I left Dhaka on February 5th with the destination of Wahid Pur, a remote village located in the Chittagong region of Bangladesh. After what felt like a seven-hour-long game of chicken involving buses, trucks, rickshaws, and whatever else happened to be on the road, I arrived at the village’s Grameen branch in order to complete some field work.
Two interns from Austria and I stayed in the modest accommodations that were located above the work area of the branch. This is where the centre and branch managers usually live.
Our branch conducted the operations of 41 centres and 1,801 active members. Surprisingly, 11 per cent of its borrowers are male although Grameen consistently boasts that 97 per cent of its members are female. In total, we visited two centre meetings and conducted about 10 interviews. Centre meetings occur once per week and involve loan repayment and new proposals. The majority of the women were very shy and often spoke in soft voices and used their saris to further cover their heads when asked a question. Others were outspoken and seemed eager to help us with our research. All looked at us with curious eyes. When we interviewed one woman, a borrower of 27 years who had been particularly outspoken when we asked about the obstacles of joining Grameen at the beginning, she said that she didn’t understand why we were there and basically asked us to help her. I was taken aback and unsure how to respond. Our translator kindly explained that we were there for research and nothing else.
The other borrowers that we interviewed were more welcoming. Although they lived in modest tin houses, they were always quick to offer us the food or tea that they had worked so hard to buy. Bangladeshis are by far the most hospitable people I’ve met
Our branch has a 100 per cent payback rate and none of the borrowers expressed any problems with the bank. There has been criticism that the group structure of micro-lending programs can cause a social hierarchy or dominance amongst the women in a village. When asked about conflict between members, the women said that it didn’t exist and if anything, Grameen has helped to strengthen the social situation as they socialize every week at the centre meeting. However, all interviews that we conducted were in the presence of the branch manager and the borrowers could have felt uncomfortable expressing any doubt towards the bank.
One of the most shocking meetings we had was with a struggling member, or basically someone who used to beg before she received her loan. Grameen issues these loans to discourage begging and allow the opportunity to sell things door-to-door instead. The woman we interviewed was very young but her husband had passed away seven years ago and she was left with nothing but mouths to feed. Her only option was to resort to begging in order to support her family. With a Grameen loan, she began with selling cosmetics door-to-door and worked her way into a mat-making business. However, four years after her first loan she is still living at her brother’s house and can’t feed her family very well. She said in order to get out of her current situation she requires more money and wishes that Grameen would allow her to take a larger struggling members’ loan as she can’t afford to become a normal member and carry the burden of a basic loan with weekly repayments. Although her situation has improved, she is still caught in a trap and struggling. On my way back from the meeting, I mentally calculated that my outfit was worth six times more than her entire loan that she will take two years to pay back.
We talked to many women who said that their husband or son ran the business. We spoke to a man running a fruit stand who said that his mother was the one with the loan but he and his father handled the actual stand. Although the women maintained some control over the business, they were still expected to stay at home and carry out their duties as the woman of the house. Even when the business was to make mats or baskets, it still came second to cooking and cleaning. This brings up the question of whether women are really empowered by the microcredit process. Sure, they are better able to handle cash but are still considered servants of their husbands. From my experience, actual empowerment is overestimated. Also, mobility of women can be questioned as it done by Stephen Young in his paper “Gender, Mobility and the Financialisation of Development” which is a read that I highly recommend.
The disorganized chaos of Bangladesh has thrown me through a loop. The majority of the time I’m so confused that I don’t even know whether efficiency exists or not. I feel like I won’t ever be able to develop the type of specialized judgment that’s required for living here. It’s impossible to capture and convey the environment.
Since arrival, I have felt uncomfortable numerous amounts of times. I don’t like walking the streets alone as I usually attract unwanted attention, including beggar children dressed in rags who grab onto my legs and shout the only English word they know – “money”. Begging here is different than in Canada where it’s easier to justify refusal using the reasoning that it will be spent on drugs or alcohol, things are so expensive that pocket change won’t help that much anyway, or my money would be better spent in donations to an organization for the homeless. Here drugs and alcohol basically don’t exist, it’s easy to get a meal for less than a dollar, and no one touches the beggars.
Foreigners seem to be pretty uncommon and are really interesting for Bangladeshis. They have no reservations with crowding around us, staring and taking photos and even videos. Oftentimes people will ask for pictures with us and once we say yes to someone, others feel as though we laid out a welcome mat and start posing with us without even asking. At first I felt flattered but it has really come to the point where I wish I didn’t stick out as a foreigner.
I’m three weeks in and I’ve already learned and experienced more than I could have imagined. I’m looking forward to that which the next two and a half months will throw at me!
Take care! Kendra