navigate anatomical hardware and pants and the latrine and to do so in a timely fashion, etc.  European toilets were also this way when my mom went to Europe in 9th grade, she said.  What gives?

Yesterday we toured the big corporate machine that is ASA.  They charge $50 a day for visits from foreigners, which I am all for – we took up a lot of time at these places, and I am assuming the money goes for good, though I would like to investigate this further. Bangladesh is at this point very accustomed to having foreign visitors check out their MFIs.  The guy in charge of managing foreigners at ASA, however, said a lot of interesting unprompted things when Najm and I went back upstairs after their rehearsed schpiel so that I could get his card.  He said stuff about how women aren’t physically capable of working at ASA because going into the field requires long bike rides (why were there then also no women in the upper echelons of the corporate structure, driving in to work in the Dhaka high rises?).  He said that people ask about the tendency men have to take over their wives’ loans once they’re received (because many MFIs loan exclusively to women), and he was very adamant about it being the “husband’s loan” and this therefore not being any sort of issue.  He also said, entirely out of the blue, something about “bad behavior of field officers” not being “general” even though foreigners come there and catalogue such things and report on them, and he showed some anger when revealing this.  He said that visitors should forget everything they know, the ideas they come to the ASA office with; this seemed to entail the forgetting of basic ideas about equal treatment for people regardless of gender.  At the risk of creeping into melodrama, I remain unsure whether or not he said these things to me as some sort of warning.

The regional branch of ASA that we visited in the capital city of Dhaka was also guilty of discriminatory practices of a different sort that I was witness to even during my short stay.  Our driver ate his lunch in a different room than we did because of their policy on such things, and he later complained that they underfed him and gave him the worst leftover food.  Pretty uncool.

I don’t mean to sound cynical, and I have an awareness that I’m approaching microfinance in Bangladesh with somewhat negative expectations, given what I’ve heard about the glut of organizations here and the way the trendiness surrounding microfinance has phased out other vital social networks for the poor in rural areas.  I saw a lot of good at ASA, but I found it notable that the branch I felt was doing the most good, and did the best job connecting to the women borrowers, was the only one we visited with a woman as the point-person branch manager.  She held the hand of a borrower whose son recently died, patting her arm and exuding incredible warmth as the woman shed tears, telling us that it should’ve been her time to die, she is old, her son was a young, and a good man.  This woman’s name, though I can’t recall it at all in Bangla, means ‘moonlight’ in English, which I love.  We also had this exchange:

Moonlight: What do you think of Bangladeshi people?

Me: They’re very nice.

Moonlight: (smiling, maybe confused) Why you think we’re nice?  You’re white and we’re black. [unsure what prompted this remark, what miscommunication may have happened]

Me: Bangladeshis have been very friendly to me on this trip.  You’re very kind.

Moonlight: [Silent, tears welling up in eyes.  She beams.]

I made a mistake in not requesting before coming here that women be my only points of contact.  We had to remind the men standing behind me from the branch MFI offices not to pipe up and answer questions for the women Najm and I interviewed countless times.

Maybe tomorrow, when feeling better, less tired, more generous, I will be able to evaluate these events through the lens of culture more so; the sexism embedded in everyday life here has a complicated origin, to say the least.  We’ll see.  I’m going to sleep at 7 p.m. Bangladesh time, easy.  Heading back stateside tomorrow.

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