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Choosing has always been the hardest part of this project. I’ve tried my best to share all the emotions I’ve had during this project like the joy of helping children in the Hill-Tracts, or the anguish and sense of powerlessness during Cyclone Sidr disaster relief, or the craziness involved in reaching some remote rural village. With this latest video, I’m sharing the toughest reality of this project: being forced to choose.

With this video, there is no wrong answer – only tough choices.

More after the jump.

Continue reading ‘Challenge Poverty (with Save the Children)’

A year’s worth of textbooks for a Grade Nine student studying in rural Bangladesh cost over 900 taka. Many can’t afford it – and many drop out. In fact, of all the children that enroll in school, only 54% of them are still in school by the age of ten. Individual poverty is a big factor as is the lack of infrastructure and general lack of access to education.

During my latest trip to Tangail District, I got to meet Mohammed Hossain – a Grade Nine student who didn’t have the 900 taka necessary to buy his books for the year. Fortunately, 900 taka is just 13 bucks. And, having liquidated my savings for my Xbox 360, there was more than enough money to buy all the books for him. To show his thanks, after he got his books, he sang a couple of songs for my grandmother and I.

The desk he is examining the books on is the same desk I talked about in this post. We painted it to make it waterproof before donating (thus the paint brush on the table).

There are a couple of more photos on my page on Flickr.

Before (read my original article here):

Five Months Later:

What’s Different?

• Clothes – no more walking around shiverring and shirtless! (clothes provided by my aunt)
• Schooling – the eldest son just graduated from Grade One! (school costs paid for by my mom, dad, and I)
• No more insects and insect-bites! The PermaNet  I donated to them got rid of the cockroaches that used to crawl around their bed at night. It’s also protected them from being feasted upon by mosquitoes while they slept. (PermaNet donated to this project courtesy of Vestergaard Frandsen – they rock)
• Can Study in the Dark – that windup flashlight I gave them still works and the eldest son uses it to study. My dad was worried that a five dollar camping flashlight from Wal-Mart wouldn’t be useful as long-term light source in the third world. Five months on, it’s still going on strong. LEDs and hand-cranked rechargable batteries rule!
• Hungry no more! Malnutrition is a big problem here. And, that doesn’t mean that people aren’t eating meals. Rather, it means that people aren’t eating a lot of the proper stuff – because they can’t afford it. Protein and iron deficieines are all too common here. I found out that most of the poorer locals can’t afford beef or other foods high in protein. There are apparently two kinds of salt sold here. The “poor mans” salt is basically old and low in iron. The good stuff – the kind most reading this have on their dinner tables – is high in iron. Not only did we give them money for food but also, whenever my grandmother is in town, she invites them over for a meal full of all the stuff they normally can’t afford like beef and the “good” kind of salt. I was able to share such a meal with them earlier today.

Here’s a photo I took shortly after eating along with them:

One of the things I remember Dr. Jeffrey Sachs talking about was how the poor know what they need but just cannot afford to buy it. Now that I knew the basics (protection from insect bites, funds for school, helping with food, etc) were taken care of – I could finally ask them: what do they need? I could tell no one ever asked the mother this question because it kind of took her aback. After some hesitation, the mother turned to the eldest son and quietly talked to him for a bit. She then turned to me and said it would really help if I could buy them a desk and a couple of chairs. They can’t afford it and, because of it, the son needs to study on the bed (as you can see in episode one).

Since Ikea hasn’t opened up a shop yet in rural Bangladesh, I was kind of worried that this would cost a bit of money. Afterall, all the furniture here is hand-made. And when was the last time anything hand-made was cheap, right? I went to the local bazar with my grandmother and we scouted out a couple of good hand-made chairs and a hand-made table to go along with it – not unlike the table and chair I’m using right now. Turns out the whole thing cost eight bucks. Eight bucks. Wow. Let me put it this way: There is a vending machine on the ground floor of the Hesburgh Library back at Notre Dame that has stolen more than eight bucks from me.

If I was looking for a pat on the back about my work – I’d end this article here. But, no good deed goes unpunished and nothing good comes without trouble. So click the jump to hear more…

Continue reading ‘One Difference at a Time – The Follow-Up’

When it came to Cyclone Sidr and disaster relief – I thought I knew it all. I knew I couldn’t help them all. I knew the media would be coming. I knew the local population knew the area better than foreigners. I knew aid work was more than just giving stuff away. I knew things could go wrong. I knew the blankets I was giving away could be used to keep people warm during this cold season. I thought I knew it all….. I was wrong.

In this latest episode I talk about the lessons I had to learn – the ones that were tough for me to learn. I’ve tried to keep this project positive. This episode is an exception to that.

Click the jump to read more.

Continue reading ‘The Hard Lessons of Aid Work’

They say when you see such suffering and devastation first hand, you’re mind goes into shock. I didn’t believe them until I experienced it myself. I kind of feel like a weakling for reacting like this. I mean, I wasn’t harmed by the Cyclone – my family is safe thousands of miles away – what is there for me to be in shock about?

But, here I am just now – reviewing some footage I took during my time in the disaster area – and all of a sudden I vividly remember something I must have blocked out. And, now that I remember it, I kind of remember why I would have wanted to block it out in the first place.

As I mention in the last youtube episode (or see below, after the jump), I spent the third day with Nick Downie with Save the Children. We had to walk among endless rows upon rows of make-shift housing from people displaced by the cyclone. I had forgotten until now, but a group of people raced up to me and asked me in Bengali if I was a television reporter.

They wanted to tell the world how improperly aid was being given in their part of the disaster area. They were explaining to me how they were waiting and some people were getting aid and relief for the second time and they hadn’t received any at all. Unfortunately, we were on a tight schedule and I was falling behind – we hadn’t even reached the abandoned school yet to test its water. After explaining to them I wasn’t with any Bangladesh TV station – I left them behind. I’m just starting to remember how sad the looks on their faces were.

I also understood why they were complaining about how aid was be distributed. Technically, aid hadn’t fully reached this region yet. My sparse 30 blankets were some of the first aid of its kind in that area. There were also far more pressing concerns. For starters, there was no clean water anywhere in sight. I had brought with me my Notre Dame Nalgene water bottle. In such intense heat, I finished the water in the bottle very quickly. I spent the rest of the day parched. Because, although there were tube wells everywhere we went – the cyclone left them too contaminated to drink from. Water from every tube well was yellow with chunks of dirt in it. Yet, that’s exactly what everyone else was drinking who was stuck there. One day in that area and I was tempted to risk drinking from it.

Imagine having to live there.

[UPDATE 1: Somebody submitted this blog post to digg. I am really flattered. If you want, you can digg it here.]

[UPDATE 2: Welcome to those who came here by Stumbleupon.]

Continue reading ‘Disaster Area: I’m Starting To Remember More Details’

Dave Semeniuk is a student at the University of British Columbia and writes for a UBC publication called Terry.

This interview answers some questions like: Where did I get the name “Uncultured Project” from? How has my experience been with aid efforts in this country? What is particularly inspiring to me about Dr. Sachs work?

You can read the full interview here. A summary and excepts of this interview are syndicated on the Terry website and on NowPublic.

“Are you sick?” asks Rahul Singh – an EMS first responder and fellow Canadian from my hometown of Toronto. He came to Bangladesh to try and help the victims of Cyclone Sidr as part of an NGO he runs called Global Medic. Rahul is a big guy – but he isn’t as big as the presence he is able to command. You don’t mess around with this guy – even over the phone. If it was anyone else, I might have lied – but not with Rahul. “Yes I am,” I explained. I then quickly added “I’m sure it’s nothing and I’ll be fine by the time we get there,”. That wasn’t good enough for Rahul. I’m stuck in a hotel just a short drive to the disaster area – alone.

In hindsight, he was probably right. I had come to the hotel from Dhaka by midnight – after a long 7 hour trip. I hadn’t slept and I was hungry. The only thing to eat at this late hour was some food the Global Medic and Muslim Aid team had saved for me and my travel companions (who were employees from Muslim Aid). It was cold but it looked safe. I mean, the hotel we were staying at is impressively modern. Cable TV, room service, modern bathroom with all the trimmings – you could hardly tell you were in rural Bangladesh. The food poisoning, however, was a cold reminder that looks can be deceiving. I spent the entire night – the entire night – throwing up.

….. Looking back at that last sentence, that was probably as delicately as I could have worded it.

Even though I was sick – I wanted to go. If only because I wanted to correct a mistake. I met Rahul once before – months ago, very early into this trip. Before I was blogging in fact. There was a devastating flood that hit Bangladesh and I was here for that. My dad, back in Canada, had seen a news story about this Canadian NGO going to Bangladesh and told me about it. I looked them up and was ecstatic to hear that they wouldn’t mind me tagging along. My grandmother, mother, aunt, and uncle – however, were anything but ecstatic. My parents had been very supportive of this whole project. Not many parents would be cool with helping to fund a trip around the world for (well, for all intents and purposes) an unemployed former grad student. So, when they wanted to veto something – I conceded.

I quickly came to regret that decision. My own efforts at independent aid were nothing like I had hoped for. The best I could do was provide two crates of water bottles to a flood affected region within the city – hardly the big difference I wanted to make. While I would have preferred that something like Cyclone Sidr never would happen – when it did, I didn’t want to repeat my mistake. “70 blankets can save 70 lives” said my dad to me over the phone. It had been a couple of months since the flood – and this time my parents attitude was somewhat different. This time, both he and I agreed going to Global Medic and Muslim Aid was an OK if not-without-risk idea. And 70 blankets is far more useful than 2 crates of mineral water to about 2 dozen people.

But, I guess what they say is true – nothing worthwhile is without risk. So, here I am – all puked out with my tummy still hurting. I’m so close… yet so far away from making a difference in the lives of the Cyclone victims.

(Disclaimer: Tagging along with Global Medic and Muslim Aid in no way implies support or endorsement of The Uncultured Project, me, or my views. The views expressed are my own and do not reflect Global Medic, The David McAntony Gibson Foundation, Muslim Aid, or any other NGO or charity. I am not under the employment or contract of any of these organizations.)