UP | uncultured project

I’m a city-boy at heart. I panic if I’m more than a few blocks away from the subway. I’m also used to living in a nuclear family and the hemisphere of relatives that usually come with it (immediate aunts, uncles, and cousins). Since coming to Bangladesh, I’ve had to change some of those conceptions and expand my horizons. My trip to Jamalpour – a rural remote village in Bangladesh – was one such experience for me.

My grandmother on my mother’s side is my last surviving grandparent. In turn, she has only one last surviving sibling – a brother who lives in a rural village not far from where I was doing some work related to my latest YouTube episode. In fact, before I was able to visit that school for working kids – my grandmother insisted that I go see her brother (and his children and grandchildren) first. Time is precious and opportunities like this come up rarely. In my family, no one appreciates that fact more than my grandmother.

Here are some photos I took on that trip. See them after the jump or you can check even more of them out on my Flickr photoset titled “My Trip to Jamalpour”.

Continue reading ‘Photos: My Trip to Jamalpour’

Okay, so it’s been a few days since coming back from the rural villages (including my Bengal Bouts journey to Jalchatra) and I thought I’d kick things off with an update video. This was something I filmed in a rice field in a rural village in the district of Jamalpur. Filming in the middle of a rice field is a lot tricker than it looks.

Near the end of the video, I talk about what I’d like to call my “Xbox 360 Challenge”. Before going to the rural villages, I withdrew 21,000 taka from my bank at Notre Dame. That’s over $300. That $300 was actually the last of my savings from my last job. I had set this money aside to buy a Xbox 360 (and Halo 3) upon my return. I’m a huge Halo fan – I bought the original Xbox just to play Halo and I bought Halo 2 within the first week of its release. I was waiting to buy an Xbox 360 after Halo 3 came out – but by then I was already doing this project.

Halo 3 will have to wait because all that money has now gone to much more important causes. I went to the rural villages with $300 and came back with about $3. With such rampant poverty and destitution, it’s very easy to find ways to spend $300. I really wanted to make a difference with this cash, so I set for myself the following rules:

1. I can’t give just cash. I must buy or pay for things people need.
2. It must be a hand up not a hand out. (As cheesy as that sounds)
3. I have to learn from the locals. I can’t just buy stuff I think they need, I have to get to know the people and figure out how to best spend the money in a way that helps them.

A small part of this money went to buying supplies for the trip, paying for gas, and paying for my internet connection. But, the rest of the money (more than enough to buy an Xbox 360 Core System) went to the poor. What do I do now that all my savings have been spent? Well, I am now officially running only on family donations (which is about a few hundred dollars each month). Don’t worry – it doesn’t cost that much to live here and I have relatives helping with room and board. I’m going to make sure as much of that money goes towards helping the poor as possible.

Expect more footage from my trip to rural Bangladesh in the future

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’

My biggest surprise since coming to Bangladesh has been that it’s more difficult for me to raise awareness about the problem of poverty to local Bangladeshis than it has been for me to raise the issue with Bangladeshis living abroad.

While 80% of this country earns less than $2 a day, those who are able to afford chauffeurs, maids, and satellite TV are hard pressed to admit that Bangladesh is a “poor” country. No one has been more vocal about this issue – and more critical of my work here – than my uncle on my mother’s side of the family. He is a judge on the High Court Division of the Supreme Court. According to him, “Bangladesh is not a poor country” and, therefore, I couldn’t possibly be here to help the poor.

The first criticism came before anything had even been distributed to the poor. “You want to hand someone a straw [referring to the LifeStraws], take a picture, and call it poverty alleviation?” he laughed. Even after distributing some items – his criticism had only got worse. “You’ve done nothing,” he explained to me referring to the over fifty mosquito nets I’ve distributed to rural villagers “these things cost 100 taka – anyone can buy them” (the nets actually cost much more than that – but why quibble?).

What has been particularly shocking to me has been when he suggests that the poor don’t even deserve some of the items that I’ve been giving out. If you saw episode one or read this blog earlier, you might have seen the poor rural village boy who I gave a wind-up flashlight. This kid is trying to stay in school but cannot afford electricity – or even candles. This flashlight is perfect for reading at night without the need to buy batteries (which he couldn’t afford). When I told my uncle about this boy and how he was going to use this to study at night – he rolled his eyes and said “yeah right”.

Whenever my uncle sees the stuff I’m planning on giving away – be it a wind-up flashlight, mosquito net, or a water purification straw – he always asks for one. “I’m giving these to those who need them” I repeatedly tell him. “I NEED THEM! The poor are just going to sell them off anyways.” he would say – followed by “I’ll just have to buy them off whoever your distributing them to instead”. The tragedy that was Cyclone Sidr had temporarily silenced this criticism – but only temporarily. Upon my return from aid work in the disaster area, my uncle saw my latest YouTube episode only to say: “you’re just doing this for the publicity…. there is no altruism here”.

It hurts. But, at the same time, I see where he is coming from. His view is no different than the much of the successful well-to-do Bangladeshi community in Dhaka. These people are in a better position to help the poor of their own country than some unemployed former graduate student coming here on his personal savings and family donations. Yet, I seem to be doing more than most of them have. For some people – like my mother’s side uncle – their reaction is to try and rip me a new one. For other’s – like my father’s side uncle – their reaction is to try and outdo me and give even more than I have.

If for every relative that critiques me, I inspire another relative – I can call it a win. But, that doesn’t make the harsh criticism any easier to hear.

[This post has been updated - see below after the jump] Bangladesh seems to be apparently blocking access to Google and its related web properties. I noticed this on my own connection about 48 to 72 hours ago. Since then I have been able to get independent confirmation from those using different internet connections. This problem seems to affect Bangladeshis trying to access Google’s services via EDGE, GPRS, and landline based internet connections in both Dhaka and other locations in the country.

More details after the jump along with a way to bypass this blocking. Continue reading ‘BREAKING: Bangladesh Censoring/Blocking Access to Google’

As a Canadian I’m both surprised and sad to report that Bangladesh beats Canada when it comes to cellphone service. I’m writing now from a rural village in Bangladesh (called Madhupur). There is no electricity, no running water, and the diesel generator that was powering a ceiling fan and light bulb died earlier this night. Bangladesh is still a third world country afterall. But, despite all this, I am still able to check my mail, see what’s going on at Digg, and post to this blog.

Bangladesh is one of the few countries in the world that can guarantee each one of its residents can get a cellphone signal – no matter where they are in the country. With a population of over 150 million (over four times Canada’s population) that’s pretty impressive. There are populated parts in the North in Canada that most cellphone service providers don’t bother putting up towers for. Not only can Bangladeshis send and receive calls from anywhere in the country – they can also surf the web on either an EDGE or GPRS network. Part of this has to do with free market competition in Bangladesh and corporate collusion in Canada. Continue reading ‘Bangladesh Cellphone Service Better than Canada’