Caitlin Morgan's Blog (7)

If I occupy this room during the afternoon, as I do today in my stomach rumblings and fatigue, I fling back the mosquito net surrounding my bed—it obscures the small relief from the overhead fan, and mosquitoes have mostly retired til dark. I scratch violently at the bites peppering the backs of my thighs. Last night I mistakenly trapped one insect in my cocoon, and it feasted on me throughout the night. This is my penance for being relatively unsweet-blooded, compared with my friends, and I thi… Continue

The rhetorical dangers of culture clash (comments from local women made through a translator) “Is she yours?” --woman to Sahil, about Katherine “Are you Muslim or Hindu?” --(I still don’t know how to answer this question) “Chicken?” --Manzhu, our translator, at every single meal, still disbelieving that we actually do not want meat “But if you get tired from this walk you won’t be able to finish the rest of the day!” --Manzhu, regarding a 1 km stroll, for which we insisted a rickshaw was unn… Continue

After identifying a village’s poorest people, a BRAC interviewer visits each poor household to determine if its mistress qualifies for the TUP program. As he loudly accuses one woman of involvement in another NGO program, she smiles and protests friendlily in front of a smirking crowd. I shudder to think what a poor Yankee farmer would do if a man in business clothes appeared, asking to see food stashes and evidence of furniture. Even if the farmer only ate twice a day and desperately needed sup… Continue

I think about food and weight differently here—it’s impossible not to. People always serve us more food, more food. I wonder if I look thin to them (for a foreigner, that is) or plump. Either way, in reality, I don’t need to eat so much. I’m not in danger of future hunger. When I think about it, I realize that it would be nearly impossible to for me to starve. Even if my parents went completely bankrupt, and everyone in my extended family died, and I became crippled and unable to work, I still c… Continue

I am sitting on a wooden chair in front of a semi-circle of village members who have settled onto straw and dirt. I dislike the feeling of being placed on a throne. A BRAC employee, an interviewer, stands over a chalk outline of the village’s borders. Today is Social Mapping day in the Targeting the Ultra Poor program schedule, and the same process repeats in each village BRAC selects. We watch the covert operation; BRAC has told villagers that they are collecting information for a government su… Continue

Northern Bangladesh So hot. The kind of hot that kills old ladies in Texas summer heat waves, or at least the kind of hot that makes them want to die in the first place. The kind that barely cools down after dark because hot is just sitting in the air after baking the dampness all day. The weather drips so humid that my skin doesn’t dry even when I towel off because the minute I step out of the shower, I start sweating. The devil himself must have invented this kind of hot in anticipation of th… Continue

So we've arrived in Dhaka, here for a week before heading out into the field to do interviews of BRAC clients. It is hard to know where to begin when explaining what it's like here. 12.5 million people in a fairly small space. The weather weighs heavy, and if you're not in an air conditioned room, then you are sweating. Outside, busses, cars, auto-rickshaws (CNGs), bicycle rickshaws, and pedestrians all compete for street space that has no official lanes or even traffic lights, ususally. Riding… Continue