The Dhaka Project

As per the previous post the new school is on the track but the expenses are huge and we need more money.
Just to give you an idea of what we are purchasing now as school and students supplies
(it is just a small part of it)
800 chairs
50 blackboards
Generators
all the books and stationaries for 1 year curriculum for 750 kids
3000 uniforms
800 sweaters
1600 pair of socks
800 pairs of shoes
800 sport outfits
etc etc etc.....
2 ways for donations right now as we are still waiting for the paper works for our registration in Dubai through the Humanitarian City.
You can call Florence in Dubai +971 50 4517 440 who will collect your donations in cash. In exchange she will give you a receipt. Or you can transfer directly some money to Bangladesh following the instructions there
I remind you that 100 Dirhams make a big difference in Dhaka. Just to give you an idea, 100 Dirhams = 1800 Taka which is the average of one month salary...
Any of us can help, we can, you can.
THANK YOU FOR THEM

We are so happy and proud to announce that our new school will get the name of Emirates Airline Foundation School.

EK Foundation has been supporting us since couple of months now and we have to say that what is happening in TDP regarding the new school is because of them. The cost of "renovation" or set up of the building is 170 000 Dirhams without any equipment and not even thinking of providing all the supplies needed by the kids.


The school is opening in couple of days and we wanted to say thank you also to Delta Partners Group as their donation is going to contribute for a big part to purchase the school and children equipment.
Also a big thank you to Trish Murphy and her donation ;-) which went directly to the school expenses.



THANK YOU

Saturday
Of course, first thing I do is go and check on the site. Progress is good and I have a look on the roof level (which is flat and ready to be built on). We have thought about building some more structure on the roof to make a canteen with the best views in Gawair!! Progress is being made, so I am happy. The rest of the morning I have been in the office, assisting with admin, writing documents and letters. I also sat down with Masud and made him a flow chart of how purchasing, receiving and stores work, giving him and overview of what to expect when he gets to the Sheraton. At lunch I went to check on the site and was happy to meet Onay there, it seems he believes, just like me, that as long as we keep on top of the work team and keep checking, there will be no slacking!! We discussed the idea of putting a structure on the roof and he thinks it will be no problem. Luckily he had a spare architects drawing of the building on him, which he gave me. Back at the office I sat with Firoz and Maria, looking at the architects drawing and working out how many children we can fit in each class room and all the supplies and equipment we will need to fit out the school (from chairs to printers and computers to UPS/IPS and generators). We have put together a list for Maria and Masud to take to Sheraton tomorrow when they go for a meeting with Trevor and discuss a training schedule for Masud. We have many problems with suppliers here, few will deliver goods, most try to over charge us and are unreliable. So having training and getting assistance from the purchasing department in Sheraton who can also point us in the right direction for good suppliers will be a huge boost to the project.
Must dash now as I have to finish off the last of my chores, say good bye to pupils and staff at the project, pack and head to the airport…until the next time!!

Friday
First thing to do on a Friday is visit the site and check the progress, thankfully they are working and not sleeping!! Today we have a meeting with Trevor, the GM of the Sheraton hotel, whom I met on my last visit. He has been a great source of support to both Maria and the project for a long time now. At 10.30 we head over to the Sheraton and met Trevor, who was charming and relaxed as always. Visiting him in the Sheraton feels a world away from the project as we sat by the pool and had pizza and ice cream. Trevor is a star and has always offered assistance to the project, today we asked his assistance in training a purchasing manager to international standards. Thank fully he agreed to talk to his finance manager and ask him if he would assist us. I was hoping for a weeks training for Masud, our new purchasing manager, but Trevor thought a week in each discipline (purchasing, stores and receiving) would be about right…and of course he had no complaints from us!! Thank you Trevor.
On returning to the project I headed straight to the site to check on the progress…and there has been progress, the walls are growing higher, rooms are taking shape, but most importantly, electricity is on the site! The electrician had borrowed some power from a neighbour and was installing temporary lights and powerpoints!!!

Thursday
When I was here in December we started new advanced school project, so I went over to the site to see the progess. It seemed to be going slow. The delay had been finding a good contractor who would do the work without ripping us off. Here they see foreigners and think the project is made of money, so they charge extra high rates, it doesn’t occur to them that we run this on a shoe string and do it to help their country! Thankfully a reasonably priced contractor had been found and work had started 2 days prior to my arrival. After conversations with the site foreman I got up to speed on the general brick work, electrics, windows and plumbing. After meeting Murad, another local Dhaka project supporter, we managed to get 10 extra men on site and a late shift, so work continues until 1am in a frantic dash to get the school ready for the new school year which is now days away!
Maria is exhausted today. She has been here for 10 days already and I know the challenges of working in an environment like this can really wear you down. She is short staffed as it is, even though she has interviewed about 100 people in the last week, it is a real challenge to find quality staff. A lot of qualified people don’t want to work in this area and/or don’t want to work with the poor, their parents have sacrificed a lot for them to get a good education and so there is huge family pressure to work for prestigious large organizations and not small projects working with the poor – which isn’t so glamorous. Sometimes we even employ people, but they don’t last for a day or two due to family pressure. So Maria has been fighting against the clock, working understaffed and with loyal, but under qualified staff, to get the new school ready for the new school year because she has to return to Dubai to her job, which is the platform for everything that has been achieved here.
The main work of today was being on site, making sure the work is progressing in the new school. In order for them to work late shift, they need lights…unfortunately it takes weeks to get the electricity connected here in Dhaka, thou Maria went to the electricity authority and apparently they will do it in 5 days…we wait in hope! So, we went to the school and borrowed twenty rechargeable lights from the children so that workers could continue after dark. The children normally use these lamps for studying, but as the school year hasn’t yet started they can spare them for us for a few days! Together with Shimul, a teacher at the project school, we went back regularly through the day and early evening to check on the progress and push the foreman to get the fastest work possible out of his team! We also met the architect Onay so now we know who to call if things aren’t up to speed!!!

Saturday 5 January 2008
Today I went out with Nayan to distribute shoe boxes filled with gifts from the children of the Dubai British School, an activity they repeated after its success last year. A pile of colourful boxes was awaiting me as I entered the school building. The children had no clue what was coming to them. The pre-school children received the gifted boxes and were not to open them until they got home. As there were not enough boxes to give to all the children in the school, Maria had decided to open all the boxes and divide the gifts evenly between all the children. They were so excited! My task was to take picture of the children receiving all the goodies. A bundle of smiles and laughs roared the building. Wherever I came with the camera, I could expect loads of hugs and kisses.

We yelled: Thank You Children of Dubai!!

When I got back to the guesthouse, Maria and Florence were running around being busy and not talking to me about the necessities of the project, I felt brushed aside and a bit useless whilst I also felt that I could contribute in many ways. Late in the afternoon I showed Maria, Firoz and Florence what I have been doing in the north of Thailand in terms of a poverty alleviation project. In that project women create slightly adjusted ethnic products as a secondary income, for which they are paid per finished item. The outcome after a year and a half of hard work is fantastic and the same could be done here.
This opened the doors to Maria and her team and now the road opened for inclusion of my skills in the Project.

One of the issues not yet solved is the sourcing of a supplier for school uniforms. Florence has started the sourcing, but went to shops and suppliers of materials.
As a business owner in the production of toys and decorative items, both commercially in the world of manufacturing in China and in a poverty alleviation project, I have experience that can benefit the project, so I am happy to jump in and offer my help in sourcing the garments for the children. I immediately start up the internet and search for suppliers in Bangladesh, after all a project that serves the community in Bangladesh in general and Dhaka specifically should also provide the commercial transaction within Bangladesh. No good sourcing uniforms from China to save a little donated money when there is a huge garment industry in Bangladesh that is craving for business. By bringing in money to this nation and having as much of the necessities for the Project made locally we benefit growth and prosperity in all possible aspects. So off we go to face this great new challenge. But before I can set off to do so, there is a very rewarding other thing to do on Sunday…

We conclude the day with a nice dinner which brought us back to the guesthouse well after midnight.

Upon getting to the guesthouse we see the truck ready waiting to be loaded with 3000 blankets donated by Emirates Airlines, which will be distributed to the extreme poor of Sripur and Manikhat, two rural villages, a long way outside of Dhaka. Maria intends to go there soon, to enrol families for her Project. Some of the guys of Maria’s staff suggest they’d load the truck with the blankets immediately instead of at 4 AM the next morning. So off they go and I jump in bed for a short night.

Sunday 6 January
Maria calls me at about 6 to get up and drive out on the truck to meet a new, impressive experience.
After a 6 hour drive together with Russell, Firoz’s brother and 2 other guys that work for Maria, we reach the village of Sripur, where we are going to hand out the blankets. A crowd gathers shortly after our arrival and before I know it, we are surrounded by a mass of poverty stricken people.

The struggle of life is very visible in their skinny bodies, their bloodshed eyes and their torn and dirty clothes. My smiles of sympathy are once again answered with the warmest and most welcoming smiles, showing broken and rotten teeth, stained red by the habit of chewing beetle-nut, a habit I first got acquainted with during my volunteering in Papua New Guinea, some 12 years back. I was told than that chewing the beetle nut, packed with a beetle leaf, lime and some other herb, gives a high. I guess that is what one needs when living under these conditions. This struggle to survive yet another day, every single day of their lives is the reality to more than 1 billion people in the world. Just imagine waking up in the morning and facing the same torment that left you feeling weak and exhausted the day before, 365 days a year, without any break.
Not the breath of fresh air, not the crack of yummy smelling, freshly washed white bed-linen, no, nothing like that, instead you wake up in a shed containing 1 room only, which houses your entire family on a wooden or stone “bed” with rugs. Hard as the stone itself, because a mattress is for the rich, the walls are no more than dried mud, or if you’re lucky and relatively wealthy, they might be made of a steel plate. Warmth is only provided by the bodies of the other family members who all share the “bed”.

The crowds gathering are staring at me, what a strange appearance I must be for them.

Here I am, tall blonde woman, dressed Bangla, but by no means comparable to them. Kids start to laugh and giggle, the youngest burst in tears of fright. What a sensation! People just stare at me, some smiling, most just staring. If they’d had a camera, they’d be taking loads of pictures of me. So that’s what it feels like when all those tourists visit your country and stick their cameras up your face to catch your exotic looks! Well, as much as I am now feeling a bit of shame for all the staring and photographing I have been doing all these years, I think it is quite funny. I joke to the guys that every Western woman who needs to boost her ego should come here. No lack of male attention here!!! Hahaha.

Once the crowd has gathered, they are all lined up in categories; women and children first, older men second and the other men last. The village elderly has provided a list of the poorest who are to receive the blankets. These people have been given a piece of paper with their name on it and some form of ‘not to be copied’ marking, which they have to hand over to receive the blanket. It works very efficiently and within 2 hours we have distributed about 2000 blankets here. Time to move on to the next village, Manikhat, for another 1000 blankets.

When we get there, we find a similar scene, a growing crowd of very poor people, eager to receive a blanket to stay warm at night.
It may be hard to imagine the necessity, but being here in January, I can tell that a warm winter jacket isn’t a luxury here at night and living in a shed with a night temperature of about 10 degrees makes a shivering night without the comfort of a something as simple as a blanket,
a bare basic commodity in our societies of the developed world.

For these people:
Finally, a piece of luxury Finally a night to be spent in the comfort of warmth.

Just looking at the gratitude in their faces makes your heart stop for a while, thinking about all the things we take for granted every day, spending our consumptive lives without a single thought about what life is like on the other side of the scale.

In sharp contrast to the well organized method of distribution used in Sripur, we find a growing chaos here. 3 Hours after we got there, not even 20% has been distributed. The crowd just keeps growing and the noise becomes so overwhelming that it starts to get a bit threatening. Darkness falls and we are surrounded by shouting people, stretching out their arms to get a gift. Since there are many more people than blankets, it is no option to just hand them out to all those present. The village elderly keeps trying by calling the names of those entitled to a blanket, but the noise is such that no one can hear him. When we find ourselves in total darkness and still not even 30% distributed, we decide to pull out. This is not going to work. A very touch decision, but the only one to be made. This situation proves what the development literature writes, giving out freebees is not the always the best thing to do, as it brings out the greed in all humans, regardless the social status. It is painful to see, especially since you’d want to help all those surrounding you, but incapacitated by number of gifts to hand out we have to pull out, leaving so many empty handed. I need to withdraw and pull out my iPod, find a spot on the truck between the cartons and just sit there staring, trying to give this overwhelming experience a spot in my heart, as my emotions are running a-wire on me.
As we pull out, the people start to jump away and become slightly violent. I am glad we can go, as I have gotten a bit frightened. But what to do now? We still have about 700 blankets left on the truck. Firoz’s brother, Shahalam, and Russell decide we stop at another village on the way to had out the remaining blankets. Shahalam thinks of a great system upon arrival. All the people are to cue up and sit down. Here too, women, children and elderly first as we have only a limited number of blankets to give. All are to remain seated after they get their blanket. Within the hour we are out of blankets and can leave with a feeling of relief. Back towards Sripur for a village meal at Shahalam and Firoz’s mother’s and then onwards back to Uttara, where we arrive at 3AM. What a day! One that will go down memory lane and will be thought of and spoken about often.
Anoesjka Timmermans

Wednesday
I arrived back in Dhaka, sleepy eyed from the night flight from Dubai. It’s a smooth process now, I know where to go for the visa, how to get through immigration quickly, which carousel the luggage will be on. As you exit the airport there is customs, where non-tourists have to hand in a declaration of any items they are importing. Normally I am traveling with suitcases and get waived through as a tourist or foreigner or both, they are really looking to tax Bangladeshi people bringing back high value and electronic items. However, this time I bought a big bundle (full of shoe box gifts from school kids in Dubai), plastic wrapped, just as the Bangladeshi’s do…so the first customs man let me through, but another one realized that I had far too much luggage for a 4 days stay in Dhaka. I told him it was gifts for kids, he said it wasn’t allowed, I said they have no commercial value and I’m not paying…so then we had a small crowd of customs officers debating the situation in Bangla, with most saying it was for the kids, its fine, but still this one wanted me too pay…luckily I was first through immigration and was in customs when it was quiet, but suddenly there was a few hundred people from 3 flights heading to the customs officials…with their hands full a couple of customs officers told me to go and the one who wanted to charge me tax looked on, wanted to stop me, but had his hands full and so I was free to head into the morning sunshine of Dhaka with all the gifts for the kids and having paid no tax…woo hoo!!
I quickly dropped off my bags, changed and headed out to the project to see what was going on…I arrived at the school to find a big tent put up where the children normally play cricket and badminton…was it a party?? Sadly no…well at least not until later…inside were hundreds of children forming orderly queues. Dr. Musa, a local dentist and great supporter of the Dhaka project had arranged for volunteers (mostly dental students) and bought all the supplies to be able to do a blood test for every child and employee at the Dhaka project to find out everyones blood group! Here we go again, the children are already more vaccinated than me…and guess what, I have no idea what my blood group is either…so I joined the line!! So now I can tell you, my blood group is A positive!!
Back to the blood tests, myself and two volunteers went off to visit the nursery and pre-school, were the children are too small to come to the big tent for the tests, so we take the tests to them. We were armed with my only ammunition to stop them crying…a big jar of sweets! As it turned out, very few of them actually cried, most were more distracted by my camera than anything else…in fact some of the teachers and catering staff were more scared of the needle than the kids! In the evening, with the big tent still up, the kids put on a little party/farewell send off to another volunteer from Holland called Anouska, so it did get used to a party after all!!

Really hard to go, really hard to say goodbye to Maria at the airport and to leave them also. By "non" chance I caught a bad cold just the day before leaving and I believe that it just gave me an excuse to feel so bad.....

I arrived in Dubai at 2am and at home at 3am but impossible to sleep. Happy to find my bed but too many things in my mind avoiding me to fall asleep. I knew that it will be difficult to come back here after this trip and I confirm ;-) I guess the lack of sleep is also one of the reasons I am feeling so down.
I found in Maria a younger sister as we find in each other many similar things. But I can tell you that she has a fire burning inside her that I cannot explain. She is a caterpillar that nothing will stop. Why? Because she knows where she goes and she can see the kids in couple of years, graduating from University.
Maria is far from being perfect (thanks god ;-)) and she knows it. She does not need people telling her what she has to do or criticise the way she is doing things. She needs people around her to support her, understand her and share her joy and her fears, people who do things with her or show her that they also can achieve.

An entire Community has found dignity because of this young lady. The journey is just at the beginning and it's a long one but if you are ready.... welcome on board!